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Science & Hypothesis
So-called “hard” sciences like physics, chemistry, or biology would never have developed to their present rigor and extraordinary intricacy without the scientific method.
Although induction’s role in contemporary science remains philosophically controversial, it wouldn’t be wrong to claim that induction is practically used to support hypotheses and to test theories.
While today we (as a society) focus too little on philosophy, theology, and the liberal arts, it can be justly argued that the Scholastics focused too little on induction and the “hard” sciences.
Francis Bacon (1561 –1626) in his work Novum Organum (“New Method”) criticized the overreliance on Aristotelian deduction. He thought more attention was needed on induction.
Briefly, he thought massive collections of data into carefully designed tables would advance the sciences to completion in a “few years.”
Naturally, that was a very naïve view.
Massive data per se doesn’t result in greater understanding. Data won’t interpret itself. And looking over data is always going to be selective.
Other important figures developing induction included
John Stuart Mill, William Whewell, and John Herschel.
There’s been genuine advancement in the scientific method! We can attempt to outline the spirit behind this method, but, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the detail.” There is no, so to speak, precise formula that leads to scientific discoveries.
Often a spark of insatiable curiosity and genius intuition is required.
Moreover, when it comes to philosophy, it can help us grasp what the “hard” sciences do better. After all, the basic rules of logic still apply – including deduction. And the “hard” sciences entirely take for granted both epistemology and metaphysics.
Philosopher of science Hans Reichenbach (1891 – 1953), for instance, emphasized that the “context of discovery” has no fixed method.
Evidence itself is inductive, but the “context of justification” is actually deductive. That deduction is based on determining results and predictions from some given theory or hypothesis.
What is a central contention of an Aristotelian, by the way? It’s that we learn through experience. Experience must ground us. Truth is not determined by us but by reality itself.
Induction and the “hard” sciences must be incorporated into sound philosophy.
Everything Starts with Observations!
Ancient and Medieval Wisdom Applies Today…
Nihil Est in Intellectu Quod Non Fuerit Prius in Sensu. . .
“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”
(From Thomas Aquinas in De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19.)
This is an epistemological principle because it concerns how we acquire knowledge. From an Aristotelian-Scholastic understanding, all our ideas, ultimately, trace back to experience. We learn as embodied beings in the “external” world around us.
(Note, this doesn’t imply that it’s impossible to have an idea that has no referent in the world. You can have an idea of a “unicorn,” yet that idea was still formed via your experiences with various things.)
Scientific Method: A Tentative Outline
- Observe and Question!
A phenomenon is observed. Questions are raised about it.
For example, what is causing something?
To what extent is something reacting to something else? - Offer an Answer with a Hypothesis!
Give an educated guess that is testable with some experiment.
Note: any hypothesis should be relevant, logically compatible with other things known, give clear predictions, and (generally) have simplicity. - Predict the Hypothesis’s Consequences!
Make predictions about what is entailed by the hypothesis. - Implement Experiment!
Run an experiment that tests the hypothesis.
Or run calculations to test the hypothesis.
Is the hypothesis confirmed or not? - Formulate Results!
Put together (a) the hypothesis, (b) predicted consequences,
and (c) experimental findings.
This outline is subject to harsh criticism.
For one thing, it’s not as if a discovery invariably starts with an observation. A hypothesis may start the process instead. Discoveries are often not randomly discovered. Many contemporary philosophers (e.g., Thomas Kuhn) have argued that observation is always “theory-laden.” This is going to impact what is being observed, what has relevancy in observation, how things are interpreted, etc.
And, for another thing, it’s important to realize that there’s a difference between “knowing the rules” and “applying the rules.” For example, philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote that much of our activities are rooted in “tacit knowledge.” How one designs an experiment, discriminates between data, and practically goes about doing things are not matters that can be easily made explicit or precise.
Rules from Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) gives four rules for “philosophizing.”
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy has a section worth reviewing.
Rule I: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.”
In commenting on this, he adds, “Nature does nothing in vain.”
(This rule upholds Aristotelian-Scholastic principles.)
Nature is, in this sense, “simple” or economical.
Also, things have reasons for being. Effects have causes.
Rule II: “Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.”
The same cause produces the same effects.
Gravity, he says, works the same in Europe and America.
(Rule II nicely follows Rule I because it goes against nature to suppose two different physical forces will produce identically the same thing. There is a “uniformity of nature.”)
Rule III: “The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.”
We can induce, Newton says, the universality of gravity.
Further, we can infer the laws of motion about all bodies.
Rule IV: “In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.”
A mere hypothesis cannot be used to disprove an inductive conclusion.
***
Science without Induction?
David Hume (1711-1776) wrote, “all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition, that the future will be conformable to the past” in his An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.
Since, e.g., I believe that the future will resemble the past, I infer that after throwing a ball into the air it will eventually fall down (as that is what has happened in the past). However, how can I know the future will resemble the past or that induction is dependable?
According to Hume, we cannot appeal to the “principle of the uniformity of nature” because that presupposes that induction is true. Such arguments will essentially be circular. There’s nothing contradictive, Hume further argued, about denying the uniformity principle.
Karl Popper (1902-1994) had a radical answer to the so-called “Problem of Induction.” Popper agrees with David Hume that induction is not justifiable; but then goes on to argue we don’t need induction in the sciences. A scientist should only claim, without resorting to inductive inferences, a hypothesis that can potentially be falsified with contrary evidence. We can never claim anything more.
This is a skepticism. The upshot is that it is only a hypothesis to claim that if a man jumps off a skyscraper he will fall down.
Should we bite the bullet? Should we agree with this radical position?
For what it is worth, my answer is “no.”
Contemporary Aristotelian-Scholasticism can provide an alternative answer. Induction always comes with “risks.” By its very nature it is not deduction. We cannot expect induction to do things it cannot. However, insofar as there is such a thing as “essences” and “natures,” that there are cause-and-effect relations, and so forth, there is reason to think we are justified in using induction.
Indeed, in the process of abstraction, we focus in about the nature of a thing by leaving behind such things as change or other contingencies, and this allows us to legitimately think about the future happenings based on past happenings.
What’s more, what needs to be explained is why the universe is so orderly. If David Hume was right that we have no good reason to think causality is a feature in our universe or that induction has no rational justification, then we should consider what a universe without causality would probably look like.
Since it would likely look radically different from ours, we should infer that it is improbable that everything is due to chance with no causality. Without causality, what are the odds that this website would even exist or maintain its existence? Without causality, what are the odds that a normal match catches on fire rather than bursts into daffodils or human beings?
As Andrew Younan has explained in Matter & Mathematics, “it is the uniformity that requires explanation. To ask how we can explain induction is to miss the point that induction is the explanation, not the thing needing explanation” (pp. 61-62).
That is, Hume wants induction and causality to be explained, but they are doing the explaining of the uniformity of nature.
Finally, it’s also not clear, in practice, that the “hard” sciences work exactly like Karl Popper would like. It seems that induction is going to be part of the picture — even, in spite of it, if we formulate things into the proposition of a falsifiable hypothesis.
Like anything in philosophy, the debates get deep.
There’s more to consider from both sides.