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
- The story of the universe is not complete. We have no idea what was before the big-bang and what awaits the universe
in the distant future? Perhaps, there was nothing before the big-bang and then everything just popped up out of
nothing. Or there was something, but no one knows exactly what that something was.
- What is the universe made of? A large body of evidence has been accumulated over the last decades indicating that the
mass of all visible matter in galaxies is not sufficient to explain rotation of these galaxies. There must be more
matter inside them to keep planets and stars together and avoid disruption by centrifugal forces.
That missing invisible matter
has been named an ordinary dark matter. On a much larger scale it appeared that more invisible mass is required to explain
the dynamics of galaxies. The problem was again too much empty space and lack of the mass to keep these galaxies together.
Another kind of dark matter was introduced called exotic dark matter. As if this was not enough, astronomers
discovered that the universe is expanding with accelerating speed. The unknown force that cases this acceleration was
called dark energy. Very little is known about the nature of the dark matter and even less is known about the dark
energy. All this invisible and pretty much unknown ingredients of the world make up about 96 % of its mass. In other
words, all science we have had so far was about understanding and explaining a fraction of the universe comprising only
4% of its mass.
- Why the micro-world is so strange and counterintuitive? Waves – particle duality, non-locality, probabilistic nature,
entanglement. Could it be another “Ptolemaic” model of the universe waiting to be replaced with more simple and accurate
description?
- Why the progress in understanding and predicting complex systems (alive creatures, social systems) is so poor? Is
science picking low hanging fruits?
- Why we still do not have a unifying theory of all physical forces? Until we have it, the theory of physics remains
fragmented because there are no connections between different parts of this story. In other words, we don't
know if the story of physics is self-consistent.
- Why science is silent about morals and purpose of life?
- Why there are no aliens? There is plenty of space and was plenty of time for them to develop
civilisations and show up.
Nick Bostrom (Swedish philosopher from Oxford) speculates there might be a cap, such that as soon civilisation
reaches certain stage of development it destroys itself. But we do not know for sure.
- Do we live in a multiverse?
- Ontological foundations. Is an information a basic building block of the Universe?
- Origin of life. No one knows exactly how life forms have emerged on the planet Earth.
The probability that DNK and proteins have been created
spontaneously is negligibly small. Biologists hypothesise about intermediate step of a smaller complexity (based on RNK)
which may have preceded creation of the DNK and proteins, but all this remains hypothetical. No one so far succeeded
in creating life forms from abiotic components and the hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin (panspermia)
remains a plausible alternative to that of the self-creation on Earth.
- Why physics speaks math? Richard Rorty said that nature does not speak Newtonian, people do. However, it does look
like some parts of the nature, if not speak then definitely follow math. The motion of planets, electro-magnetic waves,
thermodynamics, quantum mechanics etc. It looks like any coherent math system is destined to have some physical
counterpart. Why this is so? Why these systems behave as if they materialise math algorithms? As if the physics was
there but in a latent space, and only after the discovery of the algorithm it has became real
(Wigner, 1960).
- What is the basis of consciousness? Is general AI possible?
- P vs NP problem.
- Quantum computer
- Global warming
- Inner workings of Earth and changing magnetic poles.
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.