How Does Science Give Us Knowledge?
How would I know? (Joke- that works on several levels)
I would like to begin with a more fundamental
question: What is science?
Probably a good idea to go back to the origins of
science.
The following section of today’s lecture I lifted
directly from my lecture on the origins of Philosophy because:
- It was
already written.
- It
seemed appropriate.
So…
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Philosophy
(Redux)
(Side note: At FIU no upper division philosophy course has a
prerequisite. This means it is often the
case that I have students taking an upper division course with me in, say, the
Philosophy of Religion, who are not familiar with philosophy. This lecture I created as a way of making
sure everyone is on the same page.)
There are 2 parts of this
introduction to philosophy:
1. Methodology of Philosophy (Critical Thinking)
2. Subject Matter of Philosophy (Perennial Issues of Philosophy)[1]
Best Explained by:
1st (Western)
Philosopher Thales of Miletus
(Ionia) (624-546 B.C.)
- Considered the Founder of Western Philosophy and
the Founder of Science;
- Little of his work survives.
- Famous/infamous for claiming "Everything
is Water"
- Significance may not be readily apparent. Must explain the times and culture.
Thales was from Ancient
Greece. (Actually, Miletus, a Greek Colony on the coast of modern-day Turkey.)
- Greeks were very inquisitive.
- They had many questions
- (e.g. Why does the sun cross the sky each day
from east to west?),
But…
- they had answers for these questions
- (e. g. The god Apollo drives his fiery
chariot across the dome of the sky.)
However, these “answers” were
not so much explanations as they were “Mythos”
(e.g. Narratives which attempt to unify experiences into a single coherent
whole, often employing supernatural agents and forces which are believed to
underlie the visible. (e.g. Gods & Goddesses, magic)
Note, nothing is more natural
than for humans to form a narrative out of various disparate experiences in
order to make sense of things and gain perspective. For instance, when you come home after your
classes and your mother asks you to tell her about your day, what do you
do? You turn it into a story.
“Well I got up a little late so I
rushed out the door without the paper that was due today. But I couldn’t come back to get it because I
had a test in my first class. So after
my first class was over, I went to the library to see if I could print out my
paper from my Dropbox account. At first I couldn’t get it to work at all and I was worried
that I would be late for my second class, but at the last minute I figured it
out. So then I finally got to class with
my paper and the professor told us that he was extending the deadline! After all of that I decided I needed to treat
myself so I bought a smoothy. I met my study group around 3:00 PM and then
gave Becky a ride home when we were done.
Now notice what you’ve
done. You took all the experiences of
the day, focused on some, filtered out others and turned the day into a coherent
narrative whole. This is not unlike what
goes on in myths.
Example:
"Why do the seasons change?" A:
Demeter/Persephone Myth
Note: Mythos-narratives were not meant to be testable
hypotheses. Two important
features of the Greek Myths:
- These answers to questions usually invoked
supernatural powers for natural phenomena.
- Since these answers were held to be "revealed
to mortals by the gods," they carried Divine Authority. If one questioned or challenged these
beliefs one would be in danger of execution or exile for the sin/crime of
blasphemy or heresy.
The reason for condemning the
heretics was because they were considered to be
questioning the gods’ authority. The political
climate of the day was not liberal since the survival of the community depended
on everyone conforming to the same rules.
The city-states of ancient Greece were like lifeboats of civilization
outside of which a decent human life (family, friends, creature comforts,
security) was impossible. The last thing
you want in a lifeboat is someone “rocking the boat.”
Back to Thales-
He was curious about the notion of change. In any change there must be "something" which is changed. If
this is true, then every change presents us with a paradox; there is that which remains constant (endures)
through-out the change (the “something”) and that which is changed (the same “something?”).
Example: Grass to Milk-
When a cow eats grass it changes the grass into
milk.
- Grass= Green, solid, leafy
- Milk= White, liquid, milky
- Grass ≠ Milk
- That which IS becomes
that which IS NOT. Weird when you think about it. How can something be what it isn’t? How can something that “isn’t” come “to
be” at all? But this seems to be
what it required in every change.[2]
Thales reasons that there must be some
enduring stuff (substratum, substance - standing under-) which
undergoes the change. The substance
supports the apparent qualities (green, solid, and later, white, liquid etc.),
but while these apparent qualities ”change” the substance endures. And change is going on all the time and
everywhere. It’s ubiquitous. So, Thales reasons, there must be a basic
substance of everything.
What could this basic substance of everything be,
which underlies all reality? Well… you
already have his answer.
Hypothesizes that “everything is water.”
His choice of water was
probably due to the fact he was already working within a framework of four basic
elements (Earth, Fire, Water and Air) and water seems most versatile -assumes
all states of known matter: solid, liquid or gas.
Since he “thought it up all by himself” and it was
not given to him by the gods, he is not claiming the theory to be a myth with divine
authority; it had no more authority then
that of an ordinary human.
His students questioned him. They
pointed out counter-examples.
Counter-examples (to a theory): Facts or observations which are
incompatible with the truth of theory and thereby show the theory to be wrong,
incomplete or otherwise flawed.
They (students/successors)
took on the challenge coming up with a better account.
Anaximander:
(6th century BC)– the basic substance is “the Boundless”; Apeiron.
This in turn was criticized as
too vague.
Democritus: (ca. 460-360 BC) the basic substance of
everything is minuscule particles he called “no-splits” –atoms. Change is the result
of the composition or dissolution of aggregates of atoms, that is atoms moving
in the void of space.
It’s worth noting that it was
not that far (intellectually, temporally or even
geographically) from Thales’ “Everything is water.” to Democritus and atomic
theory.
Back to Thales-
Thales is considered the founder
of Western philosophy NOT because his theory was so well received. In fact it was shot down almost immediately. The importance of Thales is that he presented
a theory that could be shot down, and specified the
criteria by which it could be shot down.
Thales is considered founder of Western philosophy because he starts the
philosophical conversation and set up the rules for the dialogue; (Logos vs.
Mythos[3]
as mode of explanation.)
Philosophical
Methodology (4 steps)
1. Theory Postulation
2. Justification
3. Critical Review
4. Revision (if necessary)
NB: But note, #4 loops us back
to #1. The revised theory is a new
instance of Theory Postulation which calls for new Justification, further
Critical Review, potentially new Revisions, etc..
This is called a Dialectic.
Dialectic: The art or practice of arriving at the truth by
the exchange of logical arguments
Offers a different sort of/mode
of rationalizing our disparate experiences from Mythos.
“Logos”
- Testable hypotheses supported by reasons, and
subject to critical review and evidential revision.
- No divine authority is claimed or invoked. Therefore
questioning the adequacy of any human-generated explanation is not an
impious or sinfully prideful act. (Also note that Thales proposes natural
explanations for natural phenomena.)
But of course, this is not
only the methodology of philosophy, it is also the methodology of science, at
least in broad outline. Thales’
dialectic continues today in philosophy and in science. So if philosophy and science are similar in
that they share methodology, how do they differ?
Well, for a LONG time, they
didn’t. Science (scientia)
was understood as “inquiry” generally.
What we call “natural science” today would have been referred to as
Natural Philosophy differing in the object
and/or scope of inquiry, but not the mode. Any adequate understanding of the world/reality
required asking and answering questions that, today, would belong to the
separate disciplines of philosophy and science.
Understanding how and why this changed will go some way to understanding
“How (modern) Science Gives Us Knowledge” and perhaps as importantly the kind
of knowledge that science can give us.
Brief aside on the Development
of Greek Science
In the ancient near east and
Homeric Greece (c. 850 BC and onward) we find a high importance on observation,
but explanations are typically also associated with magic and supernatural
forces. Observation was as much an
attempt to “read” natural signs as revealing the will of the gods (e.g. augury
and omen reading). But we see among the
early Greek cosmologists a critical shift associated with the beginning of
science. We see with Thales et al, an
attempt to read natural events without reference to the gods
(non-theological explanations). They
assumed / believed that reality was fundamentally ordered (kosmos)
and that humans can articulate what that order is. (Reason trying to understand the rational
universe.)
Nevertheless, while this was a
fundamentally different project (Logos vs. Mythos), it did not lead to a complete
"scientific" and segregated system of explanation all at once. Several things had to develop first. For one thing, they needed to develop a
vocabulary of “scientific terms/ causes” and this
often required pressing old words into new and uncustomary usage. The early cosmologists had to develop a
conceptual vocabulary that did not include the gods. This was more difficult than it might sound
at first, for the language available to them was truly literary and narrative
(mythos). Hence, these cosmologists typically
recorded their thoughts in verse (as did Empedocles[4]). This was not merely stylistic, but
substantive. They used a poetic
vocabulary, e.g. “love,” as used by Aristotle, to describe (ostensibly
mechanical?) phenomena, eventually giving way to the more
"scientific" words such as "attraction," which even today still
has two meanings, one emotional and the other scientific. Even today scientists must develop new terms
to describe new phenomena --and note how words of Latin and Greek origin are
employed for this purpose (Super Nova --Latin).
Then for these new words to be
learned, accepted and find their way into widespread
and uniform use, there had to be public discourse, a key characteristic of the
Greek city state. We know that such
discourse existed in the 5th Century BC because we know that cosmologists as
distant from one another as Sicily (e.g. the Eleatic School) and Western Turkey
(e.g. the Ionian school) critiqued the views of one another. They could only do
this if they had access to the ideas of the others. Also, in a famous passage on the flood of the
Nile, Herodotus states that Greek cosmologists got "a reputation for
cleverness" by proposing schemes to account for the fact that the Nile
flooded in high summer instead of winter.
And the comic poet, Aristophanes, satirizes the views of the
cosmologists in his play, “Clouds,” but satire can only be publicly successful if
everyone understands the nature of the discussion.
Thus public dissemination, discussion
and criticism forced the Greek cosmologists to think about both the method and principles
of rational demonstration, namely how does one demonstrate a proposition, and
ultimately that the demonstration / proposition must be persuasive to others. So the evolution of science also required a
recognizable methodology which took centuries to develop and in the case of
measurement and devises to measure, more than a millennium would be
needed. Eventually a "scientific method" was articulated
in a precise way by Aristotle in the late
4th Century BC. Aristotle
proposes a general cosmological system, one that was plausible in that it
accounted for most observations, most of the time. In time, however, there arose some very
disturbing observations that were inconsistent with the system he proposed which
could not be denied. Much of ancient
science is devoted to reconciling his model with those discrepancies. It was modified, but retained
due to its general plausibility which was held to be superior to available
alternative proposals.
A major constraint on this
process was of course the lack of a standard of measurement and of devises for
doing so. The gnomon (the upright stick of the sundial) provides indications
but is not exact. These give way to more precise hour glasses and water clocks. Mechanical clocks were not developed until
the late Middle Ages. Given the
primitive instrumentation, the level of observation was high, but the ability
to verify in any modern or even early modern sense hardly possible. For a good
indication of the progress of early science in the Classical World we could note
the differences between what the Hippocratic writers do in the 5th Cent., BC
and what Galen does in the 2nd Cent., AD.
Medieval Science (No, this is not an oxymoron.)
However bad the ancient Greek
philosopher Aristotle’s physics, astronomy, meteorology, etc. were, he is
recognized as an important scientist and biologist
nevertheless. His careful biological
observations were not surpassed until the invention of the microscope. He had his former student, Alexander the
Great, send him specimens from across Alexander’s empire for careful
study. But Aristotle’s science (theory
of everything) suffered from several impediments from the Modern Perspective:
- Ptolemaic Cosmology
- Theory of the Five Substances
- Insistence on Syllogistic Structure* (probably the biggest
problem)
- Doctrine of the Four Causes (arguably)
Ptolemaic Cosmology
Aristotle believed (along with
pretty much the rest of the world at the time) that the earth was the center of
the universe and all the heavenly bodies revolve
around it. Additionally, the celestial
objects were perfect eternal spheres which move in perfect circular orbits.
Theory of the Five Substances
The terrestrial (sublunary)
world is comprised of four elements, each with its own nature and
characteristic way of behaving/ changing/ moving. (Earth, Water, Air and Fire) The celestial realm
however, was eternal unchanging and thus perfect. It must, he reasoned, be comprised of a fifth
element (quintessence) which is unlike anything terrestrial, and the perfect motion
of these entities must be powered by a perfect (unmoved) mover. The celestial and the terrestrial were
governed by different sets of causes.
Insistence on Syllogistic Structure
Real science must proceed
deductively by valid syllogisms where the first premise is a fundamental
necessary principle of nature.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore:
Socrates is mortal
The major premise of the syllogism (All men are mortal.) is supposed to be
a necessarily
true claim arising from our knowledge of the “nature” of humankind (i.e. Human
Form or Human Nature).[5]
The minor premise (Socrates is a man.) is another necessarily true claim
we discover by observation when we realize that humanity is part of the essence
of Socrates. (He is essentially a man;
he is only accidentally snub-nosed.)
Therefore, the conclusion, (Socrates is mortal.) which follows
necessarily from the premises, deduces an effect/consequent from its cause. Socrates’s mortality is a necessary effect
caused by his form: humanity. (This is
what Aristotle has in mind by “Formal Causality.”)
Thus the conclusions of science are said to be necessarily true.
Now there’s nothing wrong with
deductively valid categorical syllogisms.
A problem arises however, as to how we are to get the necessary
universal first principles. Aristotle
never satisfactorily addresses this nor did centuries of adherents to his view
of science to come after.
If we had more time, we might
unpack each of these. But for our
purposes today, mentioning them is probably sufficient. The only one I would like to dwell on today
is the last of the five: The Doctrine of
the Four Causes.
Doctrine of the Four Causes:
Aristotelian Doctrine which holds that
to truly know what a thing is, and thus to gain a complete
scientific understanding of the thing, one must know four things about it. That is, to explain what a thing is as it is
and why behaves as it does one must know four things about it:
1. Material Cause: (What's it made of?)
2. Efficient Cause: (Who or what brought it about or
generated it.)
3. Formal Cause: (To what species and genus does
it belong?)
4. Final Cause: (What is it supposed to do?)
Here you may wish to review my notes
on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and
Epistemology.
Imagine a thousand years from now someone
is digging around in his backyard and comes across a curious object that he can
see is very old, but he does not know what it is. And he wants to find out. So he takes it to his chemist friend. “What is this?” he asks. And his chemist friend replies, “Why I can
tell you what it is: it is steel with some iron and chrome. There is also a bit of rubber here.”
Despite the fact
that what the chemist
has said is true, our discoverer is not satisfied. “Yes, that’s fine, he says to himself, but
what is
it?” So he takes it so another friend of
his, this time an Economic Historian.
“What is it?” he asks. “Oh my,
that’s an artifact, that is.” she says.
“It was designed by Franz Wagner.
It was produced in Underwood factories in New York sometime in the very
early 1900s.”
Ok, so now this guy knows how it came
to be and who made it, but still, “What is it?” He sees a third friend, an archeologist this
time. “Yes I’m certain I can help you. I know precisely what it is. It is an
Underwood number 5. It is very similar
to the Densmore, but differs from that kind in that it
is a 4-bank frontstrike version. It differs from the Daugherty in that it was
less likely to have its keys jam. Well
now our discoverer understands the object’s type, that is, he can
recognize another one of the same type when he sees it
and he can distinguish it from things of a different type. He knows that class of things it belongs to
in that he knows its form, but there is a sense in which he still
does not know what the thing is.
Finally he takes it to an expert on
Religion and Culture from the early 20th Century. “I understand your difficulty,” he says. “You know what it is made of (Material Cause)
and how it came to be (Efficient Cause) and the class of things it belongs to
(Formal Cause), but what you want to know is ‘What is it supposed to do; what’s
it for?’ (Final Cause). Well, I can help you there. This was called a Typewriter. This was a machine by which people in the
early 20th Century communicated with their gods. They would sit in front of it all day and use
the keyboard to type messages of praise or petitions for help to the deities.“
Now another friend is walking by and
overhears this and says, “What? Don’t be
ridiculous! That was not the telos of
this thing. The telos of this machine
was to make music. It was a percussive
instrument and people would use it to play all sorts of complicated rhythms
throughout the day. Note the little bell
on the side.”
Well if our discoverer believed either
one of these stories he would be wrong, of course, and
there is a sense in which he would still not know what this thing is. He would still not know what the telos of a
typewriter was and thus his knowledge of the typewriter would consequently be
incomplete, this despite the fact that he knew the
material cause, the efficient cause, and the formal cause. He would still not know the final cause of
the object. And thus he could not tell a
good
one from a bad one.
So Final Causality speaks to the fact
that Aristotelian Science was teleological.
Aristotle believes the items of nature all have their own end or
purposes, and that any adequate understanding of nature requires knowing these
“Final Causes” of the items of nature.
Telos: Greek word for “end” or “purpose”.
Teleology: A system of ends and purposes./ The
study of a system of ends or purposes.
Aristotle had a teleological
worldview. Natural living things (apple
trees, badgers, fruit bats, date palms, etc.) had purposes too. But for natural things their final cause
(telos) was their formal cause. And to
truly know what a thing is one must know its function or
purpose (final cause).
The Function of Natural Living Things:
What are apple trees supposed to
do? Aristotle claims that the only
things that apple trees are supposed to do is to BE APPLE TREES. – Presumably be the BEST DARN APPLE TREES
they can be. But that just means, do all
and only the “apple tree things” (i.e. fulfill apple tree nature). Thus, for natural
organisms, the nature of the organism’s species, that is, the thing’s formal
cause, is also the goal of the thing, its final cause. (And most often the
efficient cause as well- i.e. the parents)
Further these formal and final causes
explain why the thing moves/ changes in the way that it does. They determine the thing’s potential and
actual properties. Aristotle was still
dealing with the problem of change. (See
Thales and Parmenides.) Some had argued
that change is impossible since change would require something be what it isn’t
(P be ~P) or that something come from nothing.
Others had argued that change is all there is
and nothing exists in a deliberate definitive way. Plato had split reality into two realms in order to try to resolve this dilemma (i.e. the Realm of
Being and the Realm of Becoming).
Aristotle on the other hand resolves it by pointing out that there is
more than one sense in which a thing can be said to “be.”
Being in actuality and potentiality
I do not speak French.
However I do possess the ability to speak French. That is, I AM the sort of thing (human) whose
nature permits him to learn and speak French.
Aristotle would say I have the ability to speak
French in potentiality, but not in actuality.
An apple tree possesses the potentiality to speak French NEITHER in
potentiality nor in actuality. And even French speakers possess the ability
to speak French in potentiality only when they are sitting quietly doing a
watercolor painting or knitting etc.
(That is when not ACTUALLY speaking French.)
Any change in a substance is the “actualization” of a
pre-existing potentiality. What actual
and potential characteristics a thing has are determined by the thing’s nature
or “form.” Note further the only thing
that could “move” a thing from potential to actual is a mover (impetus) outside
the moved thing.
What Being/ a Being “Is”
There are several senses in which a thing can be said to
'be' / That is, there are several different but equally correct answers to the
question “What is that?”
- 'being,' means 'what a thing
is'
You might see me walking down the hall, point and ask “what is it?”
Were someone to respond, “That’s a human being.” he or she would have
answered correctly. But that would not
be the ONLY correct answer since that is not the only way I “be.” One might also correctly respond, that’s an
FIU professor, or, less kindly, that is an overweight middle-aged consumer.
- a quality or a quantity of a thing- (e.g. ‘being’ good
or bad, red, many)
You might see a certain red bird landing on a tree branch,
point and ask “What is it?” Were someone to answer, “That’s a cardinal,”
he or she would have answered correctly.
But that would not be the ONLY correct answer since that is not the only
way the thing can be said to “be.” A
person might truly reply, That’s red.”
Now “redness’ DOES exist, to be sure, but redness only exists as a
property of things that can exist on their own, what Aristotle termed “primary substances.” Since “redness” cannot exist on its own
Aristotle classified it as a secondary substance. Aristotle would say that “redness” is a
secondary substance, while the cardinal is a primary substance. Further, while being a cardinal is essential
to that primary substance’s nature, being red is accidental. (Being human is essential to my nature; being
185 pounds is accidental… let’s hope.)
So primary substances have formal causes (essences) which
determine why they are the way they are and why the develop/ move change as
they do (potential and actual properties).
Some of these properties are accidental and others are essential.
The primary sense
of "to be" is to be a substance.
e.g. To Be a human
The secondary sense
of “to be” to is be an instance of a quality or
quantities.
e.g. To Be a Tall.
So, note that I am essentially a human; I am only
accidentally a 185 pound philosophy professor, sitting
a my desk. I
could lose weight (undergo a quantitative change) or get another job (undergo a
qualitative change) but I would still be a human. I could also go to Starbucks for coffee (undergo
a change in location). So, I can survive
a qualitative change (Still me.) a quantitative change (Still me.) and a change
in location (Still me.)
When I die, I undergo a substantial change. I am no longer a human; in fact “I” no longer
“am” at all. In my place in is a new
substance: an human corpse. ☹
A bit more about Primary and Secondary Substances
Primary Substances can stand alone. (ontologically
independent e.g. The Cardinal).
Secondary substances cannot. (ontologically
dependent e.g. The Redness of the Cardinal)
A Primary Substance is a combination of Form and Matter.
Note: For Aristotle Form does not/ cannot exist apart from matter
(though separable in thought- we can imagine Michelangelo’s "David" apart
from the marble that actually constitutes it- done instead in Cheese say).
Primary Substances are individually existing objects with
inherent essential natures.
Humans, Cardinals, Lumps of Gold
Secondary substances are those “objects” constituted by particular individual primary substances.
Philosophy Teachers, Blonds, wedding rings.
A change of the Primary Substance is a Substantial Change.
It destroys the thing in question and replaces it with a new thing.
·
If I cut a Sphere in half, the sphere
no longer exists; instead two hemispheres exist.
·
If I separate water into oxygen and
hydrogen, water (along with its water nature/form) no longer exists. The new substances (oxygen and hydrogen) have
quite different potentialities and actualities (i.e. different nature/ form)
than does water.
·
Death is a substantial change; the
human is destroyed and the corpse comes into
existence.)
Human-made products cannot be considered to be true
substances because they do not have their
own immutable nature. They are not “natural kinds.”
Therefore, they cannot be identified with an immutable nature. (Ex: table,
chair, or bed.)
Note: For Aristotle, a “Nature” is what a substance will do if
nothing stops it. (Think “Natural Tendency” or Activity)
In order to know what apple trees are supposed to do, (what the “apple tree
things” are- apple tree nature- the apple tree telos) one must engage in an
empirical study of the species and see what they do do.
Through careful observation one will be able to distinguish the healthy,
thriving apple trees from the sick, diseased, withering apple trees. Studying the characteristic behavior of the
healthy ones will reveal the “nature” and thus the function of the
species. (Thus the normative force is
provided by health vs. disease: i.e. one ought to be healthy/ excellent, one
ought not be sick/ pathetic.)
Suppose you, a native Floridian, move
up to my hometown in Pennsylvania and you buy a house, in part, because of the
big apple tree in the front yard.
However, in the middle of September, you notice that all the leaves are
turning funny colors and start falling off.
“Oh no!” you think, “There’s something terribly wrong with my apple
tree.” You call me up in a panic and
tell me what’s going on. “Calm
yourself.” I would reassure you. “That’s how apple trees are supposed to
behave. It is natural for apple trees
to lose their leaves in the autumn.”
However, if all the leaves start turning funny colors and falling off
your tree in the middle of May, well then, yah, you got a problem.
Back to Medieval Science
The medieval philosophers/scientists bought
this worldview almost in its entirety.
Reality is a rationally ordered stable phenomenon amenable to human
investigation and understanding through reason.
(The Logos of reality is accessible to the Logos of the human
mind.) The cosmos is an earth-centered
orchestration animated and sustained by a good and transcendent being. The natural world is a world of purpose and
meaning where all living reality is tending towards its natural ends, including
humans. Human happiness is to be achieved by understanding our natural place in
the world and realizing fully our human nature.
(And the St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th Century philosopher and
theologian, would add to that, having achieved our end we attain our final Summa Bonnum,
eternal bliss.)
I want to point out, that all the
above, they believed was demonstrable by science/ philosophy and NOT merely
matters of blind, unreasoned faith.
Faith gave us the names of the players (Yahweh, Jesus, Spiritus Sanctus,
Something About Mary, etc.), but the outline
came from observations and theorizing over those observations.
And then… (dun, dun, dun)
The Copernican Revolution/ Modern Philosophy/ Modern Science
Astronomical Dispute arose over time:
Geocentric theory ‑ earth at center and everything
revolves around it (church supported this theory).
Heliocentric theory ‑ sun at center (Copernicus’
theory)
Something often overlooked is that the
Ptolemaic/ Geocentric model did work pretty well. It was crazy complicated, but it “worked[6].” Initially Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543)
presented his heliocentric model, but used circular orbits (Aristotle’s notion
of perfect, celestial motion). That version of the model worked LESS well
than the geocentric model. Johannes
Kepler (1571 – 1630), with great reluctance, relinquished the idea that the
celestial motions were perfect circles and suggested elliptical orbits instead. This greatly improved the heliocentric model’s
predictive ability. By the time Galileo
weighed in on the matter, the two views were of near equal
explanatory/predictive power, but the Heliocentric theory was much more
elegant/simple.
Nevertheless, the Geocentric theory had
one thing still going for it: even on the Heliocentric model, the moon orbits
earth. Now if even the Heliocentric
theory has to admit that the moon does NOT orbit the
sun, then the moon stands as an anomaly.
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)
Galileo is considered the founder of
Modern Physics. He was commissioned by
Pope Urban VIII to write analysis comparing the 2 theories,[7] and used the newly invented telescope to
investigate the celestial system. In the course of his investigations, he found that other planets had moons
of their own. Therefore, there was nothing exceptional about the moon orbiting
the Earth. In fact, the new findings
were more consistent with Heliocentric theory.
Each of the heliocentrists
was advised to present his work as a mere “saving of appearances”[8]
to avoid persecution from the Church. Galileo
did not take great pains to hide his commitment to the reality of heliocentrism
however. Quite the contrary. Galileo defended the Heliocentric Model in
his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems (1632).
“I cannot sufficiently admire the eminence of
those men's wits, that have received and held it to be true, and with the
sprightliness of their judgments offered such violence to their own senses, as
that they have been able to prefer that which their reason dictated to them, to
that which sensible experiments represented most manifestly to the contrary.
...I cannot find any bounds for my admiration, how that reason was able in
Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape on their senses, as in
despite thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity.[9]
“Philosophy is
written in this grand book, which stands continually open before our eyes (I
say the 'Universe'), but can not
be understood without first learning to comprehend the language and know the
characters as it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and its
characters are triangles, circles and other geometric
figures, without which it is impossible to humanly understand a word; without
these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.[10]
As a result of this publication,
Galileo was brought before the Inquisition. In 1633, Galileo was convicted of "grave
suspicion of heresy" based on the book, which was then placed on the Index
of Forbidden Books. It was not removed
from that list until 1835. He was forced
to recant, and lived under house arrest for the rest
of his life.
It is worth mentioning that, while Heliocentrism,
when taken as a literal description of celestial mechanics, does seem in
tension with various Biblical passages, there may be another reason why Galileo
was met with such persecution. In the Dialogue, Aristotle’s view, the view in
fact favored by the Pope who had initially commissioned Galileo to write the
study, were attributed to a fictional
character called Simplicitus, which satirized those ideas
held by Pope Urban VIII. Historian of science Ronald Numbers explains
that Galileo:
‘had gone out of his way to insult the Pope [Urban VIII], who
had previously supported him. He put the Pope’s favourite
argument against heliocentricism into the mouth of
the character Simplicio - the simple-minded person’[11]
in his Dialogue on the Great World Systems.
As J. Bronowski comments:
‘It may be that
the Pope felt Simplicitus to be a caricature of
himself; certainly he felt insulted.’[12]
As a result Galileo:
‘‘was summoned
down to Rome by the Inquisition [and] lived in the Tuscan palace. And then when
he was asked to move into the Vatican, to the palace of the Inquisition, one of
the officials in the Inquisition vacated his three-room apartment so that the
distinguished guest, Galileo, could have a nice apartment.
“And they allowed
him to have his meals catered by the chef at the Tuscan embassy. Ultimately, he
was under house arrest in his villa outside of Florence… for his theological
heresies, not for his Copernicanism. He happened to
be a Copernican, but that’s not what got him into trouble.’ [13]
Also, as Steve Fuller recounts:
‘Galileo, that
17th century icon of scientific heroism, overplayed his hand by fabricating
experimental results and embellishing observational accounts… Even Galileo’s
most sympathetic critics found his appeal to the telescope as a scientific
instrument rather puzzling. He lacked any principled explanation – a theory of
optics – for how this Dutch toy, essentially a spyglass, enabled him to see
lunar craters and sunspots. Moreover, the lenses that Galileo improvised for
his own telescope were so full of distortion that observers not already
convinced of his interpretation could make little sense of what they saw
through them.’[14][15]
As Peter S. Williams notes:
‘While the
Catholic church of the period certainly doesn’t come out of the Galileo
incident smelling of roses, the ‘science’ verses ‘faith’ portrayal of the
affair beloved by Sagan et al is historical revisionism plain and simple.”[16]
Incidentally…
The famous heliocentrists,
Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler each had Pythagorean commitments. Each held to the reality of his model, and
each was strongly motivated, not just by actual data, but also by strong
mathematical aesthetics. This raises
the issues of:
This incident serves to illustrate a number of issues for the Philosophy of
Science:
·
Pure Observation
Statements vs/ Theory Laden Statements of Observation
·
Scientific Realism
vs/ Instrumentalism
·
The Rationality of
Scientific Progress
·
Aesthetics and
Theory Preference
·
The Nature of
Scientific Revolutions
·
The Rationality of
Theory Change
Whither to now, scientia?
The Copernican Revolution in science/
knowledge in Western culture was HUGE.
Humans had been wrong, and wrong in
some pretty fundamental ways, for thousands of years and then some. A lot of other long held beliefs were being overturned. For example, Aristotle had taught that objects
of different weights fall at different rates of speed." Since - Aristotle had said so, everyone
believed he was right. Galileo proved Aristotle was wrong, and always had
been.
What else might he (and we) have been
wrong about?
Enter: Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) –
1st Modern Philosopher and near contemporary of Galileo
Descartes was dealing with the new
revolutions. Hence his methodological
doubt and rejection of belief based on authority. While he is famous for his “dualism” and
theory of an immortal, immaterial soul, in all other matters he advanced a
mechanistic view of the universe. He
rejected any sort of animism. Galileo
too investigates matter and is among the first to discover that acceleration is
a mathematically expressible relation between velocity and distance. The scientists of the 17th century
and those following Descartes, built up a mechanical world picture discarding
the multiple “causes” of the Aristotelian worldview/ science. They restricted the “causes” they used to
theorize about the world to material forces on material objects. The only causes one needs to appeal to are
the impact laws which govern bits of material substance and can be expressed
mathematically. And if “quantifiable
reality” is all one needs to talk about to explain our experiences of objective
reality, then perhaps “quantifiable reality” is all there
“is” to objective reality. (i.e.
Ockham's Razor)
Elsewhere Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and
others criticize another central tenant of the Aristotelian world view: whether the world truly breaks itself up into
knowable “natural kinds[17]” or whether we merely create these classes by labeling. (And note, if there are no natural kinds,
there can be no natural final causes.)
The old ideas needed to be abandoned for the new mechanistic science to flourish.
Francis Bacon writes:
“there is yet a
much more important and profound kind of fallacies in the mind of man, which I
find not observed or enquired at all, and think good to place here, as that
which of all others appertaineth most to rectify
judgment: the force whereof is such, as it doth not dazzle or snare the
understanding in some particulars, but doth more generally and inwardly infect
and corrupt the state thereof. For the mind of man is far from the nature of a
clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to
their true incidence, nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of
superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced. For this
purpose, let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us by the
general nature of the mind ….”[18]
Bacon emphasized the practical benefit
to be derived from science and scientific investigation. In a way, he prefigures American Pragmatism
which sees the goal of inquiry as not to secure objective truth, but
rather to secure useful theoretical models.
Bacon called for a "spring of a progeny of inventions, which shall
overcome, to some extent, and subdue our needs and miseries." Scientific work should aim at alleviating human
misery and inventing useful things. This
changed the course of science in history, from inquiry and contemplation aimed
as knowing the true nature of things (as it was conceived in ancient and
medieval times) to a practical, inventive enterprise aimed at the practical
manipulation of experiences.
This Ushers in “The Enlightenment”
You may already know that during the
Enlightenment, there was unprecedented confidence in the ability of Reason,
once it has been freed from all “irrational impediments” to solve any
problem. If only we could be “rational”
and conquer our fears, our prejudices, our unreasoned emotional attachments to
doctrines, our superstitions etc. there would be no problem we could not
overcome. There must be a rational
explanation for whatever happens, and the wise “man of science” is committed to
finding that explanation and using this knowledge to improve the human
condition. During this period, it was
believed that what had impeded the progress of science and knowledge for the
previous 1000 years or so was the lack of reason, or at least a sufficiently
strong commitment to reason. It was
suggested that we had been too given to the power of authorities, superstition,
knowledge as received doctrine and blind faith.
For instance, Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
had claimed that objects of differing weights fall at different rates of
speed. And this was taught thereafter
for nearly two thousand years. Do
objects of differing weights fall at different rates of speed? No.
Objects fall at the same rate of speed (when one accounts for air
resistance), but no one bothered to question that for nearly 2000 years! Galileo (1564-1642 CE) did.
Legend has it that he dropped lead balls of different weights off the
Leaning Tower of Pisa and discover the rate of free-fall is independent of
weight. The point is that the progress
of knowledge had been impeded by unquestioned acceptance of Aristotle's (et
alia) authority. When we adopted this
skeptical and critical mindset, we began to make comparatively swift progress
where previously there was only stagnation.
Some of the important figures from the
Enlightenment were champions of this new mechanistic science (or matter and
motion) and vocal critics of religion.
This was the theme of the French materialist philosopher Baron d'Holbach (1723 – 1789) 1761 work Christianisme dévoilé ("Christianity
Unveiled") in which he argued that Christianity and religion in general
was an impediment to the advancement of humanity. Enlightenment required jettisoning blind,
irrational faith, it would seem, along with the Classical (Platonic/
Aristotelian/ Scholastic) Worldview.
There is something ironic and perhaps unfair however, with
characterizing classical theism as sustained only by blind faith. It was eminently rational on the older
scientific and metaphysical picture of the universe. Only when one abandons the scholastic model
in favor of the mechanistic one, is theism seriously challenged.
Legacy of Modern Science:
Lots of stuff.
The Domain of Science (knowledge?)
- The
empirical (the Lockeian domain of “primary
properties” More on this later.)
- The
propositional (Whatever can be known (scientifically at least) can be/must
be said in words.
- The
Verifiable: (Logical Positivism: Much more on this later.)
“If a
sentence is unverifiable, even in principle then it is meaningless.”
- The
practical/ that which practically affects us.
- Items
of human experience (as opposed to “things in themselves”)
Back to Philosophy: The Subject Matter of Philosophy
What about questions that science
cannot answer? Are they simply foolish
meaningless questions? Are they outside
the domain of knowledge? What then of
ethics? What of God? What of beauty and art? What of meaning, purpose, significance? The
soul?
Some have held that the questions which
cannot be investigated by (modern) science are meaningless, badly formed
questions. Either questions are
scientific/ empirical or they are nonsense. This is a view called Scientism and it
maintains the domain of rational inquiry begins and ends with Math and
Science. Recall Hume’s quote:
"When
we run over our libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we
make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental
reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the
flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."[19]
But is Scientism true? Can we avoid asking and seeking answers to
non-empirical questions? Well, you
already know I think the answer to both questions is “No.” I maintain that the domain of Philosophy is
characterized by non-empirical questions that are nevertheless meaningful and
important and can admit of better or worse (more or less reasonable)
answers. But we will be looking at
Scientism presently.
Two Branches of Philosophy
Metaphysics: that branch of philosophy which seeks to answer questions about the
types and structure of existence.
Metaphysics talks about
existence and reality in the broadest terms.
Examples of metaphysical
questions:
- Do immaterial things exist?
- Is there a soul? /What is a soul?
- What sort of existence do rainbows
have? Unicorns? Sherlock Holmes? Santa Clause? Beethoven’s 9th
Symphony? Triangles?
- In what way can any of these things be said to
“exist?”
These questions are not
scientific questions because any answers cannot be secured (merely) through
observation.
Example of a Metaphysical
Theory:
Physicalism: the view that the only things which exist are material objects and
material forces.
While this might look
unproblematic at first, it is not that simple a story to make out. Consider:
- What about Rainbows? (They are not physical. They are located nowhere in space.)
- What about shadows?
- What about Corporations? (Surely
they “exist” in some sense.)
- What about Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony?
- What about Sherlock Holmes?
Note: This Physicalism is not itself a scientific
theory. One cannot prove by empirical
means that “immaterial objects” do not exist.
After all, what can a (modern) scientist do qua science, except
look? But the fact that we do not see
non-physical objects (or hear them, or taste them, etc.) is not itself
sufficient reason to think they don’t exist because we wouldn’t see them even
if they did exist. They are not
empirical items. Therefore, any reasons
one might offer for adopting or rejecting this metaphysical view would be
philosophical reasons.
Epistemology: branch of philosophy that seeks to answer questions about the nature
of knowledge, truth and justification.
Example of epistemological
questions:
- Is observation and experiment reliable ways of
coming to know reality?
- Is science a good way of coming to know (all)
objective truth?
Note: The above are not themselves scientific questions.
Could we use science (run an experiment, make an observation
or take a poll, etc.) to prove it a reliable source of objective truth? No.
Science assumes that observation and experiments are good ways of coming to
know reality, therefore, there is a circularity problem because science must
use an experiment to prove the value of experiments. (One is beginning by
assuming what one is trying to “prove.”) This is like writing one’s own “letter
of recommendation” and assuring the prospective employer that she can believe
every word of it because you are honest (as you say in your letter).
Must have a philosophical
discussion to assess the best way of coming to know reality.
Example of Epistemological Theory: (perhaps)
1.
Science provides us with (the most) useful
theories.
2.
Useful theories are true theories.
Therefore:
3.
Science provides us with true theories.
This is a Philosophical Theory known as Pragmatism
(–well.. sort of.
This is a very watered down version). It is NOT a scientific theory, but rather an
epistemological one. Further, some might
question premise 2. There seems nothing
contradictory about a useful, false theory.
Final Note:
Disunity of Science:
There are those who seek a unity within
science, that is, that the information, knowledge and
theories of one branch of the natural sciences can be translated into or
otherwise accounted for in the language and theories of a more fundamental
branch. Indeed, some see this sort of
reduction as a kind of progress within science, reducing one set of theoretical
abstractions to a more fundamental set, without informational loss. For
instance, we might achieve a kind of unity between chemistry and physics if
chemical talk could be reduced to physics talk.
But there seems a problem with
biology. Biology contains teleological
talk, perhaps vestigial. For instance,
it seems an important biological fact that the purpose of the heart is to
circulate blood, a fact we were ignorant of for the better part of human
history and one we are better off knowing.
But neither chemistry nor physics
contain any teleological notions. If
biology is fundamentally teleological, then no complete reduction is possible
without the loss of knowledge.
Some have argued that biology is NOT
fundamentally teleological, but rather evolution theory can help us translate
talk of purpose and function into purely mechanistic talk that can be
accommodated by the other two physical sciences. We will be looking at this more closely later on.
Some of the issues in the Philosophy of Science that a
review of this history reveals:
·
Necessary
Universal Principles (Natures or Laws of Nature)
·
Induction and
Theory Confirmation
·
The Nature of
Causality
·
Scientific Realism
vs/ Instrumentalism
o Useful saving the appearances, or
Pythagorean correspondence?
·
Observation
statements vs Theoretical/ theory-laden statements
o Did Galileo see “moons” or merely spots?
·
The rationality of
scientific progress
o What are the social and political
forces that determine how or whether science progresses? Can this progress be objectively assessed?
·
Aesthetics and
theory preference
o Is the simplicity of the Heliocentric
model grounds for rational, scientific preference? (This was by no means an isolated case.)
·
The nature of
scientific revolutions/The rationality of theory change
·
Teleology and the
Unity of Science
·
The Reasonableness
of Scientism