I wasn't sure how best to structure this so I'm going to start with my main claim, followed by a Q and A bit. The Q's are not intended to be straw-men or caricatures, they're questions I've asked myself in the course of thinking about this.
My Claim: "Science" is just the process of looking at the world and thinking about the evidence in an effort to understand it. It's not a special form of knowledge, scientists don't use a special 'scientific method' - scientists just look and think about things. They may use special equipment and techniques, but in essence it's no different to what we all do every day. As such it makes no sense to talk about the 'limits of science' or 'what science can't tell us', unless by that we mean the limits of human knowledge itself, because science just is knowledge.
Q: "But if science were just observation, everyone would be a scientist and it becomes meaningless." - No: for the same reason that not everyone is a poet, even though anyone can write a poem.
Science is observation informed by previous scientific findings i.e. it is expert observation. Anyone can, say, look at the stars but this doesn't make them an astronomer. Astronomy is in essence just looking at the stars and thinking about them - in a broad sense - but to contribute to astronomy, you first need to know the relevant background, which few except astronomers do.
Likewise, anyone can write a poem, but few of us can make a living out of it.
Q: "OK, but still, if science is just observation, then all forms of knowledge are science." - This is a tricky one, but the answer is crucial to understanding my point.
A few hundred years ago, the word "science" in English did indeed just mean "knowledge". However, more recently, it has come to mean a particular subset of knowledge: roughly, it today includes physics + chemistry + biology. Maybe some others.
We lump these three (or more) things together and call the lump "science". But this lump is more or less arbitrary. Physics + chemistry + biology don't share a special essence, which sets them apart from other kinds of knowledge (other 'sciences' in the older sense.)
So I'm not saying that all knowledge is "science" in the modern sense. The modern word "science" only includes a limited portion of knowledge. But I am saying that the rest of knowledge is essentially no different from science, because "science" is just an arbitrary subset of knowledge.
Here's a picture of what I mean:
Science is a colour of knowledge. It's not a true kind.
Q: "But if the difference between science and knowledge is arbitrary, are you saying that The Scientific Method is the only way to knowledge?" Not at all. I don't think 'The Scientific Method' exists.
This follows from the fact that "science" is an arbitrary lump. Scientists are a diverse bunch and they use many different methods. Theoretical physicists, for example, use methods which are very close to those of mathematicians - who are not 'scientists' by most definitions. Zoologists use others, and you can get by in (most) of zoology without knowing any math at all. And so on.
In fact, there's almost as much difference between branches of "the same science" as there is between sciences. Just like "science", "biology" is a lump of diverse things, although not quite as arbitrary a lump.
Outside science, people use all kinds of methods as well. Historians have their set of methods, economists have others, all tailored to the particular demands of the case. That's exactly how it should be - all knowledge comes from observation and, to observe different things, you need different methods.
There are many different kinds of facts, but a fact is a fact, whether it's a scientific fact, a historical fact, or just an everyday fact. "Shakespear wrote Hamlet" is just as true as "The earth orbits the sun" is just as true as "It's raining" (if it is, in fact, raining.) The facts of history are just as true as the facts of biology.
But there is a grain of truth in the question here: I am saying that observation is the only way to knowledge.
Q: "That's very simplistic. Are you saying that we can only know what we can see and measure?" - No because I'm using "observe" in the broadest sense here, to include things like noticing, sensing, feeling, seeing, hearing, being told that, reading about...
You observe that it's raining: maybe you look out the window, maybe you hear the rain on the roof, maybe someone comes in from outside dripping wet. You observe that you feel hungry. You observe that Obama is president (even if you've never actually seen him) by watching the news. Etc.
"Observe" is in many cases an awkward word and I'm not saying we should use it in all those cases. My point is that these are all ways of finding stuff out about the world. In that broad sense, I think all knowledge comes from observation - although maybe indirectly, through thinking about observations; thoughtless observation is almost as unhelpful as purely abstract speculation.
Of course, it's easier said than done: very often it's not clear what we've observed (is it real or some kind of trick, mistake, illusion?), what it means, whether it matters, or even what the question is. This is why there's always room for debate, controversy and doubt, at least at first, before all the observations have been made.
Q: "But what you're saying is merely trite and obvious: 'science is based on observation' 'there is no one single scientific method', well, duh!" - From a certain perspective, they are obvious, but if you think so, then you ought to agree with everything else I've written here. They're all connected, you can't take some and leave the rest.
38 comments:
This post falls under philosophy. I hate philosophy. It's so pointless.
I would argue that there is such a thing as "the scientific method," with a precise definition: briefly, observation->hypothesis->experimental test->repeat. The mistake people make is equating "the scientific method" with "science." A grest deal of science is done purely through informed observation, e.g. paleontology and astronomy.
"Likewise, anyone can write a poem, but few of us can make a living out of it." Not such a good analogy, in that it refers more to the market conditions of poetry than the existence or nonexistence of poetry as a discipline. In fact, most poets don't make a living at it, highly regarded or otherwise: we have to define professionalism in other ways.
Philosophy provides substantial raw materials for the construction of testable scientific hypotheses. You might dislike it, but it isn't pointless.
Topic of the day???
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/08/30/the-varieties-of-scientific-experience/
Tiel Aisha Ansari: That's what I used to think about the scientific method too, but I don't think it works.
In some branches of science there are no experiments. Astronomers, evolutionary biologists, and others. There are just observations.
You could say that there's still a cycle of:
observation->hypothesis->test hypothesis by further observations->repeat
But while that's true, it's not limited to science.
I mean just now I wondered where my cat was. I suspected he was on his favourite cushion. So I looked there, he wasn't there. Hypothesis falsified.
Everyone makes observations, hypotheses and tests hypotheses to find out more (although usually unconsciously).
It is always tricky to try to define what is science or knowledge without spending time describing what is neither. While knowledge has a tremendous role in all choices we face individually or collectively as human beings, a lot of those choices are also based on subjective, moral or cultural principles and goals that are outside of the scope of "knowledge". Since confusing arguments about knowledge with arguments about subjective choices is the source of so much sterile conflict, and wasted time, I would hope defining the boundary between them is not considered wasted time (when making life choices, that boundary is probably as complex as the topology of fractals).
Philosophy as i understand creates a lot of hot air, philosophy to me means discussing whether a falling tree makes a sound etc.
Flinging various ideas around to see what comes up isn't philosophy to me.
Discussing what is science falls in the first category.
Discussing what are boundaries/definitions of science is another thing.
What is NOT science is very easy to say however. Start with that and work backwards
Neuroskeptic: I agree that searching for your cat (in the way you describe) is much like the scientific method. But science aims to draw more generalized conclusions than the location of a particular cat. In order to do so, scientists must make use of replicable procedures and must take great pains to minimize sources of bias.
Neuroskeptic
"Science" is just the process of looking at the world and thinking about the evidence in an effort to understand it."
I disagree. Evidence of what? A hypothesis? If so then understanding of what? A hypothesis? What is there to understand about a hypothesis? It is what it is as stated.
Science IMO is the observation, description and predication of something we define to be a system. Your definition appears to emphasize observation above the other two components. I think this is not helpful and I think it is a mindset peculiar to those that study biological systems. IMO it is not science unless all three components are there. Science is the endpoint not the path.
I think that you should be more careful when connecting the terms "science" and "scientist". IMO the definition of scientist should not be: One that that has done science. Instead I would say that a scientist works on one or more of the components of science.
I suppose that those who think that mathematicians "are not 'scientists' by most definitions" have the three (or less) component definition of science in mind and assume that mathematicians are generally not observing systems and are therefore not scientists. But by the same token if you are studying the brain by measuring variable X but X is not part of any proposed model describing the system or/nor if the model does not predict well then you have not yet done science.
Sometimes folks will say: Yes but mathematicians are not testing a hypothesis. Well hypotheses were even part of the definition I gave but putting that aside: They aren't? They spend considerable time and effort addressing hypotheses of the types: Algorithm X will do better than algorithm Y or Model W is a better predictor of a systems behavior than model V. Those are hypotheses. They may not be hypotheses specifically about the system being studied but they are hypotheses about the tools used to study those systems and tools are systems themselves.
"...science just is knowledge"
Or rather, in your opinion, science is a process which helps lead us to a (sizeable) subset of all possible human knowledge.
Very interesting, but I disagree with the claim that observation is necessary for knowledge. Observation is necessary for a posteriori knowledge, but not a priori knowledge (which, as Kant proved, includes both analytic and synthetic knowledge). No observation leads one to the conclusion that the square root of two is irrational, or the law of the excluded middle, etc etc.
@Neuroskeptic - Great share. I noticed you removed the word "literature" from the diagram that you espouse. Care to elaborate on that or is this merely coincidental?
@Petrossa - Philosophy is pointless is a philosophical proposition. It demands a philosophical defense.
@All - For a more in depth look at some history of the philosophy of science (i.e. some of the best attempts to answer the question "What is science?"), see God-frey Smith's book). It will cover more details about why propositions like "knowledge requires observation" is less than perfectly satisfactory.
Science is boring.
L. Paul Strait wrote:
"No observation leads one to the conclusion that the square root of two is irrational, or the law of the excluded middle, etc etc."
I disagree that logic (including the law of excluded middle) is not based on observation as well as description and prediction. Classical logic is a set of rules (They describe and predict very broad aspects of nature) that we have observed works well for us. We will keep using them as long as they work well for us.
Who knows, it may be that the rules of classical logic are the only rules compatible with human thought. Logic may be as much about what we are as what nature is.
I think the philosopher Dewey viewed logic roughly from this perspective.
Rediscovering the wheel in philosophy of science, anyone?
PS: Mathematicians do not need replication because they are the only scientists who demonstrate their working hypothesis.
Sometimes it takes a few of them and a few centuries.
And may be even twice when a silly one is killed in a duel after demonstrating an hypothesis without publishing it and the papers are not found.
But to do research in math you need to be very clever and able to concentrate as long as needed on a problem. Two reasons who prohibited me to become a mathematician
Thanks for the comments.
Nick Barrowman: "I agree that searching for your cat (in the way you describe) is much like the scientific method. But science aims to draw more generalized conclusions than the location of a particular cat. In order to do so, scientists must make use of replicable procedures and must take great pains to minimize sources of bias."
In most cases that's true. But not always - sometimes scientists are interested in particular facts that are not at all "general".
For example take the GFAJ-1 "arsenic life" bacteria. This bacterium lives (as far as we know) only in a single small lake in the USA.
That's not quite as specific as my cat, only one of which exists, but it's much less general than most of biology and infinitely more specific than physics or chemistry.
Now to reuse my own metaphor rather differently: the question in the case of GFAJ-1 is much like my question of is the cat on the cushion: "Is the arsenic in the DNA"? Of course it's more complicated in practice because you can't just look and see, you have to search for indirect evidence of the arsenic. But in essence it's no different.
DS: I'm honestly not sure about mathematics. On the one hand, in theory, it is not about observation of the world, it is 'purely a priori'. That would make it non-science.
But in practice I think mathematicians proceed like scientists in many cases. They "observe" the behaviour of numbers (maybe purely inside their own mind) and try to explain them. Although the behaviour of any set of numbers is defined a priori, in practice people 'discover' new facts about numbers by setting up systems and seeing what happens...
In which case mathematics would be much like science.
But I've never done serious mathematics so I don't know if that's really true, or just my impression of how mathematicians work.
@NS: I think you are conflating the 'scientific method' with 'science'. They aren't the same but in my book science is only science if the scientific method is applied. But that doesn't preclude you from using the scientific method outside of science.
Moreover, I also think you're defining the scientific method wrongly. I'd argue that it amounts to:
hypothesis->falsification->repeat
I don't believe 'observation' is the necessary starting point, at least it is possible to create purely theoretical constructs that become testable hypotheses. (In reality, I'd say we are already in an on-going loop so most hypotheses, even from pure theoretical thinkers, will have arisen from previous iterations of that loop).
The mere completion of a PhD does not a scientist make, that much I can tell you! (I sometimes wonder whether there might be some mutual exclusivity at work...)
Labels and categories can be hard to define, even scientifically. There's a similar debate - with legal ramifications - going on in journalism. Who is a journalist and what is journalism? Is NS a journalist because he has a blog? Or does one require some sort of professional membership to be a journo? Slippery slope, that.
So, perhaps as with the advent of new tools and a redefinition of who can be considered a journalist, so there is an evolution of who is a scientist and what science (and the scientific method) is. Back in the 17th century a scientist was a rich white guy, or a white guy with a rich benefactor. We seem to have progressed a little bit since then!
Ivana, I'm yet to be convinced neuroscience as science. Mishmash of medicine, psychology, technology, not much science if you ask me. Then again what is science, do you answer that is terms of history ? method ? discipline ? I still say science today is boring. Lots of facts, information, meticulously recording stuff without much knowledge value. Back in the days it was compulsory for scientists to be trained in philosophy, the time of great scientists, disciplined to think. Scientists today seem rubbishy, driven by prestige, paying off mortgage.
Another thought just struck me: it's beautifully appropriate for us all to be debating this subject. It's neuroscience at work! A need for our human brains to categorize, to find a pattern that fits! Seems our brains don't like it when something violates an otherwise neat category. It makes us think, to search for a new pattern that makes everything fit just so. Wonderful!
@omg 1 September 2012 17:25
"Scientists today seem rubbishy, driven by prestige, paying off mortgage."
Oh boy do I ever have the academic satirical novel for you! Just finished read a friend's first draft, proofreading for grammar, etc. soon. I'll be nagging him to release it online before year's end. I'll blog/tweet about it as soon as it's available.
Back in the 17thC and before the scientists were Arabs, anyone but White. White guys initially plagiarized. Copernicus was not a hermit when he wrote those volumes, nor Galileo with the Copernican Revolution.
P. fMRI, yes please tweet, looking forward to it. You'll have to drug me first though.
@omg:
"P. fMRI, yes please tweet, looking forward to it. You'll have to drug me first though."
Fear not, he's a hardened, cynical electrical engineer. This thesis - such as he has one - is that it's the academic system that's corrupted/corrupting, not science per se. With the possible exception of Sheldon Cooper, the sad reality is that scientists are humans first.
Great post I agree totally
It doesn't look like either the person who posted the original blog or any of the people who posted comments are working research scientists. Scientists generally understand that science is a process. The so-called "scientific method" is a philosophical ideal, never truly realized. Science is self-correcting, reproducible, experimental, based on the principle that any experiment or theory must be falsifiable, and progressive. It is also co-operative and undeniably social.I must agree that the most truthful and cogent of comments was the first, that of petrossa. Philosophy is a highly personal and useful guide for a specific individual, in that it sets out answers to questions like "What do I think?" and "How do I think I should behave, or approach life" and is totally based on the logic of what a particular individual person thinks without examination of assumptions or review of experimentally determined facts. Science is a game of trying to find out how the Universe works without resorting to supernatural means.
If human understanding could make substantial progress by individuals observing things and trying to understand them there'd be no need for science. But in reality, humans are full of all kinds of cognitive biases which make us poor at objectively assessing the accuracy of our own hypotheses.
Instead what humanity requires to further its understaning is some kind of algorithmic process in which competing hypotheses are put forward to expain some phenomenon of interest, evidence (ideally from controlled experiemnts, but also from observations where experiments are not feasible) is gathered for and/or against those hypotheses, the hypotheses are refined in light of that evidence, and the process is then repeated iteratively ad infinitum.
Science is an (approximate) implementation of that algorithm which (approximately) overcomes the problems of individuals biases by placing evidence gathering and hypothesis testing in a competitive social process.
For instance, having a hypothesis about where your cat is and then testing it yourself is not science, because how can you as an individual ensure that you're genuinely being unbiased when testing that hypothesis? On the other hand, having a bunch of people with different hypotheses about where your cat is, and then tasking them with proving their hypothesis while disproving everyone else's, leads (in principle) to the individual biases cancelling each other out, the inaccurate hypotheses gradually being discarded, and (assuming that everyone is acting in good faith) the correct hypothesis eventually being agreed upon.
In my view, that is a closer description of what science is.
@Darwin's Chihuahua
"It doesn't look like either the person who posted the original blog or any of the people who posted comments are working research scientists."
There are at least two amongst the commenters, and I have a good idea that Neuroskeptic is, too.
Doggy, good for you.
P. fMRI, corruption hey.. I've bookmarked your blog.
Anonymous: "If human understanding could make substantial progress by individuals observing things and trying to understand them there'd be no need for science. But in reality, humans are full of all kinds of cognitive biases which make us poor at objectively assessing the accuracy of our own hypotheses.
Instead what humanity requires to further its understaning is some kind of algorithmic process in which competing hypotheses are put forward to expain some phenomenon of interest, evidence (ideally from controlled experiemnts, but also from observations where experiments are not feasible) is gathered for and/or against those hypotheses, the hypotheses are refined in light of that evidence, and the process is then repeated iteratively ad infinitum..."
I'd agree with that. Good science is not just observation but systematic, careful observation.
But that's not a definition of 'science' because it also applies to, for example, history, economics, opinion polling, quality control in manufacturing even. In all of those cases, people take care to make multiple observations, take account of potential biases and errors that would lead to misleading data...
Interesting post.
I do not normally comment as I usually read the posts days later from RSS, but I got lucky with timing and this one provoked me.
In short, I am uncomfortable reducing science to "observation" because, as implied in the post, observation without the requisite critical thinking, adequate understanding of context, and self-correction is meaningless.
We need a term to encompass both the observational qualities and the scepticism. I agree, however, that this would not necessarily be limited to just physics and the special sciences. But we do need a term nonetheless.
I had much larger problems with some of the comments to the post. I particularly did not like the bashing of philosophy as an illegitimate field of inquiry.
Petrossa said: "What is NOT science is very easy to say however. Start with that and work backwards "
Identifying what is and what is not "science", even broadly defined, is very tricky indeed.
While we have an intuitive sense in many cases that something is "not science", it is the philosophy of science - and it is metaphysics and epistemology - with which we form a rigorous framework for that identification.
For example, intelligent design and string theory are very grey by our intuitive standards. Practitioners of science disagree on their classification. A post addressing these two in any detail in a comment would be inappropriate (and would surely provoke quite a vociferous debate), but a quick example will suffice.
The concept of "irreducible complexity", despite Judge Jones' ruling, is indeed a valid hypothesis by most standards: if any plausible mechanism(s) other than an intelligent designer can account for the feature's development, the hypothesis is falsified. The problem for the IDers in this case is the features they specify (like flagella) are easily falsified. But not all ID claims meet this ill-defined standard.
I know there are those who will disagree with my classification, and that is fair. But on what we must surely agree is that there is some definitional work and the field of that definitional work is philosophy.
I dunno NS, I think you're confusing the semantic ambiguity surrounding an official "definition" of what differentiates science from non-science with ambiguity as to what a science truly is.
The general qualities tend to include data collection (in terms of both observation and controlled experimentation), hypothesis creation and testing, data replication and falsifiability of said hypotheses. If your field can't be said to accomplish most of these things in the general course of research, then it is difficult to define that field as a science. Most of the studies conducted within broad swaths of physics, biology and chemistry tend to fulfill these standards (or, at least claim to--I would argue that some individual studies may not reach the bar). When we start looking into areas such as the "social sciences" which have less controlled experimental conditions and have to rely more heavily upon naturalistic designs, some of the core features of traditional science are not possible to fulfill in a controlled fashion. Nonetheless, these disciplines tend to aim for some level of replicability of results and falsifiability of claims and hypotheses.
Regardless, if there is one feature of the scientific method (and yes, I do believe a legitimate method exists) that provides a cogent and coherent explanation of what all sciences share in common, it is the feature of "falsification through replication". It's not foolproof (especially not in the short term, and in the long term it often relies upon technological or epistemological advances), but I think this feature combined with a legitimate desire of its practitioners to accurately advance the bounds of knowledge forward, is a necessary condition for any form of research to be called a science. Observation alone won't cut it.
Joshua Miller: "I am uncomfortable reducing science to "observation" because, as implied in the post, observation without the requisite critical thinking, adequate understanding of context, and self-correction is meaningless.
We need a term to encompass both the observational qualities and the scepticism. I agree, however, that this would not necessarily be limited to just physics and the special sciences. But we do need a term nonetheless."
I agree, but my point is that "science" or "scientific method" is not a good term, because the same processes of careful observation and critical thinking are used (and ought to be used) in many other fields - history, etc.
"Observation" alone is, as you say, rather broad because it includes all kinds of bad (sloppy, biased, mistaken) observations... still I used it because, in essence, that's all there is - good observation is no more than observation (that happens to be good), it's not observation plus... some extra ingredient.
"Thoughtful observation" is I think a fairly good term. "Study", in some contexts, also works.
Self knowledge (i.e. first person experience) is not observation. I am uncomfortable with the idea that we observe our senses as if we are separated from them through some kind of Cartesian window. Therefore, the limits of science are legitimate because as method of acquiring knowledge it cannot be used to acquire the knowledge (experience) we acquire directly, through our senses. To sat that the limits of science are the equivalent to the limits of knowledge in its entirety is to exclude the possibility that first person experience ( the oniony-ness of an onion) is not a from of knowledge in its own right. I feel that it is.
Anonymous: Thanks for the interesting comment.
You may be right. I'm not sure what to make of purely subjective 'knowledge' but my feeling is that it's not actually knowledge; that 'knowing' about the onionyness of onions (e.g. after eating one for the first time) is a form of objective knowledge (onions taste a certain way - you observe this taste when you eat one - then you 'know' what an onion tastes like) and the intuition we have that there's something more to it than this (something purely 'mine') is a category error... an error we would not make if we were talking about anyone other than ourselves (if you saw a stranger, or even better, a monkey, eat an onion for the first time, you would think 'now he knows what an onion tastes like' in just the same way as any other kind of knowledge... but I am not sure.
I know I'm late to the party but I wish more scientists thought like this. The notion of a expert thought being just an extension of our normal human faculties is the core of Gadamer's hermeneutics
I've been having that same kind of discussion on my blog from the other perspective:
http://metaphorhacker.net/2012/07/who-knows-what-how-stories-the-scientific-and-religious-knowledge-paradox/
That's not to say I don't have some quibbles.
1. The distinction between science and non-science you make is only a consequence of the English language. On the continent, the word science (Wissenschaft - also derived from knowledge) is used to mean scholarship. Thus you have language science or literary science. A lot of this is part of complex institutional negotiations.
2. "Fact is a fact" is far from being a fact. There is loads of philosophy and history of science that shows how complicated and contextually determined facts are. Since we only have access to "facts" through our knowledge, we have to take into account the social as well as cognitive dimension of knowing.
Dominik: Thanks!
On #1, that's very true and I actually considered mentioning the German case but decided against it. It seems like Wissenschaft is approximately equivalent to the older broader sense of the English word 'science', as opposed to the modern usage where 'science' without any qualifiers means 'natural science'.
Anyway my point is, knowledge is knowledge and distinctions are largely arbitrary.
On #2, what I meant (my statement was rather broad) was that if something is a face, it is first and foremost just a plain fact - not a 'scientific' fact or a 'historical' fact. Those are labels we apply later. But what makes a fact a fact is that it's true - not that it is 'scientifically' true or any other more complex thing.
Broadly speaking what I'm endorsing here is the deflationary theory of truth.
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