Science Terminable and Interminable, August 6, 2006
One of the things I marvel at from time to time is the nearly complete lack of interest in the status of science in the world. I am, of course, referring to the vast majority of my fellow citizens. I doubt that the politicians share this agnosticism as to science's place, purpose, nature, technique and subject matter, the uses of science are too well known for that; but the subject does not seem to cause much wonder amongst the people. The modern world, after all, is a technological construct, and one would have thought that a consideration of, for instance, the epistemological underpinnings of science or the status of its' theories, would be de rigueur in a world whose very existence is based on the importance of science for the technological creation, maintenance and perpetuation of that world. No? Turn off the world's fuel and electricity supply for a month and see how many survive.

Indeed, in speaking with people one finds an unlikely, perhaps I should say alarming, tendency to consider science (and its' theories) with a quasi religious respect that simply is not due the subject. A tendency to speak as if science were in the business of discovering Platonic Truths, perhaps even revealing Nature Herself, which, of course, would obviously leave no room for criticism. One educated person once told me criticism was for politics and art; science, however, is objective. - That while literary criticism is endless (and often pointless), science discovers natural laws. But he speaks as if the great strides in science haven't been made by overthrowing earlier scientific theories. Think of the twentieth centuries replacement of Newton by Einstein, of classical mechanics by Quantum Mechanics.

This process of the replacement of one scientific 'truth' by another is ongoing and possibly endless. For all we know, at any point in history, we may be in the process of overturning yet another scientific theory. Allow me an anecdotal case in point. A few years back some observations, impossible from earth based telescopes, were made by the Hubble space telescope which showed a distant galaxy going in exactly the opposite direction that we would have expected it to go. That prediction was made on the basis of an interpretation of the the Big Bang Theory and the observable matter large enough to gravitationally effect the galaxy in question. (The Big Bang Theory basically predicts that all galaxies will be moving away from all other galaxies unless some locally large structures, nebulae or galaxies, have enough gravitational attraction to pull it in another direction). When pressed for an explanation of the discrepancy between the theoretically based prediction and the recent observation, the poor scientist that was interpreting this observation said that their must be a completely unknown type of unobservable matter attracting this galaxy in this unanticipated direction. In other words, save the theory at any cost, even if it requires a miracle!

As we can see, a combination of observation and theory led to the prediction, but observation alone isn't enough to overturn it. What this scientist, and some of my fellow citizens, have forgotten is that a theory is neither a fact nor a truth, it is only a working hypothesis. They treat theories as facts, and observable facts as details that either confirm present theory, or anomalies that sooner or later will be explained, or perhaps I should say, explained away. The philosopher that best explains, in my opinion, how we should treat theory is Karl Popper. His great insight is the importance of falsification to the theoretical process, and the counter-intuitive insight of the relative unimportance of 'true' theories.

Let me explain. Or, even better, let him explain. He says, in The Myth of The Framework, "All scientific knowledge is hypothetical or conjectural." Note this: It is not a Platonic Truth, a fact of nature, or a revelation of God. Therefore we can doubt a scientific theory without falling into grievous sin. He goes on to say, "The growth of knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge, consists in learning from our mistakes." If theories weren't falsifiable we would still believe the world flat. He tells us, "This fact should encourage you to try to refute your own [and others theories]." Of course, I should add that he doesn't mean that any objection to a scientific theory is good. He is defending objections and refutations that are scientific - flat-worlders and luddites will not find an ally here.

What of the vaunted scientific objectivity we have heard so much of? Again, Popper: "It is not the objectivity or the detachment of the individual scientist but of science itself [...] which makes for objectivity." What Popper is telling us is that it is the scientific method, not individual scientists or currently accepted theories, in which sciences great claims to objectivity reside. And he means that methodic objectivity is not mere experimentation, it is testing to falsify, that is to fail, theories.

The only way to discover the unknown is by seeking to overturn the known. That is why Popper says, "Authoritarianism in science [is] linked with [...] proving or verifying theories. [While] the critical approach is [...] trying to refute, or to falsify its conjectures." In other words, science is a critical, and therefore interminable project; it is an endless task. It is how we interact with our changing world. There is no piety, utterly no piety at all, in Popper's view of science; and this is the scientific attitude that I think we all should strive to emulate. ( )