14. TOK AND NATURAL SCIENCES
14.1.
Examples of themes for group presentations and discussions
Work in groups of
2-3 people and present briefly the main arguments of both sides in these
controversial science-related issues. Then present your own stance and/or lead
a short discussion about it.
Etc.
14.2. Comments to the 25 questions in the IB TOK
syllabus pp. 18-20
1. Can the word science mean somewhat different
things in different languages? What subjects or disciplines could the term
'natural sciences' include?
-The English word "science" often
implies that we are referring to "natural science", not to history or
the study of languages. Academic titles like Bachelor/Master of Science vs.
Bachelor/Master of Arts show this.
-In. vetenskap/tiede means "science"
in a more general sense, including natural, social and other sciences,
humanities etc.
- A borderline case is geography, which includes
parts related to natural and social sciences.
- in Europe, physics and chemistry are together
with mathematics and computer science called "mathematical subjects",
in other countries math and physics/chemistry/biology are more clearly
separated
2. Should the natural sciences be regarded more
as a method or more as a body of knowledge?
It is possible to regard them as both
"method" and "body of knowledge". They can also be
difficult to separate - if one studies the history of science, one will focus
both on what experiments or other investigations were done and how they were
done, but also what knowledge they yielded.
Some issues concerning the scientific method:
-the deck of cards: will we notice if we are
shown black hearts or red spades?
- Fake and real sleeping pills
- Neither the patient nor the nurse giving the
drug known if it is real or placebo
- Case example: a chemical factory in
the former
- People living around factory are
carefully examined and the result after this is: more of some diseases per 1000
people than the national average are found=> the accident caused them? Is
this conclusion justified?
-Case example: car testing, state and
private, belief that private more lenient, investigation: private stations fail
29%, state 27% => privates stricter. Is this conclusion justified?
-Example: people eat more ice cream in summer;
people are more likely to drown in summer => eating ice cream causes
drowning?
3. What is meant by 'the scientific method'?
What are the roles of various kinds of reasoning in science? To what extent is
there one method which is appropriate for, and actually followed in, all of the
natural sciences?
- Note how this question reveals the answer to
the previous one wanted by the IBO! The alternative "body of
knowledge" is not followed up!
Main types of reasoning
- Inductive reasoning: from many special
cases to a general rule. Ex. we study many swans in nature and find that they
all are white, and then present the theory: "Swans are white".
- Deductive reasoning: from a general
assumption(s) we logically find the consequences in a special case (which then
may be tested). Ex. We know the density of iron and the density of water, and
that things generally float in a liquid only if they have a smaller density. We
deduce that iron will not float in water. That this will be the case may be a
hypothesis we try to test (it is falsifiable, can turn out to be wrong).
- Most scientists would use both
inductive and deductive reasoning. To some extent deductive reasoning is more
important if the research requires expensive equipment (one would not send a
probe to Mars to just generally drive around and see what if anything is found,
but the place where it lands and the instruments on it are designed so that
existing hypotheses can be tested. With less specific equipment, inductive
reasoning becomes more important, ex. if we investigate which species of
insects are found at the top of the trees in the jungle.
Possible philosophical foundations of science:
Confusing terminology and selectivity
- an important problem in the debates between
realists and constructivists is that these philosophies can be used in
different versions, e.g. if a realist attacks a constructivist and describes
constructivism as absurd, the constructivist often responds by retreating to a
more moderate version of "constructivism", where some difficulties in
obtaining objective knowledge are pointed out, but the existence of a physical
reality not denied
- conversely, there are versions of realism,
such as critical realism where the pessimism regarding the possibilities of
finding objective knowledge are so emphasized that this philosophy may be
better placed among the versions of constructivism
- The terminological difficulties are
exacerbated if different versions are used in different contexts
"When one analyzes these writings, one often
finds radical-sounding assertions whose meaning is ambiguous, and which can be
given two alternate readings: one as interesting, radical, and grossly false;
the other as boring and trivially true."
Quote by Alan Sokal (see http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/noretta.html)
- Or if realism and constructivism are used
with selectivity: realism for ideas we want to believe in ('science has
proved this') and constructivism for those we don't like or care about ('this
is just something the scientists think now, tomorrow we may have a totally
different idea')
- illustrating various philosophical
standpoints (from the center outwards):
A. Radical realism: Reality - Ways of Knowing - Areas of Knowledge
B. Moderate realism: Reality - Ways of
Knowing - Areas of Knowledge -
Knower(s) or
Reality
- Ways of Knowing - Knower(s) - Areas of
Knowledge
C. Radical constructivism: Knower(s) - Ways of Knowing - Areas of
Knowledge
D. Moderate constructivism: Knower(s) - Ways of
Knowing - Areas of Knowledge
Reality
- Other possible illustrations than concentric
circles?
- For a summary (ca 25 pages) of different
philosophies of science, see Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal : Defence of a
modest scientific realism (2001) at:
http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final_rev.pdf
4. What are the implications of the following
claim? 'One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of
the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has
been to prove that this aim is unattainable' (Jacob Bronowski)
The claim is probably connected to
"modern" (ca 100 years old) physics such as Einstein's theory of
relativity and quantum physics which by some constructivists/postmodernists has
been used as support for their philosophy.
1. The speed of light is the same for all
observers (in inertial frames of reference).
2. The laws of physics have the same form in
all (inertial) frames of reference.
The general theory of relativity extends to
non-inertial frames of reference. Note: Our reason for believing that the
theory of relativity is valid is that it fits experimental results.
Incoherent and unclear references to “modern”
physics have in recent decades been used by prominent social scientists to
support constructivism/postmodernism; for an analysis of this see: Alan Sokal: "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" at
http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
Alan Sokal:"A Physicist Experiments with Cultural studies" at
http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html
5. In the Diploma program, Group 4 subjects are
designated 'Experimental Sciences'. What counts as an experiment? Can
experiments be undertaken in other subjects? Are there some necessary
conditions for an activity to be an experiment, for example, hypotheses, data,
manipulation of variables, observations, generalizations and expectations of
outcomes?
-The reason for using the name
"Experimental Sciences" instead of the better "Natural
Sciences" may the very questionable pedagogical idea that all science
should be taught by experiment rather than transmission of theoretical
knowledge.
- the concept of an "experiment"
usually involves manipulation of variables, rather than mere observations such
as astronomical ones where we cannot affect the object of observation
- besides Group 4 subjects
"experiments" can be undertaken in at least psychology, possibly
economics; one may also refer to political events as "experiments"
such as the Soviet era in Russian history
6. What are the similarities and differences in
methods in the natural sciences and the human’s sciences? To what extent do
their fields overlap? To what extent would it be true to say that the human
sciences appear less 'scientific' because their subject matter is more complex?
- similarities: the conflict between realism and
constructivism is present also in human sciences such as history. Some
historians would claim that all historical knowledge is a subjective interpretation
and that there is no historical reality - even the Holocaust may be denied.
See: Richard J. Evans: In defence of history, 2000; or
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393046877/ref=ase_avsearch-bkasin-20/102-1271402-6667367
- differences: some natural sciences are more
quantitative and mathematical, while most human sciences are qualitative and
verbal.
7. Is the scientific method a product unique to
Western culture, or is it universal?
- The Nazis rejected Einstein's theory of
relativity and other "Jewish science" while preferring "Aryan
science"
- today multiculturalists refer to a profound
difference between "Western" and "indigenous" science in a
similar way
- multiculturalism is usually more strongly
connected to constructivism than realism
8. What is the role of creativity in the
sciences? To what extent is the creation of a hypothesis or a research method
comparable to the creation of a work of art?
- scientists often consider a simple theory
that explains many things to be more "beautiful" than a more
complicated one, but ultimately this is a subjective view (which is more or
less important depending on whether one follows realism or constructivism). See
also nr 10.
9. What knowledge, if any, will always remain
beyond the capabilities of science to investigate or verify? If there is, or can be, such knowledge, why
will it always elude effective scientific treatment?
- ethical values, artistic and aesthetical
aspects and religious issues (see nr 20) are sometimes considered outside the
scope of science. Is this justified? Discussion of this later, at questions nr
15 and 20.
10. What can be meant by Poincaré's comment
that 'It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we
discover?
- there is no limit to what hypotheses one may
present, and they often arise more by intuition, guesses, coincidences etc.
than by a systematical method. Testing whether the hypothesis is correct is
done by the scientific method
11. Is science about establishing cause and
effect relationships? If so, how is this achieved?
- a constructivist may use the difficulty in
finding cause-effect relationships in some phenomenon as an argument against
realism
- a realist answer could be: science is about
describing reality. If there are cause and effect relationships in reality, it
is our job to describe them. If not, then we should not force ourselves to
"find" them.
12. What may Poincaré have meant by 'Science is
built of facts the way a house is built of bricks: but an accumulation of facts
is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house'?
- a "brick" may represent the
discovery of a singular fact about nature
- it is then the business of science: to
describe the bricks AND how they are
arranged - if and to whatever extent they are arranged in some regular way. It
is not the job of science to arrange the bricks into a house but to tell how
they were found lying (as a house or as an unorganized pile)
- the question reveals the constructivist bias
of the TOK curriculum in the IBO: the way it is posed implies that any
"house" (ordered pattern described by science) must have been
constructed by the scientist rather than have been discovered in nature.
13. How different are the knowledge claims of
those disciplines that are primarily historical, such as evolutionary biology,
cosmology, geology and palaeontology, from those which are primarily
experimental, such as physics and chemistry?
- in "experimental" natural science
one can repeat an experiment, while in "historical" natural science
one can only study what nature offers; ex. there is a limited number of fossils
of a certain type, or supernova explosions (astronomical events which give a
lot of astrophysical information) occur rarely and cannot be caused by an experimentor
- the difference is not very radical, even if
the experiment can be repeated many times in a test tube the number of
practically possible experiments is never infinite
14. What kinds of explanations do scientists offer,
and how do these explanations compare with those offered in other Areas of
Knowledge? What are the differences between theories and myths as forms of
explanation?
- the answer to what the difference between a
theory and a myth is depends on which main type of philosophy one prefers: in
constructivism all theories are "myths" and modern science not
significantly better than voodoo or astrophysics while in realism the
difference is in the degree to which they correspond to an objective reality
15. To what extent can all the natural sciences
be understood through the study of just one science, for example physics? If
biology relies on chemistry and chemistry relies on physics, can it be said
that all natural sciences are reducible to physics? If so, what would be the
implications of this position?
- physics is universal in the sense that it
studies properties that e.g. living and non-living have in common such as mass,
length, time, speed etc.: a stone and a fish may have the mass 50 g, the length
4 cm, move at the speed 7 ms-1 etc
- the connection between physics and chemistry
is rather non-problematic; chemical rules for how many electrons fit into a
certain electron shell are simplified versions of a deeper quantum-physical
description
- biology relies on chemistry which is relevant
for a discussion about the foundations of ethics (see p. 22 below). Which (if
any) of these actions are unethical and why?
16. Is scientific knowledge progressive? Has
scientific knowledge always grown? In this respect, how do the natural sciences
compare with other Areas of Knowledge, for example, history, the human
sciences, ethics and the arts? Could there ever be an 'end' to science? In
other words, could we reach a point where everything important in a scientific
sense is known? If so, what might be the consequences of this?
- since in the past, older theories have been
replaced by newer ones, will this always continue?
- ex. flat earth -> spherical earth ->
ellipsoid earth . What will come next - cubical or tetrahedral earth?
- is this different from history: will future
historians discover that it was the Jews who killed 6 million Nazis or will
what we know about the Holocaust today only be the approximate historical truth
about it?
17. Is it accurate to say that much of science
investigates entities and concepts beyond everyday experience of the world,
such as the nature and behavior of electromagnetic fields, subatomic particles
or the space-time continuum? To what extent do these entities actually exist?
What consequences might these questions about the reality of these entities
have for the public with regard to perception and understanding of science?
- example: show and draw picture of a bar
magnet with magnetic field (illustrated with field lines). We then have:
- science sometimes refers to non-existing
entities in the same way as to existing ones (e.g. the field lines go out from
the north pole and into the south pole) which may be confusing
- philosophical constructivist: there are no
actual existing objects
18. How does the social context of scientific
work affect the methods and findings of science?
- the realist view would be that it affects
what type of problems are studied, the constructivist view is one that it affects
the outcome of investigations
- Issue for discussion: if women were "in
power", what if anything would be different in science?
19. What values and assumptions about knowledge
underpin science? What findings might emerge from a consideration, for example,
of whether or not scientific knowledge is amenable to public scrutiny, whether
or not it is intrinsically worthwhile, and whether or not it will continue to
be valid in the future?
- values, see nr 22. Intrinsic value, see nr
21. Future validity: see nr 16
20. What could be meant by the statement 'I
have been steeped in science all my life, now I am ready to pray' /(Stephen
Hawking) ?
- relations between science and religion have
been difficult, ex. Catholic church vs. Galilei
- modern conflict: creationism vs. evolution
- especially the "constructivist"
view of science similar to that of so called New Age religiosity (combinations
of buddhist/hindu views, religions of indigenous peoples)
- the Gaia cult (see nr.23): a form of
non-Christian creationism
- if we condemn creationism, does this apply to
all types of creationism or only to the Christian version?
"I'm sorry to say it, but under the
influence of postmodernism some very smart people can fall into some incredibly
sloppy thinking, and I want to give two examples. The first comes from a
front-page article in the New York Times (10/22/96) about the conflict
between archaeologists and some Native American creationists. I don't want to
address here the ethical and legal aspects of this controversy -- who should
control the use of 10,000-year-old human remains -- but only the epistemic
issue. There are at least two competing views on where Native American
populations come from. The scientific consensus, based on extensive
archaeological evidence, is that humans first entered the
(from Alan Sokal: A plea for reason, evidence
and logic at
http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/nyu_forum.html )
- in some situations terminology with religious
origin is removed (ex. the year "500 BCE = before common era" instead of "500 BC = before Christ"
- in other cases such terms are still used,
e.g. names of planets (Mars, Venus, ... = ancient Roman gods) or weekdays (Thursday
from Thor)
21. Is scientific knowledge valued more for its
own sake or more for the technology which it makes possible? Is there any
science which can be pursued without the use of technology?
- the working scientist is often driven by
interest in the issue, but those who fund the research in the possible
usefulness of it
- difficult to predict what research will lead
to technological or medical applications: ex. X-rays were discovered by
accident by researchers not trying to produce anything useful, but were very
soon used to diagnose bone fractures
22. Should scientists be held morally
responsible for the applications of their discoveries? To what extent would it
be true to say that technological advances drive changes in values and
morality? Is there any area of scientific knowledge which is morally
unacceptable?
- a more general question must be answered
first: should anyone be held responsible for any actions? Is there anything
that is morally right and wrong?
- like for scientific theories, there are two
main alternatives:
- like for scientific theories (see nr. 3),
there is a problem with selectivity: one may use ethical realism for
some things ('it is really wrong to drop nuclear weapons on civilians') but
ethical constructivism in other areas
- if one would choose ethical realism, one could
say that we make moral observations with a conscience, like we make other
observations with other senses. What if any are the similarities and
differences between moral/ethical and other observations?
- if some things really are morally
right or wrong, these may affect what scientists do; ex. is it right to work to
develop new military technology? or: is it ever right to use animal tests in
science? Discuss!
23. If natural sciences are defined as
investigating the natural world, what is meant by 'natural' and 'nature' in
this context? What difference might it make to scientific work if nature were
to be regarded as a machine (for example, as a clockwork mechanism) or as an
organism (such as some recent interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis)? How useful
are these metaphors?
- the Gaia hypothesis: the idea that living
organisms and the planet Earth together form a planetary organism, or at least
show some features of such. This hypothesis exists in many versions:
1. co-evolutionary Gaia: organisms influence
non-living environment and vice versa
2. homeostatic
Gaia: they do so in a way that keeps the global ecosystem in balance
3. geophysiological Gaia: this is done
in a way that makes the planet and the biosphere
resemble
a living organism, which may develop
4. optimizing or teleological Gaia: the
Gaia organism does so in a way that shapes the
environment
to suit it’s (her?) needs
In addition we have:
- Gaian environmentalism: humanity as a part of
Gaia can be viewed as a disease, or alternatively as the "brain" that
should keep the global ecology in balance
- Gaia cult: religious worship of the Earth
goddess, sometimes combined with a belief that this religion is supported by or
at least consistent with hard
science
Comments to the versions:
1. correct, but trivial and known
since the 1800’s
2. testable, but incorrect
3.&4 these versions can be
adapted to fit any experimental data
Problem: the use of ambiguous
terminology (which version of Gaia are we talking about now) and the belief
that support for one version implies that also other versions are correct
- some versions of the Gaia
hypothesis can be illustrated with computer simulations (the "Daisy world"
model) but these simulations depend on assumptions which are not necessarily
valid; other assumptions may lead to other results of the simulations (see
Kirchner's articles)
Articles about Gaia by James
Kirchner:
http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~kirchner/reprints/1989_7_Gaia_can_it_be_tested.pdf
http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~kirchner/reprints/1990_8_Gaia_metaphor.pdf
http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~kirchner/reprints/1991_12_Gaia_testable_useful.pdf
http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~kirchner/reprints/2002_55_Kirchner_gaia.pdf
http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/~kirchner/reprints/2003_62_Gaia_conjectures.pdf
24. Does scientific language and vocabulary
have primarily a descriptive or an interpretative function? Consider here
expressions such as 'selfish gene', 'artificial intelligence', 'electric
current', 'and natural selection’, ‘concentration gradient'.
- Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis: language affects science, ex. some Africans have many words for
black, Inuit’s many words for snow
- but:
which if any is cause and effect? Is there snow on
- like constructivism, the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis can be presented in versions that are radical and false and ones
that are trivial and true (like that it is easier to describe something if you
have a rich and suitable vocabulary for it
25. Are the models and theories which
scientists create accurate descriptions of the natural world, or are they
primarily useful interpretations for prediction, explanation and control of the
natural world?
- The question is misleading: the two are not
separate alternatives but related to each other. Valid scientific theories are
useful for the mentioned purposes because and to the extent that they
are accurate descriptions of the world.
- If you have a map, it will be useful for
finding the way somewhere if it correctly, to a relevant precision,
depicts the landscape you are in.