Science as Philosophic Enquiry
For scientists and laymen alike, understanding the essential nature of science and the basis for its role in modern society remains intrimine and elusive. P e r h a ~as little nhilosonhv and history will provide perspective. Modern nhilosonhv heean in the 17th centurv. At that time. the ~eformation& I the scientific revolutio~ledby toper: nicus. Kenler. and Galileo nresented nhilosonhers with inte~lectualchallen~es of the 'first impor&nce. +he scientist's new view of nature. em~hasizine comnarahle .. auantitativelv . aspecti nf natural phenomena, made it imperative that philosophers examine the imnlications of this view. and that thev ask how these implicatio& might be reconciled with existing beliefs in other areas, aarticularlv with relieious beliefs. Descartes answered thisquestion in a way thatieemed to do iustice to both science and religion. T o him, the whole of naiure was a great machine, all oiwhich-including the human body-could he explained in mechanical terms. However, the human mind or spirit belonged to another order entirely,and had to he dealt with in quite another way. In the 18th century, (and stimulated by Isaac Newton's discoveries of calculus and gravity, and by his delineation of the scientific method) traditional religious beliefs lost their hold on human minds and gave way to a new creed-a creed that placed premiums on tangible evidence and clarity of thought. In effect, scientific rationalism successfully challenged religious mysticism as the dominant philosophy, with a result that science confidently was expected to escalate its triumnhs in exnlainine the wonders of nature t o encomnass the world uf human af?airs. When one group of philosop'hers held that the mord nature of humans could be rom~rehended in scientific terms, the dominance of science was virtually com~lete. B& Immanuel Kant, who respected science and sympathized with its human ideals, rebelled against this belief, calling it plainly false and labeling as misguided the Newtonianinspired movement toward naturalism. For Kant, mechanical explanations of nature were valid hut they had limited apnlicahilitv: the ultimate constituents of the world were unknowable in principle. Hegel went further. Struggling among the waves of a great romantic tide that swept Europe between 1760 and 1869, he opposed the mechanical interpretation of nature and exposed traditional logic (the logic that had made scientists the darlings of the intellectual set) as inflexible and restrictive. His writings in religion, law, esthetics, and history provided thoughtful alternatives to scientific explanations for all human activitv. The-19th century brought positivism, materialism, logical analysis, and Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species." It also brought clarifications of induction and deduction, and even wider differences in beliefs about scientific reality. Ernst Mach's concept of positivism was for scientists perhaps the most influential idea from 19th century philosophy. Mach was both a physicist and a philosopher. When asked: T o what extent is the meanine of a scientific concept or law e funrtion of thedataand to wiiat extent is it a functionofthe knowing operations? Mach answered that it is primarily a function of the data. This emphasis on empirical verifiability is chmacteristic of positivism. An advocate of unity in science, Mach sought "a siience which, embracing boththe organic and inoreanic. shall interpret the facts that are common to the two."
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Because of their primary emphasis on data, positivists rejected the reality of theoretical entities of all kinds. Mach, for example, hoped that atoms would finally disappear from the theory of heat. Scientific realists like James Clerk Maxwell held that electrons. fields. waves. but not numbers. are either & m t i a l l y ohservihle or conc~ptuallypotentially ohservahle and are therefore real. Arguments resulting from this dichotomy still rage, undiminished by experimental verification of entities or hv" sonhistication of analvsis. Scientific materialism may have developed partly as a reaction aeainst the romantic movement and the spiritual m e t a p h y k it fostered. Thus a school of biophysicis& in the late 1800s. writing in popular journals, preached a doctrine of mechanistic determination in which rigorous laws of cause and effect governed all things from the motions of atoms to the thoughts of men. The physiologist, Karl Vogt is claimed much as the to have said that the brain nroduces thoueht " kidneys produce urine. Logical positivism or logical empiricism, the view of science most generally held today by scientists and the public, was shaped by a school of positivist philosophers, the Vienna Circle, during the 1930s and '40s. In this view, science is a lrniical process in which scientists p r o m e theories on the basis ofinductive logic and confirm or ;elute them by experimental tests of predictions deductively derived from the theory. When theories fail, new ones are proposed and adopted because of their greater explanatory power. In this way, science moves inexorably closer t o the truth. Implicit in logical empiricism are the requirement of strict objectivity in observing and reporting, and the idea of the scientific method as a rule that factors out other humanistic and ethical considerations. Perceptions of science that include human factors in addition to logical structures now are being considered by historians and philosophers. Perhaps the best known of these is that of Thomas Kuhn who concludes that the goals, rules, and methods of science are not natural truths or eternal canons. hut change discontinuously. Scientific revolutions are less triumphs of truth over error than transitions from one disciplinary perspective (paradigm) to another within the discipline (from phlogiston to oxidation, for example). Each transition brings new assumptions, methods, and scientific laneuaee. .. .. Crudelv. .nut.. transitions often result in the emergence of a different, but not necessarily hetter or more scientifirally sound perspective and effurt. Once installed, a perspective often is difficult to modify or displace. Thouah seeminrly tame, Kuhn's altered interpretation of the nat&e of s c i e n k revolutions raisrs important questions about truth,ohjectivit~,and pruaressinscience. It brinm into scrutiny the deeply held notionof science as an activity that draws ever closer to some goal set by nature. At the same time that it allows for human factors such as intuition and imagination, it casts a shadow on scientific objectivity and on the immutability of the scientific method. It exposes a whole array of problems and issues about progress, values, and morality in science. T o the extent that philosophy can he considered the epistomological conscience and consultant of science, civilization and science appear to have been well served over the years. To the extent that it might have been expected to be the cultural conscience and consultant of science, it appears in need of metaphvsical redemntion. Honefullv, .. Kuhn has opened the door i o grace. WTL A
Volume 55, Number 7, July 1978 1 411
