Scientism is the ideology of science. The term scientism generally points to the cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations not amenable to application of the scientific method or similar scientific standards.
In philosophy of science, the term scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism[1][2] and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek,[3] philosophers of science such as Karl Popper,[4] and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam[5] and Tzvetan Todorov[6]
to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific
methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is
measured or confirmatory.[7]
More generally, scientism is often interpreted as science applied "in excess". The term scientism has two senses:
The improper usage of science or scientific claims.[8] This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply,[9] such as when the topic is perceived as beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence
to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference
to the claims of scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any
result described as scientific. This can be a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority. It can also address the attempt to apply "hard science" methodology and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek described in The Counter-Revolution of Science
(1952) as being impossible, because that methodology involves
attempting to eliminate the "human factor", while social sciences
(including his own field of economics) center almost purely on human action.
"The belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories
and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements
in any philosophical or other inquiry",[10] or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"[5] with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological [and spiritual] dimensions of experience".[11][12]
Tom Sorell provides this definition: "Scientism is a matter of putting
too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches
of learning or culture."[13] Philosophers such as Alexander Rosenberg have also adopted "scientism" as a name for the view that science is the only reliable source of knowledge.[14]
It is also sometimes used to describe universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview
or the most valuable part of human learning—to the complete exclusion
of other viewpoints, such as historical, philosophical, economic or
cultural worldviews. It has been defined as "the view that the
characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only
source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone
can yield true knowledge about man and society".[15] The term scientism is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.
Reviewing the references to scientism in the works of contemporary scholars, Gregory R. Peterson[23] detects two main broad themes:
It is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing allreality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things;
It is used, often pejoratively,[24][25][26]
to denote a border-crossing violation in which the theories and
methods of one (scientific) discipline are inappropriately applied to
another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. An
example of this second usage is to label as scientism any attempt to
claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a
traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews).
The term scientism was popularized by the Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek, who defined it as the "slavish imitation of the method and language of Science".[27] Karl Popper defines scientism as 'the aping of what is widely mistaken for the method of science'. [28]
Mikael Stenmark proposes the expression scientific expansionism as a synonym of scientism.[29] In the Encyclopedia of science and religion, he writes that, while the doctrines
that are described as scientism have many possible forms and varying
degrees of ambition, they share the idea that the boundaries of science
(that is, typically the natural sciences) could and should be expanded
so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject
pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science (usually
with science becoming the sole or the main arbiter regarding this area
or dimension).[29]
According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states
that science has no boundaries and that all human problems and all
aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved
by science alone.[29] This idea has also been called the Myth of Progress.[30]
E. F. Schumacher, in his A Guide for the Perplexed,
criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to
what can be counted, measured and weighed. "The architects of the modern
worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes,
assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted
were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn't
be counted, in other words, it didn't count."[31]
Intellectual historian T.J. Jackson Lears
argues there has been a recent reemergence of "nineteenth-century
positivist faith that a reified 'science' has discovered (or is about to
discover) all the important truths about human life. Precise
measurement and rigorous calculation, in this view, are the basis for
finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies." Lears
specifically identifies Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's work as falling in this category.[32] Philosophers John N. Gray and Thomas Nagel have leveled similar criticisms against popular works by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and writer Malcolm Gladwell.[33][34][35]
Genetic biologist Austin L. Hughes wrote in conservative journal The New Atlantis
that scientism has much in common with superstition: "the stubborn
insistence that something...has powers which no evidence supports."[36]
Relevance to debates about science and religion
Several scholars use the term to describe the work of vocal critics of religion-as-such. Individuals associated with New Atheism have garnered this label from both religious and non-religious scholars.[37][38] Theologian John Haught argues that Daniel Dennett and other new atheists subscribe to a belief system of scientific naturalism,
which holds the central dogma that "only nature, including humans and
our creations, is real: that God does not exist; and that science alone
can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality."[39]
Haught argues that this belief system is self-refuting since it
requires its adherents to assent to beliefs that violate its own stated
requirements for knowledge.[40]
Christian Philosopher Peter Williams argues that it is only by
conflating science with scientism that new atheists feel qualified to
"pontificate on metaphysical issues."[41] Philosopher Daniel Dennett responded to religious criticism of his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
by saying that accusations of scientism "[are] an all-purpose,
wild-card smear... When someone puts forward a scientific theory that
[religious critics] really don't like, they just try to discredit it as
'scientism'. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town".[42]
Non-religious scholars have also linked New Atheist thought with scientism. Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that neuroscientist Sam Harris conflates all empirical knowledge with that of scientific knowledge.[43] Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton argues that Christopher Hitchens
possesses an "old-fashioned scientistic notion of what counts as
evidence" that reduces knowledge to what can and cannot be proven by
scientific procedure.[44] Agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny has also criticized New Atheist philosopher Alexander Rosenberg's The Atheist's Guide to Reality for resurrecting a self-refuting epistemology of logical positivism and reducing all knowledge of the universe to the discipline of physics.[45]
Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, draws a parallel between scientism and traditional religious movements, pointing to the cult of personality
that develops around some scientists in the public eye. He defines
scientism as a worldview that encompasses natural explanations, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason.[46]
The Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr has stated that in the Western world, many will accept the ideology of modern science, not as "simple ordinary science", but as a replacement for religion.[47]
Gregory R. Peterson writes that "for many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins".[23]
Philosophy of science
In his essay Against Method, Paul Feyerabend characterizes science as "an essentially anarchic enterprise"[48]
and argues emphatically that science merits no exclusive monopoly over
"dealing in knowledge" and that scientists have never operated within a
distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. He depicts the process of
contemporary scientific education as a mild form of indoctrination,
aimed at "making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform,
more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and
unchanging rules."[49]
[S]cience can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists
and similar religious movements; and... non-scientific cultures,
procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should
be allowed to do so... Science must be protected from ideologies; and
societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from
science... In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes,
and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there
must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation
between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught
as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and
reality.
Thomas M. Lessl argues that religious themes persist in what he calls scientism, the public rhetoric of science.[51]
There are two methodologies that illustrate this idea of scientism. One
is the epistemological approach, the assumption that the scientific
method trumps other ways of knowing and the ontological approach, that
the rational mind reflects the world and both operate in knowable ways.
According to Lessl, the ontological approach is an attempt to "resolve
the conflict between rationalism and skepticism". Lessl also argues that
without scientism, there would not be a scientific culture.[51]
Religion and philosophy
Philosopher of religion Keith Ward has said scientism is philosophically inconsistent or even self-refuting,
as the truth of the statements "no statements are true unless they can
be proven scientifically (or logically)" or "no statements are true
unless they can be shown empirically to be true" cannot themselves be
proven scientifically, logically, or empirically.[52][53]
Rationalization and modernity
In the introduction to his collected oeuvre on the sociology of religion, Max Weber
asks why "the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic
development [elsewhere]… did not enter upon that path of rationalization
which is peculiar to the Occident?" According to the distinguished
German social theorist, Jürgen Habermas, "For Weber, the intrinsic (that is, not merely contingent) relationship between modernity and what he called 'Occidental rationalism' was still self-evident." Weber described a process of rationalisation, disenchantment and the "disintegration of religious world views" that resulted in modern secular societies and capitalism.[54]
"Modernization" was introduced as a
technical term only in the 1950s. It is the mark of a theoretical
approach that takes up Weber's problem but elaborates it with the tools
of social-scientific functionalism…
The theory of modernization performs two abstractions on Weber's
concept of "modernity". It dissociates "modernity" from its modern
European origins and stylizes it into a spatio-temporally neutral model
for processes of social development in general. Furthermore, it breaks
the internal connections between modernity and the historical context of
Western rationalism,
so that processes of modernization… [are] no longer burdened with the
idea of a completion of modernity, that is to say, of a goal state after
which "postmodern"
developments would have to set in. …Indeed it is precisely
modernization research that has contributed to the currency of the
expression "postmodern" even among social scientists.
Habermas is critical of pure instrumental rationality,
arguing that the "Social Life–World" is better suited to literary
expression, the former being "intersubjectively accessible experiences"
that can be generalized in a formal language, while the latter "must generate an intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in each concrete case":
The world with which literature
deals is the world in which human beings are born and live and finally
die; the world in which they love and hate, in which they experience
triumph and humiliation, hope and despair; the world of sufferings and
enjoyments, of madness and common sense, of silliness, cunning and
wisdom; the world of social pressures and individual impulses, of reason
against passion, of instincts and conventions, of shared language and
unsharable feelings and sensations…
Criticism of science addresses and refines problems within science in order to improve science as a whole and its role in society. It is distinct from the academic positions of antiscience or anti-intellectualism which seek to reject entirely the scientific method.
Philosopher of sciencePaul Feyerabend advanced the idea of epistemological anarchism, which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge,
and that the idea that science can or should operate according to
universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to
science itself.[1] Feyerabend advocates a democratic society where science is treated as an equal to other ideologies or social institutions such as religion, and education, or magic and mythology, and considers the dominance of science in society authoritarian and unjustified.[1] He also contended (along with Imre Lakatos) that the demarcation problem of distinguishing science from pseudoscience on objective grounds is not possible and thus fatal to the notion of science running according to fixed, universal rules.[1]
Feyerabend also criticized science for not having evidence for
its own philosophical precepts. Particularly the notion of Uniformity of
Law and the Uniformity of Process across time and space, as noted by Steven Jay Gould.[2]
"We have to realize that a unified theory of the physical world simply
does not exist" says Feyerabend, "We have theories that work in
restricted regions, we have purely formal attempts to condense them into
a single formula, we have lots of unfounded claims (such as the claim
that all of chemistry can be reduced to physics), phenomena that do not
fit into the accepted framework are suppressed; in physics, which many
scientists regard as the one really basic science, we have now at least
three different points of view...without a promise of conceptual (and
not only formal) unification".[3] In other words, science is begging the question when it presupposes that there is a universal truth with no proof thereof.
Historian Jacques Barzun termed science "a faith as fanatical as any in history" and warned against the use of scientific thought to suppress considerations of meaning as integral to human existence.[4]
Sociologist Stanley Aronowitz
scrutinizes science for operating with the presumption that the only
acceptable criticisms of science are those conducted within the
methodological framework that science has set up for itself. That
science insists that only those who have been inducted into its
community, through means of training and credentials, are qualified to
make these criticisms.[5] Aronowitz also alleges that while scientists consider it absurd that Fundamentalist Christianity uses biblical references to bolster their claim that the Bible is true, scientists pull the same tactic by using the tools of science to settle disputes concerning its own validity.[6]
Philosopher of religion Alan Watts criticized science for operating under a materialist model of the world that he posited is simply a modified version of the Abrahamic worldview, that "the universe is constructed and maintained by a Lawmaker" (commonly identified as God or the Logos).
Watts asserts that during the rise of secularism through the 18th to
20th century when scientific philosophers got rid of the notion of a
lawmaker they kept the notion of law, and that the idea that the world
is a material machine run by law is a presumption just as unscientific
as religious doctrines that affirm it is a material machine made and run
by a lawmaker.[7]
Epistemology
David Parkin compared the epistemological stance of science to that of divination.
He suggested that, to the degree that divination is an
epistemologically specific means of gaining insight into a given
question, science itself can be considered a form of divination that is
framed from a Western view of the nature (and thus possible
applications) of knowledge.[8]
Polymath and Episkopos of DiscordianismRobert Anton Wilson
stresses that the instruments used in scientific investigation produce
meaningful answers relevant only to the instrument, and that there is no
objective vantage point from which science could verify its findings
since all findings are relative to begin with.[9]
Ethics
Joseph Wright of Derby (1768) An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, National Gallery, London
Several academics have offered critiques concerning ethics in science. In Science and Ethics, for example, the professor of philosophy Bernard Rollin
examines the relevance of ethics to science, and argues in favor of
making education in ethics part and parcel of scientific training.[10]
Social science scholars, like anthropologists like Tim Ingold, and scholars from philosophy and the humanities, like Adorno in critical theory, have criticized modern science for subservience to economic and technological interests.[11]
A related criticism is the debate on positivism. While before the 19th
century science was perceived to be in opposition to religion, in
contemporary society science is often defined as the antithesis of the humanities and the arts.[12]
Many recent thinkers, such as Carolyn Merchant, Theodor Adorno and E. F. Schumacher considered that the 17th century scientific revolution shifted science from a focus on understanding nature, or wisdom, to a focus on manipulating nature, i.e. power, and that science's emphasis on manipulating nature leads it inevitably to manipulate people, as well.[13]
Science's focus on quantitative measures has led to critiques that it
is unable to recognize important qualitative aspects of the world.[13]
Methodology
Cognitive and publication biases
While
many scientists and skeptics point out cognitive biases that may
permeate commonsense thinking and cause illogical conclusions, the same
biases are much less likely to be examined within the scientific
community. Critics argue that the biggest bias within science is
motivated reasoning, whereby scientists are more likely to accept
evidence that supports their hypothesis and more likely to scrutinize
findings that do not.[14]
Scientists do not practice pure induction but instead often come into
science with preconceived ideas and often will, unconsciously or
consciously, interpret observations to support their own hypotheses
through confirmation bias. For example, scientists may re-run trials
when they do not support a hypothesis but use results from the first
trial when they do support their hypothesis.[15]
It is often argued that while each individual has cognitive biases,
these biases are corrected for when scientific evidence converges.
However, systematic issues in the publication system of academic
journals can often compound these biases. Issues like publication bias,
where studies with non-significant results are less likely to be
published, and selective outcome reporting bias, where only the
significant outcomes out of a variety of outcomes are likely to be
published, are common within academic literature. These biases have
widespread implications, such as the distortion of meta-analyses where
only studies that include positive results are likely to be included.[16]
Statistical outcomes can be manipulated as well, for example large
numbers of participants can be used and trials overpowered so that small
difference cause significant effects or inclusion criteria can be
changed to include those are most likely to respond to a treatment.[17] Whether produced on purpose or not, all of these issues need to be
taken into consideration within scientific research, and peer-reviewed
published evidence should not be assumed to be outside of the realm of
bias and error; some critics are now claiming that many results in
scientific journals are false or exaggerated.[16]
Reproducibility
The behavioral science and social sciences have long suffered from the problem of their studies being largely not being reproducible.[18] Now, biomedicine has come under similar pressures.[19] In a phenomenon known as the replication crisis, journals are less likely to publish straight replication studies so it may be difficult to disprove results.[20] Another result of publication bias is the Proteus phenomenon: early attempts to replicate results tend to contradict them.[21] However, there are claims that this bias may be beneficial, allowing accurate meta-analysis with fewer publications.[22]
Metascience critiques
There are some critiques of science from metascience,
that broadly accepted form of scientific publishing produces mostly
insignificant, unreliable and false results, because of studies design
and prevalence of scientific misconduct.[23] Because of small statistical power as much as 95% of neuroimaging-base studies could be false.[24] 85% of biomedical research efforts is probably wasted, according to one analysis.[25] In psychology about ⅛ of papers consist statistical error, which could changes conclusions of those papers.[26] Most of economic hypothesis could be false.[27] Also due to replication crisis and omitting from publication negative finding results,[28] most discoveries in science are inflated.[29]
Feminist critiques
Feminist scholars and women scientists such as Emily Martin, Evelyn Fox Keller, Ruth Hubbard, Londa Schiebinger
and Bonnie Spanier have critiqued science because they believe it
presents itself as objective and neutral while ignoring its inherent gender bias.
They assert that gender bias exists in the language and practice of
science, as well as in the expected appearance and social acceptance of
who can be scientists within society.[30][31][32]
Sandra Harding
says that the "moral and political insights of the women's movement
have inspired social scientists and biologists to raise critical
questions about the ways traditional researchers have explained gender,
sex, and relations within and between the social and natural worlds."[33]Anne Fausto-Sterling is a prominent example of this kind of feminist work within biological science. Some feminists, such as Ruth Hubbard and Evelyn Fox Keller, criticize traditional scientific discourse as being historically biased towards a male perspective.[34][35]
A part of the feminist research agenda is the examination of the ways
in which power inequities are created and/or reinforced in scientific
and academic institutions.[36]
Other feminist scholars, such as Ann Hibner Koblitz,[37]Lenore Blum,[38]Mary Gray,[39] Mary Beth Ruskai,[40] and Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram,[41]
have criticized some gender and science theories for ignoring the
diverse nature of scientific research and the tremendous variation in
women's experiences in different cultures and historical periods. For
example, the first generation of women to receive advanced university
degrees in Europe were almost entirely in the natural sciences and
medicine -- in part because those fields at the time were much more
welcoming of women than were the humanities.[42]
Koblitz and others who are interested in increasing the number of
women in science have expressed concern that some of the statements by
feminist critics of science could undermine those efforts, notably the
following assertion by Keller:[43]
Just as surely as inauthenticity is the cost a woman suffers by
joining men in misogynist jokes, so it is, equally, the cost suffered by
a woman who identifies with an image of the scientist modeled on the
patriarchal husband. Only if she undergoes a radical disidentification
from self can she share masculine pleasure in mastering a nature cast in
the image of woman as passive, inert, and blind.
Language in science
Emily
Martin examines the metaphors used in science to support her claim that
science reinforces socially constructed ideas about gender rather than
objective views of nature. In her study about the fertilization process,
Martin describes several cases when gender-biased perception skewed the
descriptions of biological processes during fertilization and even
possibly hampered the research. She asserts that classic metaphors of
the strong dominant sperm racing to an idle egg are products of gendered
stereotyping rather than a faithful portrayal of human fertilization.
The notion that women are passive and men are active are socially
constructed attributes of gender which, according to Martin, scientists
have projected onto the events of fertilization and so obscuring the
fact that eggs do play an active role. For example, she wrote that "even
after having revealed...the egg to be a chemically active sperm
catcher, even after discussing the egg's role in tethering the sperm,
the research team continued for another three years to describe the
sperm's role as actively penetrating the egg."[30]
Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist at Swarthmore College supports
her position: "if you don’t have an interpretation of fertilization
that allows you to look at the egg as active, you won’t look for the
molecules that can prove it. You simply won’t find activities that you
don’t visualize."[30]
Media and politics
The mass media
face a number of pressures that can prevent them from accurately
depicting competing scientific claims in terms of their credibility
within the scientific community as a whole. Determining how much weight
to give different sides in a scientific debate requires considerable expertise regarding the matter.[44] Few journalists have real scientific knowledge, and even beat reporters who know a great deal about certain scientific issues may know little about other ones they are suddenly asked to cover.[45][46]
Many issues damage the relationship of science to the media and the use of science and scientific arguments by politicians. As a very broad generalisation, many politicians seek certainties and facts whilst scientists typically offer probabilities and caveats. However, politicians' ability to be heard in the mass media frequently distorts the scientific understanding by the public. Examples in Britain include the controversy over the MMR inoculation, and the 1988 forced resignation of a government minister, Edwina Currie, for revealing the high probability that battery eggs were contaminated with Salmonella.[47]
Some scientists and philosophers suggest that scientific theories
are more or less shaped by the dominant political, economic, or
cultural models of the time, even though the scientific community may
claim to be exempt from social influences and historical conditions.[48][49] For example, ZoologistPeter Kropotkin
thought that the Darwinian theory of evolution overstressed a painful
"we must struggle to survive" way of life, which he said was influenced
by capitalism and the struggling lifestyles people lived within it.[9][50] Karl Marx also thought that science was largely driven by and used as capital.[51]
Robert Anton Wilson, Stanley Aronowitz, and Paul Feyerabend all thought that the military-industrial complex, large corporations, and the grants that came from them had an immense influence over the research and even results of scientific experiments.[1][52][53][54]
Aronowitz even went as far as to say "It does not matter that the
scientific community ritualistically denies its alliance with
economic/industrial and military power. The evidence is overwhelming
that such is the case. Thus, every major power has a national science
policy; the United States Military appropriates billions each year for
'basic' as well as 'applied' research".
In late July, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards published a paper titled “Inventory of CO2 available for terraforming Mars,” which was sponsored by NASA. The paper analyzed the amount of volatiles, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2),
on or in Mars currently, and concluded reasonably that there are not
enough volatiles available on Mars to terraform it sufficiently for a
person to not need a pressure suit. Jakosky is the principal
investigator for MAVEN, the NASA Mars orbiter studying the planet’s
atmosphere. He and his co-author wrote what is technically an accurate
paper, in spite of what was an existing mild controversy over the amount
of some volatiles in the soil and regolith of Mars. The timing of this
paper was reasonable, since by 2018, MAVEN data, as well as othee
orbiting radar data and related geologic modeling, was available and
allowed more accurate estimates of amounts of remaining carbon dioxide
and other volatiles.
All of this particular argument actually is “sound and fury signifying nothing,” since the debate is all focused on the wrong volatile and totally ignores the potential of importing volatiles to Mars.
Unfortunately, quite a few in the science and space media, and other
more sensationalistic outlets, took the ball and ran with it like the
apocryphal rider who “rode madly off in all directions.” The results
turned a technical paper into the basis for a vicious debate over
whether terraforming Mars is possible at all. Some of the writers
implied that the researchers were speaking officially for NASA in saying
that terraforming Mars was impossible. Most of the media writers
totally ignored a key phrase in the paper’s abstract: “using present day
technology.” Is there really anyone who thinks we can terraform Mars
right now? In its later phases, the debate and coverage turned into a
series of snide and unfair attacks on Elon Musk, who is well known for
his interest in terraforming Mars, and who made an incautious but
probably jesting remark about the use of nuclear devices to melt the
Mars polar caps several years ago. Some of the more outrageous, unfair
and untrue article headlines included:
“Sorry Elon, NASA says plans to terraform Mars won’t work”
“Elon Musk’s Dream Has Just been proven Impossible”
“NASA says we can’t terraform Mars”
“It’s Official – We can’t Terraform Mars”
Now, it may seem premature to be arguing over our ability to terraform
Mars when humans have not even landed there yet. Fortunately, we already
have a huge amount of information on Mars and its atmosphere, so many
of the arguments are on solid technical ground.
However, all of this particular argument actually is “sound and fury
signifying nothing,” since the debate is all focused on the wrong
volatile and totally ignores the potential of importing volatiles to
Mars. A “volatile” is any substance which can be turned into a gas
easily or is normally a gas. Good common examples are water, oxygen,
carbon dioxide, ammonia, and nitrogen. The current focus on carbon
dioxide is about its role as a greenhouse gas that could raise the
temperature of Mars. While releasing the known amounts of frozen carbon
dioxide could raise the temperature and pressure significantly,
terraforming Mars requires more than merely making Mars warmer. The day
side of the moon can reach 120 degrees Celsius, but with its vacuum, it
is not very conducive to life.
The surface pressure on Mars now averages about 0.6 percent of our own
sea level pressure, or about 0.087 psi (600 pascals), and is thus a
“physiological vacuum”. This means the pressure is less than a tenth of
the “Armstrong Limit” of about 0.9 psi (6,200 pascals) where blood boils
and far below what is needed to survive even with pure oxygen. You
would need to wear a pressure suit to survive on the surface, just like
on the Moon. Fortunately, though chilly, the temperatures on Mars are
much milder than those on the Moon.
In addition, the surface of Mars is exposed to about 250 millisieverts
(mSv) per Earth year of solar and galactic (cosmic) radiation, composed
partly of dangerous high-speed atomic nuclei that can leave a trail of
dead brain cells behind. Due to these particles, cosmic radiation is
more dangerous than “regular” radiation. Crews and early civilian
settlers would need to live underground in heavily shielded, pressurized
habitat buildings to prevent the cosmic ray nuclei from reaching them.
For reference, you would experience some radiation sickness if you got a
dose of 1000 mSv all at once. In interplanetary space, you would get
about 657 mSv per year without shielding, but on Mars, the planet itself
blocks half of the radiation and the thin atmosphere absorbs another 20
percent of what remains. At this lower but constant rate, you would not
get sick but there would be cumulative cell damage and a slow increase
in cancer risk. On Earth, at sea level, we have in effect a layer of air
equivalent in mass to 10.3 meters of water over our heads, which
absorbs virtually all of the dangerous high-energy particles. On Mars,
that layer is equivalent to about 20 centimeters of water, barely enough
to shield anyone from a dangerous solar “proton storm” radiation
outburst.
A
reasonable mix at about 10 psi would obviously be 70 percent nitrogen
and 30 oxygen oxygen, providing the needed 3 psi of oxygen. This would
be similar to being at about 3,000 meters on Earth, which the majority
of people can obviously tolerate.
So there are three main reasons we need significant air pressure on
Mars: to remove the need for pressure suits when working outside (and so
that we would no longer need to live in pressurized habitats), to allow
water to exist as a liquid on the surface, and to block the ubiquitous
cosmic radiation so that buildings can be right on the surface and so
that people can work on the surface without being irradiated. We can
look at this issue from two points of view: radiation blocking mass and
air pressure. So how much air mass and pressure do we really need?
From the radiation perspective, this is primarily a matter of sheer
mass. On Earth at sea level, we have enough air over our heads so that
only a tiny fraction of the natural background radiation most people get
per year, totaling 3 to 6 mSv, is from space. To duplicate that very
good level of protection on Mars requires a comparable amount of air
mass (10.3 metric tons) over every square meter of Mars surface,
ignoring the great altitude differences. Multiply this by the number of
square meters of Mars surface and you get the required air mass: 1.493
trillion metric tons. This amount would create about 6.14 psi of air
pressure or about 0.42 of Earth sea level pressure. More importantly,
essentially all of the dangerous cosmic radiation from space would be
blocked. This compares to the paltry 25 trillion metric tons of air
currently in place at Mars, almost all of it CO2.
Some may note that for the same air column mass (the mass of air over a
given surface area), we are not getting as much air pressure as we do on
Earth. With Mars lower gravity, about 38% of Earths, it takes more air
mass per square meter than it does on Earth to produce the same amount
of pressure. So with the radiation threat now (theoretically) dealt
with, how much air pressure do we need and what kind?
Right now, the air you are breathing is about 78 percent nitrogen and
only about 21 percent oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, at only
0.04 percent. You actually breathe 25 times more argon than carbon
dioxide. If you are old enough, or are a space history buff, you may
remember the Apollo 1 fire. The first Apollo spacecraft being prepared
to be launched with a crew had about 16 psi of pure oxygen inside it
during a pre-launch test, and all of the metal and plastic surfaces were
saturated with oxygen. The capsule interior was like a fire bomb
waiting for one tiny spark. The three astronauts were quickly
asphyxiated by smoke within a minute of that spark and most of the
interior of the capsule was incinerated. This horrific accident
illustrates how dangerous high levels of oxygen are.
So future colonists would have little use for an atmosphere of almost
all carbon dioxide, and they would not want an atmosphere mostly of
oxygen due to the huge fire risk it would create. It turns out that the
oxygen in any future nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere should be less than 50
percent of the total air pressure, but with the 42 percent pressure
described above, we would still need a future 50-50 oxygen and nitrogen
mix. (The amount of nitrogen delivered should be related to the future
oxygen component.) So if we increase the air column mass to about 12.3
metric tons over each meter of surface, we get almost exactly half sea
level pressure, or about 7.35 psi. To create this half-atmosphere of
pressure (almost all of nitrogen) we need to add 1,784 trillion tons of
nitrogen. However, this is equivalent to an altitude on Earth of about
5,200 meters, the altitude of the highest community on Earth in the
Andes.
We assume, once we have a half-atmosphere of pressure, early settlers
would be using oxygen helmets when working outside, and living inside
slightly pressurized habitats, which could then be on the surface, with a
nitrogen-oxygen mix. In addition, those in charge of the terraforming
process would want to find ways to slowly add oxygen to the atmosphere,
such as using the oxygen in some of the carbon dioxide and the existing
water on Mars. This may take a long time, but adding oxygen will also
add to the atmospheric pressure. Eventually, perhaps after centuries,
there would be enough oxygen to breath and green plants could grow
outside, but not so much as to be dangerous. A reasonable mix at about
10 psi would obviously be 70 percent nitrogen and 30 oxygen oxygen,
providing the needed 3 psi of oxygen. This would be similar to being at
about 3,000 meters on Earth, which the majority of people can obviously
tolerate. For example, the town of Leadville, Colorado, is at an
altitude of 3,100 meters. This is why we want the nitrogen in place
first as it is a non-reactive gas.
Now, of course, many people will wonder where do we get all of these
trillions of tons of nitrogen to import onto Mars. The planet has very
little of it: just a few percent of what is needed, as most of it was
lost during the last 3.5 billion years. However, It turns out that the
outer solar system has huge amounts of nitrogen, both as a gas, such as
on Titan, and as a semi-solid slush or ice on Pluto, Triton, and very
probably the other large Kuiper Belt dwarf planets. Small asteroids
would not have significant amounts of nitrogen as their gravity would
have been too low to hold an atmosphere. We should be able to mine some
of this nitrogen and move it to Mars where it can help support life.
The current atmospheric loss rate from Mars would be very low.
Right now, it is true we have no means of moving the nitrogen, but
chances are, with the new private investments in fusion power, that we
will have it before we are ready to start terraforming. Fusion rocket
powered tugs would only need to thrust for a few days to a couple weeks
to send huge loads of nitrogen—as much as 100 million tons in each
load—into the inner solar system at low speeds and carefully intersect
the atmosphere of Mars. Ten such loads would deliver a billion tons of
nitrogen, as much mass as a cubic kilometer of water, and 10,000 loads
would deliver a full trillion tons.
The
use of the nitrogen dumps using the existing atmosphere as a brake does
away with the need to use either asteroid impacts or nuclear bombs to
melt Mars ice, both very temporary and extremely undesirable methods.
The image at the top of this article shows a load of 100,000 chunks of
nitrogen (shown as cubes but they could be in huge plastic bags.) Each
chunk is about 10 meters across and weighs about 1,000 tons. By aiming
these large loads of nitrogen ice so that they come in exactly
horizontally at the high atmosphere of Mars over the desired areas,
instead of impacting on Mars surface, there are no craters formed and
all of the nitrogen is turned into gas and added to the atmosphere over
an entry path of hundreds of kilometers. Very large amounts of heat, but
no dangerous radiation, are created by these entries, which would occur
many times a day and go on for over 100 years.
The entries could be targeted over the ice caps or glaciers and would
easily melt them totally, as each entry produces as much radiant heat as
a hydrogen bomb but with no dangerous radiation. Thus, the ice cap
melting can be done by these repeated entry events, instead of a few,
very dangerous cratering events. The fusion tugs back away from their
loads before entry and head back to the outer solar system at high speed
since they now have no load. Climatologists may have to hurry to get
valuable ice cores of all the ice cap areas before they are melted to
form a new, but initially shallow, Boreal Ocean and other bodies of
water.
Thus, the whole argument over how much carbon dioxide is on Mars now is
totally irrelevant, since we need to import the nitrogen, which is far
more important than the carbon dioxide. The use of the nitrogen dumps
using the existing atmosphere as a brake does away with the need to use
either asteroid impacts or nuclear bombs to melt Mars ice, both very
temporary and extremely undesirable methods. The paper’s authors
probably had no idea of the media firestorm their paper would create,
but it left no “out” allowing the possibility of terraforming, such as
pointing out that there were other sources and kinds of volatiles
besides those on Mars. This almost invited the irresponsible media
writers to make the claims that terraforming was impossible.
There was another issue raised by the paper and media debate. The
paper’s authors confused chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) gases with
perfluorocarbons, which have been identified for a quarter century as
the preferred greenhouse gas to use by respected Mars authorities like
Christopher McKay. The media did not seem to notice this during their
intense focus on the carbon dioxide issue. No one supports using CFCs
today, but the mixture of several different perfluorocarbons that has
been devised has no chlorine atoms and thus would not damage a future
ozone layer over Mars. The essential element in these molecules:
fluorine, certainly exists on Mars but we will need to figure out what
minerals to extract it from.
Another issue no one discussed is the chance that the desired increased
in Mars atmospheric pressure could lead to a great increase in water
vapor in the Mars atmosphere. This seems to be exactly what we want, but
it could also result in a lot of snow on the surface outside the polar
areas, which could actually reduce the planet’s temperature by
increasing its albedo or reflectivity. Having additional carbon dioxide
and perfluorocarbons present early on before the pressure on Mars was
raised would be a good terraforming strategy. This might warm Mars
sufficiently so that the snow potentially enable by the higher pressure
would melt sooner and run off or sink into the ground. Once the pressure
has been raised, the perfluorocarbons would become the main greenhouse
gas mixture, eventually protected from photolysis by the new ozone layer
high above. Both the perfluorocarbons and the carbon dioxide would
remain as trace gases in the Mars atmosphere. Our advanced
climatological modeling can help tell what the best course is.
It is important to realize that without full terraforming, with at least
a half-atmosphere or more of pressure, the fanciful images of
skyscrapers and shimmering domed cities on the surface of Mars are not
realistic. Once there are enough humans living under Mars surface, the
public pressure for terraforming will build and action will be taken.
Eventually creating a living world on the surface of Mars—to act as a
backup for Earth’s biome, not as a replacement for it—is a great dream, and a valid one.
John Strickland is a member of the National Space
Society Board of Directors but as an independent writer, he speaks for
no organization. His opinions are his own.
Philosophy of science is a sub-field of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth.
There is no consensus among philosophers about many of the
central problems concerned with the philosophy of science, including
whether science can reveal the truth about unobservable things and whether scientific reasoning can be justified
at all. In addition to these general questions about science as a
whole, philosophers of science consider problems that apply to
particular sciences (such as biology or physics). Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy itself.
While philosophical thought pertaining to science dates back at least to the time of Aristotle, philosophy of science emerged as a distinct discipline only in the 20th century in the wake of the logical positivism
movement, which aimed to formulate criteria for ensuring all
philosophical statements' meaningfulness and objectively assessing them.
Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was also formative, challenging the view of scientific progress
as steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge based on a fixed method
of systematic experimentation and instead arguing that any progress is
relative to a "paradigm," the set of questions, concepts, and practices that define a scientific discipline in a particular historical period.[1]Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Peirce moved on from positivism to establish a modern set of standards for scientific methodology.
Subsequently, the coherentist
approach to science, in which a theory is validated if it makes sense
of observations as part of a coherent whole, became prominent due to W. V. Quine and others. Some thinkers such as Stephen Jay Gould seek to ground science in axiomatic assumptions, such as the uniformity of nature. A vocal minority of philosophers, and Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994) in particular, argue that there is no such thing as the "scientific method", so all approaches to science should be allowed, including explicitly supernatural ones. Another approach to thinking about science involves studying how knowledge is created from a sociological perspective, an approach represented by scholars like David Bloor and Barry Barnes. Finally, a tradition in continental philosophy approaches science from the perspective of a rigorous analysis of human experience.
Philosophies of the particular sciences range from questions about the nature of time raised by Einstein's general relativity, to the implications of economics for public policy. A central theme is whether one scientific discipline can be reduced to the terms of another. That is, can chemistry be reduced to physics, or can sociology be reduced to individual psychology?
The general questions of philosophy of science also arise with greater
specificity in some particular sciences. For instance, the question of
the validity of scientific reasoning is seen in a different guise in the
foundations of statistics. The question of what counts as science and what should be excluded arises as a life-or-death matter in the philosophy of medicine. Additionally, the philosophies of biology, of psychology, and of the social sciences explore whether the scientific studies of human nature can achieve objectivity or are inevitably shaped by values and by social relations.
Introduction
Defining science
Karl Popper in the 1980s
Distinguishing between science and non-science is referred to as the demarcation problem. For example, should psychoanalysis be considered science? How about so-called creation science, the inflationary multiverse hypothesis, or macroeconomics? Karl Popper called this the central question in the philosophy of science.[2]
However, no unified account of the problem has won acceptance among
philosophers, and some regard the problem as unsolvable or
uninteresting.[3][4]Martin Gardner has argued for the use of a Potter Stewart standard ("I know it when I see it") for recognizing pseudoscience.[5]
Early attempts by the logical positivists grounded science in observation while non-science was non-observational and hence meaningless.[6] Popper argued that the central property of science is falsifiability. That is, every genuinely scientific claim is capable of being proven false, at least in principle.[7]
An area of study or speculation that masquerades as science in an
attempt to claim a legitimacy that it would not otherwise be able to
achieve is referred to as pseudoscience, fringe science, or junk science.[8] Physicist Richard Feynman coined the term "cargo cult science"
for cases in which researchers believe they are doing science because
their activities have the outward appearance of it but actually lack the
"kind of utter honesty" that allows their results to be rigorously
evaluated.[9]
Scientific explanation
A closely related question is what counts as a good scientific
explanation. In addition to providing predictions about future events,
society often takes scientific theories to provide explanations
for events that occur regularly or have already occurred. Philosophers
have investigated the criteria by which a scientific theory can be said
to have successfully explained a phenomenon, as well as what it means
to say a scientific theory has explanatory power.
One early and influential theory of scientific explanation is the deductive-nomological model. It says that a successful scientific explanation must deduce the occurrence of the phenomena in question from a scientific law.[10] This view has been subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely acknowledged counterexamples to the theory.[11]
It is especially challenging to characterize what is meant by an
explanation when the thing to be explained cannot be deduced from any
law because it is a matter of chance, or otherwise cannot be perfectly
predicted from what is known. Wesley Salmon developed a model in which a good scientific explanation must be statistically relevant to the outcome to be explained.[12][13] Others have argued that the key to a good explanation is unifying disparate phenomena or providing a causal mechanism.[13]
Justifying science
The expectations chickens might form about farmer behavior illustrate the "problem of induction."
Although it is often taken for granted, it is not at all clear how
one can infer the validity of a general statement from a number of
specific instances or infer the truth of a theory from a series of
successful tests.[14]
For example, a chicken observes that each morning the farmer comes and
gives it food, for hundreds of days in a row. The chicken may therefore
use inductive reasoning to infer that the farmer will bring food every
morning. However, one morning, the farmer comes and kills the chicken.
How is scientific reasoning more trustworthy than the chicken's
reasoning?
One approach is to acknowledge that induction cannot achieve
certainty, but observing more instances of a general statement can at
least make the general statement more probable.
So the chicken would be right to conclude from all those mornings that
it is likely the farmer will come with food again the next morning, even
if it cannot be certain. However, there remain difficult questions
about the process of interpreting any given evidence into a probability
that the general statement is true. One way out of these particular
difficulties is to declare that all beliefs about scientific theories
are subjective, or personal, and correct reasoning is merely about how evidence should change one's subjective beliefs over time.[14]
Some argue that what scientists do is not inductive reasoning at all but rather abductive reasoning,
or inference to the best explanation. In this account, science is not
about generalizing specific instances but rather about hypothesizing
explanations for what is observed. As discussed in the previous section,
it is not always clear what is meant by the "best explanation." Ockham's razor, which counsels choosing the simplest
available explanation, thus plays an important role in some versions of
this approach. To return to the example of the chicken, would it be
simpler to suppose that the farmer cares about it and will continue
taking care of it indefinitely or that the farmer is fattening it up for
slaughter? Philosophers have tried to make this heuristic principle more precise in terms of theoretical parsimony
or other measures. Yet, although various measures of simplicity have
been brought forward as potential candidates, it is generally accepted
that there is no such thing as a theory-independent measure of
simplicity. In other words, there appear to be as many different
measures of simplicity as there are theories themselves, and the task of
choosing between measures of simplicity appears to be every bit as
problematic as the job of choosing between theories.[15]. Nicholas Maxwell
has argued for some decades that unity rather than simplicity is the
key non-empirical factor in influencing choice of theory in science,
persistent preference for unified theories in effect committing science
to the acceptance of a metaphysical thesis concerning unity in nature.
In order to improve this problematic thesis, it needs to be represented
in the form of a hierarchy of theses, each thesis becoming more
insubstantial as one goes up the hierarchy[16].
When making observations, scientists look through telescopes, study
images on electronic screens, record meter readings, and so on.
Generally, on a basic level, they can agree on what they see, e.g., the
thermometer shows 37.9 degrees C. But, if these scientists have
different ideas about the theories that have been developed to explain
these basic observations, they may disagree about what they are
observing. For example, before Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity,
observers would have likely interpreted the image at right as five
different objects in space. In light of that theory, however,
astronomers will tell you that there are actually only two objects, one
in the center and four different images
of a second object around the sides. Alternatively, if other scientists
suspect that something is wrong with the telescope and only one object
is actually being observed, they are operating under yet another theory.
Observations that cannot be separated from theoretical interpretation
are said to be theory-laden.[17]
All observation involves both perception and cognition.
That is, one does not make an observation passively, but rather is
actively engaged in distinguishing the phenomenon being observed from
surrounding sensory data. Therefore, observations are affected by one's
underlying understanding of the way in which the world functions, and
that understanding may influence what is perceived, noticed, or deemed
worthy of consideration. In this sense, it can be argued that all
observation is theory-laden.[17]
The purpose of science
Should science aim to determine ultimate truth, or are there questions that science cannot answer? Scientific realists claim that science aims at truth and that one ought to regard scientific theories as true, approximately true, or likely true. Conversely, scientific anti-realists argue that science does not aim (or at least does not succeed) at truth, especially truth about unobservables like electrons or other universes.[18]Instrumentalists
argue that scientific theories should only be evaluated on whether they
are useful. In their view, whether theories are true or not is beside
the point, because the purpose of science is to make predictions and
enable effective technology.
Realists often point to the success of recent scientific theories as evidence for the truth (or near truth) of current theories.[19][20] Antirealists point to either the many false theories in the history of science,[21][22] epistemic morals,[23] the success of false modeling assumptions,[24] or widely termed postmodern criticisms of objectivity as evidence against scientific realism.[19] Antirealists attempt to explain the success of scientific theories without reference to truth.[25]
Some antirealists claim that scientific theories aim at being accurate
only about observable objects and argue that their success is primarily
judged by that criterion.[23]
Values and science
Values
intersect with science in different ways. There are epistemic values
that mainly guide the scientific research. The scientific enterprise is
embedded in particular culture and values through individual
practitioners. Values emerge from science, both as product and process
and can be distributed among several cultures in the society.
If it is unclear what counts as science, how the process of
confirming theories works, and what the purpose of science is, there is
considerable scope for values and other social influences to shape
science. Indeed, values can play a role ranging from determining which research gets funded to influencing which theories achieve scientific consensus.[26] For example, in the 19th century, cultural values held by scientists about race shaped research on evolution, and values concerning social class influenced debates on phrenology (considered scientific at the time).[27]Feminist philosophers of science, sociologists of science, and others explore how social values affect science.
History
Pre-modern
The origins of philosophy of science trace back to Plato and Aristotle[28] who distinguished the forms of approximate and exact reasoning, set out the threefold scheme of abductive, deductive, and inductive inference, and also analyzed reasoning by analogy. The eleventh century Arab polymath Ibn al-Haytham (known in Latin as Alhazen) conducted his research in optics by way of controlled experimental testing and applied geometry, especially in his investigations into the images resulting from the reflection and refraction of light. Roger Bacon
(1214–1294), an English thinker and experimenter heavily influenced by
al-Haytham, is recognized by many to be the father of modern scientific
method.[29]
His view that mathematics was essential to a correct understanding of
natural philosophy was considered to be 400 years ahead of its time.[30]
Modern
Francis Bacon's statue at Gray's Inn, South Square, London
Francis Bacon (no direct relation to Roger, who lived 300 years earlier) was a seminal figure in philosophy of science at the time of the Scientific Revolution. In his work Novum Organum (1620) – an allusion to Aristotle's Organon – Bacon outlined a new system of logic to improve upon the old philosophical process of syllogism. Bacon's method relied on experimental histories to eliminate alternative theories.[31] In 1637, René Descartes established a new framework for grounding scientific knowledge in his treatise, Discourse on Method, advocating the central role of reason as opposed to sensory experience. By contrast, in 1713, the 2nd edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
argued that "... hypotheses ... have no place in experimental
philosophy. In this philosophy[,] propositions are deduced from the
phenomena and rendered general by induction. "[32]
This passage influenced a "later generation of philosophically-inclined
readers to pronounce a ban on causal hypotheses in natural philosophy."
[32] In particular, later in the 18th century, David Hume would famously articulate skepticism about the ability of science to determine causality and gave a definitive formulation of the problem of induction. The 19th century writings of John Stuart Mill
are also considered important in the formation of current conceptions
of the scientific method, as well as anticipating later accounts of
scientific explanation.[33]
Logical positivism
Instrumentalism
became popular among physicists around the turn of the 20th century,
after which logical positivism defined the field for several decades.
Logical positivism accepts only testable statements as meaningful,
rejects metaphysical interpretations, and embraces verificationism (a set of theories of knowledge that combines logicism, empiricism, and linguistics to ground philosophy on a basis consistent with examples from the empirical sciences). Seeking to overhaul all of philosophy and convert it to a new scientific philosophy,[34] the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle propounded logical positivism in the late 1920s.
Interpreting Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language, logical positivists identified a verifiability principle or criterion of cognitive meaningfulness. From Bertrand Russell's logicism they sought reduction of mathematics to logic. They also embraced Russell's logical atomism, Ernst Mach's phenomenalism—whereby
the mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, which is
the content of all sciences, whether physics or psychology—and Percy Bridgman's operationalism. Thereby, only the verifiable was scientific and cognitively meaningful,
whereas the unverifiable was unscientific, cognitively meaningless
"pseudostatements"—metaphysical, emotive, or such—not worthy of further
review by philosophers, who were newly tasked to organize knowledge
rather than develop new knowledge.
Logical positivism is commonly portrayed as taking the extreme
position that scientific language should never refer to anything
unobservable—even the seemingly core notions of causality, mechanism,
and principles—but that is an exaggeration. Talk of such unobservables
could be allowed as metaphorical—direct observations viewed in the
abstract—or at worst metaphysical or emotional. Theoretical laws would be reduced to empirical laws, while theoretical terms would garner meaning from observational terms via correspondence rules. Mathematics in physics would reduce to symbolic logic via logicism, while rational reconstruction would convert ordinary language into standardized equivalents, all networked and united by a logical syntax. A scientific theory would be stated with its method of verification, whereby a logical calculus or empirical operation could verify its falsity or truth.
In the late 1930s, logical positivists fled Germany and Austria
for Britain and America. By then, many had replaced Mach's
phenomenalism with Otto Neurath's physicalism, and Rudolf Carnap had sought to replace verification with simply confirmation. With World War II's close in 1945, logical positivism became milder, logical empiricism, led largely by Carl Hempel, in America, who expounded the covering law model
of scientific explanation as a way of identifying the logical form of
explanations without any reference to the suspect notion of "causation".
The logical positivist movement became a major underpinning of analytic philosophy,[35] and dominated Anglosphere
philosophy, including philosophy of science, while influencing
sciences, into the 1960s. Yet the movement failed to resolve its
central problems,[36][37][38]
and its doctrines were increasingly assaulted. Nevertheless, it brought
about the establishment of philosophy of science as a distinct
subdiscipline of philosophy, with Carl Hempel playing a key role.[39]
For Kuhn, the addition of epicycles in Ptolemaic astronomy was "normal science" within a paradigm, whereas the Copernican revolution was a paradigm shift.
Thomas Kuhn
In the 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn argued that the process of observation and evaluation takes place within a paradigm, a logically consistent
"portrait" of the world that is consistent with observations made from
its framing. A paradigm also encompasses the set of questions and
practices that define a scientific discipline. He characterized normal science as the process of observation and "puzzle solving" which takes place within a paradigm, whereas revolutionary science occurs when one paradigm overtakes another in a paradigm shift.[40]
Kuhn denied that it is ever possible to isolate the hypothesis
being tested from the influence of the theory in which the observations
are grounded, and he argued that it is not possible to evaluate
competing paradigms independently. More than one logically consistent
construct can paint a usable likeness of the world, but there is no
common ground from which to pit two against each other, theory against
theory. Each paradigm has its own distinct questions, aims, and
interpretations. Neither provides a standard by which the other can be
judged, so there is no clear way to measure scientific progress across paradigms.
For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by rational
processes, but not ultimately determined by them. The choice between
paradigms involves setting two or more "portraits" against the world and
deciding which likeness is most promising. For Kuhn, acceptance or
rejection of a paradigm is a social process as much as a logical
process. Kuhn's position, however, is not one of relativism.[41] According to Kuhn, a paradigm shift occurs when a significant number of
observational anomalies arise in the old paradigm and a new paradigm
makes sense of them. That is, the choice of a new paradigm is based on
observations, even though those observations are made against the
background of the old paradigm.
Current approaches
Naturalism's Axiomatic assumptions
All scientific study inescapably builds on at least some essential assumptions that are untested by scientific processes.[42][43]Kuhn
concurs that all science is based on an approved agenda of unprovable
assumptions about the character of the universe, rather than merely on
empirical facts. These assumptions—a paradigm—comprise a collection of
beliefs, values and techniques that are held by a given scientific
community, which legitimize their systems and set the limitations to
their investigation.[44]
For naturalists, nature is the only reality, the only paradigm.
There is no such thing as 'supernatural'. The scientific method is to
be used to investigate all reality.[45]
Naturalism is the implicit philosophy of working scientists.[46] The following basic assumptions are needed to justify the scientific method.[47]
that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.[47][48] "The basis for rationality is acceptance of an external objective reality."[49]
"Objective reality is clearly an essential thing if we are to develop a
meaningful perspective of the world. Nevertheless its very existence is
assumed." "Our belief that objective reality exist is an assumption
that it arises from a real world outside of ourselves. As infants we
made this assumption unconsciously. People are happy to make this
assumption that adds meaning to our sensations and feelings, than live
with solipsism."[50]
Without this assumption, there would be only the thoughts and images in
our own mind (which would be the only existing mind) and there would be
no need of science, or anything else."[51]
that this objective reality is governed by natural laws;[47][48]
"Science, at least today, assumes that the universe obeys to knoweable
principles that don't depend on time or place, nor on subjective
parameters such as what we think, know or how we behave."[49] Hugh Gauch argues that science presupposes that "the physical world is orderly and comprehensible."[52]
that reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.[47][48]
Stanley Sobottka said, "The assumption of external reality is necessary
for science to function and to flourish. For the most part, science is
the discovering and explaining of the external world."[51] "Science attempts to produce knowledge that is as universal and objective as possible within the realm of human understanding."[49]
that Nature has uniformity of laws and most if not all things in nature must have at least a natural cause.[48] Biologist Stephen Jay Gould referred to these two closely related propositions as the constancy of nature's laws and the operation of known processes.[53]
Simpson agrees that the axiom of uniformity of law, an unprovable
postulate, is necessary in order for scientists to extrapolate inductive
inference into the unobservable past in order to meaningfully study it.[54]
that experimental procedures will be done satisfactorily without
any deliberate or unintentional mistakes that will influence the results.[48]
that experimenters won't be significantly biased by their presumptions.[48]
that random sampling is representative of the entire population.[48]
A simple random sample (SRS) is the most basic probabilistic option
used for creating a sample from a population. The benefit of SRS is that
the investigator is guaranteed to choose a sample that represents the
population that ensures statistically valid conclusions.[55]
Coherentism
Jeremiah Horrocks makes the first observation of the transit of Venus in 1639, as imagined by the artist W. R. Lavender in 1903
In contrast to the view that science rests on foundational
assumptions, coherentism asserts that statements are justified by being a
part of a coherent system. Or, rather, individual statements cannot be
validated on their own: only coherent systems can be justified.[56] A prediction of a transit of Venus
is justified by its being coherent with broader beliefs about celestial
mechanics and earlier observations. As explained above, observation is a
cognitive act. That is, it relies on a pre-existing understanding, a
systematic set of beliefs. An observation of a transit of Venus requires
a huge range of auxiliary beliefs, such as those that describe the optics of telescopes, the mechanics of the telescope mount, and an understanding of celestial mechanics.
If the prediction fails and a transit is not observed, that is likely
to occasion an adjustment in the system, a change in some auxiliary
assumption, rather than a rejection of the theoretical system.[citation needed]
In fact, according to the Duhem–Quine thesis, after Pierre Duhem and W. V. Quine, it is impossible to test a theory in isolation.[57] One must always add auxiliary hypotheses in order to make testable predictions. For example, to test Newton's Law of Gravitation
in the solar system, one needs information about the masses and
positions of the Sun and all the planets. Famously, the failure to
predict the orbit of Uranus
in the 19th century led not to the rejection of Newton's Law but rather
to the rejection of the hypothesis that the solar system comprises only
seven planets. The investigations that followed led to the discovery of
an eighth planet, Neptune.
If a test fails, something is wrong. But there is a problem in figuring
out what that something is: a missing planet, badly calibrated test
equipment, an unsuspected curvature of space, or something else.[citation needed]
One consequence of the Duhem–Quine thesis is that one can make
any theory compatible with any empirical observation by the addition of a
sufficient number of suitable ad hoc hypotheses. Karl Popper accepted this thesis, leading him to reject naïve falsification. Instead, he favored a "survival of the fittest" view in which the most falsifiable scientific theories are to be preferred.[58]
Paul Feyerabend
(1924–1994) argued that no description of scientific method could
possibly be broad enough to include all the approaches and methods used
by scientists, and that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science. He argued that "the only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes".[59]
Feyerabend said that science started as a liberating movement,
but that over time it had become increasingly dogmatic and rigid and had
some oppressive features. and thus had become increasingly an ideology. Because of this, he said it was impossible to come up with an unambiguous way to distinguish science from religion, magic, or mythology. He saw the exclusive dominance of science as a means of directing society as authoritarian and ungrounded.[59] Promulgation of this epistemological anarchism earned Feyerabend the title of "the worst enemy of science" from his detractors.[60]
Sociology of scientific knowledge methodology
According to Kuhn, science is an inherently communal activity which can only be done as part of a community.[61]
For him, the fundamental difference between science and other
disciplines is the way in which the communities function. Others,
especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that
there is insufficient difference between social practices in science
and other disciplines to maintain this distinction. For them, social
factors play an important and direct role in scientific method, but they
do not serve to differentiate science from other disciplines. On this
account, science is socially constructed, though this does not
necessarily imply the more radical notion that reality itself is a social construct.
However, some (such as Quine) do maintain that scientific reality is a social construct:
Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as
convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but
simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods
of Homer ... For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical
objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to
believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the
physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind.
Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.[62]
The public backlash of scientists against such views, particularly in the 1990s, became known as the science wars.[63]
A major development in recent decades has been the study of the
formation, structure, and evolution of scientific communities by
sociologists and anthropologists - including David Bloor, Harry Collins, Bruno Latour, and Anselm Strauss. Concepts and methods (such as rational choice, social choice or game theory) from economics have also been applied[by whom?]
for understanding the efficiency of scientific communities in the
production of knowledge. This interdisciplinary field has come to be
known as science and technology studies.[64]
Here the approach to the philosophy of science is to study how scientific communities actually operate.
Continental philosophy
Philosophers in the continental philosophical tradition
are not traditionally categorized as philosophers of science. However,
they have much to say about science, some of which has anticipated
themes in the analytical tradition. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche
advanced the thesis in his "The Genealogy of Morals" that the motive
for search of truth in sciences is a kind of ascetic ideal.[65]
Hegel with his Berlin students Sketch by Franz Kugler
In general, science in continental philosophy is viewed from a
world-historical perspective. One of the first philosophers who
supported this view was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Philosophers such as Pierre Duhem and Gaston Bachelard
also wrote their works with this world-historical approach to science,
predating Kuhn by a generation or more. All of these approaches involve a
historical and sociological turn to science, with a priority on lived
experience (a kind of Husserlian "life-world"), rather than a
progress-based or anti-historical approach as done in the analytic
tradition. This emphasis can be traced through Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, the late works of Merleau-Ponty (Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, 1956–1960), and Martin Heidegger's hermeneutics.[66]
The largest effect on the continental tradition with respect to science was Martin Heidegger's critique of the theoretical attitude in general which of course includes the scientific attitude.[67]
For this reason the continental tradition has remained much more
skeptical of the importance of science in human life and philosophical
inquiry. Nonetheless, there have been a number of important works:
especially a Kuhnian precursor, Alexandre Koyré. Another important development was that of Michel Foucault's analysis of the historical and scientific thought in The Order of Things and his study of power and corruption within the "science" of madness.
Post-Heideggerian authors contributing to the continental philosophy of
science in the second half of the 20th century include Jürgen Habermas (e.g., "Truth and Justification", 1998), Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ("The Unity of Nature", 1980), and Wolfgang Stegmüller ("Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschafttheorie und Analytischen Philosophie", 1973–1986).
Other topics
Reductionism
Analysis is the activity of breaking an observation or theory down into simpler concepts in order to understand it. Reductionism
can refer to one of several philosophical positions related to this
approach. One type of reductionism is the belief that all fields of
study are ultimately amenable to scientific explanation. Perhaps a
historical event might be explained in sociological and psychological
terms, which in turn might be described in terms of human physiology,
which in turn might be described in terms of chemistry and physics.[68]Daniel Dennett distinguishes legitimate reductionism from what he calls greedy reductionism, which denies real complexities and leaps too quickly to sweeping generalizations.[69]
Social accountability
A broad issue affecting the neutrality of science concerns the areas
which science chooses to explore, that is, what part of the world and
man is studied by science. Philip Kitcher in his "Science, Truth, and Democracy"[70]
argues that scientific studies that attempt to show one segment of the
population as being less intelligent, successful or emotionally backward
compared to others have a political feedback effect which further
excludes such groups from access to science. Thus such studies undermine
the broad consensus required for good science by excluding certain
people, and so proving themselves in the end to be unscientific.
Philosophy of particular sciences
There
is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science
whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.[71]
In addition to addressing the general questions regarding science and
induction, many philosophers of science are occupied by investigating
foundational problems in particular sciences. They also examine the
implications of particular sciences for broader philosophical questions.
The late 20th and early 21st century has seen a rise in the number of
practitioners of philosophy of a particular science.[72]
Philosophy of statistics
The problem of induction discussed above is seen in another form in debates over the foundations of statistics.[73] The standard approach to statistical hypothesis testing avoids claims about whether evidence supports a hypothesis or makes it more probable. Instead, the typical test yields a p-value, which is the probability of the evidence being such as it is, under the assumption that the hypothesis being tested is true. If the p-value is too low, the hypothesis is rejected, in a way analogous to falsification. In contrast, Bayesian inference seeks to assign probabilities to hypotheses. Related topics in philosophy of statistics include probability interpretations, overfitting, and the difference between correlation and causation.
A triangle.
Philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of mathematics is concerned with the philosophical foundations and implications of mathematics.[74] The central questions are whether numbers, triangles, and other mathematical entities exist independently of the human mind and what is the nature of mathematical propositions. Is asking whether "1+1=2" is true fundamentally different from asking whether a ball is red? Was calculus invented or discovered? A related question is whether learning mathematics requires experience or reason alone. What does it mean to prove a mathematical theorem and how does one know whether a mathematical proof is correct? Philosophers of mathematics also aim to clarify the relationships between mathematics and logic, human capabilities such as intuition, and the material universe.
Philosophy of chemistry is the philosophical study of the methodology and content of the science of chemistry.
It is explored by philosophers, chemists, and philosopher-chemist
teams. It includes research on general philosophy of science issues as
applied to chemistry. For example, can all chemical phenomena be
explained by quantum mechanics or is it not possible to reduce chemistry to physics? For another example, chemists have discussed the philosophy of how theories are confirmed in the context of confirming reaction mechanisms.
Determining reaction mechanisms is difficult because they cannot be
observed directly. Chemists can use a number of indirect measures as
evidence to rule out certain mechanisms, but they are often unsure if
the remaining mechanism is correct because there are many other possible
mechanisms that they have not tested or even thought of.[76]
Philosophers have also sought to clarify the meaning of chemical
concepts which do not refer to specific physical entities, such as chemical bonds.
Philosophy of Earth sciences
The
philosophy of Earth science is concerned with how humans obtain and
verify knowledge of the workings of the Earth system, including the
atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere (solid earth). Earth scientists’
ways of knowing and habits of mind share important commonalities with
other sciences but also have distinctive attributes that emerge from the
complex, heterogeneous, unique, long-lived, and non-manipulatable
nature of the Earth system.
Peter Godfrey-Smith was awarded the Lakatos Award[77] for his 2009 book, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection which discusses the philosophical foundations of the theory of evolution.[78][79]
Philosophy of biology
Philosophy of biology deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology (e.g., Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz and even Kant), philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s.[80] Philosophers of science began to pay increasing attention to developments in biology, from the rise of the modern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering. Other key ideas such as the reduction of all life processes to biochemical reactions as well as the incorporation of psychology into a broader neuroscience
are also addressed. Research in current philosophy of biology includes
investigation of the foundations of evolutionary theory (such as Peter Godfrey-Smith's work),[81]
and the role of viruses as persistent symbionts in host genomes. As a
consequence the evolution of genetic content order is seen as the result
of competent genome editors in contrast to former narratives in which
error replication events (mutations) dominated.[82]
Beyond medical ethics and bioethics, the philosophy of medicine is a branch of philosophy that includes the epistemology and ontology/metaphysics of medicine. Within the epistemology of medicine, evidence-based medicine (EBM) (or evidence-based practice (EBP)) has attracted attention, most notably the roles of randomisation,[83][84][85]blinding and placebo controls. Related to these areas of investigation, ontologies of specific interest to the philosophy of medicine include Cartesian dualism, the monogenetic conception of disease[86] and the conceptualization of 'placebos' and 'placebo effects'.[87][88][89][90] There is also a growing interest in the metaphysics of medicine,[91]
particularly the idea of causation. Philosophers of medicine might not
only be interested in how medical knowledge is generated, but also in
the nature of such phenomena. Causation is of interest because the
purpose of much medical research is to establish causal relationships,
e.g. what causes disease, or what causes people to get better.[92]
Philosophy of psychology
Wilhelm Wundt (seated) with colleagues in his psychological laboratory, the first of its kind.
Philosophy of psychology refers to issues at the theoretical foundations of modern psychology.
Some of these issues are epistemological concerns about the methodology
of psychological investigation. For example, is the best method for
studying psychology to focus only on the response of behavior to external stimuli or should psychologists focus on mental perception and thought processes?[93]
If the latter, an important question is how the internal experiences of
others can be measured. Self-reports of feelings and beliefs may not be
reliable because, even in cases in which there is no apparent incentive
for subjects to intentionally deceive in their answers, self-deception
or selective memory may affect their responses. Then even in the case of
accurate self-reports, how can responses be compared across
individuals? Even if two individuals respond with the same answer on a Likert scale, they may be experiencing very different things.
Other issues in philosophy of psychology are philosophical
questions about the nature of mind, brain, and cognition, and are
perhaps more commonly thought of as part of cognitive science, or philosophy of mind. For example, are humans rational creatures?[93] Is there any sense in which they have free will,
and how does that relate to the experience of making choices?
Philosophy of psychology also closely monitors contemporary work
conducted in cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and artificial intelligence, questioning what they can and cannot explain in psychology.
Philosophy of psychology is a relatively young field, because
psychology only became a discipline of its own in the late 1800s. In
particular, neurophilosophy has just recently become its own field with the works of Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland.[72]
Philosophy of mind, by contrast, has been a well-established discipline
since before psychology was a field of study at all. It is concerned
with questions about the very nature of mind, the qualities of
experience, and particular issues like the debate between dualism and monism. Another related field is philosophy of language.
A notable recent development in Philosophy of Psychology is Functional Contextualism or Contextual Behavioural Science (CBS). Functional Contextualism is a modern philosophy of science rooted in philosophical pragmatism and contextualism. It is most actively developed in behavioral science in general, the field of behavior analysis, and contextual behavioral science in particular (see the entry for the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science). Functional contextualism serves as the basis of a theory of language known as relational frame theory[1] and its most prominent application, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).[2] It is an extension and contextualistic interpretation of B.F. Skinner's radical behaviorism first delineated by Steven C. Hayes
which emphasizes the importance of predicting and influencing
psychological events (including thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) with
precision, scope, and depth, by focusing on manipulable variables in
their context.
Philosophy of psychiatry
Philosophy of psychiatry explores philosophical questions relating to psychiatry and mental illness.
The philosopher of science and medicine Dominic Murphy identifies three
areas of exploration in the philosophy of psychiatry. The first
concerns the examination of psychiatry as a science, using the tools of
the philosophy of science more broadly. The second entails the
examination of the concepts employed in discussion of mental illness,
including the experience of mental illness, and the normative questions
it raises. The third area concerns the links and discontinuities between
the philosophy of mind and psychopathology.[94]
Philosophy of economics is the branch of philosophy which studies philosophical issues relating to economics.
It can also be defined as the branch of economics which studies its own
foundations and morality. It can be categorized into three central
topics.[96]
The first concerns the definition and scope of economics and by what
methods it should be studied and whether these methods rise to the level
of epistemic reliability associated with the other special sciences.
For example, is it possible to research economics in such a way that it
is value-free, establishing facts that are independent of the normative
views of the researcher? The second topic is the meaning and
implications of rationality. For example, can buying lottery tickets
(increasing the riskiness of your income) at the same time as buying
insurance (decreasing the riskiness of your income) be rational? The
third topic is the normative evaluation of economic policies and
outcomes. What criteria should be used to determine whether a given
public policy is beneficial for society?
Philosophy of social science
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and method of the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, and political science.[97] Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the natural sciences, causal relationships between social phenomena, the possible existence of social laws, and the ontological significance of structure and agency.
The French philosopher, Auguste Comte (1798–1857), established the epistemological perspective of positivism in The Course in Positivist Philosophy, a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the physical sciences already in existence (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of social science: "sociologie".[98]
For Comte, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first,
before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most
challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. Comte
offers an evolutionary system proposing that society undergoes three
phases in its quest for the truth according to a general 'law of three stages'. These are (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive.[99]
Comte's positivism established the initial philosophical foundations for formal sociology and social research. Durkheim, Marx, and Weber are more typically cited as the fathers of contemporary social science. In psychology, a positivistic approach has historically been favoured in behaviourism. Positivism has also been espoused by 'technocrats' who believe in the inevitability of social progress through science and technology.[100]
The positivist perspective has been associated with 'scientism';
the view that the methods of the natural sciences may be applied to all
areas of investigation, be it philosophical, social scientific, or
otherwise. Among most social scientists and historians, orthodox
positivism has long since lost popular support. Today, practitioners of
both social and physical sciences instead take into account the
distorting effect of observer bias
and structural limitations. This scepticism has been facilitated by a
general weakening of deductivist accounts of science by philosophers
such as Thomas Kuhn, and new philosophical movements such as critical realism and neopragmatism. The philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas has critiqued pure instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself.
.jpg)
