Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, by Samir Okasha
This book attempts to answer questions such as "what is science?", "what is
observable?" and "can scientific reasoning be free from cultural
influences"? I enjoyed this book; it's challenged my assumptions about what
science is.
Some of the points I thought were interesting:
- Karl Popper said that a fundamental feature of a scientific theory is
that it should be falsifiable. E.g. since post-hoc arguments can be made by
Freudians to explain any human behaviour - there's nothing that someone could
do which would invalidate Freudianism - then he sees psychoanalysis as a
"pseudo-science". However, there are many cases where scientists have come
across data which doesn't fit an existing theory, and the usual response is
not to abandon the theory, but attempt to refine or modify it, which is
arguably what Freudians are doing
- The main thing that impressed me was reading about Kuhn's idea of
scientific revoltions. Kuhn said that it's not the case that scientists are
moving slowly but surely towards an ultimate "truth"; rather at any time
scientists are working within a particular paradigm, and that the work
they do does not attempt to test the paradigm, rather to understand more
about it. Over a period of time, evidence accumulates which contradicts the
paradigm, and eventually this cannot be ignored and a paradigm shift
occurs with the introduction of a new paradigm. Examples include the
acceptance of the Copernican view of the earth orbiting the sun, and then
again with the acceptance of Newton's theory of gravitation. Kuhn's ideas
caused a lot of controversy, but have been very influential
The logical positivists felt that what was important in science
was the discovery itself, rather than the cultural/historical context in
which it took place. However Kuhn said that because all data is
"theory laden", it's not possible to carry out science in a way that is
totally free from some underlying assumptions that cannot be objective
- Most of what we "know" is from inductive, rather then deductive
reasoning. E.g. we "know" that water will turn to ice when it freezes
because all the past evidence we have shows that it will. Hume says that
induction cannot be rationally justified "Humes problem of induction" and
this is still an issue of debate nowadays
- Simplicity, or parsimony in an explanation seems to be a good thing, and
so simple theories are generally preferred to complex ones. But there's no
reason to believe that the universe is simple.
- Hempel came up with the "covering law model" which treats a
scientific explanation as having the same structure as a logical argument:
premisses that lead deductively to a conclusion. The "concept of causality"
is an alternative
- Many people think that eventually science will be able to explain
everything. But in order to explain something, we need to invoke something
else - and what explains that second thing? For this reason, some
philosophers think that science won't ever be able to explain everything.
- Realists believe that the world exists independently of human observation;
anti-realists say that it depends in some way on being observed.
- What does "observable" mean?
- Does "space" exist in itself, or is it just an expression of the distance
and relative position of physical objects? Scientists and philosophers
disagree, but there are some interesting thought experiments discussed in the
book
- How should we classify things in science? E.g. in biology should we do it
based on the apparent similarity between species, or based on their
evolutionary heritage?
Completed : 07-Sep-2003
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