Starting this month, we began a series of classes on the History and Philosophy of Science and plan to have one such discussion every month. This was the first class that I attended in which we were given a few chapters to read and were asked to discuss our questions and opinions in the class. We were given the first three chapters of the book “Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science” by Peter Godfrey-Smith, a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. My notes from that discussion are what I’ve written below.

The discussions revolved around three questions

  1. What is ‘Science’? Can it described apart from the methodology that it uses?
  2. What is the role of Objectivity in Science? Does interpretation make observation false?
  3. What makes Science different from other kinds of investigation?

Godfrey-Smith, in the first three chapters, talks about

  1. The history of science and the importance of Scientific Revolution
  2. The “three pieces of the answer” to the question of how science works: Empiricism, Mathematics and Social structure.
  3. Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism and the problems faced by logical positivists and empiricists
  4. Induction and confirmation of a scientific theory

First off, I think it is necessary to write what my views were about the philosophy of science while reading the three chapters from Godfrey-Smith’s book. My initial opinion was that Science is a process of investigation of “stuff”. All investigations are scientific. The investigations should be carried out using an accepted method, they should be based on questions that don’t relate to just physics, chemistry, biology or other traditionally accepted “sciences” and the results must be presented in a “language” that is agnostic of the person who reads it. What I mean by the last part is that regardless of who reads/sees/learns/listens to the results, the result should be communicable without any loss of information and with complete objectivity. Here is where I ran into trouble and my mind went into overdrive both while reading and during the discussion.

Some things about my views of Science really troubled me and the same questions that the author mentions in the book started popping up. What are “stuff”? Are all investigations scientific? What “topics” can be considered science? What do I mean by language? Is complete objectivity possible? (The author also points out that the term “objective” itself might not be complete objective. It might mean “absence of bias” or it could be used to express claims about “whether the existence of something is independent of our minds”). Then I ran into an even more basic question, which a few other people also had during the discussion: Why are we asking the question “What is Science” at all? It is, after all, a word humans invented and gave constraints to. And if we were to answer it, should we find an answer to it using the scientific method; or should we define scientific method first, for which we need to define science!

Another problem was that of empiricism and past experience. How can we be sure to base our result on something that happened in the past? As Godfrey-Smith points out, even if past experiences have helped provide good answers to many problems, that was still in the past! How can we be sure that the future results will be close to or based on our past experiences? Yesterday my Mom found a hole in the mosquito net in the kitchen window and she said that by all her previous experiences she was very sure a rat was inside the kitchen. This is an investigation and by the previous premise, this is a scientific investigation, and by past experience we ought to be certain that the rat is inside the kitchen. But how can we be completely sure of that fact? In all probability the darned rat is inside the kitchen but there is no way to make sure of it using just our past experience. Also, how do we call something a “fact”? If we were to think empiricism as the only way science works, then isn’t teaching science at schools against empiricism as the kids need to learn science by experience alone? This, however, could be answered to a certain extent. Learning at school falls under the Social Structure of Science, where we learn from the experiences and knowledge of others.

Then comes the question of considering all investigations as scientific. If we were to apply Godel’s incompleteness theorem (of which I know very little) here, it would mean that using the elements of the system, we cannot prove if or not there exists any investigation that is non-scientific. So how can we conclude that all investigations are scientific? Then comes the question of subjectivity. How subjective can the proofs to an investigation be? For instance, in my sister’s Environmental Science question paper, one question was “Holes in the ozone layer cause Skin cancer. True or False?”. Is it possible to find Boolean answers to such questions with absolute proof? What all can be considered as Sciences and to what extent can the answer to this question be subjective? Can Art be considered a Science? (Aditi pointed out here that many people don’t consider art a Science probably because of the significant difference in the end goals of Art and the other things traditionally considered Science. Art is for recreation while traditional sciences are mostly not). Language was another big question mark. When we talk about a “common language” for Science do we mean a commonly spoken/written language like English or a common tone of writing/speaking about Science in any language or both?

One of the biggest discussions we had was that of “a theory for everything”. Again, if we go by Godel’s incompleteness theorem, we cannot prove the non-existence of a lot of things using just the elements of the system available to us. So how can we define “everything” and how can we find a theory for it?

The induction and confirmation of scientific theories were not discussed during this session. I had a ton of questions about them but considering I found the chapter so immensely confusing, I’d rather write about it after the next discussion in June.