The main thesis of this book is that the winning combination for scientists is mastery of the general principles of scientific method together with mastery of the specific research techniques of a chosen specialty. Neither can substitute for the other. Ordinarily, a scientist's training in specialized knowledge and techniques is strong. But all too often, training in science's history, philosophy, logic, presuppositions, and fundamental methods is weak.

The most compelling way to show that the general principles of scientific method matter is to give several examples of scientific research that are striking precisely because they incorporate an exceptional grasp of these principles. Accordingly, this chapter presents several case studies.

Recall that this book has two objectives, to increase productivity and enhance perspective. The first case study, concerning the elementary physics of motion, pursues a balanced perspective on science by defending science's credibility against the various philosophical attacks reviewed in Chapter 3. The remaining case studies, concerning advanced research in diverse pure and applied sciences, reflect remarkable productivity energized by an exceptional understanding of scientific method. It is hoped that reflection on these examples will suggest possibilities for some new advances using analogous applications in the reader's own specialty.

INTUITIVE PHYSICS

Recall from Chapter 3 that Sir Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and other prominent philosophers have challenged the very foundations of science, citing four deadly woes: (1) Science cannot prove any theory either true or false. (2) Observations are theory-laden, and theory is underdetermined by data. (3) Successive paradigms are incommensurable.

In two words, the business of scientific method is theory choice – the choice of what to believe about the physical world. The presuppositions, evidence, and logic that comprise the scientific method have been explored in earlier chapters. Here a brief overview will draw much from the insightful and concise account of scientific method by Box et al. (1978:1–15).

Figure 12.1 shows the basic elements of data collection and analysis in scientific research. Starting at the top of this figure, the object under study is some part of the natural world. The scientist's objective is to find the truth about this physical thing, as emphasized in Chapter 2. The currently favored hypothesis Hi regarding this object will influence the design of a relevant experiment to generate empirical observations. When designing an experiment, a scientist must consider the prospective value of its data for discriminating between the competing hypotheses, together with the experiment's cost and risk. Informative experiments concentrate attention on situations for which the competing hypotheses predict different outcomes.

Naturally, different scientists may choose different research strategies: “Notice that, on this view of scientific investigation, we are not dealing with a unique route to problem solution. Two equally competent investigators presented with the same problem would typically begin from different starting points, proceed by different routes, and yet could reach the same answer. What is sought is not uniformity but convergence” (Box et al. 1978:5).

This is the first of four chapters directed mainly at this book's secondary goal of enhancing perspective (the others being Chapters 3.4, and 10). The particular kind of perspective sought here is intellectual perspective, as contrasted with, say, perspective on science's monetary costs, technological benefits, or sociological role. The focus here is on the traffic of ideas between science and the humanities, especially philosophy and history. In pursing perspective on science, this chapter tackles three rudimentary questions: What does it mean to say that science is a liberal art? What claims does science make for its methods and conclusions? What is the meaning of truth in science, and how has that meaning developed historically?

SCIENCE AS A LIBERAL ART

Is science a liberal art? What would it mean to affirm that it is, or to deny that it is? How has this conception of science waxed and waned over the centuries, and what are its current prospects? To address such issues about science's intellectual identity, a good point of departure is the position of the world's largest scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The official, energetic position of the AAAS (1990:xi) is that “Science is one of the liberal arts and … must be taught as one of the liberal arts, which it unquestionably is.”

Does science have a rational method of inquiry that provides humans with objective truth about physical reality? Certainly a reply of yes represents the traditional claims of science, as delineated in Chapter 2. And certainly that would be the reply of most contemporary scientists, as well as the general public. Anyone who confidently believes the scientific stories that water really is H2O and that table salt really is NaCl gives every appearance of being in the camp that replies yes to this question.

Nevertheless, at present there is a controversy raging over science's claims of rationality and truth, a controversy of such intensity that it often goes by the name of the “science wars.” These intellectual wars have been so noteworthy that they have even made the front pages of the world's leading newspapers. This chapter will examine the controversy.

An enormous literature, some of it for and some against science's claims of rationality and objective truth, reveals a bewildering array of positions, motivations, attitudes, temperaments, rhetorics, and intended audiences. Accordingly, the first task is to locate a reasonable and constructive attitude for scientists to take toward this debate. Then we shall examine the four principal problems that convince some philosophers that science's claimed rationality is in big trouble. Finally, reactions from scientists will be explored, and some preliminary suggestions will be offered for shifting the debate to more fertile ground.

Every conclusion of science requires presuppositions, just as necessarily as every conclusion of science requires evidence. Indeed, without appropriate presuppositions, evidence loses its evidential role, and that undoes science. Consequently, any reflective version of science must understand, disclose, and legitimate science's presuppositions.

The concept of “presupposition” will be defined more carefully later. Essentially, a presupposition is a belief that is required to reach a particular conclusion, and yet it cannot possibly be proved. A presupposition cannot be proved in the ordinary sense of marshaling definitive evidence because presuppositions precede and empower evidence. But that does not necessarily mean that presuppositions are arbitrary and shaky. Rather, presuppositions should be chosen carefully, disclosed, and then legitimated by appeal to common sense and sincerity.

Although presuppositions and evidence are equally essential, in ordinary scientific discourse the presuppositions are ignored, whereas the evidence is cited. Why? Basically that is because within the context of ordinary, common-sensical science, the presuppositions needed in science are sensible and unproblematic and are taken for granted. Nevertheless, “Our presuppositions are always with us, never more so than when we think we are doing without them” (O'Hear 1989:54).

Presuppositions and evidence are different in terms of implementation. Legitimating science's presuppositions can be done once and for all, whereas marshaling evidence must be done for each individual scientific inquiry. Envision reading several scientific papers about diabetes, cosmic rays, semiconductors, and turbulence over airplane wings.

The logic that is so essential for scientific reasoning is of two basic kinds: deductive and inductive. Chapter 5 reviewed deductive logic, and Chapter 6 probability, which is a branch of deductive logic. This chapter reviews inductive logic, with “statistics” being essentially the term meaning applied inductive logic.

For better or for worse, statisticians are not unified. Rather, there are two major paradigms for induction: Bayesian and frequentist statistics. At stake are scientific concerns, seeking efficient extraction of information from data to answer important questions, and philosophical concerns, involving rational foundations and coherent reasoning.

In order for scientists to judge for themselves which paradigm can best address their research needs, they must understand exactly which questions these two paradigms are asking and exactly what data or information these paradigms require in order to provide answers. By understanding the relative merits of different statistical paradigms, scientists have much to gain in the way of efficiency and productivity.

This chapter cannot possibly do what entire books on statistics do – present a comprehensive treatment. But it can provide a prolegomenon that will clarify the most basic and pivotal issues, which are precisely the aspects of statistics that scientists generally comprehend the least. The main objectives are to depict and contrast the Bayesian and frequentist paradigms and to explain why inductive logic or statistics often can function just fine despite imperfect data, models, and scientists.

As Huxley sought a scientific career, first at sea and then in London, during the late 1840s and early 1850s, he drew on a range of models of manliness from the imperial culture of exploration and conquest and from the heroes of sentimental fiction. He also appropriated ideals of Victorian womanhood and domesticity to distance himself from and obtain moral authority over other forms of commercial and industrial endeavor. Isolated for much of this period from the metropolitan world of learning, he conferred a social meaning upon his scientific work through the novels he read, the journal he kept, and the extensive correspondence he undertook with his fiancée. How then did Huxley conduct himself with other gentleman practitioners whose company he now wished to join? How did he position himself within this diverse scientific community? Who became his models, mentors, and patrons?

At mid-century, the sciences in Britain had little of the career structure and few of the defining institutions of today, such as the large research laboratory with its team of experts, the academic department, or the university degree.

If Huxley's scientific identity was derived in part from the identities of the artist and man of letters, how then was the man of science defined in relation to the clergyman, the figure who in many respects appears his most obvious counterpart or rival? Until the early Victorian period, scientific practitioners had often been clergymen by vocation. Leading naturalists such as William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and John Henslow not only combined their respective geological and botanical pursuits with clerical office but actively incorporated their science within the Anglican tradition. Natural theology continued to provide a unifying structure for English science well into the nineteenth century. Even practitioners like Darwin, who chose not to pursue a Church living, and whose work was viewed by some as undermining the principle of design in nature, still occupied traditional positions in society that rested partly on religious foundations and exercised a quasi-religious authority in their local communities. The appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species and other works, however, has long been associated with the decline of religious authority over the mind, and as evidence of the gradual secularization of knowledge and the corresponding replacement of religious leadership in a variety of quarters by new professions.

In 1846, Thomas Huxley received an appointment on HMS Rattlesnake, a survey vessel bound for the South Seas. In his shipboard diary, the twenty-one-year-old called himself a “man of science,” but the designation was highly tenuous. His official title was assistant surgeon, a low-ranking officer in Her Majesty's Navy. With only two years of formal schooling, Huxley had been apprenticed to general medical practitioners in Coventry and London's East End. With the help of a scholarship, he had taken courses at Charing Cross Hospital and had read comparative anatomy and physiology in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons. Having completed the first examination for the degree of Bachelor of Medicine at University College, but lacking the financial means to continue his education, he entered the navy in 1845. A position on a survey voyage afforded a young man an excellent opportunity for furthering a career in science; however, Huxley was not the official naturalist on the Rattlesnake. This title fell to the ornithologist John MacGillivray, whose father was a professor of natural history at Aberdeen. Such dredging and dissection as Huxley desired to perform would have to be supplementary to his medical duties. His scientific findings were not guaranteed a place within the official report of the voyage.

Chapters 3 and 4 have shown how Huxley drew on literary and religious models to shape scientific identity, and how he contended and cooperated with men of letters and clergymen in the reform of curricula in public schools and universities, and in new elementary classrooms supported and administered by the state. The public controversies in which Huxley engaged with other leading social figures took place before a variety of audiences who often had quite different notions of what science, literature, and religion should be, and who did not merely defer to learned men. Thus the meaning of the cultural practices in which such men engaged, the values that they attached to their work, and their self-definitions were in large part dependent on the views of the people whom they sought to educate. The “cultural authority” for which learned groups contended was itself in question and could be acquired only by meeting the expectations of various publics. Men of science were called upon by their patrons in government and industry to be meritocratic and practical, while many of their audiences and publishers expected rational amusement, moral didacticism, and a display of specially endowed powers of intellect.

In 1894, Thomas Huxley wrote to the editor of Science-Gossip magazine, criticizing the appearance in its pages of a vulgar Americanism – the word “scientist.” For Huxley, the term denoted the sort of technical practitioner who was valued in a nation ruled solely by concerns for utility. Such a nation, he suggested, was so culturally impoverished that it fabricated words like “electrocution” (coined from “electricity” and “execution”), thereby associating science with an instrument of death, simply for linguistic economy. “Scientist,” he implied, was undignified for a person of his caliber, and improper for the community of which he was a member – men of broad learning and moral gravity, capable of pronouncing on matters of general interest. From the mid-1840s, the expression that he and other professional practitioners had used for self-designation was “man of science.” It was a title that, in common with those denoting other cultural leaders of the period, such as men of letters or clergymen, was free from the connotations of intellectual or commercial narrowness that could prevent men in Victorian England from entering elite circles of learning. As a community, Victorian men of science may have differed from the “natural philosophers” of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in their sharper sense of distinction from other forms of learned activity (such as literature) and in their antipathy toward patronage.

Over the course of his career, Huxley worked to define the Victorian “man of science” through a complex set of discriminating categories embracing gender, gentlemanliness, literature, religion, and the relations of “elite” and “popular.” An absence of well-established career patterns and institutitonal structures made for an enormous diversity amongst practitioners. Scientific identity thus depended crucially on the assertion of social and cultural “others” to maintain its coherence and to secure its boundaries. In a variety of ways, Huxley's scientific self was positively constituted of these others. The “autonomous” scientific practitioner that allegedly emerged in the Victorian period as a result of professionalization was in fact a carefully wrought image that obscured a host of new social relations between men of science and heads of state, industrialists, publishers, and others. It also concealed substantial cultural borrowings from domesticity, from theology, from literature, and from empire.

Conflations of science with other social practices, such as literature and religion, facilitated friendships and working relations across professional boundaries and consolidated a more general authority of cultural elites. Science and literature were conjoined as symbolic, even fictive, creations of genius and imagination that refashioned material reality (and minds). Science and religion in turn were represented as essential components of biblical criticism and of the discovery of natural order. The joint efforts of elites in the domain of public instruction, such as the London School Board, provided spectacles of social solidarity while institutionalizing the common culture they produced.