Scientific logic: The way I understand it

Personally I find no comprehensive meaning in phrase like “the Philosophy of Science”. I believe science as the best software for thinking we ever had or have. I also believe that philosophy has wasted much of our time through history and it has been responsible for retarding scientific growth. Otherwise most of the development in human history is made possible due to bold scientific hypothesis and theories.

[For reference study Edward De Bono]

Perhaps the early Greeks had this confusion more obvious. That is why we find a mix of religion, philosophy and science in their theories. Russell had this confusion when he presented a linear model of putting philosophy before religion and after science. Wittgenstein had made it narrower when he restricted philosophy to the study of language. And we still believe in the “philosophy of science” as something which may provide more grounds for advancements in science.

I think science as the best common sense tool and software for brain has been underestimated since ancient times. A possible explanation might be that we practice science and take for granted its usefulness. But when we think we make leaps of imagination and somehow desire to solve the mysteries (unknown, unseen). This might also be called a contradiction between what we know or should know and what we want to know.

Stephen Hawking suggests in his book the “Brief History of Time” that:

“Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories. In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, “The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!” http://www.fisica.net/relatividade/stephen_hawking_a_brief_history_of_time.pdf

Closely related to this discussion is the problem of logic. The irony is that despite having scientific logic as software for the brain since time immemorial and despite the fact that we have been practicing it, philosophers have mostly remained obsessed with inventing logic. The Greek logicians discovered some rigid principles which held in high disdain scientific hypothesis and which later on facilitated Scholasticism and influenced (though negatively and to an extent retarded scientific thinking) the later course of scientific advancement. The logic evolved through time but it remained something which has been focusing on truth value (absoluteness of truth), Critical thinking of violently attacking the point of view of other and a coarse way of debating which mostly ends in a win-lose situation. Perhaps Edward De Bono is one of the best writers I ever read and understood who helped me getting rid of the slavery of logic.

To me science is something which simultaneously allows for bold conjectures and hypothesis and restricting us to scientific theories which have been developed on evidences. To understand Science we need to understand what a scientific theory is. Both Popper and Hawking have explained them in great length.

“…a theory is just a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. It exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean). A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations. For example, Aristotle believed Empedocles’s theory that everything was made out of four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. This was simple enough, but did not make any definite predictions. On the other hand, Newton’s theory of gravity was based on an even simpler model, in which bodies attracted each other with a force that was proportional to a quantity called their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Yet it predicts the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets to a high degree of accuracy.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.”  Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

http://www.fisica.net/relatividade/stephen_hawking_a_brief_history_of_time.pdf

 It is, therefore, important to understand science as software for thinking and a way of doing and behaving. I have underlined some important points of scientific logic which may further be developed.

1.       There are no absolute truths in science;

2.       There are only theories;

3.       Theories are accepted as long as they work;

4.       A theory may potentially be disproved for when we cannot disprove it; it may tend to be considered an absolute truth;

5.       Theory may work in one place but it may not work in another place;

6.       While critical thinking is a more informed judgment upon an existing judgment, scientific thinking may allow suspension of judgment;

7.       There is easy flow of ideas in scientific thinking;

8.       Critical thinking may not allow room for emotions but scientific thinking owing to its descriptive nature may allow for emotions;

9.       Critical thinking may become rigid, hence, not allowing creativity and restructuring of ideas; a scientific thinking believes in hypothesis and provide enough room for creativity and possibilities.

Looking forward for your feedback,

Muhammad Arif