Is science a belief?

[Matt]

Interesting thread everyone. Most enjoyable.

Just like to say that it is good to see some fighting the corner for philosophers, I always did think they get an unfair bashing a lot of the time.
The term 'philosophy' carries negative connotations (as in 'I have a new age philosophy') but has been responsible for formulation of logic, is linked closely with mathematics and has helped to inform science (Popper).

Possibly, psychology is also subject to a similar bad press because the term has been usurped or feature more highly in people's minds than other more rigorous branches of the discipline.

Regards

Median

It seems to me that most barbs aimed at philosophy apply only the metaphysics, just one branch of the subject.

I contend that science is another branch - a refined empircism, which is a school of epistemology.

Yet there subjects that are less contentious as branches of philosophy. What do the detractors of philosophy have against ethics or logic? Both clearly branches of philosophy taught in a contemporary philosophy course.

[tolman]

Thing is, it's possible to classify, for example, chemistry as being a branch of physics ("It's basically all about the interaction of electron shells"), but that classification isn't very useful - chances are that faced with a pretty average chemist and a really good physicist, you'd ask the chemist every time if you wanted to know about chemistry at any level from the most basic upwards.

It may be useful, for example, to count digital electronics, analog electronics, power systems, etc as part of electrical engineering, but despite the clear historical link, it may be less useful to think of computer programming as a branch of electrical engineering (and that's even acknowledging that many elec. eng students may do a fair amount of programming alongside their other studies.
Effectively, the disciplines have evolved to the point where the practices and concepts are different, even if someone may well use both disciplines when actually working.

Reading Popper (or, for most of us, reading some brief summary of his ideas), may help codify once implicit/subconscious concepts so that they may be more clearly talked about for intellectual entertainment, but does pondering on the philosophy of science actually have much effect on science itself?
It could be useful in the sense of giving the ability to more formally explain why some nonscience isn't science, but people were still pretty much as able to make that distinction pre-Popper, even if they possibly had a less formalised means of explaining it.

A philosopher isn't really needed to understand that theories are only provisional truths, since a quick look at the history of overthrown or modified old theories can illustrate that fairly adequately.

[tolman]

What's the point of calling science a subset of philosophy?

From a cynical scientist/engineer's viewpoint, it could look either patronising, or like some attempt to claim a share of glory, with no particular upside.
Once, the 'natural philosophy' tag may have been useful, but it was ditched when that use had expired.

Maybe it's just that a scientist doesn't necessarily see a point in classifying things just for the sake of it, but only if there's a real purpose (Do I get more time off teaching? Do I get to use the philosophy department coffee room with the nice sofas?)

[Tim the Mage]

What's the point of calling science a subset of philosophy?

From a cynical scientist/engineer's viewpoint, it could look either patronising, or like some attempt to claim a share of glory, with no particular upside.
Once, the 'natural philosophy' tag may have been useful, but it was ditched when that use had expired.

Maybe it's just that a scientist doesn't necessarily see a point in classifying things just for the sake of it, but only if there's a real purpose (Do I get more time off teaching? Do I get to use the philosophy department coffee room with the nice sofas?)

I hear an engineer speaking rather than a scientist. Of course science is about speculation rather than application. What's the point of it if it isn't - it just becomes engineering, merely playing with the bricks created by someone else.

[Dr B]

I would first like to pick up on the point about medicine.

There was no point about medicine - it was about more medically oriented psychology (some quarters of clinical psych / psychiatry etc) which use a disease and medical-based view of certain behaviours. I never mentioned medicine per-se.

A great deal of medical-based psychology borders close to woo. Anyone remember the phrase 'pathological gambling'? - pathological, oh really......and what is the evidence for this? The term has now been changed to 'problem gambling' ......i wonder why.

In addition - many philosophers and scientists have argued that Freudian psychology (as an example) is utter pseudoscience as it is totally unfalsifiable and there is no scope for it to be wrong. None of this has anything to do with the science of psychology which is taught in universities all over the world.

As a consequence of my clarification (and see original post) most of the below is irrelevant (and indeed I would agree with you on much of this).

In terms of applying scientific methodology to real life, it is difficult to think of an area where there has been more effort than medicine. Over the past 30 years double blind methodology has been appled to vast numbers over prolonged periods followed by extensive registries to document that, that which has been observed occurs in real life populations. Sure there are areas of medicine that have lagged behind. But there is nothing fluffy about most of pharmacology anymore. Even in areas such as hospital infection, models of care delivery and preventative medicine, new techniques have been developed to overcome the constraints of moving real science out of the 'ideal' but artificial controlled enviornment.

[tolman]

I hear an engineer speaking rather than a scientist. Of course science is about speculation rather than application.

Science isn't about speculation. Speculation is merely one aspect of it, in much the same way it's an aspect of engineering - a way of generating ideas that can then be checked out to see whether they seem to work.

The point of science isn't just to generate speculative models of reality for some personal intellectual satisfaction, it's to generate models of reality which seem to be useful (ie which correspond with the real world well enough that they can be used for making accurate predictions with less expense and danger than trying everything out full-scale and in real time).

It's not about just asking "What if?" questions, it's about gaining the knowledge to allow us to accurately answer "What if?" questions.
That's what causes people to pay for science being taught and done.

To the extent that an area of science can't really be checked against reality, it's debatable whether it's really science (in the sense of knowledge), or just potential science.
For example, as long as it was not possible to decide between string theory and various other competing theories by any appeal to the real world, it'd also be basically irrelevant which, if any, may be more or less correct.
No decisions would (or even could) be affected by a suspicion that one or another may be correct, saving possibly those aimed at trying to find a way of distinguishing between them, or guessing how to allocate funds out of a limited budget.

What's the point of it if it isn't - it just becomes engineering, merely playing with the bricks created by someone else.

Now, what was that I said about people being patronising?

[Pebble]

I suspected as much - some areas of clinical (because its more medical) is very fluffy with regard to what mainstream psych is all about. However, you should not extrapolate from that limited observation to tarnish a whole discipline od research.

OK so you have not directly stated that medicine is fluffy, but the above statement becomes difficult to comprehend if that was not the inference.

With respect - it will only remain tarned by those making the mistake you just did......the fallacy of the sweeping generalisation perhaps?.

Now back to the real debate.......

The point you have neatly sidestepped here, is that it is the behaviour of card carrying psychologists that is responsible for my perception.

I note that no 'real scientist' is willing to take up the challange of defending the 'paradigm' argument.

[Pebble]

The point of science isn't just to generate speculative models of reality for some personal intellectual satisfaction, it's to generate models of reality which seem to be useful (ie which correspond with the real world well enough that they can be used for making accurate predictions with less expense and danger than trying everything out full-scale and in real time).

'Real academics' claim to pursue knowledge for its own sake considering any potential use to which that knowledge can be put as entirely secondary. This appears to be a dying breed. Survival of the fittest at work?

[tolman]

'Real academics' claim to pursue knowledge for its own sake considering any potential use to which that knowledge can be put as entirely secondary. This appears to be a dying breed. Survival of the fittest at work?

I suppose there's what people claim when pontificating in a common room, and then there's what people claim on grant applications.

Anyway, it's possible to pursue 'pure' knowledge about reality without getting involved in immediate applications, but ideas still needs some cross-checking with reality to ensure you *have* actually gained knowledge and not merely generated speculation.

I'm not sure that many Nobel prizes get awarded for untested theories.

(and I know I'm using 'theory' in the small-T everyday sense, not the strict 'tested hypothesis' sense)

[Matt]

I'm not sure that many Nobel prizes get awarded for untested theories.

But Al Gore got one

</AGW denialist>

[Lord Muck oGentry]

I note that no 'real scientist' is willing to take up the challange of defending the 'paradigm' argument.

Pebble,

I'm sorry to be tedious here. Which argument do you mean by " the 'paradigm' argument"?

Is it an argument meant to show that science moves from paradigm to paradigm, with intervals of upheaval? Or is it an argument meant to show that paradigm-shifts of this sort must be irrational? Or is it something else?

[Pebble]

Pebble,

I'm sorry to be tedious here. Which argument do you mean by " the 'paradigm' argument"?

Is it an argument meant to show that science moves from paradigm to paradigm, with intervals of upheaval? Or is it an argument meant to show that paradigm-shifts of this sort must be irrational? Or is it something else?

As mentioned above everything is a paradigm these days. As I understand the notion, it describes the theory or group of theories that describe the current understanding of a given branch of study.

The notion being proposed (I have not stated that I agree with this) is that most of the time the underlying theory is not challanged. Where anomalies are observed, one assumes that there is some missing data that can reconcile the anomaly with the current theory. Further it is claimed that many anomalies will not be observed as one is generally looking for data that support the theory rather than trying to disprove the theory. Next, it is much easier to get funding for projects that 'flesh out' a given understanding than challange it. Finally, it is much easier to publish findings that accord with current understanding (peer review), observations that challange the current position must be much better supported by evidence than those which accord with the current beliefs.

In essence the whole process is geared to resisting major change, and that there is an unequal playing field. Major changes such as occurred with Darwin, Kepler etc are strongly contested and converting the scientific community is managed better by forceful personalities than by the force of argument alone.

I suspect that this was very true a couple of hundred years ago, and much less so now, but presenting coherent evidence is difficult, especially given the behaviour of Einstein and I believe Schrodinger.

[tolman]

I guess it's often easier to see paradigms in hindsight.
In reality, I'd have thought that things are frequently finer-grained, and that sometimes even small changes can be difficult, whereas larger ones can just happen as a result of evolution, not revolution.

Presumably there are historic reasons/evidence why people think a particular way, so new results/ideas which contradict the current popular theory will have to provide better evidence than those which accord with it, since the non-controversial ideas effectively have the weight of the historic reasons/evidence behind them.

However, I'd wonder how significant the suggestion is of things conflicting with paradigms not being looked for.
At any one time, in a mature discipline where the methods basically work, the large majority of scientists seem likely to be working inside the box doing things which are useful enough for someone else to fund, and few of those are generally going to be hugely groundbreaking, even if they are finding out new things.

How many of the really big shake-ups would have to have happened sooner or later, (often not much later) merely from the slow collection of facts from people *not* trying to think outside the box?

Are there really many people prepared to throw funding around for people simply trying to prove what is already believed true?
Would anyone pay for someone to do that if they didn't have confidence that anomalous results would be reported and investigated?

Surely with Darwin, it was the weight of collected evidence and a chain of reasoning that it was hard to find fault with that counted, rather than personality? Many people who were opposed to the ideas were opposed for reasons which had little to do with science.

With Kepler, he was just trying to explain Brahe's measurements. Was there even an orthodoxy in existence about how planets moved, or just a collection of personal theories based on data of varying accuracy?

[Pebble]

Are there really many people prepared to throw funding around for people simply trying to prove what is already believed true?
Would anyone pay for someone to do that if they didn't have confidence that anomalous results would be reported and investigated?

Surely with Darwin, it was the weight of collected evidence and a chain of reasoning that it was hard to find fault with that counted, rather than personality? Many people who were opposed to the ideas were opposed for reasons which had little to do with science.

With Kepler, he was just trying to explain Brahe's measurements. Was there even an orthodoxy in existence about how planets moved, or just a collection of personal theories based on data of varying accuracy?

In terms of funding, it is clear that the 'great and the good' are the real power brokers in most grant awarding bodies, and these individuals legacy is to a certain extent based upon current theories surviving. Certianly they would not wish to fund individuals that would deliberately falsify results, but those committed to furthering theories to which they themselves are committed are favoured.

As to Darwin>

http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/default.htm


This site suggests that evolution was but one of a competing number of possible theories being developed. Darwin is likely to have favoured evolution as the explaination largely as this was his grandfathers (Erasmus Darwin) favourite theory.

Ussher/Lightfoot proposed on biblical research that god had created most species as are.

Ray/Linnaeus codified natural species (much like geneticists are doing now), inadvertently pointing out the similarities between man and apes.

Lamarck propsed inheritance of acquired characteristics

While Darwin propsed 'surivial of the fittest'

Certainly Darwind theory holds up best to skeptical analysis, but hardly the straight line suggested in retrospect.

As for Kepler, not really my area, but as I understand it the Platonic theory (or perhaps vision) had stood unchallanged for 2000 years, so certainly accepted orthrodoxy.

I certainly remember the belief from pulmonary hypertension that vasospasm, led to vascular rigidity and ultimatley being replaced by proliferation of vascular fibrostic cells causing irreversible heart failure, was only very grudgingly replaced by and acknowledgement that the vasoreactive component was only demostrable in a tiny minority of patients, and that in most the proliferative phase was probably the initiating pathological abnormality. This had massive implications for drug development, treatment approach and research direction. It was certainly resisted long after the evidence base for the vasomotor theory was considerably less well supported than any other possible theory, but as that was the standard, the evidence base required to move on was greater than that supported by history alone.

[tolman]

With planetary motion, once accurate data was collected, it was clear that motion wasn't circular. Whatever someone had been taught to believe, if their belief caused them to predict a planet being in one spot and it was actually elsewhere, they'd have to accept there was something wrong.

One could look at Kepler and say "Look - as soon as Brahe's really accurate measurements were available, someone could work away, dismiss theories that didn't work, and eventually come up with a good solution. If it hadn't been him, it would have been somebody else, and probably fairly soon afterwards"

I'm confused what the point is supposed to be re: Darwin, since there doesn't seem to have been some existing monolithic paradigm for him to fight against, and many of the threads of his ideas weren't novel, even if the coherent synthesis of ideas in one solid theory backed by evidence was.
To quite an extent, what both drew significant support and also annoyed those with emotional reasons to want him to be wrong was that it was extraordinarily hard to argue against the basic premises of what was at heart a very clear and simple theory. About the best you could do was go Lamarckian or something and argue that descent-with-modification doesn't happen.

When it comes to medicine, I suppose it does tend to be rather more 'traditional', but medicine isn't just science, it's science with lots of things added.
I imagine the thought "Have I really been unknowingly giving a poor treatment for the last 30 years?" may make doctors hope that little bit more that a new idea is wrong. (There aren't many other areas of science where people dying wouldn't be assumed to be an explicit failure of some kind, rather than something which often just happens.)