Philosophy of Science

My interest in understanding the philosophy of science, in general, is largely attributed to the writing skill of David Deutsch who manages to write the abstraction of knowledge creation for complex aspects of the world precisely away from chaos. However, to understand the role that humans play in the growth of science and in advancing the philosophical roots of science I wish to refer to Freeman Dyson who kept himself open to new ideas occurring anywhere not only behind "the closed doors" of academic institutions and government-run laboratories. A free thinker of Freeman Dyson's caliber reflects the victory against "the chemical scum" argument. While these two reflect the purest of scientific divinity, I wish to remember the lesser-known geniuses who more than in science championed the social cause to change their neighborhood region through multiple scientific frontiers. One such man was Vikram Sarabhai who devoted his life to creating world-class institutions across the landscape of a post-colonial India fruits of which modern India has gathered in Astronomy and Space Technology. The pioneers of science-led-social-cause from the time of Leonardo Da Vinci and even before have added another degree of freedom to this larger framework of the philosophy of science. 

In a different context, an aspect of the philosophical framework must address the growing distance between people and their adaptability to scientific methods and tools.  Through various dialogues with my colleagues at various academic institutions, I have come to an understanding that while communication about the advancement of science is very much gaining momentum there's an increasing divide between science communication for the general audience and scientific publications. Most scientific publications assume so much context that an amateur mathematician, physicist, or engineer can never fully grasp the ideas and methods employed in them. The amount of effort made by the scientific community is so little that most of the fundamental work remains vaguely abstract even in "Plain English" let alone the heaviness of formal mathematics. These vague abstractions between the microscopic yet close-to-truth explanation and the macroscopic needs of a common man give rise to a variety of theories away from science. 

My understanding of the philosophy of science and to some extent  epistemology which studies the nature of knowledge  relies on the following pillars, 

(1) The knowledge at a certain level of emergence

(2) Method of knowledge creation which Karl Popper and recently, David Deutsch, highlighted as a combination of conjecture/guesswork and criticism

(3) Error correction that requires removing scientific, religious, cultural, and societal barriers

(4) Embodiment of knowledge in Technological Artifacts and the sensitivity of the reality to these technological artifacts

The process of knowledge creation can be understood by giving it a historical context through the dream of Socrates.

It all began with Socrates' quest to know the wisest man who ever existed among mankind. This quest led him to meet with Hermes, the God of Knowledge, in an ethereal dream or as some argue a voice from within. On his quest, he reached a point where he asked Hermes about the true nature of knowledge when he met with a fascinating revelation. 

" An objective knowledge is attainable but certain truth isn't."

This idea aligns with the philosophical perspective emphasizing the importance of open inquiry and continuous refinement of our understanding of reality. To attain objective knowledge one needs to have a persuasion that drives from conjecture followed by criticism. Hermes further revealed that our understanding of reality (physical and moral world, abstract geometries, and so on) is nothing more than our guesses that we test against flickers and shadows falling on our eyes which then find their way inside the darkness of our brain. It is in this darkness of our brain the meaning of this reality originates. 

David Deutsch captured the essence of this truth through this beautiful line by wise mortal Xenophase who described the nature of objective truth as follows: 

"The Gods did not reveal, from the beginning, All things to us; but in the course of time, through seeking we may learn and know things better. "

In practical terms what it refers to is that while our scientific theories may very well encode the abstract knowledge of reality as we see it, it is in our best interest to keep improving. For example, while Newton's law of gravity appeared to have created lasting knowledge finding its use cases in the neighborhood of Earth, a better theory through the work of Einstein on General Relativity was an essential improvement. Similarly, while Darwin's theory of evolution was an equivalent of Newton's theory of Gravity, we must seek an equivalent of Einstein's work for the evolving landscape of biological evolution. 

To begin with we need to understand that not even by combining the best computing capabilities all across the world one can aspire to predict the physics happening at the molecular level inside a kettle filled with water put onto boil. To say the least, the number of molecules within 1 cubic centimeter of volume would outnumber the number of stars in the galaxy by quite a margin.   Therefore, predicting the physics of molecule by molecule is out of the question. For such cases, which are almost everywhere in the universe and the processes within the universe comprising such physics are everywhere, we must look at emergent properties.  All complex physical phenomena resolve themselves into a high-level simplicity known as emergence. Entropy is one such phenomenon that reveals itself in higher dimensional simplicity through emergent properties such as temperature, and pressure. In other words, these complex microscopic details are quantized in terms of high-level meaningful abstractions. 

The emergent properties that we measure for water in a kettle are an abstraction of a physical system. On the contrary, a computer (real) that models the prime number is a physical approximation of an abstract perfect computer. In Deutsch's view, the philosophy of science is about realizing the problematic nature of how we acquire knowledge through abstractions. However, two contrasting schools of thought on reductionism and holism argue otherwise. 

Reductionism: Any physical process should be explained through microscopic level only in terms of its most basic constituents. 

Holism: All significant explanations for any physical processes should be formed in terms of the system as a whole without looking at every constituent individually. 

Deutsch believes that both reductionism and holism are mistakes. Good explanations do not form a hierarchy such that lowest level of knowledge being the most fundamental or the explanation that describes the process as a whole is the best one. He adds that any level of emergence can be fundamental as it encodes certain level of abstraction.