The Scientific Attitude Read online

  Popper famously argued that the social sciences could not be sciences because of the “open systems” problem created by the effect of free will and consciousness on human decision making. In natural science, he claimed, we use falsifiable theories, but this path is not open to the social sciences.11 Similarly, Kuhn, for all his fans in the social sciences (who felt that they may finally have a target they could hit), also tried to distance himself from the messy study of human behavior, by insisting that his model was applicable only to the natural sciences, and that he was not providing any advice to the social sciences. Add to this the problem of what to do about some of the other “special” (i.e., nonphysical) sciences—like biology or even chemistry—and we have a full-fledged crisis on our hands in defending a view of science that is separate from reduction to physics. What to do about the claim that there are epistemically autonomous concepts in chemistry (such as transparency or smell)—just as there are in sociology (such as alienation or anomie)—that cannot be explained at the physical level of description? If our model of successful science is physics, will even chemistry make the cut? From a certain perspective, most of those fields that are either scientific, or wish to become so, do not fit the models of philosophy of science that have been drawn from the history of physics and astronomy, and so could be considered “special sciences.” Have we no advice, or justification, to offer them?

  Finally, what to say about those fields that make a claim to being scientific, but just do not measure up (such as “intelligent design theory” or denialism about climate change)? Or of those instances where scientists have betrayed their creed and committed fraud (such as Andrew Wakefield’s work purporting to show a link between vaccines and autism)? Can we learn anything from them? I maintain that if we are truly interested in what is special about science, there is much to learn from those who have forsaken it. What is the proponent of intelligent design theory not doing that genuine scientists should do (and in fact generally succeed in doing)? Why are climate change deniers unjustified in their high standards of “skepticism”? And why is it forbidden for scientists to rig their data, cherry pick their sample sets, and otherwise try to fit the data to their theory, if they want to succeed in scientific explanation?12 It may seem obvious to those who defend and care about science that all of the above have committed a mortal sin against scientific principles, but shouldn’t this help us in articulating the nature of those principles?

  In this book, I propose to take a very different approach from my predecessors, by embracing not only the idea that there is something distinctive about science, but that the proper way to understand it is to eschew the exclusive focus on the successes of natural science. Here I plan to focus on those fields that have failed to be scientific, as well as those (like the social sciences) that might wish to become more so. It is one thing to discern what is distinctive about science by examining the transition from Newton to Einstein; it is another to get our boots muddy in the questions of scientific fraud, pseudoscience, denialism, and the social sciences.

  Why bother? Because I think that to truly understand both the power and the fragility of science we must look not just at those fields that are already scientific, but also at those that are trying (and perhaps failing) to live up to the standard of science. We can learn a lot about what is special about science by looking at the special sciences. And we should be prepared to answer the challenge of those who want to know—if science is so credible—why it does not always provide the right answer (even in the natural sciences) and sometimes fails. If we can do this, we will not only understand what is distinctive about science, we will have the tools necessary to emulate its approach in other empirical fields too.

  But there is another problem: we cannot pretend, these days, that the conclusions of science are going to be accepted just because they are rational and justified. Climate change skeptics insist that we need more evidence to prove global warming. Vaccine resisters maintain that there is a conspiracy to deny the truth about autism. What should we do about the problem of those who would simply reject the results of science? We may be tempted to dismiss these people as irrational, but we do so at our peril. If we cannot provide a good account of why scientific explanations have a superior claim to believability, why should they accept them? It’s not just that if we don’t understand science we cannot cultivate it elsewhere; we cannot even defend science where it is working.

  In short, I think that many of those who have written about science have mishandled the claim that science is special because they have not said enough about the failures of natural science, the potential for the social sciences, and the drawbacks of those fields that seek the mantle of science without embracing its ethos. This has led to failure to emulate science by those fields that would like to do so, and also to the irrational rejection of scientific conclusions by those who are motivated by their ideologies to think that their own views are just as good.

  So what is distinctive about science? As I hope to show, what is most notable is the scientific attitude toward empirical evidence, which is as hard to define as it is crucial. To do science we must be willing to embrace a mindset that tells us that our prior beliefs, ideologies, and wishes do not matter in deciding what can pass the test of comparison with the evidence. This is no easy thing to mark off with a criterion of demarcation—neither does it pretend to be a proxy for “scientific method”—but I argue that it is essential to engaging in (and understanding) science. This is something that can be emulated by the social sciences and also helps to explain what is not scientific about intelligent design theory, the emptiness of denialism by those who wish to reject the evidence for climate change, and the folly of other conspiracy theories that purport to succeed where science is restrained by bona fide skepticism. At its heart, what is distinctive about science is that it cares about evidence and is willing to change its theories on the basis of evidence. It is not the subject or method of inquiry but the values and behavior of those who engage in it that makes science special. Yet this is a surprisingly complex thing to unravel, both in the history of the past successes of science and also in a program for how to make other fields more scientific in the future.

  In the chapters to follow, I will show how the scientific attitude helps us with three main tasks: understanding science (chapters 1 through 6), defending science (chapters 7 and 8), and growing science (chapters 9 and 10). When done right, the philosophy of science is not just descriptive or even explanatory, but prescriptive. It helps to explain not just why science has been so successful in the past, but why evidential and experimental methods have so much potential value for other empirical fields in the future. It should also help us to communicate more clearly to those who do not—or will not—understand what is distinctive about science, why the claims of pseudoscience and denialism fall so far short of its epistemic standards, and why scientific explanations are superior. For decades, philosophers of science have sought to understand what is special about science by focusing on the past successes of the physical sciences. My approach, instead, is to turn this on its head: if you really want to understand why science is so special, you must look beyond the victories of natural science, and focus too on those fields that are not—and may never become—sciences.

  Notes

  1. P. H. Gleick, R. M. Adams, R. M. Amasino, E. Anders, D. J. Anderson, W. W. Anderson, et al., “Climate Change and the Integrity of Science,” Science 328, no. 5979 (2010): 689–690, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/328/5979/689.

  2. “On Energy Policy, Romney’s Emphasis Has Shifted,” NPR, April 2, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149812295/on-energy-policy-another-shift-for-romney.

  3. “Scientific Evidence Doesn’t Support Global Warming, Sen. Ted Cruz Says,” NPR, Dec. 9, 2015, http://www.npr.org/2015/12/09/459026242/scientific-evidence-doesn-t-support-global-warming-sen-ted-cruz-says.

  4. Oliver Milman, “Trump to Scrap NASA Climate Research in Crackdown on ‘Politicized Science,�
� Guardian, Nov. 23, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research.

  5. Recent examples of disparaging remarks about philosophy by such renowned scientists as Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson are discussed in Massimo Pigliucci’s essay “Science and Pseudoscience: In Defense of Demarcation Projects,” which appears in Science Unlimited (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Earlier salvos include physicist Richard Feynman’s statement that “philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds” and physicist Steven Weinberg’s entire chapter “Against Philosophy” in his book Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon, 1992). One should balance all of this, however, against Einstein’s quite high opinion of philosophy and its importance in scientific work. See Don A. Howard, “Albert Einstein as Philosopher of Science,” Physics Today (Dec. 2005): 34–40.

  6. Note that this is very different from the claim that a scientific theory is true. There is unfortunately no guarantee that a scientific theory is true, even if we are justified in believing it based on a rational consideration of the evidence. (We will discuss this issue further in chapter 2.)

  7. Though note that in Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry self-consciously seek to resurrect the problem of demarcation. Also note that in The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (New York: Norton, 2012), Alex Rosenberg embraces the term “scientism” as a badge of honor.

  8. Popper’s model has also been handicapped by his occasional insistence that some scientific fields—like evolutionary biology—were not actually scientific, because they did not pass his criterion of demarcation. Though he later recanted this position, to many it seemed to reveal the hubris of thinking that there was a sharp theoretical line that could be drawn between science and nonscience. Popper made his claim that natural selection was “tautological” and “not a testable scientific theory,” in his autobiography, which appears as part 1 of The Philosophy of Karl Popper: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 14, ed. Paul Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1974), 133–143. Within a few years Popper retracted this opinion, but he still held to the idea that it was “difficult to test” Darwinian theory. See his “Natural Selection and the Emergence of the Mind,” Dialectica 32 (1978): 344.

  9. It should be noted that Kuhn himself resisted this interpretation of his work. While he acknowledged the potential influence of such theoretical virtues as scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness on paradigm choice, he never gave up the idea that science was and should be evidence based (see quotation accompanying note 27 in chap. 3). For more on Kuhn’s account of the role of subjective, factors in theory choice, see his “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice,” in The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 320–339.

  10. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1978); Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Steve Fuller, Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents (New York: Guilford Press, 1992).

  11. For further discussion of Popper’s objections to a science of human behavior, see Lee McIntyre, Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences: Defending a Science of Human Behavior (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 34–45, 64–75. Popper’s own argument is spread over several of his works: The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge, 1957), The Open Universe (London: Routledge, 1982), and “Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences,” which appears in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965).

  12. We will take up all these issues when we discuss denialism and pseudoscience in chapter 8.

  1    Scientific Method and the Problem of Demarcation

  If there is one thing that most people think is special about science, it is that it follows a distinctive “scientific method.” If there is one thing that the majority of philosophers of science agree on, it is the idea that there is no such thing as “scientific method.”

  If you are one of those people who has saved his or her textbooks in astronomy, physics, chemistry or biology, I invite you to go find one now and open it to the first page. This is typically the page that is never assigned by the professor and never read by the students, but it is nonetheless de rigeur, because it purports to provide the basis for why the rest of the claims in the book are to be believed. Often this page gives an account of “scientific method.” There are different renderings, but here is a simple version of the classic so-called five step method:

  (1)  Observe.

  (2)  Hypothesize.

  (3)  Predict.

  (4)  Test.

  (5)  Analyze results, revise hypothesis, and start again.1

  Is this how scientific discoveries are in fact made? Few would claim this. The way that scientific theories are produced is an often messy process that involves serendipity, failure, blind alleys, heartache, dogged determination, and the occasional stroke of luck. But that is not what is supposed to be special about science. The quirky way that scientists sometimes get their ideas is the stuff of legend. One thinks of August Kekulé in front of the fireplace, dreaming of a snake swallowing its tail, leading to the benzene ring, or Leo Szilard stepping off the curb as the traffic light changed from red to green, realizing in that moment that it was possible to split the atom.2 Inspiration in science, as in art, can come from a diversity of sources. Yet many hold that the results of science have a special claim to be believed because of the distinctive way that they can be rationally reconstructed after the fact. Thus it is not the way that scientific theories are found that gives them such great credibility, it is the process by which they can be logically justified.

  Science textbooks provide a cleaned-up version of history. They give us the result of many centuries of scientific conflict and make us feel that the process inevitably led to our present enlightened understanding. Historians of science know this to be inaccurate, but it remains immensely popular, because of the great convenience that this account of “scientific method” provides in supporting not only the claim that the content of science is especially credible but also the idea that the process of scientific explanation can be emulated by other disciplines that wish to make their own empirical discoveries.3

  Yet even if the classic five-step method proves too simple to get the job done, there are other ways that philosophers have sought to characterize what is distinctive about science, and some of these focus on methodology. Here it is important not to get confused. The claim that there is no universal one-size-fits-all “scientific method”—where we put in sensory observations at one end and get scientific knowledge at the other—does not contradict the idea that there could be some unique methodological feature of science. To say that there is no recipe or formula for producing scientific theories is a very different thing than to claim that scientists have no methods whatsoever. This is to say that even if most philosophers of science are willing to reject the idea of a simple “scientific method,” many still think there is enormous benefit to analyzing the methodological differences between science and nonscience, in search of a way to justify the epistemic authority of those scientific theories that have already been discovered.

  The Relevance of the Problem of Demarcation

  One benefit of focusing on the methodology of science is that it purports to provide a way to demarcate between what is science and what is not. This is the so-called problem of demarcation, and it has been of enormous concern to the philosophy of science at least since the time of Karl Popper at the beginning of the twentieth century. In his essay “The Demise of the Demarcation Problem,” Larry Laudan claims that the problem of demarcation goes all the way back
to Aristotle—who sought to differentiate between knowledge and opinion—and surfaced again in the era of Galileo and Newton—who pushed science into the modern era by using empirical methods to understand how nature worked. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Laudan asserts, Auguste Comte and others began to hone in on the claim that what was distinctive about science was its “method,” even if there was as yet no widespread agreement about what that actually was.4 By the beginning of the twentieth century, philosophers were ready to sharpen this analysis and attempt to solve the problem of demarcation by creating a strict “criterion of demarcation” that could differentiate science from nonscience.

  The Logical Positivists tried to do this on the basis of the allegedly special “meaning” of scientific statements. In contrast to other kinds of assertions, scientific statements were accepted as making a difference to our experience in the world, which meant that they must in some way be verifiable through sensory data. If scientists said that the planet Venus went through phases, we had better be able to see that through a telescope. Statements that could not do this (other than those used in logic, which is deductively valid and so already on firm ground) were branded “cognitively meaningless” because they were unverifiable; they were dismissed as nonsense and unworthy of our time, because there was no procedure for determining if they were right or wrong. If a statement about the world purported to be true, the positivists claimed, it must be verifiable by experience. If not, then instead of being scientific it was just “metaphysics” (which was the pejorative term they used to cover huge swaths of knowledge including religion, ethics, aesthetics, and the vast majority of philosophy). To pull off such a hard and fast distinction, though, the Logical Positivists needed to come up with a “verification criterion” by which one could sort meaningful from meaningless statements. And this, owing to technical reasons that ultimately came down to the problem that they couldn’t get the sorting right, led to their undoing.5