Some basic understandings of the philosophy of
science for nursing science students
Somparn Promta
(A Lecture
Given to Ph.D. Students, Nursing Science Program,
Philosophy
of science is one among the important applied philosophy courses taught in
university in the world. In short, the philosophy of science is generally known
as the process of the application of philosophy to do something to science. We
can look at philosophy from at least two perspectives. First, philosophy is a
kind of tool designed to examine intellectual activities in the human world.
Second, philosophy has some contents that can be used as the ground for
understanding things in the world, including the things explored by scientists
and science itself. The philosophy of science expresses itself into main two
ways. First, it offers the philosophical analysis which says that what is
the thing undertaken by the scientist. Second, it offers the normative
thoughts, which are based on some certain belief in philosophy, which say that
what is the thing that science should do. In this paper, I would like to
present these two ways given to science by the philosophers.
I
What
is the real thing done by the scientists
Generally,
people think of science as the best example of the human attempt to gain some
kind of knowledge which is based on the most reliable sources. In the court,
the proof given by scientist such as the proof of the DNA which says that Mr. A
is the father of a child is the thing that has the influence over the mind of
the judge. People usually say that you cannot fight against scientific evidence.
Philosophers know what people think about science. But when we talk about
science as the real thing done in the world of science, there are so many
things that people do not know and have the limited ability to understand and
judge. There are some important questions concerning scientific activities
posed by philosophers as follows.
(a) Is
scientific knowledge based on solely empirical methods.
(b) Is the scientist free
from personal bias which is the result of personal backgrounds such as family,
religion, culture, education, and so on.
(c) Is
science based on materialism, which is the belief that what to be accepted as
the real things in the universe must be material that can be tested with sense
perception of human being.
(d) Is
it true that scientists of the present know more than scientists in the past.
There
are some philosophers in the world who are interested to answer these
questions. The result of the study is very useful and interesting, and some of
the research findings have been merged into the thing called philosophy of
science and taught in the university. It seems that for the (a) question,
we know that scientific knowledge as we have it in hand today is not totally
based on empirical method. We distinguish scientific knowledge into two main
categories: the law and the theory. The law is the scientific
statement in which everything can be tested with normal sense perception of
man. But in theory, which is a kind of scientific statement, there are some
things allowed to play the role as part of scientific knowledge even though this kind of thing cannot be tested with
human sense perception both in terms of the theory and the practice. The
particles in modern physics cannot be observed directly with human sense
perception. We can do something to them and observe the phenomena which are
believed to be the behavior of these particles. So, the understanding of people
that science is knowledge in which everything can be tested with sense
perception is not true. The things called black holes or the big bang are not
the things that appear to the eyes of the scientists. These concepts are
theoretical concepts which are derived from something which is empirical. At
this point, we see that science is still based on human sense perception as the
final criterion to judge whether or not that statement can be counted
knowledge.
For
the question (b), modern philosophy of science seems to believe that a
scientist is a human being like other human beings in the world such as a monk,
a politician, a prime minister, a farmer, and so on. From the point of view of
philosophy and psychology, when a man perceives things in the world there is no
one who purely perceives these things as things-in-themselves. For example,
three persons are looking at the bamboo tree. They are looking at the same
thing, and the thing that they are looking is “that thing” which is called the
bamboo tree. But the first person would see the walking stick, while the second
person would see the material for making a chair and the third person would see
things which are totally different from the things seen by the first and the
second persons. We know that these men have the different backgrounds of life,
and the differences are the reason behind the seeing of the different things
from the same thing which is appearing in their eyes. When two scientists look
at the same moon, we cannot be sure that what happens in their mind would be
the same. Modern philosophy says that seeing is believing.
The example of three men can be used as an example of this saying. People read
the same book, but some people love it while some hate it.
For
the question (c) it is clear that the great scientists of the world are
partly materialist and partly non-materialist. Isaac Newton firmly believes in
Christianity and he usually talks about the Christian God as the creator of the
universe and man. In some books,
Certainly,
there are so many scientists who are materialist in the sense that they believe
that we can explain the origin of the universe and the behaviors of things
within the materialistic worldview. For these scientists, the universe comes
from the big bang, which has nothing to do with God. Galileo and Stephen
Hawking are materialist scientists. Einstein could be questioned whether or not
materialist. Many times Einstein says that he believes in some kind of God, the
God as given in the philosophy of Spinoza.
However,
the thing that we should know is that science is one thing and the scientist is
another thing. It could be possible that personally a scientist holds the
non-materialist worldview, like Isaac Newton. But whenever
Concerning
the question (d), the recent research by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, states that there is no scientific growth as
generally believed by people (the belief that scientific knowledge has grown
bigger and bigger from the past to the present.) The real thing that happens in
the world of science is that the scientists look at the same things and use the
different outlook to explain why things in the universe behave as we have seen.
Gravity is the phenomenon that appears to all people in the world, including
the blind men. We see that when we drop things from our hands they fall to the
ground. This thing has been seen by
In his
book, The Evolution of Physics, Einstein explains to the reader that in
the past scientists think that their work is solely concerned with the
observation of the universe and report what is the law that regulates the
behavior of these things. The knowledge given by science under this kind of
understanding is known generally among scientists and philosophers of science
as law. One day, some scientists think that their work should be
concerned with the part of the universe which is not allowed by nature (or
God—if you believe in this name) to know with sense perception. In the book,
Einstein gives a story to illustrate what these scientists think and how they
will be confronted with the problems. There are three scientists walking along
the street. On the ground they see something. It is the watch. It is a very
strange watch. The watch can be seen from outside. The three men see the hands
of the watch moving, which means that the watch is working. There is no sign
showing that the watch can be opened to see the mechanics or the working system
inside it. In the past, scientists think that the fact that we can never open
the watch to see what is inside it is not the problem. Scientists can observe
everything that can be observed from the watch and try to get some knowledge
from the observation as said. There might be some relation between data that
scientists get from the observation of the watch. The relation between them can
be presented as a kind of law. Einstein says that but there are a lot of the
scientists in the present feel that they need to know what is inside the watch.
The fact that nature does not allow man to use sense perception to know what is
inside the watch is not the problem at tall, as the scientists can use things
other than sense perception in working on scientific knowledge. They think that
they can use imagination and reason to know what is inside the watch.
Einstein
says further that one scientist, after observes the behavior of the watch,
would give a theory that the watch is mechanical. Other scientists who see the
same thing as seen by the first scientist would present the different theories
such as the watch is an electric or atomic one. The result of the theory can be
different. But one thing shared by all theories is that there must be the link
between observation and the main content of the theory. As these three men see
the same thing and hear the same thing from the same watch, the link between
observation and the main content of the theory done by each of them is never
pure. Suppose the scientist A links observation X to
the main content of his theory which states that the watch is mechanical one,
and scientists B links observation X to his theory which states that the watch
is electrical one, what we see is that both scientists base their different
theories on the same data. Einstein says that the use of observation by
scientists is not pure. If it is pure, it would lead to the same theory.
This means that every scientist is still a man who lives in different
surrounding conditions of life and these surrounding conditions have the deep
power to form the different personality of the scientist as man. When they see
the same thing, they do not have the same inner understanding concerning that
thing because they are different men as said. And this is why from the same
observation X they have given the different, or even contradictory, theories.
This is the truth in the world of science.—Einstein concludes.
The
fact that men are born different is a fact. And philosophers have admitted for
so long that we do not need to fight against facts, such as we have no reason
to fight against the fact that why I have to eat, or have two hands. Some philosophers of science say that
the fact that every scientist is a man and has different personality is not the
problem. On the contrary, we can and should look at this fact as the positive
thing. The universe is the place where different things are allowed by nature.
We have different kinds of flowers in the world and we know that this is the
good thing. Why we should have only one kind of flower? Scientists can be
understood as the flowers in the world. So, let they work and present the
different scientific theory to the world.
II
No
Central Authority in Science
Important
things that happen in the world of science do not happen without a cause. There
is nothing in the universe that happens without causes, including science. The
main current of philosophy of science today accepts that when we look back into
the history of science we would find that finally there is no such a thing
which can be called the more and more growth of scientific knowledge and
science is nothing but the attempt of a scientist as a man to understand and
explain things in the universe with their mental creation which is called
scientific theory. In the view of a philosopher of science, Karl Popper, in his
book “The Logic of Scientific Discovery,” scientific truth is
contemporary in the sense that we cannot think that there can be some
scientific theory or law which is true forever. This comes from a very simple
reason. Things in the universe have changed all the time. Science is an attempt
of man to understand and predict the behavior of things in the universe. It
could be possible that during a period of time we can explain and predict the
behavior of some things. But as these thing are subject to change all the time,
one day when these things have changed much enough, the theory that can explain
and predict their behavior will be false. So, in the words of Popper, science
is true as far as it has not been yet proved to be false. This is known as
the falsification theory of Popper. According to this theory, every scientific
theory shares the same status: it can be falsified all the time. Some people
say that the teaching of my religion cannot be false. For Popper, that could be
possible. But this is not science. Science is the creation of the human
intelligence that can be false. Anything claimed to be true forever is not
science.
In the
view of some people in the world, including some scientists, there is the
difference between science and pseudoscience. In the view of
philosophers of science, this understanding needs serious examination. It could
be possible that something can be considered as not the good tool to be used by
man as it does not pass the test which guarantees its usefulness and
consistency. Exactly, we respect science not from the reason that science is
the true knowledge more than other kind of knowledge in the world. There
are so many things in the universe which we cannot know what they are, like
what inside the watch in the story given by Einstein. So, scientists are not
the person to know the fact or the truth of the universe more than other. We
respect science from its usefulness and its power to point out to us that there
is the relationship between the cause and the effect in things in the world.
Medicine X has been proved enough to have the power to cure the disease Y. This
is an example of the causal relation between two things in the world. As far as
causal relation between them has not been changed (we can use X to cure Y)
scientific knowledge within this context is true. The truth of scientific
knowledge that we are discussing is judged from its usefulness and consistency
(the relationship between X and Y is still valid.)
What
to follow from the things that we have discussed above as it appears in the
circle of philosophy of science is that we do not distinguish sharply between
science and pseudoscience. For some people, traditional Chinese medicine is not
science, but pseudoscience. This understanding in the view of some philosophers
of science such as Paul Feyerabend, the author of Against
Method, is not good. Suppose what we have found from traditional Chinese
medicine are that (a) there are usefulness and consistency in traditional
Chinese medicine not differently from European modern medicine, but (b) the
difference lies in that something in Chinese traditional medicine cannot be
tested with sense experience like modern European medicine (for example the
test of quantity of sugar in blood); as far as (a) can be found in Chinese
traditional medicine (it can be used to cure disease not differently from
modern European medicine) we have no reason to say that traditional Chinese medicine
is not science, but a pseudoscience. Scientific anarchism of Feyerabend does not accept this idea. For Feyerabend, there might not be one single authority in the
name of science to judge other. It could be possible that Thai people also have
their own medical knowledge that really works. From the perspective of modern
European medicine, Thai traditional medicine could not be tested with their
methodology. This is possible because these two medical systems are based on
different philosophical (or even religious) ideas. But that is totally not the
point. The point is that if Thai traditional medicine can make Thai people or
non-Thai people feel good within the suffering of health that has been
happening to them, there is no reason to call Thai traditional medicine
pseudoscience. Western science has no right to call non-Western science
pseudoscience, this is the point given to the circle of science and philosophy
of science by Feyerabend. In the view of this
philosopher, all scientists see the same universe and try to understand it.
They try to link something to another thing and call that link causality. The
causal relation between things, as Hume says, is not the thing that science can
say to be eternal. Religion would say there is eternal relation between some
things (as Buddhism says there is the eternal link between desire and
suffering). But science never claims this kind of thing. Every kind of science
works on things that can be changed. Scientific knowledge can be true today and
false tomorrow. Who can point the finger to other and say you are pseudoscientist as far as those people can provide the
knowledge that works well? Can mathematics given by Ramanujan
be called pseudomathematics just for the reason that
it greatly differs from European mathematics?
August
23, 2019