types of scientific progress

8/10/2019 Types of Scientific Progress

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What is Science?

Science is a process or a way to study the world in which we live. The basic purpose of science

is to create a body of knowledge through observation, experimentation and data collection.

Science is continually refining and expanding our knowledge of the universe, and as it does, it

leads to new questions for future investigation. Science will never be finished.

Major Areas of Science:

The major areas of science are as follows;

Natural Science:

This branch of science seeks the knowledge of rules that governs the natural world using

empirical and scientific method. It takes into account both observant and non observable

phenomenon, e.g. Meta Physics.

Social Science:

It is field of human knowledge and deals with all aspects of group life of human beings.

How Science has progressed:

Actually, science has progressed in a manner in which it is falsified (Popper) from time to time.

The progression of science has seen two eras, the areas of normal and mature science.The basic

thesis of this is that there are paradigm shiftsin scientific communities. Sciences have

progressed, but still its inception. Science "changes as it develops." People are simply too driven

to accept things as they are (when a success is made/or when defeated) and they wish to push on.

Normal science era is a time period when scientists were engaged in puzzle solving and this was

the era of major discoveries. Mature science era deals with paradigms, where scientist can

criticize or challenge existing theories and laws. So science has actually progressed in this

mature era where the historians of science ignore many alternate paths that wandered people in

era of mature science and they falsify the clues they followed and these opposite points of views

were the major factor of developments in science.

Types of Scientific Progress:

Discovery:Science makes progress when it demonstrates the existence of previously unknown

phenomena or relationships among phenomena, or when it discovers that widely shared

understanding of phenomena are wrong or incomplete.

Analysis:Science makes progress when it develops concepts, typologies, frameworks of

understanding, methods, techniques, or data that make it possible to uncover phenomena or test


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explanations of them. Thus, knowing where and how to look for discoveries and explanations is

an important type of scientific progress. Improved theory, rigorous and applicable methods,

measurement techniques, and databases all contribute to the analysis.

Explanation:Science makes progress when it discovers regularities in the ways phenomena

change over time or finds evidence that supports, rules out, or leads to qualifications of possible

explanations of these regularities.

Integration:Science makes progress when it links theories or explanations across different

domains or levels of organization. Thus, science progresses when it produces and provides

support for theories and explanations that cover broader classes of phenomena or that link

understandings emerging from different fields of research or levels of analysis.

Development:Science makes progress when it stimulates additional research in a field or

discipline, including research critical of past conclusions, and when it stimulates research outside

the original field, including interdisciplinary research and research on previously under

researched questions. It also develops when it attracts new people to work on an important

research problem.

Research Vitality and Scientific Progress:

Expressions of scientific interest and intellectual excitement, sometimes referred to as the vitality

of a research field. Some are the indicators of it which are as follows

Established scientists begin to work in a new field.

Students are increasingly attracted to a field, as indicated by enrollments in new courses

and programs in the field.

Highly promising junior scientists choose to pursue new concepts, methods, or lines of

inquiry.

The rate of publications in a field increases.

Citations to publications in the field increase both in number and range across other

scientific fields.

Publications in the new field appear in prominent journals.

New journals or societies appear.

Ideas from a field are adopted in other fields.


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Researchers from different preexisting fields collaborate to work on a common set of

problems.

Progress in Scientific Methods:

Scientific progress can be of various typesdiscoveries of phenomena, theoretical explanations

or syntheses, tests of theories or hypotheses, acceptance or rejection of hypotheses or theories by

the relevant scientific communities, development of new measurement or analytic techniques,

application of general theory to specific theoretical or practical problems, development of

technologies or useful interventions to improve human health and well-being from scientific

efforts, and so forth. Consequently, many different developments might be taken as indicators, or

measures, of progress in science.

As we know science is a method through which we can know about truth and according to Karl

Popper it has progressed in a manner it has been falsified. The different scientific methods being

used from time to time are as follows;

1- Causality and Association:

According to this method or theory the objects on their own doesnt exist, but they are related to

other objects. Means if we want to know the cause of one event we have to know the other series

of events causing that particular even. So this is how scientists investigate the events related to

Metaphysics and natural sciences. For example the rationale beyond how the solar system came

into existing can be explained through the Big Bang theory. Also, when we drop some object so

why does it always fall on earth can be explained through gravitational laws. So we can conclude

that science is characterized as a search for methods. Cause and association saved Meta Physic

laws to a huge extent because it also includes non observable phenomenon e.g. black hole.

Limitations of Cause and Association:

In Cause and association methods we can explain a phenomenon through sufficient conditions,e.g. for a match combustion oxygen is sufficient condition, but here we encounter a problem that

we can never know all necessary conditions.

Cause and Association methodology can also not solve problems of social science because the

reason why a person did something cant be explained e.g. whyMr. A punched Mr. B cantbe

explained through a generalized reason.


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2- Induction:

Induction is a process of Inferring a general law from the observation of particular instances.

According to this approach we came to know about this world through experience. Induction

composes of a number of similar observations on base of which a theory can be generalized e.g.

through experience, we came to know that the sun rises in the morning and also from experience

we came to know that stress causes heart disease. This theory was proposed to falsify cause and

association methodology.

Limitations of Induction:

Actually Induction takes into account the speculations about future on the base of our past

experience, but how can we draw conclusions on the base of experience in such unpredictable

world.

Also in induction to generalize a law, we need an infinite number of observations which could

increase its probability of being a truth which is not possible in many cases.

Also a single disconfirming observation is enough to reject a theory in induction.

3- Deduction:

The deduction is a kind of argument in which the premises are meant to be providing solid

support to the conclusion or in other words conclusion is supposed to follow the premises.

According to Kent only number of observation is not the method we can know truth we can also

make statements of base of premises e.g. as we know all athletes run fast and Mr. A is also an

athlete so in this case premises are giving us a clue that Mr. A can also run fast.

Problems with Deduction:

The problem with deduction is this that the conclusions must follow premises and also if

something is logical it doesnt mean that it is true. This can be explained as if French is the

official language of France and a woman is a French citizen so she speaks French, this

conclusion is drawn from premises, but if she is French so it is not necessary that she speaks

French she may be Corsican or may be the daughter of migr French parents.

4- Positivism:

Logical positivism is work of Vienna Circle a group of philosophers who argues that whatever

we know is based on observation and experience and observation provide indispensable


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knowledge, and if something is not observable then it can be termed as metaphysics. So here

logical positivism separated metaphysics from science.

Contradiction of Logical Positivism:

The basic problem with positivism is that it separates science and metaphysics, but the problem

is that each and every element of science contains an element of Meta physics and most of

scientific inventions contain metaphysical laws as a base.

5- Falsifications:

The falsification is an argument that so many number of observations cannot prove a theory right

because one disconfirmation is sufficient to refute it e.g. if many observations generalize a

statement that all swans are white, but a single black swan is enough to refute that theory so

according to Popper all theories must opened to refute. According to Popper if a theory passed

through a number of tests and if it fails those tests so it can be rejected, but if it passed tests so it

is confirmed but the problem is that all theories mostly falsify later and at the point it was

developed so was confirmed so which means that the theory is not different from hypothesis

because a hypothesis is an unproven statement.

According to falsification that if a theory passes all tests so it is better than the previous theories

it replaced so all theories must contain testable preposition and scientists must learn from

mistakes so it will lead to continuous improvement.

So in short Popper shifted scientists interests from justification to error elimination and gave

science a new direction in which instead of generalizing a statement the gaps are identified to

improve it.

Problems with Falsification:

The problem with falsification is that how we can falsify or accept a theory on base of number of

tests it passes because the tests or judgmental tools are controversial.

6- Verification:

Verification is a doctrine which argues that empirical or scientific statements can be decided to

be true or false at the point they are developed.

Contradiction of Verification:


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The problem with verification is that the natural laws or other theories cannot be proven right or

wrong because only the experience can tell what right statement is and which one is wrong, so

instead of verifying a theory there is a need to open it for refutation.

Theories in scientific progress:

1. Realism and Instrumentalism

2. Empirical Success and Problem-Solving

3. Explanatory Power, Unification, and Simplicity

4. Truth and Information

5.

Truthlikeness

Scientific Approaches:

Effective science means using multiple

Approaches and technologies. The best

Research i s that whi ch is interdiscipl inary

And involves mul tiple investigators

With a greater range of expertise.

Science is not an activity but rather an approach to activities that share the goal of discovering

knowledge. One of these activities is research. Like any approach, a scientific approach has

limitations. These limitations include rational inference, criteria for growth, pragmatic action,

and intellectual honesty..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26378/

http://www.jcesr.org/research/four-scientific-approaches/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-progress/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26378/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26378/http://www.jcesr.org/research/four-scientific-approaches/http://www.jcesr.org/research/four-scientific-approaches/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-progress/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-progress/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-progress/http://www.jcesr.org/research/four-scientific-approaches/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26378/

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