The discussion in sections 3.2.1, 3.2.1.1 and 3.2.1.2 shows how the traditional model of science tie the grounds for asserting the truth of a hypothesis to our observational experience. Such empirical nature of the ¨scientific method¨ informs their conviction that science gives us a true account of the universe. It exposes a simple-minded understanding of scientific methodology that is monistic. According to this methodology, a scientist develops a hypothesis by inductive inference from a number of
discrete observations or from inferences based on other ´true´ theories. Good scientific hypotheses entail particular observational consequences. Scientists confirm the truth or falsity of their theories by testing—looking for the occurrence of the predicted observational consequences. Theories should have evidence that supports them. But even if the evidence supports a theory today, tomorrow, new evidence may cause the theory to be revised just as it had been the case with Newton´s theories of mechanics and universal gravitation. For a couple of centuries all the evidence seemed to show Newton´s theories explained the universe precisely and were deemed ´true´. But in the late 19th century evidence started to accumulate that disturbed scientists. They were discovering phenomena Newton´s theory did not account for. It was in explaining how these new pieces of evidence, as well as other ideas, fit into a more comprehensive theory that Albert Einstein made his mark. And Newton´s theory which had appeared to be ´true´ for so long was finally shown to be ´untrue´. Eventually, Einstein´s theory became the new ´truth.´
Obviously, there are problems with saying a scientific theory is a true theory, partly because we run into the problem of determining which theories are true, and deciding whether a term in a scientific theory actually refers to a target. Instead, science uses a range of representational vehicles, e.g. models of familiarity, like Bohr´s, and abstract mathematical models. In other words, it is not adequate to analyse scientific data using solely a linguistic medium.
3.3.1 LINGUISTIC AMBIVALENCE
Past scientific theories may appear false if we analyse scientific data linguistically to see if what is being described actually is connected to any physical reality. However, if we recast the superceded theory as a sort of model, we may notice that the theory, in essence, was structurally parallel to a current theory. A good example of this could be the Carnot cycle of Sadi Carnot. In a Carnot cycle, an engine accepts heat energy from a high-temperature source, or hot body, converts part of the received energy into mechanical (or electrical) work, and rejects the remainder to a low-temperature sink, or cold body. The greater the temperature difference between the source and sink, the greater the efficiency of the heat engine. Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796 – 1832)
sought to answer two questions about the operation of heat engines: ¨Is the work available from a heat source potentially unbounded? ¨, and ¨Can heat engines in principle be improved by replacing the steam with some other working fluid or gas? ¨ In his Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice de Feu [1824/1988] (¨Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire) he arrived to the conclusion that the production of motive power was due ¨not to actual consumption of caloric but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body.¨269 Likewise, ¨In the fall of caloric, motive power evidently increases with the difference of temperature between the warm and cold bodies, but we do not know whether it is proportional to this difference.¨270
Carnot originally formulated his theorem on the basis of the caloric theory of heat which was later discarded as an incorrect concept, but in essence his theorem was found to be correct if the notion of heat (distinguished as chaleur from calorique by him)271 was identified with a form of a mechanical energy, as enunciated by such heat theorists like Count Rumford (known as Sir Benjamin Thompson). After examination of Carnot´s work, R. Clausius (1850) and such physicists like W. Thomson (Lord Kevin) were able to modify the Carnot theorem and enunciate the second principle of thermodynamics when systems undergo cyclic processes. Hence, according to the Clausius principle, by R. Clausius, it is impossible to transfer heat from a colder to a hotter body without converting at the same time a certain amount of work into heat at the end of a cycle of changes.
Carnot thought heat was a fluid of sorts. He was wrong, linguistically, but his ´fluid´
was enough like that of kinetic energy that it mattered little. In other words, the issue of
´truth´ should not matter much as regards the efficiency of one theory over rivals.
Duhem wrote thus,
It quite naturally happens that those who believe too much in their own theories do not sufficiently believe in the theories of
269Sadi Carnot, ¨Reflection on the Motive Power of Fire,¨ in Reflection on the Motive Power of Fire by Sadi Carnot and other Papers on the Second Law of Thermodynamics by É. Claperyron and R. Clausius.
Ed. Mendoza, E. (New York: Dover, 1988[1960]) p.7
270 Ibid., p. 15
271In Carnot´s theory, there appears the notion of calorique, which is distinctive from chaleur. He did not clarify its true nature, but it is safe to assume it is a quantity associated with heat transfer and equivalent to entropy or, more precisely, calortropy as the heat theory of Count Rumford suggest.
others. Then the dominant idea of these condemners of others is to find fault with the theories of the latter and to seek to contradict them….They are doing experiments only in order to destroy a theory instead of doing them in order to look for the truth.272
However, this leaves us with another problem: Should we restrict science´s goal to seeking theories that are solely ¨empirically adequate¨273 while rejecting the linguistic representation medium entirely? Or can scientific theories, in some cases ´fit´ reality, which means, they are ´true´?
The conception that observation serves as the independent foundational justification for our theoretical claims has been shown to be wrong. Observation is not independent of theory at all. All observations are dependent on some theory at some level. Observation alone is never enough and no matter how strong the evidence, science can never prove a theory true with certainty as we have seen in the overthrow of the Newtonian theory by Einstein theory. Eventually, there are other sources of evidence beyond the strictly observational that indicate truth. These additional sources of evidence do not rely on asserting a ¨match¨ between the claims made by the theory and the world itself. Instead, this evidence comes from an evaluation of the internal coherence of the theory itself.
Evaluating a hypothesis becomes a two-step process: We want to know whether the hypothesis is ´empirically adequate´—is it consistent with our observations. Second, we want to know whether the hypothesis has certain ´virtues´ we think correlate with its being ´likely to be true´. These virtues include: Simplicity, Generality, Fecundity, Entrenchment, and Testability. This shows that scientific advancement through time does not move closer and closer to a correct (true) characterization of the natural world.
272Pierre Duhem, ¨Physical Theory and Experiment,¨ in Philosophy of Science, eds. Curd, M & Cover, J. A (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998) p. 258
273 Van Fraassen´ constructive empiricism argued that ´science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate.
See Bas C. Van Fraassen. ¨Arguments concerning Scientific Realism¨, in Philosophy of Science, eds.
Curd, M & Cover, J. A (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998) p. 1069; see also Bas. C.
van Fraassen, The Scientific Image. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) p. 12
3.4 SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVITY
The view of scientific objectivity as one achieved by reliance upon non arbitrary and non-subjective criteria for developing, accepting and rejecting the hypotheses and theories that make up the whole view of science is derived from an initial factor. Such factor deals with the affirmation that science provides accurate description of the facts of the natural world as they really are. Precisely, this notion is derived from the conviction of the science practitioners of the early modern period that they have construed accurate accounts of the real underlying structure of the natural world. Hence, it implies that such accurate description of the facts in the natural world provides us knowledge of nature that is uninfluenced by the scientists.
Precisely, the accounts of the scientific revolution by various authors in the previous chapter have shown that the pure pursuit of objective truth, by ´disinterested individuals, in science is not only implausible but incorrect. Robert Merton (1938) demonstrated the role of puritanism in the rise of modern science. The Marxist historiography of scientific revolution by Hessen (1931) instigated that the development of Newton´s ´ Principia´ had its root in the economic demands of the period. Frances Yates (1964, 1972) insisted that hermeticism must have influenced the developments in the physics of the seventeenth-century science and that alchemical influences were particularly important in relation to the development of the mathematical approach to nature.274 For Joseph Needham (1969) the social transformation wrought by capitalism, renaissance and reformation motivated the rise of the early modern science in Europe.
Most traditional accounts of science repose the objectivity of science on their conviction that its method is purely objective. Objectivity is granted based on the theory-neutral nature of the observational data and the necessary nature of the logical relationship between hypotheses and their observational consequences. In this case, objectivity is attributed to the scientists to the extent that he or she follows the scientific method.
Shapin insisted that it is incorrect to justify scientific objectivity based on the objectivity of scientific method.
274Francis Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. xii
He states that,
Historians and philosophers of science have traditionally paid far too much attention to formal methodological pronouncements, often taking such statements at face value as adequate accounts of what past practitioners actually did when they went about making, assessing, and distributing scientific knowledge. In fact, the relation between any body of formal methodological directions and concrete natural philosophical practice in the seventeenth century is deeply problematic.275
In order to understand the actual identity and the worth of such formal methodology, like Bacon´s method, we also need to understand the context under which the justification for such methods is made. It means that we should have a more vivid picture of what a range of modern natural philosophers actually did when they set about securing a piece of knowledge.