1 CDT403 Research Methodology in Natural Sciences and Engineering Theory of Science RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY. WORLDVIEWS Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic Department of Computer Science and Electronic Mälardalen University

2 Theory of Science Lecture 1 SCIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, MEANING. FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEMS LIMITATIONS Lecture 2 SCIENCE, RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETAL ASPECTS. PROGRESS. HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY. POSTMODERNISM AND CROSSDISCIPLINES Lecture 3 LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION. CRITICAL THINKING. PSEUDOSCIENCE - DEMARCATION Lecture 4 GOLEM LECTURE. ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION: THEORY OF RELATIVITY, COLD FUSION, GRAVITATIONAL WAVES Lecture 5 COMPUTING HISTORY OF IDEAS Lecture 6 PROFESSIONAL & RESEARCH ETHICS

3 RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY, WORLDVIEW WHAT IS AFTER ALL THIS THING CALLED SCIENCE? Science in microcosmos and in macrocosmos. Scientific revolutions. SCIENCE, RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE, SOCIETY, ECONOMY – TRIPLE HELIX SCIENCE, RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY, PROGRESS THEORY OF SCIENCE HISTORY SCIENCE WARS

4 Culture (Religion, Art, …) WHAT IS AFTER ALL THIS THING CALLED SCIENCE – CLASSICAL SCIENCES Natural Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, …) Social Sciences (Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, …) The Humanities (Philosophy, History, Linguistics …) Logic & Mathematics Computing

5 WHAT IS AFTER ALL THIS THING CALLED SCIENCE The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Aristotle, Metaphysica

6 SCIENCE vs. RESEARCH Research is an activity. The product of research can be scientific results. But it is not necessarily so! Research can e.g. lead to any other sort of scholar knowledge.

7 SCIENCEOBJECTS DOMINATING METHOD Simple Reductionism (analysis) Logic & Mathematics Abstract objects: propositions, numbers,... Deduction Natural Sciences Natural objects: physical bodies, fields and interactions, living organisms... Hypothetico-deductive method Social Sciences Social objects: human individuals, groups, society,.. Hypothetico-deductive method + Hermeneutics Humanities Cultural objects: human ideas, actions and relationships, language, artefacts… Hermeneutics ComplexHolism (synthesis) Sciences, Objects and Methods

8 SCIENCES BASED ON SEVERAL RESEARCH FIELDS Our scheme represents classical sciences. Many modern sciences are stretching over several research fields of our scheme. Computer science e.g. includes the field of AI that has its roots in mathematical logic and mathematics but uses physics, chemistry and biology and even has parts where medicine and psychology are very important.

9 CLASSICAL SCIENCES HAVE SPECIFIC AREAS OF VALIDITY

10 Scientific Worldview: the Structure of Matter

11 DNA - Deoxyribonucleic Acid DNA is the primary chemical component of chromosomes and the material of which genes are made

12 DNA – BASE MOLECULE

13 MOLECULE - ATOM

14 ATOM – NUCLEUS - NUCLEON

15 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FORCES

16 MODEL vs ”REALITY”

17 MODELS OF ORGANIC MOLECULES

18 Different Representations of the Same Molecule

19 IMAGES Fluorescence images of rhodamine B molecules obtained by Fluorescence Imaging and Spectroscopy of Single Molecules Santa Cruz scientists have taken a detailed picture, using x-ray crystallography, of a complete ribosome, the small cellular component which translates genetic information into proteins.

20 ATOM

21 ATOM IMAGES Images of ultracold rubidium atoms trapped in different configurations of laser beams. Left to right: dual 1-D traps, crossed 1-D traps, and 3-D lattice trap formed at trap intersections. News Graphics

22 ATOM IMAGES

23 MODELLING “REAL WORLD” AS IT IS: MODELED PHENOMENA SIMPLIFIED MODEL COMPARISON: DOES IT WORK? “REAL WORLD” AS IT IS: MODELED PHENOMENA SIMPLIFIED MODEL COMPARISON: DOES IT WORK? “Real world”Model ProgramCompiler Theory Computer HardwareComputer Simulation

24 Rowley's original orrery, The orrery was made by John Rowley of London for Charles Boyle, fourth Earl of Orrery. The instrument acquired its current name after it was popularized by 17th century essayist, Sir Richard Steele. The solar system model showed the respective motions of the Earth and Moon around the Sun and was copied from an earlier example made by the famous clockmaker George Graham ( ) for Prince Eugene of Savoy. Science Museum London/ Science & Society Picture Library MODEL & SIMULATION

25 SUN

26 SUN

27 Long-lasting sunspots appear in this sequence of drawings made by Galileo himself as he observed the Sun from June 2nd to 26th, 1612 SUN

28 SCIENTIFIC METHOD CASE STUDY: THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION – Paradigm shift from medieval astronomy to modern science – Plato has defined five perfect solids corresponding to five elements. – In Aristotle’s physics each element had a natural place in the universe.

29 SCIENTIFIC METHOD CASE STUDY: THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION The natural place for the Earth was in the center of the universe; for Water on the surface of the Earth, for Air in the region above the surface of the Earth, and for the Fire above the atmosphere.

30 ARISTOTELIAN WORLD VIEW (1) Each earthly object would have a natural place in the sub-lunar region depending on the proportion of four elements. All objects on Earth were thought to have natural property to move in strait lines upwards or downwards, towards their natural place. Thus stones have the natural motion straight downwards, towards the center of the earth, and flames have a natural motion straight upwards, striving towards the top of the atmosphere.

31 ARISTOTELIAN WORLD VIEW (2) All motion other than natural motion requires a force. In the second century AD Ptolemy developed within the Aristotelian physics a geocentric astronomical system that specified the orbits of the moon, the sun and all the planets. Ptolemy’s system was held as definite truth during the Antique and Middle Ages.

32 PTOLEMY’S SYSTEM

33 COPERNICAN SYSTEM Figure 2 Copernican system

34 Copernicus ( ) had no alternative for Aristotelian physics, and hence had no strong enough arguments to defend his heliocentric system. Copernicus model was against Aristotelian ideas of earth as natural center of the universe. THE COPERNICAN TURN

35 PROBLEMS WITH THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM (1) Tower argument (the stone dropped from the top of a tower strikes the ground at the base of the tower, contrary to the hypothesis that the earth is spinning around its axes). Loose objects on the surface of the earth would be expected to flung from the earth surface in much the same ways stones would be flung from the rotating wheel. Absence of parallax in the observed positions of the stars

36 Mars and Venus, as viewed by the naked eye, do not change size appreciably during the course of the year. If the earth were moving through the universe one would expect wind blowing all the time… How to explain that the moon follows the earth on its journey through the universe? PROBLEMS WITH THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM (2)

37 GALILEO (1) The new Galileo’s ( ) mechanics helped to defend Copernican system. An object held at the top of a tower and sharing its circular motion around the center of the earth will continue that motion (because of inertia) along with tower, after it is dropped and will strike the ground at the foot of the tower.

38 GALILEO (2) Galileo proposed the following experiment to show the correctness of the law of inertia. If we drop a stone from the mast of a uniformly moving ship on the sea, the stone will strike the deck at the foot of the mast! Galileo also used telescope to observe celestial bodies. The discovery of the phases of Venus was another Galileo’s contribution to a success of Copernican theory.

39 KEPLER (1) The next major support for Copernicus heliocentric scheme was from Kepler ( ). Kepler discovered the following three (Kepler!) laws of planetary motion. Keplers’s first law LAW 1: The orbit of a planet/comet about the sun is an ellipse with the sun's center of mass at one focus. (That eliminated ad-hoc epicycles from Copernican model).

40 KEPLER (2) LAW 2: Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time Keplers’s second law LAW 3: The squares of the periods of the planets are proportional to the cubes of their semi major axes: Ta 2 / Tb 2 = Ra 3 / Rb 3

41 NEWTON Utilizing Kepler’s third law, Newton derived the law of gravitation. Gravitational force is directly proportional to masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. Constant G is called gravitational constant.

42 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS HISTORICAL EXAMPLE? (1) We can conclude that neither inductivists nor falsificationists can give a satisfactory explanation of Copernican revolution. The Copernican revolution did not take place as a result of a new theory supported by experimental confirmation.

43 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS HISTORICAL EXAMPLE? (2) New physical concepts of force, inertia and action on distance did not come in the first place as a result of observation and experiment.

44 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS HISTORICAL EXAMPLE? (3) Early formulations of the new theory, involving vaguely formulated novel conceptions, were preserved in spite of apparent falsifications! It was only due to the intellectual effort of a number of scientists developing new physics during several centuries, that the new theory could be satisfactorily justified.

45 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS HISTORICAL EXAMPLE? (4) Galileo Galilei devised new mechanic to replace Aristotelian and so remove arguments against Copernicus. He distinguished between the ideas of velocity and acceleration (change of velocity), and asserted that freely falling objects move with a constant acceleration that is independent of their weight.

46 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS HISTORICAL EXAMPLE? (5) Galileo denied the Aristotelian claim that all motion requires a force and instead proposed circular law of inertia: A moving body subject to no force will move indefinitely in a circle around the sun at uniform speed. This law of inertia is later on replaced by Newton’s law of inertia.

47 The invention of gunpowder, c 14th century. Allegorical interpretation of the invention of gunpowder, showing the devil on the shoulder of a monk involved in an experiment. It is thought that the artist intended the monk in the picture to be Berthold Schwarz, a semi- legendary German Franciscan monk. Schwarz was a nickname (German for 'black') due to Berthold's chemical experiments. The picture is an alchemical engraving. Science Museum London/ Science & Society Picture Library SCIENCE VS TECHNOLOGY

48 TECHNOLOGY EXPANDS OUR WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT THINGS, EXPANDS OUR WAYS OF DOING THINGS. Herbert A. Simon

49 SCIENCE, RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY Aristotle's Distinctions between Science and Technology ScienceTechnology Objectunchangeablechangeable Principle of motioninsideoutside Endknowing the generalknowing the concrete Activitytheoria: end in itselfpoiesis: end external Methodabstractionmodeling complexity Processconceptualizingoptimizing Innovation formdiscoveryinvention Type of resultlaw-like statementsrule-like statements Time perspectivelong-termshort-term

50 SCIENCE, RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY Science Research Development Technology

51 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY THE TRIPLE HELIX PARADIGM CULTURE SCIENCES & HUMANITIES SOCIETY

52

53 THE TRIPLE HELIX The Triple Helix Gene, Organism, and Environment RICHARD LEWONTIN Professor at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

54 THE TRIPLE HELIX We will never fully understand living things if we continue to think of genes, organisms, and environments as separate entities. Lewontin shows that an organism is a unique consequence of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features.

55 THE TRIPLE HELIX

56 THE TRIPLE HELIX

57 KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY AND THE FUTURE UNIVERSITY Knowledge society based on ICT The triple helix model: – ACADEMIC – INDUSTRY – GOVERMENT

58 SOCIETAL ASPECTS OF SCIENCE Science has undoubtedly several important facets: - insights in foundational issues, - applications - societal aspects. It is necessary to bridge the increasing gap between the sciences and the humanities by promoting rational and analytical discussions of central issues of concern to scientists and other scholars, and to the public at large.

59 SOCIETAL ASPECTS OF SCIENCE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT “if we consider Galileo alone in his cell muttering, ‘and yet it moves,’ with the recent meeting at Kyoto – where heads of states, lobbyists, and scientists were assembled together in the same place to discuss the Earth – we measure the difference between science and research” Bruno Latour

60 THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD The hypotetico-deductive cycle EXISTING THEORIES AND OBSERVATIONS 1 SELECTION AMONG COMPETING THEORIES 6 EXISTING THEORY CONFIRMED (within a new context) or NEW THEORY PUBLISHED 5 Hypotesen måste justeras PREDICTIONS 3 HYPOTHESIS 2 TESTS AND NEW OBSERVATIONS 4 Hypothesis must be redefined Hypothesis must be adjusted The scientific-community cycle Consistency achieved

61 SOCIETAL ASPECTS OF SCIENCE Further reading on current topics: Essays on Science and Society Science magazine

62 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (1) Logical Positivism During much of this century, “positivism” has dominated discussions of the scientific method. Positivism recognizes as valid only the knowledge based on experience.

63 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (2) Logical Positivism 1920s: Logical positivism (Vienna Circle), accepted as its central doctrine Wittgenstein’s verification theory of meaning that statements or propositions are meaningful only if they can be empirically verified. This differentiate scientific (meaningful) statements from purely metaphysical (meaningless) statements.

64 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (3) Logical Empiricism Carnap replaced the concept of verification with the idea of “gradually increasing confirmation”. Universal statements could never be verified, but they may be “confirmed” by the accumulation of successful empirical tests. Thus, science progresses through the accumulation of multiple confirming instances obtained under a wide variety of circumstances and conditions.

65 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (4) Logical Empiricism Logical empiricists believe that all knowledge begins with observation. This leads to empirical generalizations among observable entities. As our ideas progress, theories are formulated deductively to explain the generalizations, and new evidence is required to confirm or disconfirm the theories. Throughout the process, data are given precedence. The entire process is viewed as essentially inductive.

66 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (6) Popper and Falsificationism Unlike positivists, Popper accepted the fact that “observation always presupposes the existence of some system of expectations”. For Popper, the scientific process begins when observations clash with existing theories or preconceptions. To solve this scientific problem, a theory is proposed and the logical consequences of the theory (hypotheses) are subjected to rigorous empirical tests.

67 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (7) Popper and Falsificationism The objective of testing is the refutation of the hypothesis. When a theory’s predictions are falsified, it has to be ruthlessly rejected. Those theories that survive falsification are said to be corroborated (= confirmed) and tentatively accepted.

68 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (8) Popper and Falsificationism Thus the problem of induction is seemingly avoided by denying that science rests on inductive inference. Note nevertheless that Popper’s notion of corroboration itself depends on an inductive inference. According to Popper’s falsificationism, science progresses by a process of “conjectures and refutations”.

69 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (9) Popper and Falsificationism The most severe problem with Popper’s version of the scientific method is that it is impossible to conclusively refute a theory because realistic test situations depend on much more than just the theory under investigation.

70 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (10) Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions Thomas Samuel Kuhn ( ) was the one of most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. His The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books. His contribution to the philosophy of science meant not only a break with several positivist doctrines but also established a new style of philosophy of science directly related to the history of science.

71 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (10) Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions Kuhns account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth interrupted by scientific revolutions, to which he added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability. For Kuhn competing paradigms were incommensurable - they involved looking at the world in radically different ways. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

72 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (11) Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions In Kuhn’s view, the individual scientist’s decision to pursue a new paradigm must be made on faith in its “future promise”. Science progresses through “paradigm shifts”, but there is no guarantee that it progresses toward anything - least of all toward “the truth”.

73 EVOLUTION OF SCIENTIFIC THEORY (12) Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions Given its (seeming) advocacy of relativism, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions became one of the most carefully analyzed and evaluated works in the philosophy of science. In criticism of Kuhn, some writers have suggested alternative worldview models as for example “research tradition” concept, which attempts to restore rationality to theory selection by expanding the concept of rationality.

74 Paul Feyerabend: Anything Goes Feyerabend, held that there was no such thing as the scientific method and saw science as an essentially anarchic enterprise in which ‘anything goes’. It is true that there is no single method that marks out science from any other form of rational enquiry but nonetheless there are a range of criteria - such as explanatory scope, predictive power, experimental repeatability, consistency with other well-established theory - that make it a different sort of enterprise to, say, astrology or alchemy.

75 Postmodern Thought Postmodernism is an artistic, architectural, philosophical, and cultural movement, said to arise after and in reaction to modernism. Whereas modernism may be seen as the culmination of the Enlightenment's quest for an rational aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge, postmodernism is concerned with how the authority of those ideals, sometimes called metanarratives, are undermined through fragmentation, and deconstruction.

76 Postmodern Thought Jean-François Lyotard famously described postmodernism as an "incredulity toward metanarratives" (Lyotard, 1984). Postmodernism attacks the notions of monolithic universals and encourages fractured, fluid and multiple perspectives and is marked by an increasing importance in the ideas from the Sociology of knowledge.

77 Postmodernist Epistemology All knowledge, scientific knowledge included, is held to be socially constructed. Science is therefore merely one story among others. The world we know is one that is constructed by human discourses, giving us not so much truths as ‘truth-effects’ which may or may not be pragmatically useful. From this point of view, epistemologically speaking, a scientific text is understood as being on a par with a literary text.

78 SCIENCE WARS (1) In early 1996 the physicist Alan Sokal created a controversy by publishing two journal articles. The first article, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity appeared in the journal Social Text. It pretended to be, and was taken by the editors of Social Text as, a serious article on the implications of developments in the field of cultural studies for developments in modern physics, and vice-versa.

79 SCIENCE WARS (2) The second article, A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies, appeared in the journal Lingua Franca just as issue of Social Text containing the first article came out. It revealed that the first article was in fact a hoax.

80 SCIENCE WARS (3) “But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. “ Allan Sokal

81 SCIENCE WARS (4) “To test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies - whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross - publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions? “ Allan Sokal

82 SCIENCE WARS (5) The post modern ideas were known as Deconstructionism Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), Social Constructivism, and they greatly influenced Science and Technology Studies (STS). The branch of sociology known as Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) or Science and Technology Studies (STS), had the objective of showing that the results of scientific findings did not represent reality, but were basically the ideology of dominant groups within society.

83 The Anti-Scientism of Postmodernism Post-modernism was a radical critique against science, contemporary philosophy and current understanding of rationality. The view of science as a search for truths (or approximate truths) about the world was rejected. According to postmodernism, the natural world has a subordinated role in the construction of scientific knowledge. Science was just another social practice, producing ``narrations'' and ``myths'' with basically no more validity than the myths of pre-scientific peoples.

84 IS THERE ANYTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN? ANY PROGRESS?

85 An Example of Technological Progress - Transportation

86 An Example of Technological Progress - Transportation Beam me up Scotty next?

87 SCIENCE WARS (6) A report from the front of the ``Science Wars'' The controversy over the book Higher Superstition, by Gross and Levitt

88 SCIENCE WARS AND PEACE Cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and inter- disciplinary collaboration. Examples: Computing and Philosophy Interdisciplines (Topics: Adaptation and Representation, Art and Cognition, Causality, Enaction (Action and perception intertwined), Issues in Coevolution of Language and Theory of Mind,

89 AND AN ILLUSION AT THE END!