Scientific Knowledge: Methods and Foundations

Subtleties of Scientific Knowledge

• Both Bachelor of Science (BS) and Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees contain immense amount of knowledge.
• A distinction between the two is necessary, tracing back to the historicity of arts and humanities.
• The arts and humanities have been a staple for schools since ancient times.
• The science label emerged later in the 17th century.
• The Scientific Method provides a technique to generate workable ideas in scientific and liberal arts fields.
• It generally includes observation, questioning, hypothesizing, and testing in a repeating cycle.
• The scientific method is used in various fields from social sciences like business and economics to natural sciences like medicine, physics, and chemistry.

Foundation of Scientific Knowledge

• Knowledge was traditionally scrutinized under Philosophy called Epistemology, which debated how we came to know what we know and tried to define the limits of our knowing.
• Science adheres to Rationalism and Empiricism epistemological principles.
• Rationalism posits that adopted beliefs should be based on reason and knowledge rather than religious beliefs or emotional response.
• Rationalists believe emotion makes humans irrational and illogical.
• Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge comes from sense experience.
• Forming a hypothesis based on observation, setting a replicable experiment, and rationally interpreting results align with Rationalism and Empiricism.
• These principles determine if something is scientific knowledge

The Need for Verification

• To verify that something exists or occurred through observation and rationale appears to use rational and empirical thought.
• Philosophers and scientists had absolute confidence in the scientific method believing it was infallible and would reveal absolute truths.
• Some proclaimed analytical philosophy based on formal logic and math as legitimate for scientific discourse.
• It was also believed that only things verifiable through the scientific method could be considered True Knowledge.

David Hume and the Criticism of Inductive Method

• David Hume criticized inductive methods of science for drawing empirical conclusions.
• Induction is a method synthesizing experiences and observations, including what is learned from others, to arrive at a general truth.
• Hume argued that induction only offers probability and not certainty.
• The notion that "seeing" is akin to proving is challenged, as what one "sees" is influenced by cultural and educational conditioning.
• It is challenging to escape presuppositions, making it impossible to describe all observational reports as perfectly "objective".

Karl Popper and the Falsification Theory

• Karl Popper believed scientific theories should include an inherent feature of transparency that should be open to be disproven by contradictory incidents.
• A genuine "Falsifiability” should distinguish what science is from non-science instead of gauging scientific knowledge within a consensus of verification.

Thomas Kuhn and the Structures of Scientific Revolutions

• Thomas Kuhn elaborated the concept of paradigm shifts, changing the traditional picture of science.
• Science shifted from the progressive, gradual and cumulative science to a more relativistic and dogmatic enterprise.

Kuhn's Take of Absolute Certainty

• Realism says the science should be independent of what is real of the world.
• Demarcation argued there is no solid distinction between scientific theories and other kinds of belief.
• Cumulative view says that science is cumulative and builds on what is already established.
• Theory/observation highlights the persistent contrast between theoretical prediction and statements from observational reports.
• Foundations theory denies that hypothesis and theories are made true by the basis of observation and experiment as its singular foundation.
• Deductive structure of theories claims that theories are more than just deductions from the observational reports and well-established postulates.
• Precision posits that the terms used in science don't have fixed meanings and that scientific concepts are not always precise
• Discovery and Justification questions if there are separate contexts between discovery and justification.
• Unity of Science opposed the ideology that there should be one science about our one real world while rejecting that less profound sciences are reducible to the more profound ones.

Science Experts and COVID-19

• Science has provided experts specialization in addressing concerns about COVID-19.
• Science is affecting the lives of more people now than ever before

Redefining Science with Sociology

• According to a 2019 survey by Emerson Electric Co., 91% of Filipino respondents are interested in STEM careers, which is three times more than previous generations.
• Science has sparked interest in younger generations who are curious about the technology that they are living with.
• Science has shifted from a specialized field of experts in the 1700s to the 20th century impacting people's daily lives and projections of the future.
• As science grew more relevant to people's lives, issues were exposed which concern sociology

General Antecedents that Demanded Action from Society

• Environmental concerns range from nuclear/atomic bombs to GMOs and DNA editing tool CRISPR/Cas9.
• Commodification of science has seen research funding as a major concern, with private sector funding naturally oriented towards profitable research.
• Scientific profiteers move into indigenous communities to pilfer, patent, and sell their “inventions" to the larger enterprises under the guise of research.
• Cultural biases, accusations of cultural, racial, and gender discrimination have been a social issue at the forefront.
• Islamic scholars who progressed science had their work unacknowledged as Western Scientists built on their initial ideas.
• The Islamic Golden Age was masked and called as "The Dark Ages" in early Western History.
• Feminist scholarship suggests that the focus on quantitative measure, analysis of variation and impersonal, excessively abstract, conceptual schemes is a masculine tendency that hides its own gendered character.

Proper Modes of Science

• Post-Normal Science is a manifestation of a more open and democratic science for the 20th century that begins with needing a new style of science.
• Old views should be abandoned as empirical data leading to true conclusions and scientific reasoning leading to correct policies, are no longer comprehensive/
• Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz portrayed three different problem-solving strategies in risk assessment as applied science, professional consultancy, and PNS.
• When both system uncertainties and decision stakes are low, applied science or the “normal” way of science can continue its routine work and Scientists solve problems using the current paradigm.
• Post-Normal Science (PNS) is employed if the decision or project contains irreducible complexity, deep uncertainties, a plurality of legitimate perspectives, value dissent, high stakes, and decision urgency.
• It is is the way of thinking when facts are uncertain, values are disputed, and decisions are urgent.

Main Elements and Principles of PNS

• Includes the scientific management of uncertainty and of quality.
• One must considered the multiplicity of perspectives and commitments.
• The intellectual and social structures reflect problem-solving activities.
• quality is a contextual property of scientific information and is central to the management of uncertainty in PNS.
• PNS calls for the development of new norms of evidence and discourse, where knowledge is extended to peer communities for quality assurance purposes.
• A basic principle of PNS is the inclusion of laypersons, such as citizens and other non-experts in the assessment of quality.
• PNS helps ensure policy processes become dialogue as knowledge is "democratised" to encompass the diversity of legitimate perspectives and commitments but quality is the guiding the principle rather than "truth".
• PNS also entails intellectual and social structures that reflect problem-solving activities.
• PNS does not attempt to define unifying conceptual foundations or create closed boundaries in a field of research.
• Social unity in PNS is primarily derived from an ethical commitment to the resolution of an issue rather than from a shared knowledge base.
• PNS brings social communities into problem-solving activities and dialogues.

Post-Normal Science

• PNS operates in a reality that can be summarized by: facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, and the stakes are high before urgent decisions have to be made.

Difference Between Normal and Post-Normal Science

• Normal science goal is knowledge with quality equaling certainty while PNS has quality is the goal not knowledge and quality is not only about the product but includes process, people, and purposes when information is for fit sustainable decision-making.
• Post normal Science is methodology involving an extended peer community, both internally and externally that extends outside one's expertise and makes disciplines work together on the assessment of quality and uncertainty.

Case Study

• Post Normal Science translates to: global warming, Covid-19, nuclear meltdowns and Stem Cell therapy.