Philosophical justification and critique of science.
There are three modes of science: descriptive, explanatory, and applied. The descriptive mode consists of systematic observation of phenomena followed by discovery and empirical confirmation of general laws covering regularities in the observations. The explanatory mode uses the observations and laws with assumptions that fill in gaps to tell a story of how and why […]
The term “paradigm” shall be used to indicate what Imré Lakatos called “research programmes.” For Lakatos, what we think of as a ‘theory’ may actually be a succession of slightly different theories and experimental techniques developed over time, that share some common idea, or what Lakatos called their ‘hard core’. Lakatos called such changing collections
Auditors have discovered a million dollars missing in the accounts of the venerable First Bank. What is the explanation? (1) There has been no impropriety; small rounding errors of a few pennies have occurred many times over many years, which happened to add up to a million dollars. (2) There was an embezzlement of a million dollars. This is
Niels Bohr is credited with first asserting a correspondence principle with respect to quantum mechanics, though the general idea surely predates him. As Wikipedia puts it: “In physics, the correspondence principle states that the behavior of systems described by the theory of quantum mechanics (or by the old quantum theory) reproduces classical physics in the
It’s amazing how much “Remember Galileo!” is still used as a warning cry for those who dare question current scientific orthodoxy. And it’s amazing how much history has been replaced by mythology, meaning something everyone knows but doesn’t check to see if it’s true. A few salient facts are in order: Galileo was a life-long member
The idea that science begins with hypotheses instead of data arose in the 19th century, first in the work of William Whewell, and was very influential on Charles Darwin. It is scientific orthodoxy today but is a flawed methodology. Here are three flaws: Positive bias: It’s virtually impossible to demonstrate a negative empirical conclusion because
A prima facie case can be made that mainline science conflicts with the Scriptures, that is, the Bible. For one thing, mainline science excludes final causes and follows naturalism so some conflict is inevitable. Naturalism excludes all miracles. The chronology of nature adopted by most science institutions is contrary to some historical parts of Scripture,
I would define a first-order science as an ancient and limited form of each science that is valid within its limits and simplifications. Each first-order science is a limiting case of a higher-order science known today (the correspondence principles). These are sciences of unaided observation and common sense. In particular: First-order physics is the science of
One thing I’ve noticed with evolutionists is the level of what I call “explanation anxiety” is high. That is, they must have an explanation for everything. If something is observed, they need an explanation for it and they need it now. They can’t wait. They must know. A few minor things can be unexplained for a
The underdetermination of scientific theory is well-known in the philosophy of science. It comes down to the fact that if theory A implies fact B and fact B is observed that does not logically confirm theory A. Without multiple controlled experiments to isolate causation (which can only be done some cases), there is no logical confirmation of
