[4.1.4.] The Relation Between Science and Knowledge.

 

Most philosophers believe that there is some important connection between science and knowledge.

 

This is not surprising, given that the Latin root “scientia” means knowledge.

 

However, there is disagreement over the nature of this connection. Some believe that it is relatively strong, while others believe that it is relatively weak.

 

In descending order of the degree of strength attributed to the connection, the positions are as follows:

 

(1)  Science is the only source of knowledge.

 

(2) Science is one way of getting knowledge, but it is not the only way; however, it is the source of our epistemic standards, i.e., our standards for judging what is and what is not knowledge.

 

(3) Science is one way of getting knowledge, but it is not the only way; and it is not the source of our epistemic standards, either. There are actually two ways to understand this:

 

a)      as referring to common-sense knowledge: There is commonsense knowledge over and above scientific knowledge. Detectives, historians, investigative journalists, chefs, all of us, have all sorts of knowledge that don’t have anything to do with what guys with white lab coats and huge federal grants can tell us. But we arrive at that knowledge in ways that are not all that different from the ways that scientists arrive at scientific knowledge.

 

b)      as referring to quasi-mystical knowledge: there is knowledge “out there in the beyond” that is accessible through no ordinary means. (This strikes many philosophers as ridiculous, or at the very least as too mysterious to be philosophically useful.)

 

 

[4.1.5.] “The Scientific Method.”

 

Some philosophers believe that there is such a thing as the scientific method, which has the following two traits:

 

(i)                 It is a method used only by scientists and is the reason for their success;

(ii)               It is a mechanical procedure (i.e., a step-by-step procedure that one can follow mindlessly, as if one were a machine) guaranteed to arrive at truths (or probable truths) about whatever it is that one is investigating.

 

This view of science might lead one to accept either position (1) or position (2) on the connection between science and knowledge.

 

But according to Susan Haack,[1] it is fairly obvious that there is nothing in existence that matches this description.

 

Says Haack, what is special about science is not that scientists have a mechanical method which is used solely by them. Instead, what is special about science is:

(a)    scientists have become very good at performing experiments in order to test their conjectures;

(b)   they tend to work together as a community on the same problems, so that the results far exceed what single individuals could come up with in isolation;

(c)    science feeds on itself: the better the results of experiments, the better future experiments can be conducted.

 

Haack’s view is in harmony with physicist Percy Bridgman’s statement that: “the scientific method, as far as it is a method, is nothing more than doing one’s damnedest with one’s mind, no holds barred.”[2]

 

 

 

Stopping point for Monday April 6. For next time, begin reading the article in your textbook by G. E. Moore, “A Defense of Common-Sense.” Read pp.175-80. (We were going to begin discussing this today, but we have fallen behind again.)

 

 

The draft of your term paper (minimum 1500 words, emailed, in .doc or .rtf format only, not .docx) by 9am on Sunday April 12. (Class will not meet on Friday April 10, since I will be at a conference.) In order to help me test the efficacy of the student email system, please do two things:

 

1. Send a single email from YOUR UWG ACCOUNT, with your draft attached, to both my UWG account and my personal email account (the address I gave you in class).
2. Send a single email from YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNT, with your draft attached, to both my UWG account and my personal email account (the address I gave you in class).

 

I will then report the results of this experiment to ITS, in the hopes of convincing them that there is something wrong with the student email system.