Philosophical Aspects of Science

What is Science ?

Science is a word derived in the recent past from the Latin word 'Scientia'. Scientia means knowledge , a knowing, expertness or experience.

Science is an intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experimentation.

Relation Between Science and Philosophy of Science 

Philosophy of science, a branch of philosophy , spends a good bit of time trying to identify scientific and unscientific work, trying to figure out the logic with which scientific explanations and claims are grounded and working to understand the relation between theory and empirical data. Thus, acceptable laws and theories of science will be outputs from this process. Philosophical tools are used at many instances to discover and build scientific knowledge 

The goal of philosophy of science is not to answer scientific questions but to answer questions of science. Philosophical tools such as thinking ,reasoning and critical analysis  are used in solving problems of science. 

Use of logic in philosophy and philosophy of science plays a crucial role and explanations about their necessity and appropriate uses date back to the time of introduction of philosophy by Socrates. Philosophers practice logic in order to laydown valid and sound arguments for problems. Furthermore, logic rules are used to  validate arguments, views or reasoning presented.

Science is developed obeying logic rules. Acceptable theories and laws are outputs resulting from them.

• Logic in Arguments

Do we use arguments in science? Yes ,we do. Constructing valid arguments is a major skill that must be practiced by students in the field of science. Validity of an argument deals with logic and it  points out that all students must have a basic understanding of logic irrespective of their area of study. A student can learn logic in argumentation when studying philosophy.

Students who have no interest or sense in studying a subject like philosophy would rather try to argue, reason out or explain their ideas to their peers against the subject. But still they are unaware that they use some major aspects practiced in philosophy in their arguments and reasoning.  A student who  has  been introduced to the study of philosophy has the potential to evaluate views of such peers and immediately turn down illogical, impractical arguments. Analyzing an argument or a reason mainly depends on the logic used in them. 

Logic evaluates an argument. Argumentation begins with perception and then bridged with prior knowledge. Unless you observe the surrounding you won't  identify a problem to argue or reason. It is the same when developing science. Scientific inquiry consist of ordered steps to be followed when formulating a new theory and this procedure greatly make use of logic in formulating , testing and confirming a hypothesis.

Arguments must not be presented in the objective of persuading others. One must always try to provide deductively valid arguments and for that he/she requires a good understanding about logics. Deductively valid reasoning forms namely, modus ponens and modus tollens, are quite often used in its invalid form thus resulting in logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are not accepted in science. 

Moreover , scientific explanations must also obey logic rules to be acceptable. If not scientific explanations would fail furnish the required explanation or reasoning for a particular problem identified by systematic observation in scientific inquiry. Deductive nomological explanations are best suited for scientific explanations.

• Logic in Hypothesis Testing

In addition to careful observation, then, scientific method requires a logic as a system of reasoning for properly arranging, but also inferring beyond, what is known by observation. 

Scientists  use conditional logic for hypothesis testing in scientific inquiry.  Hypothesis for a particular problem can be tested by carrying out well planned experiments and analyzing the results of them. However, it is also possible to do the same by presenting the hypothesis in a conditional form with a test implication.

For example, when William Farr investigated the problem to check whether cholera was caused by miasmata he formulated the hypothesis with the test implication as follows. If cholera disease is caused by inhalation of miasmata, then first symptoms of the patients must appear in the respiratory tract. So he carried out a survey examining the first symptoms of patients to confirm the test implication. However, the test implication failed as the statistically reported results failed to prove the hypothesis. The above mentioned hypothesis can also be logically tested as given below.

This argument is a deductively valid with the logical form modus tollens and it supports the hypothesis with certainty. So it is clear that logically testing a hypothesis is less complicated and doesn’t need complex experiments to test the validity. However, this is also presented in the similar way as an argument. Scientists or students in the field of science can construct hypothesis in the form of arguments with logical sense, test their validity and as a result can build up scientific knowledge.

In conclusion: