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Originally Posted by Disinfo Agent
Oh, I disagree that it's just a figure of speech. It's an image that illustrates three important facts about science:
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Well, an
image that illustrates is what I mean by
figure of speech or
metaphor. I fully agree that it does illustrate exactly what you say. I am not questioning the metaphor but some of it's applications to which it is put in philosophy.
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1) Scientific knowledge is not the same as truth. If it were, we wouldn't need to revise it and correct it all the time.
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I agree. The terms
knowledge and
truth have different uses, different roles in our language and our lives. But it doesn't follow from that the knowledge refers to some sort of replica of truth (in the sense that a plastic model of the solar system is a replica, stand-in, or substitute of the solar system).
Let's say you purchase something that costs $17 and hand the clerk a $20 bill. The clerk says, “Thank you, sir. Here is your change of $2.” When you correct the clerk and point out that 20 minus 17 is 3 dollars (to the clerk's surprise that this is the case), you are not correcting a model of financial transaction the clerk privately possesses, but correcting the way the clerk deals with you and the amount of change you are handed. Improving knowledge is improving the way we live.
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2) Scientific theories should be regarded as simplifications of and approximations to the data on which they're based. They are never identical to the data. Therefore, we should not be surprised when they fail to describe the data with 100% accuracy.
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Scientific theories are not simplifications of data. Theories are not species of data. Rather, science discovers ways to do something using simpler portions of the data. Notice that science does not
create a simple copy of the world. It simplifies by focusing on some aspects of the world and ignoring others. That is, science is better seen as a process of
discovery and not of
creation.
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3) I noted above that scientific knowledge is permanently subject to revision. But how do scientists determine when it should be revised, what should be revised, and how it should be revised? The answer is that scientific theories do not exist in a vacuum. They are not self-justifying (another reason why they are not the same as truth). There are standards in science that good theories must meet. One such standard is that the theory must be reasonably compatible with observation (though perhaps not with 100% accuracy, as I noted in the previous point).
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Yes, theories do not exist in a vacuum. Revision is a process of experimenting in various ways until particular results are achieved. Len's notions of a model on one side and inaccessible absolute reality on the other are nowhere to be found in what you mention here. Instead, we see just people trying to do something better. The high standards to which science is held are standard practices, ways that experience has shown us how science should be done to achieve some result.
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Each of these three facts shows that there are important dualities in science. Truth on one side, science on the other. The complexity of the data on one side, the simplifications of science on the other. Observation on one side, theory on the other. This is why it makes perfect sense to describe science and scientific theories as models of something else (it doesn't matter that we can't access that something else directly).
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Wittgenstein might say here that the differences you mention are
grammatical differences, that is, differences in how the language is employed in the circumstances we encounter in life. Observing and theorizing, for example, are two different forms of activity involving both people and the world. In that sense there are not two distinct sides isolated from each other with one side serving as some sort of picture of the other.
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Some people may feel uneasy about these dualities. They may long for a simpler, more holistic image, where science is not subject to the flawed judgement of the scientists, but merely proceeds forward with a life of its own, impartial and unhindered, gathering more and more itty bitty little facts until it becomes one with the truth -- like a shopping cart at a supermarket.
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That is not my view at all. I am a programmer. When I deliver a buggy program, my phone rings. At that point, I no longer feel isolated from the truth. The truth has my phone number. Our actions have consequences on our lives. How we act changes our lives. Science and all of our other pursuits are a matter of discovering ways to do things better.
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In reality, science is not an additive process that keeps going forward like a train firmly on its tracks, and just gobbles up more and more data. Sometimes, scientists need to throw away what came before, and go back to the drawing board.
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Well said. Improving one's golf game is not an additive process either. There is nothing literally adding up somewhere, something whose quantity value is continually increasing with practice. Life is a richer and more complicated process than that.
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I find the picture metaphor much more realistic than the shopping-cart metaphor.
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What about the practicing golfer metaphor (or any analogy to someone improving his craft)?