The End of Science?

Why do many now view science as a failed ideology rather than as an epistemological ideal? Should science be viewed that way?

THEODORE SCHICK JR.

litde over six years ago, I attended the twenty-fifth annual Nobel conference, the only program outside Aof Sweden and Norway sanctioned by the Nobel Foundation. It was entitled, "The End of Science?" John Horgan, senior writer for Scientific American, has recently written a book of the same name (Horgan 1996). The sub- ject of both of these inquiries is not the impending solution of certain scientific problems, but the impending dissolution of science itself. What prompted these projects is the grow- ing belief that science is not the royal road to the truth. There is a view abroad in the land that science is more of an ideology than a methodology, and thus that it cannot legiti- mately claim to have a corner on reality. No one expresses this view more pugnaciously than the late philosopher of sci- ence Paul Feyerabend. He writes:

Science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is pre- pared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that

March/April 1997 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER have been developed by man, and not necessarily die best. It is justify their methodology, Feyerabend's claims have gone conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior largely unanswered. As a result, Feyerabend's position has only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without ever having exam- become prominent in both academia and the public at large. ined its advantages and its limits. And as the accepting and This has arguably led not only to the rise of pseudoscience and rejecting of ideologies should be left to the individual it fol- religious fundamentalism, but also to a shrinking pool of sci- lows that the separation of state and church must be comple- entific jobs and research funds. As physicists T. Theocharis and mented by the separation of state and science, that most M. Psimopoulos lament in their article "Where Science Has recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institu- tion. Such a separation may be out only chance to achieve a Gone Wrong": humanity we are capable of, but have

never fuiiy realized. (Feyerabend .975. Feyerabend's position... has arguably led not only to the ,_,.,. ..rise of pseudoscience and religious fundamentalism, but also In Feyerabend s view, science is a reli- r m gion, for it rests on certain dogmas that to a shrinking pool of scientific jobs and research funds. cannot be rationally justified. Thus, accepting it requires a leap of faith. But just as government has Having lost their monopoly in the production of knowledge, no business teaching teligion in die public schools, it has no scientists have also lost their privileged status in society. Thus business teaching science either. In a truly democratic society, the rewards to the creators of science's now ephemeral and dis- people would be as free to choose their epistemology as their posable theories are currently being reduced to accord with political party. their downgraded and devalued work, and with science's diminished ambitions. (Theocharis and Psimopoulos 1987, The Nobel prize-winning physicist Sheldon Glashow 595) spoke at die twenty-fifth Nobel conference in an attempt to counter these sorts of claims. His response consisted of die fol- The rise of Feyerabend's view of science, they claim, is the lowing "cosmic catechism": "We believe that the world is "most fundamental and yet the least recognized cause" of die knowable, that there are simple rules governing the behavior of decline in science funding in the West. So don't let anyone tell matter and the evolution of the universe .... [and that] [a]ny you that philosophy has no practical import. If T h e o c h a r i s and intelligent alien anywhere would have come upon the same Psimopoulos are right, philosophy has put a number of scien- logical system as we have to explain die sttucture of protons tists out of work. and the nature of supernovae. This statement I cannot prove, Feyerabend once proclaimed that scientists "have more this statement I cannot justify. This is my faith" (Glashow money, more authority, more sex appeal than they deserve, and 1989, 24). Instead of refuting Feyerabend, however, Glashow the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in vindicated him. For he admitted that his belief in die objec- their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is tivity of science is simply a matter of faith. It's no wonder that time to cut diem down in size, and to give diem a more mod- science's stock has fallen so precipitously in recent years. est position in society" (Feyerabend 1975, 304). It appears that Scientists' ignorance of die philosophical underpinnings of he has done just that. their enterprise has not gone unnoticed. In 1986, biology How did diis happen? Why is science increasingly viewed Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar commented: as a failed ideology rather than as an epistemological ideal? Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, Let's take a closer look at the arguments underlying and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and Feyerabend's position. shifty-eyed: solemn because he feds he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to conceal Popper, Induction, and Falsifiability the fact that he has no opinion to declare. (Quoted in Theocharis and Psimopoulos 1987, 595) Ironically, one of those most responsible for die diminished view of science is one who was firmly convinced of its superi- Scientists are a philosophically naive lot. But this naivete ority: Sir Karl Popper. Although Popper believed that scientific does not come without a price. Because most scientists can't theories were better than nonscientific ones, he argued diat die traditional inductive conception of science was mistaken. Theodore Schick Jr. is a professor of philosophy at Muhlenberg According to inductivism, scientific mediod consists of College, Allentown, PA 18104, and co-author (with Lewis three steps: (1) observe, (2) induce a hypothesis, (3) confirm Vaughn) of How To Think About Weird Things. He received the hypothesis through additional observations and tests. his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in philosophy Popper objected to all three of these steps on the grounds that from Brown University He has published numerous articles on scientists do not—and cannot—follow them. epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and Popper found the notion that scientific inquiry begins with ethics in such journals as Skeptic, International Philosophical an observation ludicrous. He writes: Quarterly, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to Idealistic Studies, Thought, The Journal of Speculative Philos- a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture ophy, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, and Dialog. with the following instructions: "Take pencil and paper; carc-

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER March/April 1997 37 fully observe, and write down what you have observed!" They Quine have convincingly demonstrated that hypotheses have asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the testable consequences only in the context of certain back- instruction, "Observe!" is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as under- ground assumptions. If a test fails, it is always possible to stood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen maintain the hypothesis in question by rejecting one or more object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. of the background assumptions. (Popper 1965, 46) Moreover, Popper's demarcation criterion is far too weak to For Popper, a scientific investigation begins with a hypothesis. distinguish science from pseudoscience. According to Popper, For without a hypothesis to guide research, scientists would a theory is scientific as long as there is some possible state of have no way of distinguishing relevant from irrelevant data. affairs whose actual occurrence would refute the theory. By Popper also objected to the view that enumerative induc- this criterion, however, astrology, creationism, and Immanuel tion was used to generate scientific hypotheses. Many theories, Velikovsky's theory of planetary development would all be sci- entific theories, for they all imply propositions that could turn such as the atomic theory, the genetic theory, and the gravita- out to be false. Popper's demarcation criterion, therefore, lets tional theory, postulate entities or forces that are not men- in too much; it grants scientific status to theories that don't tioned in their data. Consequently, they cannot be arrived at seem to deserve it. through enumerative induction. Thus we have arrived at an impasse. We can't establish science's superiority by Scientists and educators alike need to realize that the viewing it as an attempt to verify theories educated person is not the person who can answer the through induction, and we can't establish its superiority by viewing it as an attempt questions, but the person who can question the answers to falsify theories through deduction. Perhaps Feyerabend is right that there is Finally, he claimed, no universal generalization can be con- no way to prove the superiority of science. clusively confirmed, for we can never be sure that we have examined all the relevant data. It is always possible that we will Kuhn, Paradigms, and Relativism discover something that will overturn even the most well- Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn and Feyerabend argue established theory. Thus, he viewed science as the attempt to that neither verification nor falsification can establish the falsify rather than verify hypotheses. Besides, he thought, find- objectivity of science because both assume that data are inde- ing confirming instances of a theory is far too easy (Popper pendent of theory. They claim, on the contrary, that all obser- 1990, 104-10). vation is theory-laden, for all perception involves conceptual- The most significant problem for inductivism, however, ization. Since each theory manufactures its own data, there is was first recognized by eighteenth-century empiricist David no neutral data that can be used to adjudicate among compet- Hume. Hume noted that enumerative induction rests on the ing theories. As a result, theories are "incommensurable." principle that the future will resemble the past. But this prin- Kuhn and Feyerabend see science primarily as a puzzle- ciple cannot be proven deductively, for it cannot be deduced solving exercise. The rules for solving particular puzzles are from self-evident truths; and it cannot be proven inductively, contained in a "paradigm." A paradigm defines for scientists for that would beg the question. So if science rests on induc- what sorts of puzzles are worth solving and what sorts of meth- tion, it rests on a dogma. And if it rests on a dogma, it is not ods will solve them. From time to time, however, certain puz- a purely rational enterprise. So there may be more to zles or "anomalies" arise that cannot be solved within the exist- Feyerabend's position than mere posturing. ing paradigm. When the cognitive dissonance created by these By construing science as the attempt to falsify rather than puzzles becomes too great, the scientific community under- verify hypotheses, Popper thought that he could avoid the goes a "paradigm shift." Kuhn describes the effects of a para- problem of induction and distinguish real science from pseu- digm shift this way: doscience. The success of a test does not entail the truth of the hypothesis under investigation. But, he believed, the failure of Examining the record of past research from the vantage of con- a test does entail its falsity. So if science is viewed as a search temporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world for refutations rather than confirmations, the problem of itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists induction drops out and the mark of a scientific theory adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more becomes its ability to be refuted. Thus we have Popper's important, during revolutions scientists see new and different famous demarcation criterion: a theory is scientific if it is fal- things when looking with familiar instruments in places they sifiable. If there is no possible observation that would count have looked before. It is rather as if the professional commu- nity had been suddenly transported to another planet where against it, it is not scientific. familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by It was soon realized, however, that hypotheses can no more unfamiliar ones as well. Of course, nothing of quite that sort be conclusively falsified than they can be conclusively verified, does occur: there is no geographical transplantation; outside for a hypothesis cannot be tested in isolation. Physicist- the laboratory everyday affairs usually continue as before. Nevertheless, paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the philosopher Pierre Duhem and logician Willard Van Orman

3 8 March/April 1997 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER world of their research engagement differently. In so far as Garfinkle gives to the relativists in his philosophy classes: "You their only recourse to that world is through what they sec and may not be coming from where I'm coming from, but I know do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world. (Kuhn 1970, 111) relativism isn't true for me" (quoted in Putnam 1981, 119). Much more could be said on this topic. But it's important In Kuhn's view, scientists don't discover the nature of reality; to realize that scientists need not recite a catechism when faced they create it. There is no way the world is, for each paradigm with claims of the sort made by Kuhn and Feyerabend. makes its own world. It's easy to see why such views raise ques- Science, Justification, and Belief tions about the end of science. If there is no truth with a cap- ital "T," then, of course, it makes no sense to say that scientists Can science be shown to be a superior means of acquiring have a monopoly on it. knowledge? Yes it can, but only by showing that it is more To determine whether we should we accept this view of sci- likely to yield justified beliefs than any other methodology. ence, we need to examine its implications. Thus the real issue is not whether a belief is scientific or pseu- If what we perceive is determined by the paradigm we doscientific but whether it is justified or unjustified. accept, then it should be impossible to perceive anything that We are justified in believing something to be true when it doesn't fit our paradigm. But if it's impossible to perceive any- provides the best explanation of the evidence. Science is supe- thing that doesn't fit our paradigm, it's impossible for there to rior to other methods of inquiry because it usually provides be any anomalies. And if it's impossible for there to be any better explanations than they do. The goodness of an explana- anomalies, it's impossible for there to be any paradigm shirts. tion is determined by the amount of understanding it pro- So if we accept Kuhn and Feyerabend's theory of perception, duces, and the amount of understanding an explanation pro- we must reject their history of science. duces is determined by how much it systematizes and unifies Moreover, recent neurophysiological research has shown our knowledge. The extent to which an explanation does this that all perception does not involve conceptualization. can be determined by appealing to various criteria of adequacy Psychologist Edward Hundert explains: such as simplicity, scope, conservatism, and fruitfulness. No one wants to hold unjustified beliefs. The problem is that most If someone loses the primary visual cortex (say, because of a people never learn the difference between a good explanation tumor), they lose their vision; they go almost totally blind. But and a bad one. Consequently they come to believe all sorts of if they just lose the secondary or tertiary visual cortex, they weird things for no good reason. manifest an unusual condition called visual agnosia. In this condition, visual acuity is normal (the person could correctly Must science come to an end? Not necessarily. But unless identify the orientation of the "E's" on an eye chart). But they scientists become more philosophically sophisticated, their lose the ability to identify, name, or match even simple objects apologetics will continue to ring hollow. And unless our edu- in any part of their visual field. . . . This model can be trans- lated into psychological terms as endorsing a functional dis- cational system focuses more on teaching students how to think tinction between "perception" (input analysis) and "cognition" than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly (central processing). . . . credulous. Scientists and educators alike need to realize that the It is easy to see the evolutionary advantage of this whole educated person is not the person who can answer the ques- scheme, with its "upward" input analysis: if our transducers tions, but die person who can question the answers. In our age were hooked directly to our central systems, we would spend of rapidly changing information, knowing how to distinguish most of our time seeing (hearing, etc.) the world the way we truth from falsity is more important than knowing what was remember, believe, or expect the world to be. The recognition of novelry—of unexpected stimuli—has extremely obvious once considered true and false. Only a person who knows the evolutionary advantage, and is made possible only by the sep- difference between a justified and an unjustified belief can truly aration of transducers and central systems by "dumb" input appreciate the value of scientific inquiry. analyzers. (Hundert 1987, 413, 420-21) References Neurophysiological research suggests that not all observation is Feyerabend, Paul. 1975. Against Method. London: Verso. theory-laden, for there are two types of observation: discrimi- Glashow, Sheldon. 1989. we believe thai ihe world is knowable. New York nation and recognition. Recognition may involve the use of Times. October 22. Horgan, John. 1996. The End of Science. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. concepts, but discrimination does not. For if it did, we could Hundert. Edward. 1987. Can neuroscience contribute to philosophy? In never perceive anything new. Mindwaves. edited by Colin Blakemore and Susan Greenfield. Oxford: Finally, if all research is conducted within a paradigm, then Basil Blackwell. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Kuhn's and Feyerabend's research itself must have been con- University of Chicago Press. ducted within a paradigm. But if their research was conducted Popper. Karl. 1965. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific within a paradigm, its results cannot be considered to be uni- Knowledge. New York: Basic Boob, Inc. . 1990. Science: conjectures and refutations. In Philosophy of Science versally true. We can say of Kuhn's findings, then, what and the Occult, edited by Patrick Grim. Albany: Sate University of New Feyerabend says of science in general, namely, that "it is inher- York Press. ently superior only for those who have already decided in Putnam. Hilary. 1981. Reason. Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. favour of a certain ideology." The proper response to a Kuhnian Theocharis, T. and M. Psimopoulos. 1987. Where science has gone wrong. or a Feyerabendian, then, is the one that philosopher Alan Nature 329 (October). U

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