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The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (2nd edition)

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There's lots of talk among people over what "science" really is and what constitutes "scienticity". Despite the fact that the word science comes from the Latin word "scientia" (literally meaning "knowledge"), most defenders of science are simply not familiar with what "science" truly is. Most people seem to blindly and ignorantly assume that science is "empirical" or "conclusive" or "strictly observationally based" or "skeptical" or "exclusively inductive" or "strictly peer reviewed" or other ignorant maxims popularized by science magazines and channels [National Geographic, Discovery, Scientific American, etc]. In reality science is all over the place and really overlaps superstitions at times too. Basic things people do, play key roles in science like inquiry, thought, and reason as the basis of investigations of nature. These are also the basis for investigating local events or picking a car insurance wisely or how to invest one's own money or how to solve personal problems.

This work puts many of these beliefs to rest by describing with heavy detail the very nature of science. Ernest Nagel does a phenomenal job of putting science where it belongs - as philosophy. "Natural Philosophy" (the common name for "Science" before the 20th century) to be more precise. This book does a good job of making the distinction that science is not nature and that nature is not science. The study and attempt of simulation of nature is what leads to any science, whether it be a superstitious science, statistical science, an abstract science, a true science, or a false science.

The term "Scientist" emerged in 1834 by William Whewell, who was an Anglican priest. Titles like "Natural Philosopher" or "man of science" were common titles before 1834 and slightly after.

Empiricism and physical evidence constitute a decent chunk of "science", but overall, metaphysical aspects like: methodology, knowledge, understanding, ideas, thinking, reasoning, verification, clarification, assumption, inquiring (what, when, where, how, why), explanation, validation, prediction, modeling, numerical analysis, truth seeking, theories, mathematical rigor, basic common logic, laws, models, and "certainty" make up the vast majority of what is called "science". We all gather information from nature all the time (empirical data), but it's what we do with the gathered information that makes up science.

Furthermore, the metaphysical nature of science is seen in the top title of nearly every scientific field - "Ph.D". It stands for "Doctor of Philosophy". Also in popular science media, philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper are used and referenced perpetually to define what "is" and what "is not" science. Reading primary sources by scientists themselves also support this (see comments section).

Lord Kelvin's text in Physics, for example, is called "Treatise on Natural Philosophy" and is a modern physics textbook which includes - calculations and models with lots of old theories that are still in use today because they are really good and effective for modern situations since nature doesn't change. Our understanding of nature is what changes, if there is a need for it.

I know that some people think that science and philosophy are different, but the evidence speaks volumes to the contrary.

Note: The words "Nature", "Science", and "Technology" are not the same thing and should NOT be used interchangeably due to their separate spheres of occurrence: what physically exists (Nature), assumption and modeling (Science), and application of and enhancement of science (Technology).

If anyone ever traces the history of some theories, perhaps people will notice that "modern" science isn't really that "modern" at all, but instead is very ancient and medieval because people in the past weren't ignorant, they were usually ahead of their time in many fields.

Few examples:

* the heliocentric system is more than 2,000 years old and predates Copernicus by more than 1500 years (Aristarchus of Samos is called the "Ancient Copernicus" because he is the earliest known source to posit the heliocentric view).

* "atoms" being popular today, were first lively posited more than 2,200 years ago (Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and others) and definitely even before that.

* high school geometry is good old fashioned Euclidean geometry and we still do our proofs basically like Euclid did more than 2,100 years ago.

* Eratosthenes (2,200 years ago) and early Christian encyclopedists (1,400 years ago) like Isidore of Seville knew of the sphericity of the earth.

It should be remembered that science grows on top of the work of previous generations.

I will write the Chapter titles and give some objects of discussion found in these chapters.

1. "Introduction: Science and Common Sense"
What makes science different from common sense, specificity of systematic explanations, the rise of science from practical advantages, systematic configuration of information, specificity of "scientific" languages as explanations of explanations

2. "Patterns of Scientific Explanation"
The place of the explandum in statements of explanations for "why" questions, illustrations of scientific explanation, 4 types of explanation (with corresponding problems in their usage as explanations): Deductive Model of Explanation, Probabilistic Explanations, Teleological or "Functional" Explanations, and Genetic Explanations. Lack of explanations for the "necessity" of the ontology of natural phenomena.

3. "The Deductive Pattern of Explanation"
Problems and insights explanation, applications of explanations on the conformity of natural laws, explanations applied on individual events, common emergence of generality found in explanations, epistemic requirements for Deductive Explanation including the Aristotlian view of appropriate adequacy for premises in Deductive Explanation

4. "The Logical Character of Scientific Laws"
Accidental and Nomic Universality, difficulties of arguing of laws as necessary constructs of reality, the nature of nomic universality, contrary-to-fact universals, critiques of Hume's nomic universality, causal laws. locus of inference. Along with multiple historical examples emphasizing the significance of these issues.

5. "Experimental Laws and Theories"
Distinctions between experimental laws and theories, descriptions as non-logical constructs in experimental laws, the 3 major components of theories (Physical and Chemical mostly): 1. abstract calculus, 2. rules that reference empirical content, and 3. interpretation the unites the abstractions and references, lack of direct empirical evidence for many aspect of theories, vagueness of some theoretical language.

6. "The Cognitive Status of Theories"
Analogy as basis for theories, Descriptive View of theories, translatability, or lack thereof, of theoretical languages among theories and other theories, Instrumentalist View of theories, abstractive and hypothetical theories, theories based on "Ideal" conditions, parameters, and shapes.

7. "Mechanical Explanations and the Science of Mechanics"
What a Mechanical Explanation is, the history of Mechanics - Statics and Dynamics, detailed discussion over Newton's 3 Laws of Motion and their significance, limits of using mathematics for deriving laws, ideal state problems as a guide to Mechanics, the logical status of mechanical science.

8. "Space and Geometry"
Classical Mechanics and Euclidean (pure) Geometry

9. "Geometry and Physics"
Inadequacy of Classical Mechanics and the rise of Relativity and 2 Non-Eucladian Geometries: 1. Lobachewskian Geometry and 2. Reimannian Geometry

10. "Causality and Indeterminism in Physical Theory"
Deterministic structure of Classical Mechanics, alternate descriptions of physical states, atomic statistically properties of substances, lack of empirical evidence for components of statistical hypotheses, Probabilistic Explanations, language of Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, problems and misinterpretations of uncertainties, dual nature subatomic constructs, Psi functions as statistical magnitude measurements, indeterminism in Quantum Theory, principle of causality, Chance as meaning scientific ignorance.

11. "Reduction of Theories"
Autonomy of sciences, reduction of sciences, reductive explanations, reduction of the thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, formal conditions for reduction, non-formal conditions for reduction, borrowing of theories and laws by other sciences, doctrine of emergence, possible changing of laws of nature, wholes, sums, and organic unities.

12. "Mechanical Explanations and Organismic Biology"
Objections to Biology being absorbed or reduced to Physics, structure of Teleological Explanations, "design" or "functional" language almost impossible to avoid in biological and physiological systems (i.e. God-of-the-Gaps fallacy and the Evolution/Chance-of-the-Gaps fallacy), spatial and temporal organization statements as implying a "final end or purpose", standpoint of Organismic Biology, reduction and "primary sciences" and "secondary sciences", lack of complete autonomy of Biology as of yet.

13. "Methodological Problems of the Social Sciences"
Objections to social sciences (Anthropology, Social Science, Political Science, Economics, Psychology, etc) as being true "sciences", Controlled Inquiry as a core method, Controlled Experiment difficulties, problems with social relativity and social laws, bias, knowledge of social phenomenon as social variables, subjective nature of social subject matter, "behaviorism", "Value-Oriented" bias of social inquiry.

14. "Explanation and Understanding of the Social Sciences"
Statistical generalizations, "functionalism" and teleological and causal explanations, methodical individualism and social interpretations

15. "Problems in the Logic of Historical Inquiry"
Reliability of sources, the focus of historical inquiry, Probabilistic and Genetic Explanations, recurrent issues in historical inquiry, and Determinism in history (read Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought for an excellent look at fallacies in the science of history)

This book is 600 pages of philosophical and science rigor and is very dense in content. A prior background in Physics or Chemistry and Calculus will be helpful. I think that this book is better than Popper's works and that this book deserves a wide audience. After reading this and the Christian lawyer Francis Bacon's Francis Bacon: The New Organon and Related Writings which is to be the foundational text on the "Scientific Method" and it's variants, you will know what science truly is and it's metaphysical nature.

Nature doesn't advance because nature simply "does" what it can do without thinking or purpose in and of itself. However, science (a.k.a. knowledge), on the other hand, does and can advance because of our own ignorance and failures in our knowledge and understanding of the activities in nature.

For further reading on types of explanations used in science and also in every day life then please read Theories of Explanation and Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. For further reading on similar issues please read The Structure of Scientific Theories. You'll see that science isn't anything special, but is instead commonly used by the uneducated as well.

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Interesting fact: Most historical works in science never went through a "peer review" process at all by "impartial" referees. Usually friends or personal peers would comment and review. After World War II, peer reviewing by "impartial" peers before publishing became the norm.

Read Frank Tipler's essay "Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?" for further information on this aspect of science.

Here are a few sample quotes from Tipler's paper on peer reviewed science:

"We first need to understand what the "peer review" process is. That is, we need to understand how the process operates in theory, how it operates in practice, what it is intended to accomplish, and what it actually does accomplish in practice. Also of importance is its history. The notion that a scientific idea cannot be considered intellectually respectable until it has first appeared in a "peer" reviewed journal did not become widespread until after World War II. Copernicus's heliocentric system, Galileo's mechanics, Newton's grand synthesis--these ideas never appeared first in journal articles. They appeared first in books, reviewed prior to publication only by the authors or by the authors' friends. Even Darwin never submitted his idea of evolution driven by natural selection to a journal to be judged by "impartial" referees. Darwinism indeed first appeared in a journal, but one under the control of Darwin's friends. And Darwin's article was completely ignored. Instead, Darwin made his ideas known to his peers and to the world at large through a popular book: On the Origin of Species."

"If one reads memoirs or biographies of physicists who made their great breakthroughs after, say, 1950, one is struck by how often one reads that "the referees rejected for publication the paper that later won me the Nobel Prize." One example is Rosalyn Yalow, who described how her Nobel-prize-winning paper was received by the journals. "In 1955 we submitted the paper to Science[the Journal]. The paper was held there for eight months before it was reviewed. It was finally rejected. We submitted it to the Journal of Clinical Investigations, which also rejected it." (Quoted from The Joys of Research, edited by Walter Shropshire, p. 109). Another example is Günter Blobel, who in a news conference given just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, said that the main problem one encounters in one's research is "when your grants and papers are rejected because some stupid reviewer rejected them for dogmatic adherence to old ideas." According to the New York Times (October 12, 1999, p. A29), these comments "drew thunderous applause from the hundreds of sympathetic colleagues and younger scientists in the auditorium."

"And if Annalen der Physik rejected a paper, for whatever reason, any professional German physicist had an alternative: Zeitschrift für Physik. This journal would publish any paper submitted by any member of the German Physical Society. This journal published quite a few worthless papers. But it also published quite a few great papers, among them Heisenberg's first paper on the Uncertainty Principle, a central idea in quantum mechanics. There was no way in which referees or editors could stop an idea from appearing in the professional journals. In illustration of this, the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr said, according to Abraham Pais (The Genius of Science, p. 307), that if a physicist has an idea that seems crazy and he hesitates to publish so that someone else publishes the idea first and gets the credit, he has no one to blame but himself. In other words, it never occurred to Bohr that referees or editors could stop the publication of a new idea."

Investigate the nature of science and see what you find.