First post from a new member on Philosophy of Science

[Cenderawasih]

One thing I find interesting in all this (comments from other members welcome) is the following:

I've been arguing against the existence of "The Scientific Method" for years. Needless to say, no originality on my part: that rascal Paul Feyerabend got the ball rolling way back in the 70s.

The response tends to be one of outrage and disbelief, regardless of how much evidence and argumentation is provided by myself. Bannings have been incurred from similar sites LOL.

On the other hand, one short quote from a Steven Weinberg or a an Albert Einstein tends to silence the naysayers, or at least cause them to reflect where evidence and ratiocination alone is ineffectual.

Say what you like about the appeal to authority "fallacy" . . . but it works!

There must be a lesson for us all in here somewhere . . .

[Cenderawasih]

Well, yes, sir.

The problem facing those attempting to capture "The Scientific Method" has always been the porridge test. Make the criteria too restrictive and much of what we consider to be good science is omitted; make the criteria too permissive, on the other hand, and much of what we don't consider to be good science gets admitted. 

No one denies that scientists in various disciplines and subdisciplines use a variety of methods. The problem (cf. impossibility) lies in identifying a method that all (good!) scientists use, and only scientists use.

Take the use of double-blind trials in the testing of pharmaceuticals, for example. Seems like the kind of thing to which the epithet "method" is perfectly appropriate. 

However, were one to claim that double-blind trials just is the scientific method, then everyone who does not conduct such trials (e.g. just about every scientist you can name) must be excluded from science insofar as they are not employing the scientific method.

 

More permissively, then, we might suggest the conducting of experiments as a necessary ingredient. But not all scientists, or scientific disciplines (e.g. paleontology perhaps) conduct experiments! Gardeners, meanwhile, perform lots!

At the other extreme, suppose we choose criteria far more vague, such as "formulate and test hypotheses".

Ignoring the problem that the formulation of hypotheses would appear to be largely non-methodical, thus does not merit the epithet "method", we end up with the unpalatable conclusion that pretty much the whole world is doing science!

Who among us does not formulate and test hypotheses? Car mechanics do it, plumbers do it, policemen do it, and I suspect my late cat did it when trying to locate his food bowl that I had mischieviously placed in an unfamiliar location (tee hee!).

Now, if the whole world is formulating and testing hypotheses, what claim does science have to call it "The Scientific Method"?

Why not call it the plumber's method? Or the cat method?

Edited November 22, 2021 by Cenderawasih

[Cenderawasih]

9 hours ago, TheVat said:

ANYWAY, to relate your comment on too broad definitions of science, one could point out that if Mr. Bacon had conducted his life-ending experiment with some control birds (not stuffed with snow), and then carefully compared a larger sample of snow-stuffed and non-snow-stuffed birds in terms of length of preservation, then we could have asserted that he was taking a scientific approach by refining his methods to where some reliable facts may have emerged.  

 

From one ailurophile to another . . .

Francis Bacon's prescriptive ideas for science are usually described as inductivist. The idea goes like this: the theory/hypothesis/law (whatever you want to call it) is already somehow contained within the data and all the scientist has to do is extract it from the data.

E.g. Mill, the inductivist (see below), argued that Kepler found ellipses in the data (they were already there, so to speak); his contemporary interlocutor and deductivist, William Whewell, argued to the contrary that Kepler brought ellipses to the data (ellipses cannot be found within).

It's not uncommon to hear it asserted that inductivism just is "The Scientific Method". Like everyone else who has tried to capture "The Scientific Method", however, poor Mr Bacon has had holes punched in his brainchild ever since. E.g.

Quote

Philosophical accounts of the nature of science, or of the 'scientific method', are, in part, accounts of the relation, or relations, of theory and experiment in science. A simplistic view of the history of philosophy of science since the eighteenth century would show one philosophy, inductivism, holding sway for a century and a half before being replaced by hypothetico-deductivism. Francis Bacon is usually blamed for inductivism, a position that we all now plainly see as silly. Indeed, over a hundred years ago, Charles Darwin, who publicly gave lip-service to the 'Baconian method', privately ridiculed inductivism, saying that "one might as well go into a gravel pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours". 

- Robert N. Brandon, "Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology", p147

 

 

You may be aware already, Mr Vat, that a couple of centuries later, fellow countryman and fellow inductivist John Stuart Mill attempted to refine Bacon's prescription into something more workable -- what we now refer to as "Mill's Methods": the method of agreement, the method of difference, etc.

The result is something eerily similar to what you've astutely described above, and is indeed the kind of thing that pharmaceutical companies do when testing new drugs.

Have we then identified "The Scientific Method"?

 

Some problems:

1. The form of reasoning employed is not unique to science. It's the kind of thing we see in those "Airport" movies from the 70s where the passengers have a choice between fish and chicken, all those who ate the fish fall sick, and  . . . you know the rest -- Can anyone here fly this thing ???!!!!!

 

2. The form of reasoning employed is not used in all scientific inquiry; it does not even accord with what scientists themeselves explicitly claim to be doing. You'll find Richard Feynman, for example, in a fascinating Youtube video where he explains "The Scientific Method", or his version thereof. And it doesn't sound very much like inductivism at all. (He's actually describing what's known as hypothetico-deductivism, an arch rival of inductivism for the title "The Scientific Method").

 

3. It fails to account for vast swathes of scientific practice. 

An inductive inference standardly takes the form :

P1: All observed Fs are G   (e.g. All observed cats are arrogant)
Conclusion: All Fs are G     (All cats are arrogant)

Notice that the terms in the conclusion are exactly the same as those in the premise; no new terms appear.

But science routinely posits unobservable entities. Given an inductivist account, supposedly covering all of scientific reasoning, where do all these unobservable creepie-crawlies come from? 

E.g. How do we get--using induction--from "People are getting sick" to "Germs are responsible"?

 

I suppose you could say that Mr Bacon's thought, even in its refined form, is no longer regarded as being kosher.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Cenderawasih

[dennisfrancisblewett]

I hope to not go too far into this thread (other pressing matters), but I'll make a response.

  

On 11/18/2021 at 3:14 AM, Cenderawasih said:

This all sounds good, except that no scientist that I know of actually follows this prescription.

To re-phrase the rhetor's argument: The scientific method is bad because no scientist that I know of actually follows "this" prescription.

The rhetor denies that any scientist ever engages in the scientific method. It seems to me that the rhetor argues a deconstructionist view, arguing no one can ever define any aspect of the methodology with any authority, so things fall apart (deconstruct). I don't agree with the rhetor's premise. Sure, things are an "epiphenomenon," whereby one might claim that there is never a "method" being performed. In a lot of ways, what occurs is an art. However, I don't think it's a fraudulent art or means to be a deceptive art. It means to be a way of analyzing reality and gathering "knowledge" about reality.

 

[Cenderawasih]

On 12/31/2021 at 3:17 AM, dennisfrancisblewett said:

I hope to not go too far into this thread (other pressing matters), but I'll make a response.

  

To re-phrase the rhetor's argument: The scientific method is bad because no scientist that I know of actually follows "this" prescription.

The rhetor denies that any scientist ever engages in the scientific method. It seems to me that the rhetor argues a deconstructionist view, arguing no one can ever define any aspect of the methodology with any authority, so things fall apart (deconstruct). I don't agree with the rhetor's premise. Sure, things are an "epiphenomenon," whereby one might claim that there is never a "method" being performed. In a lot of ways, what occurs is an art. However, I don't think it's a fraudulent art or means to be a deceptive art. It means to be a way of analyzing reality and gathering "knowledge" about reality.

 

(my emphasis)

 

Seems to me, rather, that what the writer is saying, and I think correctly, is that there is no such thing as The Scientific Method.

Yes, every fellah and his dog has proposed one (from Descartes to Popper and dozens in between), but if no one follows their prescriptions . . . well, it's a bit like comparing ten different dictionary definitions of God, say.

If, we shall suppose, all ten definitions correspond to nothing in reality, what are we to say?

1. There are ten Gods

2. There is one God described in ten different ways, or

3. There is no God

?

Edited January 12, 2022 by Cenderawasih