Science is the objective branch of knowledge. Yet objectivity is not an absolute, and it is not guaranteed simply by supplying measurements. Objectivity lies in scientific models and their predictive powers. Objectivity is not a discrete entity, either present or absent, but is a continuously valued parameter.
Even when all may agree, science begins to doubt. Not only does the scientific process require the breadth of shared knowledge, but to advance, it must continuously challenge and retest what will become, in the end, subjective beliefs of individuals. Often, the new thrust of progress comes like the bursting of a dam, overcoming what was once obvious and accepted. What is universally held is suspicious, especially when it is a tacit part of the assumptions.
Of course, the scientist can be as subjective as any other human being. Media overflows with examples. Large, prestigious bodies of scientists can be wrong. When they abandon method and express unanimity, the odds increase that they are. The odds become astronomical when the body or its members can dip more deeply into government or commercial coffers as a result of their recommendations.
We can consider here the popular and controversial phrase, “Most scientists believe …” This phrase is inappropriate to science but perfectly acceptable when applied to scientists. For example, most scientists believe in ethical conduct and social responsibility. Most scientists believe professional recognition is important.
But while scientists may have beliefs, science may not. Scientists have subjectively favored theories, which can range from which procedure is likely to work (that is, to produce the desired result and to gain peer approval) to which theory is likely to receive reinforcement, modification, or fusion in a larger body of theory. Science has principles, conjectures, and hypotheses, but not beliefs. Science does not accept concepts as true. Instead, science challenges its own most cherished foundations. Each discovery, each new theory, each new crack in certainty is a commandment to reexamine the footings. The objective branch of knowledge demands nothing less.
Additional Reading
- Modern Science
- The Scientific Method, Part 1
- The Scientific Method, Part 2
- Elements of Science: Definitions
- Elements of Science: Observations & Measurements
- Elements of Science: Models & Predictions
- Elements of Science: Experiments & Validation
Comments on Scientists vs. Science: Notes on Objectivity
Just as with coaching, we are urged to keep focused on the fundamentals.
Great article and replies. While the scientific method is great in theory it is pretty useless unless the scientist is actually following it. As long as research is tainted by profit motive driven "funding", we will continue to have what we presently have. What we have now is one lie on top of another clouded by fake science that assures confusion and profit for those who fund the research.
I love this series.
This piece nicely reminds of us of the highly emotional, flawed human, with its big, powerful, creative brain prone to blind irrationality; an existence which demands standards, measurements and rigorous tests in order to know that anything believed is in actually so. Experience is relative and relativity is subjective; without experimentation progress is only accidental. Yet, experimentation is not immune to subjectivity. The scientific environment in which it is conducted surely influences what is learned.
"We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe," - Descartes
I'd like to add this excerpt from Experimental Medicine, by Claude Bernard written in the 1860s to the discussion:
"I think that blind belief in fact, which dares to silence reason is as dangerous to the experimental sciences as the beliefs of feeling or of faith which also force silence on reason. In a word, in the experimental method as in everything else, the only real criterion is reason...
Let us recall how we characterized mathematical truths and experimental truths. Mathematical truths, once acquired, we said, are conscious and absolute truths, because the ideal conditions in which they exist are also conscious and known by us in an absolute way. Experimental truths, on the contrary, are unconscious and relative, because the real conditions on which they exist are unconscious and can be known by us only in their relation to the present state of our science. But if the experimental truths, which serve as foundation for our reasoning, are so wrapped up in the complex reality of the natural phenomena that they appear to us only in shreds, these experimental truths rest, none the less, on principles that are absolute because, like those of mathematical truths, they speak to our consciousness and our reason. Indeed the absolute principle of experimental science is conscious and necessary determinism in the conditions of phenomena. So that, given no matter what natural phenomenon, experimenters can never acknowledge variation in the embodiment of this phenomenon, unless new conditions have at the same time occurred in its coming to pass; what is more, they have an a priori certainty, that these variations are determined by rigorous, mathematical relations. Experiment only shows us the form of the phenomena; but the relation of a phenomenon to a definitive case is necessary and independent of experiment; it is necessarily mathematical and absolute. Thus we see that the principle of the criterion in experimental sciences is fundamentally identical with that of the mathematical sciences, since in each case the principal is expressed by necessary and absolute relation between things. Only in the experimental sciences, these relations are surrounded by numerous, complex and infinitely varied phenomena which hide them from our site. With the help of experiment, we analyze, we dissociate these phenomena, in order to reduce them to more and more simple relations and conditions. In this way we try to lay hold on scientific truth, ie: find the law that shall give us the key to all variations of the phenomena. Thus experimental analysis is our only means of going in search of the truth in the natural sciences, and the absolute determinism of phenomena, of which we are conscious a priori, is the only criterion or principle which directs and supports us."
Food for thought.
(w/f safe)
Scientists vs. Science: Notes on Objectivity
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