The Value of the Philosophy of Science

Not everyone can be an expert in biology, computer science, chemistry, electrical engineering, genetics, kinesiology, medicine,  physics, psychiatry, whatever, or zoology (in alphabetical order), but we could all benefit from a general grasp of various scientific ideologies, their epistemology's, and philosophies.   The published journals, papers (peer reviewed and otherwise), and general treatises which record and recapitulate the progress of human thought concerning explanation are open not only to those residing in Olympus, nor are they reserved for academically trained readers, but such communications are for all of us.  The works of Aristotle, Spinoza’s Ethics, and even Wittgenstein’s Tractus are less readable now than when they were written.  The Proceedings of the Royal Society’s literature are as obtuse to many as when Pepys, Dryden, and Evelyn were fellows.  In consequence, there have grown up two classes of writings that are needed more now than ever before, on which a non-scientific reader has to rely on for wisdom, understanding, and discernment.  For any of us there are works of popular science where theoretical advances are explained in a way crafted to avoid technicalities; and for students of philosophy there are books and articles on logic in which the nature and problems of some sciences are discussed as deduction and induction based upon application of the scientific method.

Many of these books discuss first the premise of logic, applications of set theory, number theory, grammar, causality, Boolean algebra, Lie algebra, Voronoi diagrams, Venn diagrams, algorithms, calculus, statistics, and many other tools.  Whether the results of the sciences are true or only highly probable, the uniformity of nature, the accumulation of confirming instances, Mill’s methods, and the probability-calculus form the basis of most laws, theories, and expositions.  But to anyone with practical experience of science there is a curious, almost mystical, air of unreality concerning the appearance of the results.  Lucid, erudite, and carefully framed as the ideological structures might be yet somehow missing the universal mark of the absolute.  It is not that the statements are untrue fallacies, but rather that they appear irrelevant when taken out of context. The hypothesis (null and otherwise) that are impeccably written with eloquent mathematics and rational discussion are often perceived as having no application or bearing on everyday life.  Not since the discovery of fire has a scientific idea’s application and conflagration been instantly apparent.  Meanwhile the actual methods of rhetoric employed are rarely examined.  For example, writers such as Kuhn, Poincare, and Hickey recognize that one must not take too much for granted.  Several years before Einstein developed his relativity theory the mathematician Poincare postulated a non-Euclidean physical space and claimed that physicists had two choices.  Either to accept non-Euclidean geometry as a description of physical space or they can preserve Euclidean geometry for the description of physical space by adopting new physical laws stating that all solid bodies undergo certain contractions and expansions as later noted by thermodynamics and other sciences, and that light does not travel in straight lines.  Poincare maintained that physicists would always choose to preserve the Euclidean description of physical space, and would claim that any observed non-Euclidean deviations are due to the relative expansion or contraction of the instruments of measurement and to the deflection of light rays, no matter how miniscule, yet noticeable.  Einstein’s choice of the Riemannian geometry and physical laws for measurement were based on the resulting simplicity of the total system of established physics.  Relativity theory using Riemannian geometry greatly simplifies physical laws by the implementation of geodesics, such as the gravitation as a force is replaced by gravitation as a function of geometrical structure of curved space.     While many of us tend to assume some familiarity with the things that thinkers, scientists, or celebrities say and do glossing over the details that support the really intriguing philosophical points that follow.

This is an attitude that exposes each of us to cognitive biases, logical fallacies, or other dangers.  For if an individual has too simple an idea of what constitutes a statement, proof, or argument then philosophical inconsistencies occur that have no application other than humorous anecdotes ad absurdum.  If we are to take for granted that “opals and pearls are simply white” or that “Men do not require instruction” it could be concluded that appealing to such laws rest on the presupposition about the reliability of a subscription to gross generalization weekly.  But unless we are to see with clarity what the laws of nature are in practice who can decide the accuracy and precision of a proper conclusion?  The laws of nature cannot fit into the traditional array of logical categories with their corresponding criteria, leading to specialization in discussion within further refined sciences; ideological refining as an iterative and recursive process that also requires interdisciplinary communication to ensure compatibility, consistency, and validity for future applications.  Similarly anyone can think about the mechanics of causation and its place in modern sciences indefinitely, until it is noticed just how rarely the word ‘cause’ is employed in the scholarly works of professional researchers or scientists.  There is good reason for this rarity, a reason that if ignored is to divide reality from the philosophical discussion of scientific arguments.  

A student of philosophy benefits from an introductory education of the types of arguments, proof, and methods scientists employ in practice and how these are similar to those traditionally applied by theologians, logicians, and other orators.  To what degree are the examples in a logic book congruent with the practice of scientists, and what are the implications on the rest of us?  Are we to deconstruct these problems in a customary fashion and attempt to propound some novel solution; or are we to view the problems themselves as arising from naiveté conceptions that have existed since their inception.  How are we to conclude that an explanation is acceptable and therefore applicable?  What sort of impression must an expression perform to qualify on the level of Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, or as a law of nature?  How does this differ from a proposed hypothesis?  Is the difference merely a matter of degrees of a confidence interval in the classes of a proposition, or is a distinction to drawn on other grounds?  And what role does mathematics play?  As for new entities in the sciences that are so often discussed: the Higgs-Boson, patented genes and their genetic markers, Quantum-computing, or what have you.  Are those things thought of as actually existing, and when are they explanatory devices?  These are all questions whose answers are easy to be mistaken about, unless we are to pay sufficient attention to the actual practices of scientists.  The rest of this writing will examine the features which must be pondered in order to settle some questions.

The difficulties that do arise between understanding, educational entrainment, and most individuals understanding on popular science are rather different.  Within this facsimile of an authentic scientific document there can be little to no doubt that what is discussed if rather different.  The cognates of various ideas are not only discrete, but are also fair game along with appearance, perception, cognition, behavior, communication, linguistics, humanities, mathematics, anthropology, agriculture, architecture, every and all other books, articles, and recapitulations on books of popular science that might otherwise be defined as rather different.  As for me, and my point of view there is no doubt that authentic science is simultaneously being discussed; but the terms by which these ideas are first presented are not as discrete nor as explanatory as first they might seem to a tailor.  There is a tendency for those philosophical writers within this field to explain to the readers only about the models, conceptions, and formulations, employed in a novel theory instead of first giving readers a firm anchor of facts of which the theories explanations are based and afterword illustrating to the reader the method by which the manner the theories fit the hierarchy of facts.  

Recall, for instance, the means by which Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington took to spreading the non popular belief and thought that the theories of Physics based upon Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes, Poincare, Copernicus, Bacon, Feynman, Einstein, Democritus, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Sophocles, etc, etc, et, all of physics, modern, post modern, and everything else that will come to be.  Because too often those philosopher of science focused upon that which would otherwise be declared as comparatively inessential, what is introduced to the reader as predefined conceptions, particular models, or theories used to describe immanent phenomenon even when failing to do that which is essential, namely to elucidate the measurable and mathematical function of such adopted variable as they are derived into models, theoretical conceptions and the rest.  The well known two tables account is an established case in point much like an all you can eat buffet.   For a reader to acquiesce to Eddington’s multiplex understanding of ‘the two tables’ upon a surface that is understood as not only a tabletop defined as a case in point  “common-sense, solid table top”, which is also a scientific table top mostly consisting of empty space.  This recapitulation does not particularly assist a reader in the dubious task of what defines an atomic model which is more important to the sciences of explaining the chemical occurrences around us as it might be the atomic theory of matter.  The entirety of such models is to explain that which could not other there unto be explained by traditional models.  Cut off from the phenomenon of the model one can only be mislead, raising further unreal and needless conceptions about what might happen when the tea-tray that supports it is set down.  The same also goes regrettably for those pretty pictures of electron clouds encompassing our mind of atoms like bees which might hum about a blank center in a cathedral, the pictures of your brain as an anagram of our universe, depictions of your white and gray matter as a network of computers and their entwined connections, and rest.  Regrettably in can be said, because we as literary devices certainly have value, and if we were not left to stand on our own feet we might have value, unfortunately that value is defined by the very limitations of the language implemented to transfer such ideas via a written word.  The same also goes for the written word which acts as a searchlight in the darkness, picking up there a pinnacle, a chimney, and in a distance an attic window; the detail illuminated is dazzlingly commensurate even while everything surrounding is caste into even greater obscurity until we are all distracted from the overall proportions with which we have been beautifully presented. 

This is not the worst of which happens when assaulted by the human nature of appearances, appurtenances, reality, awareness, and perception.  At times an attempt to popularize a physical theory might even result in unpopularizing it, for one might ask if it is not reverse psychology if it does not work. As things are elucidation generally operates as a searchlight through the darkness of human knowledge.  For instance blue Jeans relied on finding a happy analogy  which would by itself bring home to its readers the chief features of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. And how did he invite them to think of our universe?  As the three dimensional surface of a four dimensional balloon? As the lack of condensation of anti-matter on the domain wall of  a spinor Bose-Einstein optical lattice? The mislead layperson who had been acculturated to use the word surface for two dimensional things alone, now found themselves instructed to visualize what had otherwise been contradictory.  So it was no wonder that many who agreed to Jeans’ calling the universe a mysterious one; A spectrum of mystification balanced by the confusion idea of unnecessary nothing.  There is no reason that the principles of the Theory of Relativity should not be explained in the terms of an ordinary reader who can make something of Einstein.  Oddly enough, Einstein does this very well.  But Jeans’ method defeated its own end.  Via reduction Jean defeated method by deconstructing the subject and object into that which is too easy and to do with a simile, metaphor, and allegory what no literary device alone can do, to lead many readers to conclude that what you are reading is utterly incomprehensible, thus this should now be set aside as not for you, the reader.  But then how ought you now know as such?

This might suggest that Jeans was merely careless, even if there was more to what than that.  For the fact that such writing picked up upon a point of writing which is redundant and is to the outsider is self-contradictory points to something which the average person must be told about the linguistics of speech as they might be applied to theories.  For when a theory is developed all kinds of phrases in ordinary life are devoid of meaning are given use, many familiar terms acquire fresh meanings, and a variety of new terms are introduced to serve the purpose of the theory.  A scientists, who learns their physics the hard way gradually becomes accustomed to implementing the novel technical terms and the everyday sounding phrases required to confer the source of condensation on a domain wall, or whatever even when less than half aware of what is really happening; as some professors born remark; the building of the languages of the sciences is not entirely a conscious process.  This has its consequence when a scientist has to explain a new theory to the lay person.  For then it is possible to unwittingly use in exposition terms and turns of phrase which can only be understood by those already familiar with the theory.  To the individual trained in the implementation of sophisticated geometry the phrase “three-dimensional surface” might no longer be a self-contradiction, but for those regurgitating it without appreciation to a non-mathematician it is an invitation to incomprehension.  And what happens to three dimensional surfaces like that which we live upon is equitable to invisible light and their constituents.  When scientific notions are being popularized it is necessary to explain the foci of such phrases, instead of making unexplained and untranslated use of them.  

To introduce a valued distinction is now of value.  For a communities adoption of a new theory involves a linguistic shift that can be distinguished between the account of the theory and the application of the new terminology in a participant language sense which is an account in the new terminology by which it is not used but is described by the voyeuristic nature of an onlooker’s language.  Supposing as Wittgenstein said in his ‘Tractus’ that “A physicist tells you that at last the discovery of how to see people in the dark, which no one had ever before known”.  Then you should not be surprised.  If Wittgenstein goes on to explain to you that the discovery of brainwave entrainment by means of gravitational induction is as ancient an idea as communication then you have a right to be surprised if you feel like it.  Then it is a different kind of surprise, not just a mental whirl, because before such a statement one may not just gape open after having been stretched but must ask: “What do you mean?”

An analogy will help to explain misconceptions that might follow if we were to attempt to popularize the physical sciences in such a way. When children are told stories at bedtime they are told about all kinds of people, not just rich and poor, white and black, beggars, and kings, but the more encompassing logically different people.  Some nights they are told stories from history, other nights ancient myths, sometimes legends, sometimes fables, sometimes they might even be accounts of we ourselves have done, other times accounts by contemporary authors.  Therefore when it comes to bedtime stories, this, Caesar, Cleopatra, Scheherazade, Heraclitus, Democritus, Achilles, Sisyphus, the boy who cried wolf, the man in the yellow hat, and Winnie the Pooh all appear at first sight to be on the same footing.  A clever child, no doubt, soon learns to spot from internal evidence what kind of story tonight's story is, and what sort of people its characters are, fabulous, legendary or historical,  But to begin with we must explain in asides what the logical status of each character and story is, saying, “No there aren’t really any talking animals: this is just a made up story”, or “yes, this really did happen, when my father was a boy.”  Unless the child is told these things in addition to the stories themselves, he might not know how to take them; and thus he might bet quite false ideas about the world into which he was born, about its history, its inhabitants, and the kinds of things he might encounter on any day as he turns the corner on the street.  If entertainment alone were needed, the story alone might do.  But the risks of misunderstanding are serious, and for real understanding more is always a requirement.

So in popular science: the average person is not merely ignorant of all the theories of science but is also unequipped to understand the terms in which a scientist will naturally begin to explain them.  To explain the sciences to the average person by giving the intrepid reader only potted theories and vivid analogies, without a good number of thoroughly confusing and logical asides, is like telling a child all of the sorts of stories we do tell children and not warning them as to the pitfalls, variations, and different inconsistencies therein.  Then no child will not know what weights to put on the various things that are said, which of the statements heard about the sciences are to be accepted at face value, and which narratives are misleading preponderances that are never to be met.

Perhaps the nub of the difficulty lies in that the popularizer has at least a double aim.  For most people would like to learn about the theories of the sciences in a language that is understandable; and most would like to learn this as Stephan Hawking has translated the universe “in a nutshell”.  These opposing ends of a spectrum are bound together as part of the same thing which are in practice a conflict.  For a major virtue of the language of the sciences is it conciseness.  It is always generally possible to say what a scientific theory amounts to without using the technical terms which scientists introduce to serve the purposes of the theory, although one can do so only by writing at very much greater length.  If the popularizer is to explain a theory in everyday terms and at the same time put it “in a nutshell”, something must first be sacrificed in terms of the technical accuracy of the premise.  Usually the logical asides are the first thing to go, and drastic cuts follow in the account of the phenomenon which the theory is introduced to explain.  What is even more important is just how much further along in the development of the idea the reader is when presented with the ‘explanation’.  As it is the reader might often be better off if simply left in the dark as far as the matter is concerned, due only to the simplification to the sharp point of Occam’s razor. Once this happens the everyday public individual is given no real entrance to the subject; for until they are told a good deal about the phenomena a real key is of little use if the beholden is unaware of what rooms it grants access to.  There is then no point to being told that Einstein has discovered the metaphorical key to the universe if we are not also informed as to what sort of thing counts as opening said door with said key.

However, something can be done to remedy such a state of affairs.  With the help of a few elementary examples it should be possible to show the common reader some of the more important ideas required regarding the logic of the physical sciences.  There is no reason for anyone to rest content with the ideological nature of the sciences are an inconsistent conglomeration of self-contradictions, like invisible electromagnetic phenomenon, three dimensional surfaces, and mysteries like the curvature of space.  When armed with the ability to ask questions all can penetrate behind the screen of appearance and reality to the living truth.  For the words of scientists are not always what they seem, and might be misleading if taken even slightly out of their original context.  The vital information is what sorts of questions should be asked if one is to garner a satisfactory understanding of a given theory; fortunately this is something which can be shown well with sophisticated and simple examples.  To illustrate what such questions are is the purpose of this writing you the reader are now engaged in perusing.  It will not require that you are capable of quoting the exact words of scientists so much as it necessitates the ability to notice the sort of things they do with the words they do employ.  As Einstein has said: “If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don’t pay attention to their words, fix your attention on their deeds.

This blog post is no different in aim, deed, or execution.  In fact this is merely an experimental foray into the metalinguistics of pronouns, and their subsequent psycholinguistic effects.    Thank you for your time, feedback, and complicit participation.