History, Theory, and Philosophy of Science

(In SMAC + RT)

7th semester -Fall 2005Institute of Media Technology

and Engineering Science Aalborg University Copenhagen

Luis Emilio Bruni (Ph.d)Assistant Proffesor

History, Theory, and Philosophy of ScienceFive Modules within SMAC + RT

1) Introduction to theory of science: ontology, epistemology and paradigms.

2) The paradigms of modernity and our notions of causality.

3) "Every Schoolboy Knows ...": on common epistemological errors.

4) The paradigms of complexity.

5) Art, Science and Technology: an ethical approach to reflexive modernization

History, Theory, and Philosophy of Science

(In SMAC + RT)

7th smester -Fall 2005Institute of Media Technology

and Engineering Science Aalborg University Copenhagen

1st ModuleIntroduction to theory of science: Ontology, Epistemology and Paradigms

Why history, theory, and philosophy of science?

“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based in presuppositions” (Bateson, 1979).

 The difference with other humans activities science besides being based on presuppositions has the goal of testing and revising the old presuppositions and creating new ones.

 It is desirable but not absolutely necessary for the scientist to know consciously and be able to state his own presuppositions and those of his colleages.

 Don’t you need to know the presuppositions of the people interacting with you?

 If that is so, don’t you need to know your own?

Do you?

Knowledge of the presuppositions …

Gregory Bateson (1979) who taught many students in different disciplines from bachelor to post-doctoral levels in universities and hospitals, once said:

“I have encountered a very strange gap in their thinking that springs from a lack of certain tools of thought. This lack is rather equally distributed at all levels of education, among students of both sexes and among humanists as well as scientists. Specifically, it is a lack of knowledge of the presuppositions not only of science but also of everyday life.”

What are tools of thought?

What is a presupposition?  

What is a premise?  

Can we have contradictory premises?  

Can you state or articulate some of your presuppositions?

What is the importance of scientific presuppositions?

There are better and worse ways of constructing scientific theories so there is a point in insisting on the articulate statement of presuppositions.

 We may perhaps have been protected from the harsh notion that some of our presuppositions may simply be wrong.

“Some tools of thought are so blunt that they are almost useless; others are so sharp that they are dangerous. But the wise man will have the use of both kinds”

“Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.” (Bateson, 1979)

Presupposition vs. Prejudice

What is the difference between a presupposition and a prejudice?

Presupposition something taken to be true without proof assumption, postulate, postulation, premise, supposition.

 Prejudice an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts a preconceived preference or idea the act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.

What is a paradigm?

A general conception, model, or "worldview" that may be influential in shaping the development of a discipline or subdiscipline.

"A shared set of assumptions. The paradigm is the way we perceive the world; water to the fish. The paradigm explains the world to us and helps us to predict its behavior. When we are in the middle of the paradigm, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm". Epistemology?

"A paradigm is a framework of thought ... a scheme for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality" (Marilyn Ferguson).

From the Greek Paradeigma model, pattern, example.

Paradigm

More technically a theoretical, methodological, or heuristic framework.

Sometimes "paradigm" is used synonymously with "methodology," but often it has a broader connotation, more like "world-view."

Paradigms are social constructions, historically and culturally embedded discourse practices, and therefore neither inviolate nor unchanging Paradigm Shift

Kuhn

Thomas Kuhn (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions the concept of paradigm is linked to a "coherent tradition of scientific research” a common way of seeing the world and of practicing science.

Examples Newtonian mechanics, Copernican astronomy.

General agreement within a single culture not only scientific.

Scientific Paradigms

Kuhn science is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, science is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions" [Nicholas Wade, writing for Science] after such revolutions, "one conceptual world view is replaced by another”.

Contrary to popular conception typical scientists are not objective and independent thinkers they are conservative individuals who accept what they have been taught and apply their knowledge to solving the problems that their theories dictate.

Ontology and Epistemology

Ontology a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being or kinds of existence the "science of being”.

It is sometimes considered to be identical to metaphysics.  

In a more specific sense that part of metaphysics that specifies the most fundamental categories of existence the elementary substances or structures out of which the world is made.

 It analyses the most general and abstract concepts or distinctions that underlie more specific descriptions of any phenomenon in the world e.g. time, space, matter, process, cause and effect, system.

Ontology and Epistemology

Epistemology a branch of science combined with a branch of philosophy.

As science epistemology is the study of how particular organisms (including scientists) or aggregates of organisms (including scientific communities) know, think, and decide.

As philosophy epistemology is the study of the necessary limits and other characteristics of the process of knowing, thinking, and deciding.

What is the relation between ontology and Epistemology?Ontology The way things are.Epistemology How we can know things. is there a circularity?

First Class Exercise

OntologyAristotle first to construct a well-defined and developed ontology.

 Aristotle’s "Metaphysics" analyses the simplest elements to which the mind reduces the world of reality.

 Johanes Clauberg (1625-1665) first to use the term “ontology”.

 Ontology "the science of being".

 Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) gave a wider extension to term "metaphysics".

Wolff divided "real philosophy" into general metaphysics which he called ontology and special metaphysics under which he included cosmology, psychology, and theodicy.

The subject-matter of ontology 1. The objective concept of being in its widest range, as embracing the actual

and potential the problems concerned with essence (nature) and existence the concept of entity.

2. The properties coextensive with being unity, truth, and goodness, and their immediately associated concepts, order and beauty are next explained. 

3. The fundamental divisions of being into the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc. and the subdivisions of the finite into the categories substance and its accidents (quantity, quality, etc.) follow in turn the objective reality of substance, the meaning of personality, the relation of accidents to substance being the most prominent topics.

4. The concluding portion of ontology is usually devoted to the concept of cause and its primary divisions efficient and final, material and formal the objectivity and analytical character of the principle of causality.

Ontology is not:

1. A subjective science as Kant describes it.

2. ”An inferential Psychology" as Hamilton regards it.

3. A knowledge of the absolute (theology)

4. A knowledge of some ultimate reality whether conceived as matter or as spirit, which Monists suppose to underlie and produce individual real beings and their manifestations.

Our basic beliefs

Ontology is a fundamental interpretation of the ultimate constituents of the world of experience.

 All these constituents -- individuals with their attributes -- have factors or aspects in common.

The atom, the molecule of matter, the plant, the animal, man, the computer each is a being each has a characteristic essence an individual unity, truth, goodness each is a substance and has accidents and each is or may be a cause.

The fundaments of science

Ontology is therefore the fundamental science since it studies the basal constituents and the principles presupposed by the special sciences.

 All the other parts of philosophy, cosmology, psychology, ethics, even logic, rest on the foundation laid by ontology.

 The physical sciences -- physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics likewise, presuppose the same foundations.

 Nevertheless ontology is dependent in the order of analysis though not in the order of synthesis on these departments of knowledge.

It starts from their data and uses their information in clarifying their presuppositions and principles.

Abstract and concrete

Ontology is accused of dealing with the merely abstract.

But all science deals also with the abstract, the universal not only with the concrete and individual.

 Ontology simply endeavours to make that rudimentary knowledge more distinct and complete.

Without any well developed ontology any system of knowledge would be vague and instable.

Epistemology

Epistéme knowledge, science  

Logos speech, thought, discourse  

Epistemology in a most general way that branch of philosophy which is concerned with the value of human knowledge.

The name epistemology of recent origin Ferrier's "Institutes of Metaphysics: the Theory of Knowing and Being" (1854).

”Epistéme”

Two main views correspond to the two meanings of the Greek word epistéme:

 1) Epistemology in its more general sense of knowledge.

 2) Epistemology in its more special sense of scientific knowledge.

Epistemology "the theory of the origin, nature and limits of knowledge" (Baldwin, "Dict. of Philos. and Psychol.", New York, 1901).

Epistemology does not merely deal with certain assumptions of science but undertakes to test the cognitive faculty itself in all its functions.

Early definitions

1905 "the philosophy of the sciences" "the critical study of the principles, hypotheses and results of the various sciences, designed to determine their logical (not psychological) origin, their value and objective import" ("Bulletin de la Société fran¸aise de Philos.", June, 1905)

 The Italian usage 1905 epistemology "determines the objects of every science by ascertaining their differentiating characteristics, fixes their relations and common principles, the laws of their development and their special methods."("Dizionario di seienze filosofiche", Milan, 1905)

 Epistemology (in Danish Erkendelsesteori) the theory of knowledge "that part of Philosophy which, in the first place, describes, analyses, examines genetically the facts of knowledge as such (psychology of knowledge), and then tests chiefly the value of knowledge and of its various kinds, its conditions of validity, range and limits (critique of knowledge)"  (Eisler, Wörterbuch der philos. Begriffe, 2d ed., Berlin, 1904, I, 298).

The historical need of epistemology

In the beginning of philosophical investigation, as well as in the beginning of cognitive life in the individual, knowledge and certitude are accepted as self-evident facts needing no discussion.

Full of confidence in its own powers, reason at once rises to the highest metaphysical considerations regarding the nature, essential elements, and origin of matter and of the human soul.

 But contradiction and conflict of opinions oblige the mind to turn back upon itself, to reflect in order to compare, test, and perhaps revise its conclusions; for contradictions cause doubt; and doubt leads to reflection on the value of knowledge.

The problems of epistemology

1) Does reflection also justify certitude? Is certain knowledge within man's power?

 In a general way Dogmatism gives an affirmative answer.

Scepticism a negative answer.

Modern Agnosticism attempts to indicate the limits of human knowledge and concludes that the ultimate reality is unknowable.

The problems of epistemology

2) How does knowledge arise, and what modes of knowledge are valid?

 Empiricism admits no other trustworthy information than the data of experience.

 Rationalism claims that reason as a special faculty is more important.

The problems of epistemology

3) What is knowledge?  

Is it merely the result of the mind's inner activity, as Idealism claims?

Or is the mind also passive in the act of knowing, and does it in fact reflect some other reality, as Realism asserts?

 What is the relation between the idea in the mind and the thing outside the mind?

The problems of epistemology

4) Even if knowledge is valid the fact of error is undeniable.

 What will be the criterion by which truth may be distinguished from error?

 What signs decide whether certitude is at all achieved?

The relation between Ontology and Epistemology

Throughout history interest in epistemological questions arise chiefly after periods characterized by ontological investigations implying the assumption of the validity of knowledge.

 Example the change in our notions of matter, energy, time and space that came about with relativity theory and quantum mechanics.

Arthur Peacocke (Chapter 2)

What’s there? ontology 

“…the stuff of the world, matter, possesses energy, and is located in space at a particular time.”

 “The concepts of space, time, matter and energy continued to appear to be ‘given’, self-evident features of the world, a priori concepts essential to our thinking”.

 Are these four concepts constantly the same in different cultures, traditions or historical periods?

 Ex: what changes to our conceptions of these concepts have been introduce by new theories such as relativity theory and quantum mechanics?

Causality as an ontological question

“…the succession of events which form causal chains is independent of the choice of frame of reference and, indeed, the concept of causality is affected by this initial theory of Einstein only to the extent that we now have to recognize that causal influences can never be transmitted through the universe at a speed greater than that of light”.

 Why?

 Think about the implications of these statement.

What is causality? What are our presuppositions about causality?

How to know what is there?

What is there? can we always come up with a picturable and intelligible answer in terms of our “common-sense” experience of the world?

 This will become more obvious when we talk about causality and emergence.

History, Theory, and Philosophy of Science

(In SMAC + RT)

7th smester -Fall 2005Institute of Media Technology

and Engineering Science Aalborg University Copenhagen

1st ModuleIntroduction to theory of science: Ontology, Epistemology and Paradigms