.“The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable”— physician and biologist, Rudolf Virchow
Science is one of human’s most important tools and will continue to expand our knowledge, technology and capabilities. It has helped us learn much about the physical nature at the subatomic to the cosmic level, helped us cure diseases and reach the moon, extended lifespans and led to computers. However, as with every method of examination, science has limits.
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What is science?
Science is a way of thinking that examines the physical world in a particular way, with a particular purpose and at a particular level. It is premised on sensory observation, empirical testing, and human logic, and uses an established way called the scientific method.
The scientific method consists of systematic observation, measurement and experiment to make theories and models. Though it is sometimes expressed in a different number of steps, the following is a standard example of the scientific method:
Purpose/Question – What do you want to learn? Which are faster, cats or dogs? Does the color of the light make indoor flowers grow faster?
Research – Read in books, search online, talk with experts about the topic. You do this to help you formulate your hypothesis.
Hypothesis – After doing your research, make a testable prediction (hypothesis) of the answer to the problem. An example is “Orange light will make plants grow faster than using blue or red light.”
Experiment – Design and conduct an experiment to test your hypothesis.
Analyze– Record your results (the data) and analyze it to see how it answers your hypothesis.
Conclusion – You may find that your hypothesis was correct, but you may find it was wrong and come up with a new hypothesis(es) to test. Write and report your conclusion.
Science often isn’t so straightforward, with research and testing coming up with unexpected results leading to further hypotheses to be tested. Many discoveries and paths come from accidents, happenstance and epiphanies. Research often expands into other areas. Science involves much creativity.
With continual research, testing and new findings, models and theories are regularly altered and sometimes replaced. Science is a never-ending work in progress. While superstition and pseudoscience provide easy and often untestable answers and avoid skeptical scrutiny, science requires testing and proof. Richard Feynman wrote: “It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with the experiment, it's wrong.”
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Falsification and Provisional Knowledge
Science works on the principles and reality of falsificationism and provisional knowledge.
Falsificationism says that we cannot prove something is true, we can just prove that is false. A scientific hypothesis must be testable. Where there are no cases where the claim is found to be false-- meaning the hypothesis has been tested many times with no cases proving it wrong--, the hypotheses can be considered provisionally true. Provisionally true means it is considered correct at the present, but may be changed if future evidence proves it wrong. Some might use the term working theory. As such, all scientific knowledge, theories and models are provisional.
An example is if a universal scientific statement says that "All swans are white." For the sake of argument let’s say that all swans that scientists, bird watchers with cameras, you and I, have ever seen have been white. It is still impossible to know that all swans are white. All swans have not been or ever will be observed. A black, blue or brown swan may have existed, exist or will be documented. However, as all the swans seen by scientists have been white, it can be considered provisionally true that "all swans are white."
There is nothing about which humans and scientists can be one hundred percent certain, and scientific results are expressed as probabilities. Scientists test current knowledge, models and theories and work to refine them.
One of the limits of science is it cannot have certain knowledge. One of its strengths is that it knows its knowledge is not certain.
Beyond the uncertainty, there are other limits to science, including its limited scope, unproven assumptions, and scientists’ biases.
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AREAS BEYOND SCIENCE
Science is strict about what it can and, thus, cannot study. It works in areas that can be observed and scientifically tested, with extrapolation using human logic. The following are some areas beyond scientific testing and human logic.
Art
Art, as in the sublime personal experience not the physical artifact, cannot be ‘proven,’ objectively examined or scientifically tested.
Science can measure the frequency of a note and the colors of a painting. However, there is no scientific test and no objective logical test that can tell what is art, what is good and bad art, what an artwork means.
Art perception and judgment are subjective. What an artwork means and what is art differs from person to person. There is no final or single answer. Art exists in the ephemeral personal experience.
Morals and ethics
There is no scientific or logical way to determine what is good or bad, ethical or unethical. Science and objective logic cannot test or tell you whether murder, abortion or rape is good or bad or neither, whether humans are more or less important than or equal to other animals, if stealing or cheating on your taxes is ethical or unethical. There is no scientific test to determine the best or correct way to order society, whether democracy or dictatorship is better, what are good and bad laws.
The Spiritual and mystical, the existence or non-existence of god or higher power
The existence of God or higher supernatural power cannot be scientifically tested. Whether or not it exists, God is defined as being beyond the science’s scope of the natural world, beyond human senses and reason. It is often called supernatural and transcendental.
As with everyone else, scientists have opinions on subjects outside of science. I have scientific peer reviewers for my academic work. One is a medical scientist at Oxford and the other is an applied mathematician at the National Foundation for Educational Research. One is an atheist and the other is Catholic. They agree on scientific subjects but have different opinions on subjects outside of science’s scope.
Meaning, purpose, and metaphysical truth
Science cannot answer what are the meaning and metaphysical truth of the universe, what is a human’s purpose, or even if such things objectively exist. Scientists have opinions, and they are just opinions. Much of our world view, many of our answers to big questions involve unscientific and a-logical forms of thinking.
The relative value and worth of science
There is no scientific test to identify if science is or is not the best or the correct way to examine reality or to determine if it is better, worse or equal to religion, spirituality or art. Science is neutral on religion and the meaning of art, so it cannot objectively compare them. Science saying science is the best method is a circular argument.
Science and religion, rationality versus art, have different scopes and are addressing different questions. Physics Nobel Prize winner and devout Christian Charles Townes said that science examines the physical nature of the universe, while religion addresses the questions of meaning.
What to do with science
Science cannot tell you what to do with science. Applied science, including engineering and pharmaceutical manufacturing, involves making subjective choices on how basic science should be applied, and what products and services should be made.
Scientific Things Beyond Science
Some physical events happen so infrequently and some theories need such thorough testing that they cannot be observed and tested as required.
Science’s universal laws-- laws that apply to everything for all time-- cannot be entirely tested. Anything involving infinity, forever or always-- concepts not only in science but religion, morality and common rhetoric-- cannot be observed or empirically tested.
There are scientific theories that are widely believed by scientists to be true or logically possible-- such as concerning time, other worlds and the creation of the universe--, but the scientists know they can never be scientifically tested.
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BIASES IN SCIENCE
“I was aware of biases in humans at large, but when I first ‘learned’ that they also apply to scientists, I was somewhat amazed, even though it is so obvious.”-- Chris Hartgerink PhD, School of Behavioral Science, Tilburg University
While science is often described in the rhetoric of being objective, objectivity in science or any human endeavor is impossible. Some biases are fixable, while others cannot be escaped or even known. Some biases in science are intentional.
How would scientific paradigms be different if humans had different senses and brains? Substantially. Dartmouth College physics and astronomy professor Marcelo Gleiser wrote, “Everything we do in science is conditioned by the way we look at the world. And the way we look at the world is necessarily limited.”
Scientists have all the biases of humans. For example, scientists have the unconscious tendency to search for, or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s existing beliefs. If a researcher has a particular result, she may look for patterns in the data that support that hypothesis, while ignoring other important patterns that oppose it. Scientists perceive subjective patterns and meaning in random samples. This is akin to seeing an animal in a cloud. All humans have a tendency to generalize and stereotype. Unconscious biases are exceedingly difficult to overcome. The best scientists can do is to be conscious that they have them.
Racial and sexual biases have long influenced science. For example, much technology is designed for men, and car safety features have been designed from tests using crash test dummies the size of the average male. The result is women are forty-seven percent more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash. In the essay Racism and Sexism in Science Haven’t Disappeared, Harvard University history of science professor Naomi Oreskes wrote, “Science has an admirable record of producing reliable knowledge about the natural and social world, but not when it comes to acknowledging its own weaknesses.”
Politics and religious beliefs affect scientific research. Politicians with no science background can dictate what research is funded, and religious beliefs can influence what research is banned. Stem cell research has been banned for religious reasons.
Morality and ethics in science involve biases and are biases. Choosing to experiment on rabbits or mice instead of humans involves bias. Choosing to experiment on animals 'humanely’ involves a moral bias. Choosing to do research “for the greater good of humankind” involves biases. These biases help shape scientific knowledge. It shows that, despite claims that science should be objective, most scientists and most people want science to have some biases.
Both conscious and unconscious, much scientists’ bias is from the need to get published and to have new ‘important’ findings.
“One of the reasons the science literature gets skewed is that journals are much more likely to publish positive than negative results: It’s easier to say something is true than to say it’s wrong. Journal referees might be inclined to reject negative results as too boring, and researchers currently get little credit or status, from investors or departments, from such findings.”-- Physicist and science writer, Dr. Philip Ball
From in-person conversation, University of Wisconsin-Madison Slichter Professor Emeritus of Engineering Research and US National Academy of Engineering member Dr. Dale F. Rudd said that when he first started teaching in the 1950s there was less emphasis on funding and getting published in journals. The research was long term, such as working on a five-year project. He said that in his later years there was great university emphasis on getting funding and being published. This transformed much of the research emphasis, often making it shortsighted.
Science in other ways also involves social psychology and is influenced by society. Certain theories and ways of examination are in vogue, become institutionalized and financially invested in. Scientists follow the orthodoxy, view things in the way they were trained. Research and products are often motivated by the desire for financial profits.
In his landmark 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Harvard physicist and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn wrote that science has popular paradigms that are not just based on empirical data, but societal forces and social psychology. Scientists are as much of crowd followers as anyone else.
“The success of the paradigm is at the start largely a promise of success. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise. Mopping up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science. That enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others.“-- Thomas Kuhn
These sentiments are echoed by other scientists:
"Much public thinking follows a rut. The same thing is true in science. People get stuck and don't look in other directions." - Physics Nobel Prize winner Charles H. Townes
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” -- Physics Nobel Prize winner Max Planck
As scientists tend to stick to the prevailing paradigms, Kuhn wrote that it takes an outsider-- or an abundance of dissenting information-- to notice and question the rules.
“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.” -- Thomas Kuhn
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SCIENCE’S UNPROVEN AND UNPROVABLE ASSUMPTION
Science has many unprovable assumptions, called axioms.Some axioms are beliefs that are widely held and even seem obviously true, including to you and me. Others are definitions or rules of the game that are needed to make any human system function.
The following are some axioms of science:
Naturalism
Whether used as a belief or an expression of its limited scope, naturalism is the scientific philosophy that only the natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world. However, it is unprovable.
There is an objective physical reality beyond humans that humans can study and objectively learn about
Humans cannot go beyond their minds. Even if one assumes, as most humans assume, that there is an objective physical reality beyond them, one cannot know the accuracy of their perceptions of this reality. It is known that our senses are limited and our perception is in ways delusory. Even if one considers one’s perceptions basically reliable, one knows that these perceptions aren’t entirely reliable and that the nature and extent of this unreliability cannot be fully known.
Can anything be perceived objectively? What viewpoint is objective? Does objectivity exist or is it just a human concept? Many ideas, such as art, are human concepts and do not exist beyond the human mind. Perhaps, objectivity, at least as humans conceive of it, is one of these.
Human logic and reason are correct and reliable
There is no way to prove this. Logic involves axioms, and logic can’t prove itself correct. Even if logic is correct, it is correct within its limited scope.
Mathematical logic uses axioms that cannot be proven. However, they are either definitions or seem obvious to humans and thus accepted. Humans, and logicians, couldn’t work without definitions. All human endeavors, including logic, science and games, start with assumptions and definitions.
“This is a philosophical problem. You have to start somewhere. You have to assume something at the beginning. You have no way of showing where you are starting is true, because you are at the beginning and showing something is true requires you've already begun somewhere else. You start with axioms, you assume they are true for no reason at all and you go from there. If the results look good then you are happy with the axioms.”-- Dr. Stuart Hagler, data scientist, Oregon Health and Science University
The problem with axioms is if they are exchanged with different ones it can change things drastically. Considering that axioms are unproven, unprovable and often arbitrary definitions, there is no reason some of them can’t be fairly be changed.
What if in science you changed the axiom of universality? Or the axiom of naturalism? Or change the assumption that human logic and sensory perceptions are accurate? And why can’t you?
The same can be asked of the unprovable assumptions in all other belief systems and forms of thought.
Existential Truth
Science cannot prove to you that you weren’t born five minutes ago and that your memory isn't an implant. It cannot prove that what you perceive as physical reality isn’t a computer simulation or the universe is really being run by a mad scientist or alien. It cannot prove that your perception of the physical world is just a dream.
Even if you think those ideas are foolish and fanciful-- and I do--, it is more than probable that humans are blind to essential information about the universe and themselves. It is more than probable that some humans’ basic assumptions and conceptions about the world and themselves are false or error-filled.
Scientific Models and Theories Are Functional Tools Not Representations of Reality
“Actually, I think scientists rarely if ever confuse their descriptions of reality with reality itself. In fact, I can't think of any of my colleagues or even a scientist I've ever met who might be tempted to claim that scientific descriptions are reality or are even equal to reality. Not even physicists.”-- Dr. Adam Dorr, environmental social scientist
Scientific models and theories are tools to make predictions about physical phenomena. The theories and models themselves are not necessarily representations of reality, and usually are not intended to be. Statistician George E.P. Box famously said, “All models are false, but some are useful.”
A model or theory is a limited view of a limited subject, made for a specific purpose, edited by the scientist, simplified and distorted for practical purposes, and translated into a form the scientific audience can understand and use. As scientific representations are made by and for humans, they are part about the scientific subject and part about the humans using them.
A paper world map is a useful device, but one with a plethora of differences from what it represents. To start with the obvious, the world isn’t flat, it isn’t paper-thin and can't fit on your desk or be pinned to the wall. For its purpose, maps are artificially colored and marked: latitude and longitude lines, states or territories given different colors. Roadmaps make roads appear proportionally wider than in reality, and remove unwanted details. These unreal qualities are for the convenience of the user. They are needed for the map’s purpose of communicating information.
All world maps have proportional distortions. Translating anything three dimensional into two dimensions requires distortions, as three dimensions and two dimensions are mutually exclusive. Compare your world map at home to a globe and see the difference for yourself. There are different methods of mapping the earth, each method creating its own distortions.
Model of an atom
This representation of an atom is different from a real atom in an abundance of major ways. To start, it’s thousands and thousands of times larger than a real atom. If it weren’t you couldn’t see it.
The representation hardly resembles an atom. The artist’s intent was to make a dummy model for students to learn about the different atomic ‘parts.’ The unreal balls, outer ring and cartoonish appearance are designed to simplify things to teach students.
Scientific representations were never intended to be the be-all and end-all.Scientists consider all scientific models as works in progress. For testing purposes, models are often made to be overly simple. One purpose of such simplification is that errors are more easily identified and corrected. With a more complicated, muddled model, it is harder to identify what part is working and what is not.
Instrumentalism is a scientific principle that focuses on the utility of scientific models and theories. It views theories and models as black boxes, with only their input and output being relevant. This is an excellent explanation of scientific models and theories.
Quantum mechanics is an example. Quantum mechanics uses mathematical logic and statistics to predict things at the atomic and subatomic levels. It has been successful at this, but there are competing theories over its interpretation. There are questions of if things are determined or random, and which elements of the models are real. Despite years of debate and experiment, no consensus has been reached amongst physicists and philosophers of physics concerning which interpretation, if any, best represents the reality. However, instrumentalists say it doesn’t matter because quantum mechanics produces reliable results.
These models are about input and output, but there is more to reality. And function requires suppression and distortion of the facts.
Further, some theories that are known to be wrong are still used because they are, at least in areas and levels, good at predicting. Though they are known to be incorrect, today’s physicists still use some of Newton’s laws of physics in certain areas because they are good at predicting phenomena. The same with some of Einstein's theories.
Sometimes multiple and sometimes seemingly competing theories and models are needed to explain something. This is exemplified by the wave-particle dual nature of light. Though they appear to be mutually exclusive, light in one way acts like a wave and in another way like a particle. This shows how reality and nature can work opposed to normal human logic and reason. It does things that are irrational to humans’ intuitive way of thinking.
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SUMMARY
Science is an important tool for examining physical nature. As with all forms of human examination, it has uncertainty, biases and limits, and limited scope.
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