SW of science

Let me define science as a social practice dealing with a coherent body of knowledge (predominantly about material world) and evolving this knowledge towards higher degrees of consistency and completeness. As you see, an optimistic attitude shines through this definition. Sceptics, on the other hand, may argue that the whole enterprise of science is a permanent transition from one incoherent state to another. To figure out what is going on here, let’s have a closer look on the SW of science.

Ontology. What are the building blocks of the world?
According to science, the universe is filled up with particles, the void, and the energy which moves these particles around. The motion of particles for the most part is not random but obeys certain rules. Anything else (a human being, society, love, morals, faith, etc) is, in principle, reducible to these four (particles, the void, the energy, and the rules).

Cosmology. How does this universe work?
For some unknown reasons the material universe obeys math. There are conservation laws and a bunch governing equations consistent with these laws describing the evolution of waves and particles in this universe. These equations are not universal in a sense that different environments typically have different sets of the governing equations. In other words, our knowledge of the universe is fragmented - instead of a single set of equations applicable everywhere, we have a patchwork of various descriptions developed for different domains and at varying spatial and temporal scales. From these equations, physicists deduce stories about the origin and the evolution of the universe. The latest story goes as follows. There was a big explosion called Big-Bang about 14 billion years ago, and all matter suddenly appeared in the Universe. Unlike conventional explosions, this one didn’t have the point of origin, instead through this explosion the space itself was created and everything just appeared everywhere in the universe. (As an analogy, consider a rubber with dot points drawn on it. Start stretching this rubber out and the dot points will be spreading around, moving away from each other. The rubber is analogous to space, and the dot points mark random locations in that space.) One of the consequences of such explosion is an absence of the centre of the universe (or alternatively, you can call any place in the Universe, including the planet Earth, its centre). The Universe keeps expanding at accelerating rate meaning that all planets and stars (dots on the rubber) are speeding away from each other (and from our planet). The further away from our planet the faster they move. Eventually they all will be gone beyond the cosmological horizon and there will be no stars left on the sky (ok, our knowledge of the distant future is so limited, we don't have to worry about these runaway stars)

After initial cooling and condensation following the Big-Bang, most of the matter was spread all over the universe in the form of light particles and electro-magnetic waves. Gravitational forces pulled these particles together and formed galaxies and stars. Stars when exploding have crated heavier elements – building blocks of planets. The planet Earth, in particular, has formed about 4.5 billion years ago. When the physics and chemistry were right, life has emerged on its surface and evolved from single prokaryote cells into more complex organisms including mammals which at some stage culminated in humans.

At a microscopic level, the life of particles is governed by the laws of probability. In fact, there are no particles as such but the distributions of probability for a particle to appear at this or that point during the observation. Until the observation is carried out this particle does not exist at any particular location. Strange, isn't it. Almost anything is possible in micro-world. Particles can pop up out of nowhere, they may feel each other at distance immediately, or penetrate impenetrable barriers. There are rules governing their behaviour and no one knows why these rules rather than some other, and what they mean, if such question makes any sense at all.

In between these two extremes (macro and micro scales) lies the world of natural and social sciences dealing with objects which are neither too big nor too small - the world of meso-scale phenomena studied by classical physics, chemistry, biology, humanities, sociology. Natural sciences have been quite successful in explaining and predicting many natural phenomena. More complex social constructs proved to be more challenging to handle – we often can neither understand nor predict them.

Metaphysics. Why does this universe exist?
Science can tell us how some parts of the universe work, but it does not say why the universe is here and why it works this way. All ingredients of the universe (particles, the void, the energy and the rules) are given by the nature (whatever this word could mean) to be discovered and analysed by scientists. The question of “Why all planets follow the Newton’s laws rather than some other set of laws?” is beyond the scope of, at least, the mainstream science.

It does make sense to ask this question in a multiverse version of the world, entertained by some physicists, but then the next question “Why this specific multiverse and not something else?” completes the cycle and again suspends us in nothingness. To circumvent this problem, an American philosopher Nozick (1981) introduced the fecundity principle according to which there is an infinite number of universes out there and for any theoretical construct, however hypothetical or wild or unrealistic, there is a physical counterpart hiding somewhere in this multiverse. The question “Why this universe or this equation rather than another?” is then answered with the reference to pure chance: “There are other universes but it just happened that we inhabit this one”. If you press further and ask “Why this multiverse rather than some other?”, the answer is “Because this one is the most complete (it is all inclusive)”. It is not obvious that such an all-inclusive multiverse is the most useful kind of the multiverse, but in principle, from this manifold you can subsample a multiverse of any shape to satisfy almost any requirement.

Identity. What is a human being?
According to science, a human being is just a bundle of particles and biogeochemical reactions which maintains its structure and functions for about 70-90 years and then disintegrates into more basic ingredients. A Self or a person is just a tag we attach to that structured bundle nested into a social milieu. When the structure disintegrates, nothing is left behind, the person in gone.

Practices. What people do?
About 200 thousand years ago under freezing ice-age conditions human beings anatomically indistinguishable from modern humans already inhabited the planet Earth. Over the last 10 thousand years improved climates of Holocene made it possible to cross the line between the poverty and debilitating struggle of everyday survival towards the relative stability and freedom. People have engaged in explorations of the self and the nature beyond the limits of that defined by the biological necessities. Civilisations popped up like mushrooms. Great advances have been made in science and technologies, particularly over the last 300 years. Advances in humanities and economics enabled better social structures with democratic governments caring (sometimes at least) about human rights and justice. The life span of a human being has extended tremendously and the quality of the life was improved as well (at least in the developed countries).

Note that an alternative account of the human history, particularly over the last 300 years, would be a nostalgic mourning about the lost beauty of the pristine relationship between members of a small agrarian community and the nature. The progress in science and technology, according to this view, is destroying a natural flow of events and introduces unwanted anomalies into otherwise the right order of the universe and the society. Weapons of mass destruction, contamination, global warming, fake news, wars and financial instabilities, all these highlights of modern days would testify further to this story line. A third interpretation of the human history would be a story integrating positive and pessimistic perspectives into a more comprehensive and diverse description of the human affairs acknowledging strong and weak points of the scientific developments (for a more elaborated account of various interpretations of the human history see Christian Smith’s “Moral, Believing, Animal” 2009).

Values. What is the meaning of life?
A kind of an embarrassing question adults never ask in public. Science tells us there is no answer to this question. Or more accurately, different people have different answers and there is no common ground to reconcile their opinion. Yet, if we leave aside the task of the reconciliation, within a single storied-world this question is absolutely legitimate and in most cases (except some pathology) could be answered.

The storied-world of science could be an example of such a pathology, at least formally, unless the scientist is prepared to break outside the prison of his own rules. The scientist cannot answer this question because within the realms of science life does not make sense. We have a temporary bundle of structured particles and biogeochemical reactions, called a person. On a geological time-scale the life span of this bundle is so short that even “the blink of an eye” does not make a proper metaphor. We came from nothing and in no-time return to that nothing. The world is just an illusion. The same comment applies to the phenomena of life, in general, and even to the whole universe. Why do we care about anything if everything is already almost gone? Is it just because it is a basic instinct hardwired in our genes? All other people who did not have it are gone because they were too rational and did not care to fight? In this universe of science the reason tells us that life makes no sense and has no value. Instincts, on the other hand, push us forward and demand us to stand up and fight when needed. So, are we the people of reason or animals governed by our instincts? Are we to live like beasts or die like humans? The storied world of science cannot provide us with other options.

The meaning of life is outside the scope of the scientific enquiry, and yet, it does not mean that the gap is left open and people never know how to fill it up. The solution varies with time depending upon conditions prevailing in a given society for a particular time and a particular person. For ancient Greek philosophers, for example, a philosophical contemplation was good enough to exhaust the task of defining the purpose of life. For a general public (during extreme events in particular) the task of survival is often taken for granted without further questioning the reasons. Under normal conditions, nowadays particularly, I believe, the search of the meaning of life has moved beyond the realms of science and religious tradition into the realms of art. Postmodern disbelief in big stories cleared space for new developments transcending the reason and establishing new grounds for this enquiry. Starting with Foucault’s “man as a product of art” a human being and his life are increasingly considered and assessed as an outcome of the artistic creativity rather than attributes attached to a particular description of the universe. Such notions as metaphysics, afterlife, ethics, beauty are are perfectly at home in the realm of art which transcends the mechanistic world of science and, i think, has a capacity to introduce and sustain the meaning and values.

Narrative
The aforementioned stories about the world of science integrate nicely into a narrative structure which has the beginning (Big Bang), the mid-part explaining how this universe evolves through time, and the final part describing the present days and projections into the future. According to the mainstream school of thought, the further in time we go the bigger the body of the accumulated knowledge. The more we know the better we live. The subject area is well defined and confined to the material world, anything beyond that domain is ignored (could it be the reason for chronic problems we still cannot solve with the established methods?).

Now that we have an outline of the storied-world of science, let’s have a closer look on contradictions within its body. To guide us in this enquiry, I shall take the list of major unresolved problems in science as published by special issue of “Science” magazine (Science, vol 309, 2005). The list they have compiled is not perfect and have been criticised for being tilted towards physics and biology with much less attention given to, for instance, math, social sciences, or computer science. Yet, it is still instructive. In what follows, I will present some of the items included in this list.

Contradictions and open questions in science

Further comments
Let’s see how we can interpret these unresolved problems. Mind it, some of them are quite mysterious and contradict to the key principles underpinning our basic intuitive understanding of how the universe must be (e.g. counterintuitive puzzles in quantum mechanics).

First thing to notice is that any new unexplained phenomena highlights inconsistency of our knowledge - it contradicts to the established body of knowledge. Such inconsistencies are inherent to science because they enable new discoveries - they point to new data that does not fit into existing framework and requires new explanations. Take these contradictions away and innovations will not be possible. Discovering and resolving contradictions is an ongoing process which never ceases to operate in science. The science without contradictions is dead.

Second, you may argue that these inconsistencies are happening on the fringes of the main body of knowledge and they are just transient features called hypothesis. The body of the knowledge itself is getting bigger and stable as new knowledge is discovered and new linkages are established between otherwise isolated data. The sceptic, however, may disagree and argue that science picks low-hanging fruits and leaves aside challenges it cannot handle. According to this vision, scientists solve problems they can solve and ignore all the rest however important this “rest” could be (e.g. questions pertaining to metaphysics, afterlife, arts, complex systems). The proponents of the successful progression of the science dismiss all these accusations as not well justified and illustrate their points by offering alternative explanations.

Whoever is right, it does not change the fact that at any given time the story told by scientists includes statements which are not consistent with the main body of knowledge. These contradictions can be resolved in a number of ways. In most cases existing theories can be adjusted locally in order to accommodate new facts. If the problem is particularly hard, it could be set aside, and de facto ignored by the scientific community - you do not want to waste your life on the problem which has no solution (and no funding). Finally, resolving some contradictions may lead to fundamental, top-down redesign of significant parts of the whole system of the established knowledge. An example of such a revolution provides physics which in early 19th century was considered a dead science akin to geography - no new land was left to be discovered. For better or worse, we know that that vision was utterly wrong - the quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity have enriched and fundamentally reshaped the landscape of physics since then.

Like any other storied world, the world of science must be immune to self-destructive activities and have capacities to resist external threats and pressures. Criticism must be allowed but only at a therapeutic level, and only as long as it prevents some unhealthy tendencies which may threaten the integrity of the whole body. You may reshape some secondary appearances and features (or even update the whole subject areas) but do nothing to undermine the integrity of the whole system because redesigning the whole system implies the death of the old storied-world (including the death or transformation of the carriers of that world) and the birth of the new storied-world (including the birth or transformation of the carriers of that new world).

It is worth mentioning also that a lot of science is based on rules derived through induction. If we wake up tomorrow and find the gravity constant changed by say 1%, we will have to accommodate this new observation into our new theories (assuming, of course, that we survive this change). There is nothing in our knowledge that can prevent such change from happening. Rules based on induction can fail anytime.

Finally, I would like to mention Godel’s incompleteness theorems which say there are self-consistent systems in math such that we cannot prove their consistency within these systems themselves (see Appendix: Godel). While generalising Godel’s theorems beyond the field of math may not be legitimate, the disquieting suggestion that follows is that the consistency of our belief networks taken in their totality may not be provable as well. Hah! No big deal. Fortunately, we do not have to rely on Godel’s theorems to make statements about consistency of our belief networks, because for better or worse these networks seem to be inherently inconsistent. From this perspective the hypothesis that the math itself might be hanging on nothingness and may have no solid objective foundations is an interesting and peculiar assumption to entertain but it has little to do with our affair of establishing criteria to choosing between different inconsistent belief networks.