Science as a Map of the World
While the constructionist depiction of science as just one among many
crafts which man engages in is clearly extreme and absurd, the
principles which underlie such a claim cannot simply be swept under
the rug and ignored. Science, as well as scientific knowledge is a
largely man made construal of nature rather than some mirror of
reality which the scientists "unearth." Where the constructivists went
wrong is in not acknowledging the manner in which reality strongly
constrains such construals. Yes, we can only begin to reason about
reality once a contingent and corrigible classification scheme and
fundamental assumptions is in place, but this does not change the fact
that there is an objective reality which such schemes are about. While
there may be no one, True, God's-eye conceptual scheme available from
which to view this objective reality, the very fact that there is an
objective reality to which all conceptual schemes refer entails that
some conceptual schemes are better than others.
But what does "better" mean in this context? By "better" we simply
cannot mean "true", for truth, universality and knowledge are all
things that only makes sense within a conceptual scheme. There is no
meta-scheme in which one conceptual scheme can be defined as true in
any meaningful way. Thus, the problem of scientific knowledge as
platonic truth is three-fold:
1. We have no established method for discovering truth.
2. We have no way or recognizing truth when or if we do discover it.
3. Truth is a concept which is constructed rather than discovered.
In other words, we have no way of finding what truth is in the book of
nature, we have no way of recognizing truth even if we do happen to
find it in the book of nature, and worse still, there is no one, true
book of nature at all. The same can also be said for rationality,
objectivity, knowledge and science.
This, however, seems to leave the door wide open for an anything-goes
chaos in the realm of science. After all, how are we supposed to know
what is and is not science if there is no cosmic dictionary or
prewritten book of nature which can be consulted? Who gets to decide
what is and is not science, and how can we know if they are right? Why
is dark matter fair game in the science class room, but intelligent
design or even flat out young earth creationism not? These are not
easy questions to answer in a definitive manner.
The fact is that whether a theory is scientific or not is decided
primarily (exclusively?) by the scientific community itself. This
community does not arbitrarily grant the status of science to one
theory while withholding it from another equally "good" theory.
Rather, they ask questions concerning testability, falsifiability,
explanatory power, consistency, scope, etc.
What, in turn, justifies these criteria? Principle underlies the
principle of science? The answer is fertility. Does a theory work to
control and predict phenomena with greater consistency, accuracy and
scope? Does it raise workable problems? Fertility is what justifies
the scientific assumption that the natural world is a closed system as
well as methodological naturalism in general. Dark matter is
considered to be a potentially fertile theory and is thus accepted as
a scientific theory, while intelligent design is not.
Fertility, it should be noted, does not overcome the three-fold
barrier to truth which science faces, nor does it claim to. Fertility
does not establish one conceptual scheme as being true, nor does it
make the existence of such a scheme more plausible. Fertility, we have
seen, is not a reliable indicator of whether some theory is true or
not. Fertility is interpreted as a somewhat reliable path to truth,
although it is doubtful that such a metaphor even makes sense given
the other two barriers which science faces. Indeed, it would be more
accurate to say that fertility is seen as a reliable path to
fertility.
In this respect Philip Kitcher's metaphor of science as "mapping"
reality is convenient and compelling. A map is about the world, but no
map can ever be the one "true" map of the world, for such a map would
be the world itself. Thus, road maps, detail maps, oil field maps,
topological maps, whether maps, etc. are all different ways of
modeling or mapping the world, none of which can be said to be the
"true" map. Additionally, truths of the world, indeed, the very world
itself can only be encountered and described relative to the
assumptions and schematics which structure any given map. How good or
how fertile a map is, is determined in large part by what we want to
do with it, but even more so by the actual nature of the objective
world which the map is supposed to model.
Filed in: science
# posted by jeff g : 5:52:00 PM
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# : 1/23/2008 2:54 AM
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# : 1/23/2008 2:56 AM
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