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21 Science
It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science.... This notion seems to involve some confusion of ideas, which it is necessary to begin by clearing up. Any facts are fitted, in themselves, to be a subject of science, which follow one another according to constant laws; although those laws may not have been discovered, nor even to be discoverable by our existing resources. (Mill, 1900, B. VI, Chap. 3, Sec. 1)One class of natural philosophers has always a tendency to combine the phenomena and to discover their analogies; another class, on the contrary, employs all its efforts in showing the disparities of things. Both tendencies are necessary for the perfection of science, the one for its progress, the other for its correctness. The philosophers of the first of these classes are guided by the sense of unity throughout nature; the philosophers of the second have their minds more directed towards the certainty of our knowledge. The one are absorbed in search of principles, and neglect often the peculiarities, and not seldom the strictness of demonstration; the other consider the science only as the investigation of facts, but in their laudable zeal they often lose sight of the harmony of the whole, which is the character of truth. Those who look for the stamp of divinity on every thing around them, consider the opposite pursuits as ignoble and even as irreligious; while those who are engaged in the search after truth, look upon the other as unphilosophical enthusiasts, and perhaps as phantastical contemners of truth.... This conflict of opinions keeps science alive, and promotes it by an oscillatory progress. (Oersted, 1920, p. 352)Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. (Einstein & Infeld, 1938, p. 27)A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Planck, 1949, pp. 33-34)[Original quotation: "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, dass ihre Gegner ueberzeugt werden und sich as belehrt erklaeren, sondern vielmehr dadurch, dass die Gegner allmaehlich aussterben und dass die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist." (Planck, 1990, p. 15)]I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science. (Planck, 1949, p. 46)If you cannot-in the long run-tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless. (SchroЁdinger, 1951, pp. 7-8)Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. (Heisenberg, 1958, p. 168)The old scientific ideal of episteґmeґ-of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge-has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative forever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be "absolutely certain." (Popper, 1959, p. 280)The layman, taught to revere scientists for their absolute respect for the observed facts, and for the judiciously detached and purely provisional manner in which they hold scientific theories (always ready to abandon a theory at the sight of any contradictory evidence) might well have thought that, at Miller's announcement of this overwhelming evidence of a "positive effect" [indicating that the speed of light is not independent from the motion of the observer, as Einstein's theory of relativity demands] in his presidential address to the American Physical Society on December 29th, 1925, his audience would have instantly abandoned the theory of relativity. Or, at the very least, that scientists-wont to look down from the pinnacle of their intellectual humility upon the rest of dogmatic mankind-might suspend judgment in this matter until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. But no: by that time they had so well closed their minds to any suggestion which threatened the new rationality achieved by Einstein's world-picture, that it was almost impossible for them to think again in different terms. Little attention was paid to the experiments, the evidence being set aside in the hope that it would one day turn out to be wrong. (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 12-13)The practice of normal science depends on the ability, acquired from examplars, to group objects and situations into similarity sets which are primitive in the sense that the grouping is done without an answer to the question, "Similar with respect to what?" (Kuhn, 1970, p. 200)Science in general... does not consist in collecting what we already know and arranging it in this or that kind of pattern. It consists in fastening upon something we do not know, and trying to discover it. (Collingwood, 1972, p. 9)Scientific fields emerge as the concerns of scientists congeal around various phenomena. Sciences are not defined, they are recognized. (Newell, 1973a, p. 1)This is often the way it is in physics-our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. I do not think it is possible really to understand the successes of science without understanding how hard it is-how easy it is to be led astray, how difficult it is to know at any time what is the next thing to be done. (Weinberg, 1977, p. 49)Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in a position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophize without "foundations." (Putnam, 1987, p. 29)Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Science
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