Does Scientific Progress Consist in Increasing Knowledge or Understanding
Summary (2 min read)
1. Introduction
- Given how broad the notion of progress becomes in view of the means-end thesis, it seems legitimate to ask what part or phase of scientific inquiry would not count as progress on the epistemic account.
- The referee’s objection, however, shows that when epistemists claim that a cognitive episode is progressive, they have the burden to show that there is an increase in knowledge in the episode, or that the episode serves as a stepping stone for the growth of knowledge in subsequent research.
- The humoral theory, the miasma theory, and the germ theory hold, respectively, that a disease results from an imbalance of the four humors, from a noxious air, and from germs.
- According to the noetic approach, scientific progress requires not both increasing explanations and predictions, but increasing explanations or predictions.
3. Is Knowledge Necessary for Scientific Progress?
- Thus, it is in part because scientists believe that their explananda are real that their peers take their explanations seriously.
- Let me now turn to Dellsén’s contention that understanding does not require justification.
- Einstein showed how the kinetic theory was related to Brownian motion, and Wegener showed how the continental drift theory was related to the similarity between the two coastlines.
4. Is Knowledge Sufficient for Scientific Progress?
- Dellsén contends that in science there are cases in which there is an increase in knowledge, but there is no increase in understanding and no scientific progress.
- Knowledge of the individual facts does not constitute understanding, even if inferential knowledge is additionally required for understanding.
- The proposal outlines explanations of why one million individuals have the numbers of hairs on their heads that they have.
- Epistemists, however, would say the same thing about Dellsén’s objection that collecting the data about the childbirth rates and the stork populations does not count as scientific progress.
- On the epistemic approach, however, scientific progress consists in increasing significant knowledge, but not in increasing insignificant knowledge.
5. Idealizations
- Many scientific theories involve idealizations, i.e., they distort some factors and ignore others to make target systems tractable.
- Second, Dellsén says that “since idealized theories are not true, the epistemic account implies that no progress is made when one generates minimalist idealizations, at least not when more accurate, non-idealized theories are available” (2016a: 81).
- Generating approximate theoretical knowledge is better for scientific progress than not generating such knowledge at all.
- The referee’s suggestion indicates that on the noetist account, scientists can merely accept not only scientific theories but also data.
6. Simplicity
- Scientists make progress when they choose a simple theory over a complex one.
- This section aims to defend the epistemic approach from this objection.
- By contrast, the noetic approach implies that progress is made when scientists choose T1 over T2, for a “simpler theory enables us to explain and predict aspects of the world that would be more difficult or even impossible to explain and predict with a more complex theory” (Dellsén, 2016a: 81).
- This seems to be what Dellsén has in mind.
- The empirical equivalence of T1 and T2 does not mean that T1 and T2 generate observational knowledge at the same rate any more than it means that they generate understanding at the same rate.
7. Conclusion
- Dellsén argues that understanding requires not belief but acceptance, that scientific understanding arises from correct explanations and predictions, and that scientific progress consists in increasing understanding.
- I objected that when scientists explain and predict phenomena, they believe at least that the propositions that concern the phenomena are true.
- If they merely accept the propositions, their peers might suspect that they have fabricated data, and that their explanation, prediction, and understanding do not reflect the world.
- It follows that understanding, as defined by Dellsén, cannot capture scientific progress.
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Citations
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Cites background from "Does Scientific Progress Consist in..."
...For discussion specifically focusing on understanding as the goal of science see Bangu (2015), Dellsén (2016), Park (2017), Rowbottom (2015), Stuart (2016). explanation for P....
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Cites background from "Does Scientific Progress Consist in..."
...…that the contextual theory is empirically adequate, he would not say such sentences, and he would rather say that the explananda of the contextual theory, such as rejections and asymmetries, occur in science, i.e. he would rather say ‘that explanatory phenomena occur in science’ (Park 2017a, 28)....
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...We have the epistemic goal ‘to propagate to others our own theories which we are confident about’ (Park 2017b, 58)....
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...It follows that to embrace skepticism is to kick away the epistemic goal to spread the truth of your theories to your epistemic colleagues (Park 2017b, 58)....
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...The critics have embraced a view called epistemic reciprocalism, according to which ‘we ought to treat our epistemic colleagues, as they treat their epistemic colleagues’ (Park 2017b, 57)....
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...Second, if you are skeptical about a theory, philosophical or scientific, you cannot use it to explain phenomena due to Moore’s paradox (Park 2017c, 383, 2018a, 33–34)....
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Frequently Asked Questions (8)
Q2. How many micrograms did the women take during pregnancy?
The half and the other half of them took, respectively, less than two hundred micrograms and more than three hundred micrograms of folic acid a day during pregnancy.
Q3. What would the epistemists say about the creation of idealized theories?
however, would reply that the generation of idealized theories counts as progress, given that they facilitate inferences about observables, and that those inferences are accompanied by an accumulation of observational knowledge.
Q4. What does he argue is not necessary for scientific progress?
Dellsén argues that belief is not required for understanding, and that scientific progressconsists in increasing understanding, so increasing knowledge is not necessary for scientific progress.
Q5. What is the definition of degenerate science?
a scientific practice organized around accumulating trivial knowledge of this kind would seem to be a paradigm example of degenerate science.
Q6. Why does he think that it is easier to derive observational consequences from T1 than?
Dellsén thinks that T1 gives rise to more understanding than T2, not because he thinksthat T1 has a broader explanatory and predictive scope than T2, but because he thinks that it is psychologically easier to derive observational consequences from T1 than from T2.
Q7. What is the epistemic approach to scientific progress?
In Sections 5 and 6, The authorreply to his objections that the noetic approach accounts for, while the epistemic approach cannot, the scientific practices of using idealizations and of choosing simple theories over complex ones.
Q8. What did he explain in terms of the kinetic theory?
he explained Brownian motion in terms of the kinetic theory, thereby giving rise to the understanding of Brownian motion and making scientific progress.