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Insight from the Sociology of Science

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Insight from the Sociology of Science CHAPTER 7 INSIGHT FROM THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE Science is What Scientists Do It has been argued a number of times in previous chapters that empirical adequacy is insufficient, in itself, to establish the validity of a theory: consistency with the observable ‘facts’ does not mean that a theory is true,1 only that it might be true, along with other theories that may also correspond with the observational data. Moreover, empirical inadequacy (theories unable to account for all the ‘facts’ in their domain) is frequently ignored by individual scientists in their fight to establish a new theory or retain an existing one. It has also been argued that because experi- ments are conceived and conducted within a particular theoretical, procedural and instrumental framework, they cannot furnish the theory-free data needed to make empirically-based judgements about the superiority of one theory over another. What counts as relevant evidence is, in part, determined by the theoretical framework the evidence is intended to test. It follows that the rationality of science is rather different from the account we usually provide for students in school. Experiment and observation are not as decisive as we claim. Additional factors that may play a part in theory acceptance include the following: intuition, aesthetic considerations, similarity and consistency among theories, intellectual fashion, social and economic influences, status of the proposer(s), personal motives and opportunism. Although the evidence may be inconclusive, scientists’ intuitive feelings about the plausibility or aptness of particular ideas will make it appear convincing. The history of science includes many accounts of scientists ‘sticking to their guns’ concerning a well-loved theory in the teeth of evidence to the contrary, and some- times in the absence of any evidence at all. Marton et al. (1994) surveyed eighty- three Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine about the role of intuition in their research. Seventy-two were in no doubt about its importance. Michael Brown, joint winner with Joseph Goldstein of the 1985 Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on cholesterol metabolism, commented “As we did our work… we would go from one step to the next, and somehow we would know which was the right way to go. And I can’t really tell how we knew that” (Marton et al., 1994, p. 461). Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986 winner, with Stanley Cohen, for their dis- covery of growth factors) said: “Intuition… is something unconscious, which, all of a sudden, comes out of a clear sky to you and is absolutely a necessity, more than logic… You’ve been thinking about something… for a long time… then all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash, and you suddenly see the answer” (pp. 462 & 465) and Konrad Lorenz (joint winner in 1973, with Karl von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen, for work on animal behaviour) remarked: “[You keep] all known facts afloat, waiting for them to fall into place, like a jigsaw puzzle… If you try to permutate your knowledge, nothing comes out of it. You 123 CHAPTER 7 must give a sort of mysterious pressure, and then rest, and suddenly BING… the solution comes” (p. 467). Perhaps, as so often, Albert Einstein (1918/1954) says it best: The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up… There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them (p. 221) Elegance, simplicity and parsimony can be significant factors in gaining support for a theory. As Martin Amis (1995) says, in his novel The Information, “In the mathematics of the universe beauty helps tell us whether things are false or true” (p. 8), while Richard Feynman (1965) remarked that “You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity… When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right. The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought” (p. 171). Similarly, in a conversation with Einstein, Werner Heisenberg (1971) argued that the simplicity of good ideas is a strong indication of their truth: “I believe, just like you, that the simplicity of natural laws has an objective character, that is not just the result of thought economy. If nature leads us to mathematic forms of great simplicity and beauty… we cannot help thinking that they are ‘true’, that they reveal a genuine feature of nature” (p. 68). Max Born (1924) argues in similar vein when he says that relativity theory was accepted long before supporting experimental/ observational evidence became available because it made science “more beautiful and grander”. Also commenting on the elegance of Einstein’s work, Paul Dirac (1980) states – Anyone who appreciates the fundamental harmony connecting the way Nature runs and general mathematical principles must feel that a theory with the beauty and elegance of Einstein’s theory has to be substantially correct… One has a great confidence in the theory arising from its great beauty, quite independent of its detailed successes… One has an overpowering belief that its foundations must be correct quite independent of its agreement with observation”. (p. 44) In another essay, Dirac (1963) says, “It is more important to have beauty in equations than to have them fit experiments” (p. 47). Miller (2006) argues that it was Dirac’s insistence on beauty at the expense of ‘facts’ that led to the discovery of antiparticles. Referring to his and Francis Crick’s elucidation of the structure of DNA, Jim Watson (1980) reports that Rosalind Franklin accepted the fact that the structure was “too pretty not to be true” (p. 124). More extensive discussion of the role of aesthetic criteria in science can be found in McAllister (1996). A new theory is more likely to be accepted when it is consistent with other well-established theories and is less likely to be accepted when it is in conflict with them (Laudan, 1977). Thus, Copernican theory had some initial problems because it was inconsistent with Aristotelian physics- a problem that was solved by Galileo. Perhaps scientists have expectations of a grand unifying theory, so they look for common explanations or common kinds of explanations.2 Holton (1981, 1986, 124 .
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