4 Philosophy Now ●August/September 2019Editorial
Two philosophical implications immediately spring from
this understanding of scientific knowledge. First, let’s apply
induction to the history of science itself, as part of the newly
invented (by me, just now) science of scienceology (not to be
confused with scientology, whose only apparent connection
with science is that it shares its first five letters). That history
shows that even successful and apparently stable scientific
models (or as Kuhn said, paradigms) have always eventually
been superseded. We have no good reason to think that this has
now ceased, so we must conclude that the scientific models we
have now aren’t the ones we’re going to have in fifty, a
hundred, or a thousand years time. Perhaps the only sure scien-
tific knowledge we can draw from the history of science, then,
is that our present scientific knowledge is wrong!
But what about all the near-miraculous technology and
medicine that science generates? It must be doing something
right. Well, to say present scientific knowledge is wrong
perhaps mischaracterises the situation a little. We know our
current theories work to the extent that they accurately predict
experimental results and produce technology; and in some
cases this means they work amazingly well. To this extent, they
are valid. As mentioned, any acceptable future models would
have to successfully incorporate their successes, as well as the
anomalous data that makes the new model necessary. In this
sense, good science is usually a continuation and not an
overthrow of previous good science.
However, the second thing that stands out from the history of
science, is that a new model always differs from the old in one
very significant way: metaphysically. It isn’t just about better
mathematical descriptions; each new scientific paradigm we
adopt make us think of reality itself very differently – sometimes
absolutely differently – from the old. For Newton, space and
time were an absolute, unchanging framework in which stuff
happens; whereas for Einstein spacetime changes with the
observer’s motion (technically speaking, with the inertial frame
of reference of the observer). Darwin’s new paradigm makes us
think in terms of the evolution of species and the continuity of
humanity with other animals, rather than, say, in terms of the
unchanging nature of species and the radical distinctiveness of
humanity. Our interview with John Dupré interestingly
continues the line of thinking of biology in terms of its processes.
In simple terms, even though it might in other ways incorporate
our previous scientific understanding, every time a major new
model is accepted, our understanding of the nature of reality flips.
I suppose that’s what you get for doing flipping science. It also
means that although our models will become increasingly data-
encompassing and precise, unless scientific progress is ever
completed (and that’s unknowable right now), we’ll never get a
scientific model that shows us how things really are.
Watch this spacetime for further developments.
Grant BartleyT
he scientific method is the path to knowledge in the
secular age, many would say (especially secularists).
But which science? Physics, biology, anthropology,
sociology? And which method? Experiments, field
observations, mathematical modelling, or some combination of
these? And which knowledge? Current scientific knowledge, or
some future ideal scientific knowledge?
Welcome to our issue on science and philosophy. Two of
the articles reflect on what biology can tell us about personal
identity, a key question in philosophy. But the first three pieces
look at the nature of the scientific method itself. And one thing
they collectively demonstrate is that there isno single ‘scientific
method’. There are actually several different methods, and
which is used depends on what is being investigated. For
instance, as far as I know, no experiment has ever been done to
test the theory of evolution of whole new species by natural
selection. Rather, that foundational scientific theory is based on
the interpretation of observations of the natural world and the
fossil record. A very general description of scientific activity
might be “Trying hard to get your theory to match what you
can see.” But even this basic aim isn’t particularily well met in
modern theoretical physics. No dark matter or dark energy has
ever been observed. (Obviously? Inevitably?) Rather, those
concepts have been invented to explain anomalies that don’t fit
current cosmological or other theories – in the structure of
spiral galaxies, particularly. Rossen Vassilev’s piece on ‘Einstein
versus the Logical Positivists’ examines, and calls to task, the
idea that modern physics can be a domain of purely maths-
based metaphysical speculation.
In our opening article Will Bouwman describes the devel-
opment of theories of gravity over the last 2,500 years, and
ponders what this tells us about scientific progress in general.
Philosophers of science talk of there being a succession of
‘models’ of reality, formed from ideas and equations. For
example, Einstein’s equations provided a model of reality
different to that provided by Newton’s equations; and so on
throughout science.
Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn believed that to be
accepted, new models have to explain everything the old ones do- account for all the phenomena their equations explain – but
also explain new data inexplicable on the old model. As a science
progresses, its models give ever more comprehensive and mathe-
matically precise ways of understanding, predicting, and manip-
ulating aspects of the world. Einstein’s equations are a more
accurate description of the phenomena that Newton’s equations
also cover (and more besides), but Newton’s equations remain a
close enough approximation in most everyday circumstances.
Bouwman describes how Newton’s own theory of gravity both
replaced and built upon earlier versions by Galileo, and by
Aristotle. As Newton himself wrote in 1675 “If I have seen
further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
GRAN
TATTAT
EMODER
N©PAULGREG
ORY^2016Scientific Knowledge