The rationality of science pdf

A short summary of this paper. Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. Discuss the issues on the basis of chosen standpoint and your own reflection George Couvalis, Herbert Feigl, Howard Sankey and others. Rational numbers in mathematics, for instance, represent tangible elements in the physical reality and can be provided evidence for in a non-abstract manner by simply linking the mathematical assumptions to natural objects.

This concept is the fundamental understanding of rationality, namely that there is an unquestionable and constant reflection or an assumption or a thesis in the world we can explore with our senses.

Finally, getting to the core of the meaning of the word rationality, there is its stem, ratio, conveying a proportion, a direct relation of one element to its counterpart. In this context, the ratio elements would be scientific conceptions and the counterparts would be elements of the reality being exposed to academic testing.

What is interesting, is that when getting deeper into Latin, the very origin of the meaning of ratio conveying sense, sapience and conclusion, we arrive at the core of the hereby area of concern, which is answers to the following questions: How do you form scientific judgments? What does it mean to be sensible?

How do you evaluate a method? And finally, on what grounds can you differentiate between means of analysis? A lack of substance with a simultaneous emphasis on importance that has been observed in the public media may also be encountered in the world of science. The discussion over what is rational, what rationality actually means and whether only the rational content can be deemed a genuine science, has been vivid among academics and it seems that it is gradually becoming more fiery with more tenacious bulwarks on both sides.

Scientific rationality is a fundamental issue, especially in such fields that are of a more abstract nature and do not have direct and tangible representations in the mundane reality or whose tacit counterparts are debatable and prone to various categorisations. An example of such a dubious issue may be a particular behaviour of stock market agents, not only to predict the outcomes related to their expectations, but actually project them to a great degree.

How much rationality is in the quite recent semi-psychological, semi-economic discovery that expectations influence the outcome? Roman Frydman and the other proponents of Imperfect Knowledge Economics advocate the concept that unfortunately there is little. On the one hand, there is the concepts of symmetry deeply ingrained in the philosophy of rationality. Ratio reference imply that rationality by nature denotes order, synthesis and conventions.

On the other hand, however, the contemporary understanding of rationality is referring to or depicting reality or being realistic. And, since reality is more chaotic than symmetrical, we look for tools of both, finding and creating generalisations and symmetries that we then call rationalisations when, in fact, being rational would really mean being anarchical and not blending autonomous elements into a unified and conventional abstract.

Nevertheless, from both, the philosophical and the economic aspects it appears that rationality of science is gradable and provisional. No doubt the two qualities are heavily dependent upon a particular perspective, but still, with reference to some ideas of David Hume and Karl Popper, questioning rationality can be justified.

Before commencing the more dignified philosophical debate, it may be constructive to draw a very simple, if not even banal, analogy grown from the basic interpretation of what rationality means, namely, having a physical representation.

So, the more tangibly and materially represented, the more rational some kind of a scientific tool, a concept or a method. Provided a trivial example of a map representing a city, it might seem at first that the more similar to the real territory, the more true the map. In other words, the more details, the greater rational value of the map. Is that really even possible? It is enough to imagine a map in a one-to-one scale with almost all information possible all the tiniest details along the desired path, all the fences, trees, rocks and bushes to know that such a map would be of no practical use.

In order for any conceptual tool, such as maps or fractions in mathematics or assumptions in social sciences, to play its role sufficiently, there has to be a certain degree of simplification, provision or convention. Upon applying the tool, we agree on the simplification and some level of abstraction from the material aspect in favour of being even able to recognize the potential results of an analysis against its mosaic background. Furthermore, rationality in philosophy is a normative concept, which means that not only do you form judgments with reference to what rationality encompasses and what it does not, but you also decide on what is optimal as a solution to a problem.

So, having a proven factual aspect will not suffice to state something is rational, the thing also needs to hold against the potential challenges as the choicest. Whenever there is a choice derived from a careful selection of elements of the structure, there are provisions. To make it more visible here, if one forms judgments and decides on what is the fittest representation of the rational, it makes it a conditional choice purely because of the fact that you judge positively if a particular condition is met.

Additionally, if there are more than just two options to choose from which is the most frequent case since binary conditions in the physical reality are less common than various values along a scale , any choice as a result of the act of justification must be based on some sense of gradation understood as a distribution of various volumes of value between two extremes.

The reason for that may be the idea that equality and symmetry are only abstract ideals that can never be fully realised. Nothing is revealed to us from beyond the range of our own senses and since sensual stimuli are measurable, they can be analysed by formulas and there might be scientific assumptions drawn that with all the arguments available they are likely to be deemed rational.

Nevertheless, David Hume emphasised that human experience is changeable and chaotic which is antonymous to rational or scientific in the common interpretation of rationality and science suggesting the two are stable structures upon which you build up another levels so that the former scientific conclusions become a foundation for the new.

When you consider human experience in the most collective way and science as all the scientific activities adding to one pile, then it seems they might be out of scope, since the sources of both, science and experience and the rationale for the two, are thousands of individuals, each having a different set of values and motivation. And here is the essence of the hereby thesis: complying with the rules of scientific rationality, you cannot deny a conviction that, only because the fact that we, humans, are very many minds and we do not constitute a common and unified awareness, science always has to be defended against accusations of being irrational or simply being applicable only to a certain extent.

A support of this argumentation is indeed provided by the idea of plurality that was evoked by Thomas Paine in his Age of Reason published in When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons.

It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. However, regardless of the above view, if going deeper into what it actually means to scientifically rationalise as optimal, it appears quite clear that it demands quantifiable formulas to either find or support what is the most esteemed optimum unravelment of a problem.

So any provisions and gradation simply does not take place in the proper conditions, because such formulas are frequently built upon mathematics or at least natural sciences to some extent and the quantifications altogether constitute a model, a some kind of reference frame which specifies the problem background, but also refers to the existing knowledge in the field.

In philosophy there is a distinction, or at least some philosophers agree the distinction exists, between rationality and reason. Jesus Mosterin, an advocate of the logic that science and philosophy are not at one, claims that reason is more of a psychological nature and by this very fact it is not rational in the scientific sense.

However, science is possible when the requirement of rationality is met, that is when binary either backing a premise or refuting it information is possible to obtain as a product of observation, limitation, detection or other form of analysis. Siegel, H. Reidel, Dordrecht. Jackson and S.

Haroutunian-Gordon eds. Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. This paper is mainly drawn from other publications. The first section is taken from my ; the second from , Chapter 2; and the third from , Chapter 6. Since what appears here are truncated versions of those discussions, I urge interested readers to look to those other works for fuller treatments of the issues here discussed.

Reprints and Permissions. The rationality of science, critical thinking, and science education. Synthese 80, 9—41 Download citation. Issue Date : July Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Abstract This paper considers two philosophical problems and their relation to science education. References Binkley, R. Google Scholar Dewey, J. Google Scholar Ennis, R. Google Scholar Green, T. Google Scholar Hempel, C.

Google Scholar Kitcher, P. Google Scholar Kuhn, T. Google Scholar Martin, M. Google Scholar Moshman, D. Google Scholar Nagel, E. Google Scholar Newton-Smith, W. Google Scholar Passmore, J. Google Scholar Paul, R. Press, Taylor op. Galileo testified concerning the indispensibility to his theoretical and experimental inquiries of the machines and instruments constructed by skilled artisans in the Venetian arsenal.

I want to reiterate that the other forms of understanding referred to above are those which pre-date theoretical understanding, and that theoretical understanding displaces them as an account of material objects.

The following are not precluded by this displacement, i There are or will come into being alternative forms of understanding in which understanding of material objects is not separable from human and social considerations, in which theoretical understanding is contained within a mere comprehensive social vision. Consistency with the scientific account of material objects and not consistency with any materialist world-view or methaphysics of physicalist reductionism is required of any such form of understanding, ii Such alternative, viable forms of understanding may be continuous with older forms of understanding: they may result from the development and radical redeployment of older forms in the context of modern lived experience.

Wisdom, derived from older forms, may yet come to illuminate the modern order, iii There might be important residue to rescue from the older forms concerning particular material objects and particular practices. Indeed, one would expect this because older practices presumably survived because they were soundly based empirically. See, e. A particular practice is not necessarily better than an incommensurate rival because it is technological, and the other traditional.

Thus, the displacement need not be a wholesale obliteration; it can involve more or fewer continuities with the past. This formulation derives from C. Borger and F.

Cioffi eds. Several recent writers e. Bernstein, R. I think that neo-Cartesian metaphysics has an even greater grip upon theories of the rationality of science. Exactly how the material world so conceived relates with the objects and events of lived experience constitutes a problem that has never been solved.

On this metaphysical view, the closed systems, which are well articulated by theoretical science, are simple, less complex instances of the way all natural systems are, so that the terms used in these articulations, added to and appropriately complexified, are the appropriate terms for proper articulations of the material world.

On this view, the physicalistic account is the appropriate account to give of entities for the sake of the objective of intervention and control and of entities which occur naturally under conditions analogous to those under which successful control occurs. On both views it is proper to engage in research to extend the range of applicability of theoretical principles — on the former view one will thereby be filling in more of the missing pieces of the material world; on the latter one may be generating novel possibilities.