6.3.1 |
SCIENCE AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON |
Whatever the exact definition of science may be,
essential to science is some kind of theoretical method or
procedure.
Anything goes —a variant of a two-and-a-half thousand
years older everything flows— may be true of nondisciplinary
thought, it cannot be true of
disciplinary thought,
and least of all for the most methodic form of the
factual-modal type of it: science.
(Granting that there is a difference
between nonscientific and scientific thought other than that it
is called "scientific". That science is then the most methodic
on the whole does not imply that it would be methodic by some
high, abstract standard.)
But what is the 'scientific method'? It has to do with the
inner logic of a theory, that is, the
propositional factual, modal and/or
normative conditions, and insofar as
it is empirical science, with the relationship between theory and
experiment, that is, the facts,
modes and/or norms of correspondence.
It was once said that empirical science would thus be both
rational and inductive; 'inductive' in that it would infer
from a limited number of instances of some concurrence of predicates
that the concurrence would obtain universally. On this inductivist
account of science, empirical theories or generalizations
would only have to be verifiable. Against this position it
has been argued that science may be rational, but that it is not
inductive. If all known specimens of a certain species happen to
have a predicate P, then the inference that all members of that
species, wherever in the universe, have predicate P is just not
valid if verifiability were taken as the criterion. (Happen to
have P, for the having of P must not be a predicate which a
member of that species has by definition.)
On the deductivist (but still rational) account of empirical
science, the test is not verifiability but falsifiability.
In other words, a scientific theory does not hold because it has been
proved, but because it has not yet been disproved. However, this
ideal picture of science has in turn been attacked for describing
perhaps how the empirical scientist ought to work, but not as
'e actually does work. In
other words: the objection is
that the deductivist conception of empirical science is normative
rather than descriptive. In the course of history, empirical
science would on the alternative view not only not have been
inductive, but not rational either. According to
the nonrationalist philosopher of science who looks at
'er subject in a
historical, that is, factual, perspective, a scientific theory
is actually never abandoned because it has been falsified. And
it just 'need not, and in fact never does, explain the facts
with which it can be confronted'.
To understand the nonrationalist position (which definitely is not
'irrationalist') one must conceive of science not as a purely
individual undertaking in which solitary researchers occupy
themselves with clearing a way to
truth and
relevance, but as a social phenomenon.
In
practise the scientist,
or at least the person whose brainchild needs recognition as a scientific
theory, is part of, or faced with, a 'community of specialists'.
It is this community which determines which
problems and hypotheses deserve their own and the general
public's attention. What the members of such a community share
has been called "a disciplinary matrix". Such a matrix is
said to have four components. Firstly, there is a common conceptual
apparatus with its own terminology, analogies and metaphors; an
example of this is the belief that the molecules of a gas
'behave like small elastic billiard-balls'. Secondly, there are
the so-called 'symbolic generalizations' used by all members of
the group; they are expressions cast in a logical form. Thirdly,
there is a body of norms and values particularly concerned with
predictions (which should be quantifiable and accurate) and
whole theories (which should be coherent, simple and plausible).
The most important component of the disciplinary matrix in this
philosophical theory of science is, however, the 'paradigm'.
In the strict, original sense this is merely an 'exemplar', a
'concrete problem-solution', serving as an example of how to
scientifically handle a problem in the discipline concerned. In
a much wider sense paradigm has come to be regarded as
the whole disciplinary matrix itself.
As the argument runs, 'the installation of a paradigm in a
scientific field is a prerequisite of proper, that is, normal
science'. This 'normal science' is definitely not bent upon
falsification. On the contrary: it will attempt to interpret the
facts in such a way that they agree with the paradigm in force
at that moment, or to reinterpret or restrict the paradigm
itself in such a way that it corresponds with the facts. Hence,
on this account it is erroneous to believe that a theory which
has the status of a scientific paradigm would be abandoned when
falsified. Not only one or a few, but many deviations or
'anomalies' have first to be discovered and deemed important
enough to cause a crisis. Such a crisis has been assumed to be
'a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories'.
But
altho the old paradigm
may have 'exhausted its fertility', and altho scientists may begin to
lose faith, and may begin to look for alternatives, they will not
—as pointed out— 'renounce the paradigm which has led them
into crisis'.
It is only if, and when, an alternative candidate is available
to take its place, that scientists give up their belief.
'The decision to reject one paradigm is' therefore —if this
description of the history of science is correct— 'always
simultaneously the decision to accept another'.
The so-called 'traumatic episode' during which an old scientific paradigm
is disposed of, and a new one established, has been described as "a
scientific revolution".
Less dramatically, however, one could also speak of "a more or less
radical transition".
This transition can be quite a disturbing experience as a change of
paradigms is, as it were, a change of world-view.
(A change which sometimes appears to be as sudden as a 'gestalt switch'.)
A radically new theory must first be developed or a new
discovery must first be made by one or a few individuals.
'Usually' —as noted— they are people 'so new to the
crisis-ridden field that practise has not yet committed them too deeply
to the world-view and rules of the old paradigm'.
It is not necessarily the case that their contemporaries who are too
deeply committed to the traditional paradigm would have to
apostatize personally. What often happens —as one scientist has
observed— is that the apologists of the traditional paradigm
eventually die, and that a new generation grows up which is made
familiar with the new doctrine. Even in science the transfer of
allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is said to be a conversion
experience which cannot be forced upon the believers. Endeavoring
to do so would be asocial.
As could be expected, the nonrationalist theory of scientific
paradigms has met with much criticism. It has been objected, for
example, that it is a purely sociological and psychological
description of the business of science, but this objection is
not to the point so long as it does not pretend to be a
normative methodology of (empirical) science. It has been
objected too that, altho 'normal science' and 'paradigms'
exist, 'normal science' in the sense suggested is uncritical,
and that scientists who stick to their paradigm thru thick and
thin suffer from dogmatism. According to a similar objection,
several scientific theories (paradigms?) may coexist in one
community at the same time. Finally, it has been correctly
pointed out that the practise of science as described in the
theory of scientific paradigms is not that unreasonable. The
ultimate, collective decision to accept a particular paradigm
may indeed take place in accordance with certain rules, yet when
the established paradigm is getting into serious trouble, a
scientist ought to work, or some scientist is bound to start
working, on the development of a plausible alternative. To be a
plausible alternative and to become the new paradigm it will
have to fulfil certain requirements of rationality. These
requirements are at least partially reflected in what will
remain the same in the bodies of norms and values of the old
and the new disciplinary matrixes. At the same time they do
reflect at least partially, the norms and values of scientific
rationalism.
In dealing with the theory of the succession of scientific
paradigms the historicist interpretation of this theory has not
always been clearly distinguished from a nonhistoricist one. On
the historicist view the succession of paradigms would
not only be a historical fact, but a necessity, and the theory would
thus offer a law of historical development. This historicism
would even imply, for example, that given a certain paradigm
anomalies once must occur. Looking at the theory from a
nonhistoricist angle tho, the focus of attention is not so much
on any regularity in the succession of paradigms itself, but on
regularities in the conduct of scientists vis-à-vis the paradigm
and, perhaps, change of paradigms in their own time and
community.
When comparing science with
denominationalism, it is these
regularities in the conduct of people, and in the social acceptance of
traditional or novel systems of disciplinary thought, which are
particularly interesting as they would hold at all times in the past,
the present and the future.
