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Philosophy of science
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Alloy S Ihuah PhD
Those questions may always have existed in some form, but they came to the fore in Western
philosophy after the coming of what has been called the scientific revolution, and they
became especially central and much-discussed in the twentieth century, when philosophy of
science became a self-conscious and highly investigated discipline.
It must be noted that, despite what some scientists or other people may say or think, all
science is philosophy-embedded. Philosopher Daniel Dennett (1995:37) has written, “There
is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical
baggage is taken on board without examination.”
Towards a Definition:
Etymologically, the word science is derived from the Latin word scientia, ie “knowledge”.
Understood as human activity thus said to be “knowledge” is a human undertaking to learn
about the world around us through a special method called “scientific method”. We shall
some back to this latter. But suffice it to say, however, that there is no one and only definition
Page | 2 of science. This is partly because the standpoints from which authors look at science differ. In
his book “What is Science?” Normal Campbell writes that science can be looked at from two
aspects: firstly; science is a body of knowledge and a method of obtaining it. Secondly,
science is a pure intellectual study, and so in this regard akin to painting, sculpture or
literature rather than the technical arts. Understood in this light, science aim only at satisfying
the needs of the mind and not those of the body. It appeals to nothing but the disinterested
curiosity of mankind.
We may say perhaps that though limited in scope the second aspect of science is closely
linked with the first. Both project science as a whole body of knowledge, logically
interconnected and directed at achieving some desired goal; spiritual or material. Arguably,
such an endeavour requires systematic coherence, objective and standardized method as its
import ingredients. This conception of science may have informed Amadi’s definitions of
science, that it could also mean (i) knowledge especially of fact or principles gained by
systematic study. (ii) a particular branch of knowledge especially one dealing with body of
facts or truth systematically arrange and showing the operations of general laws as the
science of mathematics. (iii) Systematized knowledge especially of the law and facts of the
physical or material world. He thus sums up science as,
The pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social dimensions of our
world of observation, formulating descriptive systems by controlled experiments to determine
the degree to which these system represent the phenomena world etc.
Understood as such, science is concerned with both man and his way as much as everything
that is foreign and external to man. It is a branch of pure learning which is concerned with the
properties of the external world of nature which business is to find accurately those properties
are, to interpret them, and to make them intelligible to man; the intellectual satisfaction at
which its aims would be secured completely if this external world could be reduced to order
and be shown to be directed by principles which are in harmony with our intellectual and
moral desires. As an intellectual endeavour, science is both natural philosophy as well as
moral philosophy which learning arose ultimately from man’s desire to understand the world.
Perhaps it is this understanding of science that the complex adjectival form of the world
“science”, namely “scientific “i.e. knowledge- making has today come to be accepted as the
real province of science which in the early beginnings was the original enterprise of natural
philosophy. No wonder therefore that science has come to be accepted as “the making of
knowledge i.e. research instead of knowledge as such. Thus, science described as such is the
systematic process of making knowledge; of building knowledge.
Thus far, science can be provisionally defined as the process, or the group of interrelated
process though which we can acquire modern and over –changing knowledge of the natural
world which encompasses inanimate nature, life, human nature and human society. It thus
means that the result of science can never be static; changing and gain. Perhaps it is this
quality of science that Ogbinaka (1998:178) writes that the intellectual frontiers of science
have ever been expanding with very little of its contents being dropped. This has been done
to such an extent that the intellectual results of ‘yester science’ look crude and naïve in the
face of today’s science. Quoting from the Encyclopedia Britannica vol. 6, he argues further
that this conception of science has provided f very strong for the following concepts of
science;
(i) Science can be taken to be a mood in which the World is considered. Being a mood, we
should accommodate its changing states. Just as no man is always in the same mood, and no
man of science remains permanently in the same scientific mood.
(ii) Science is always developing. It is not a static body of knowledge.
(iii) Science is more of the making of “knowledge” (i.e. in contradictions with a claim that it
Page | 3 is knowledge itself’, so it is close to be called a research; a method employed in pursuit of a
goal which involves “the acquisition of systematic generalized knowledge concerning the
natural world; knowledge which helps man to understand nature, to predict natural events and
to control force.”
This again involves the use of previously accumulated knowledge to construct general
theories or systems from which testable hypotheses can be derived, and the testing of such
hypotheses via quantified observation under controlled conditions.
Thus far we may ask whether such a conception of science, argued above adequate for the
analysis of the impact of science oh human development, but in particular African
development. We may argue that such a conception of science reduced to a “method”
employed in pursuit of a goal is inadequate on the following ground.
(i) As the acquisition of “Systematic” generalized knowledge concerning the natural world,
science is made to be a scarce commodity reserved only for the west to the exclusion of the
developing world. But this is clearly fallacious, for science id a widely distributed
commodity, found in every culture tradition.
(ii) Science as a whole is a process, which transcends particular scientists, research teams,
and institutes. Hence, to argue that scientific goals encompass outcomes toward which
movement occurs is to miss the point. Put in proper perspective, a “goal” as usually
understood in an outcome, which people strive or more generally toward which the internal
functioning of a system is directed. Suffice it to say then that the meaning of a statement
attributing a “goal” to such a process would require clarification. No doubt, science produces
certain outcomes and some of these outcomes are goals of individual scientists and research
teams; but it does not necessary follow that science must be defined in terms of movement
towards the goal. As rightly confirmed by Richter; (1972:14)
It is entirely possible that the most significant aspect of science involve movement, over a
long time span, in direction which have not been intended or recognized by scientists
generally, and which have emerge accidentally, even if there he has also been movement in
directions which may be identified as corresponding to a “goal” of science
(iii) Even if science is defined as a process of moving toward a goal, it does not follows that
science thereby becomes equivalent to a “method”. Rightly defined, a method is a process
employed deliberately in pursuit of goals. It refers to the specification of steps, which must be
taken in a given order, to achieve a given end. As a function in scientific inquiry, “methods
are used within scientific inquires. “However, the concept of method cannot reasonably be
applied to some important types of event through which the findings of different inquiries are
interpreted and integrated by the scientific community as a whole. This is because the nature
of the steps and the details of their specification depend on the end sough and the variety of
ways of achieving it.
We may thus argue here that the concepts of goals and method used as a quality of any
scientific endeavour can only be recognised as appropriately applicable at relatively
microscopic levels. As Maurice Richter (ibid.) conclude on this matter that, when we seek
instead to analyse science macroscopically, taking into account not merely what happens
within particular research projects but also the integration of findings of many such projects
in different disciplines over centuries, the concepts of goal and method appear to lose their
relevance. The method of science therefore vary according to whether its end is taken to be
the conquest of nature of the discovery of truth and in the light different theories about the
relation between those ends and man’s primitive condition of impotence and ignorance.
The conception of science as a social institution, science as an occupation and lastly science
as a profession are also inadequate insofar as they imply comparatively stable relationship
between science and society, with science performing certain functions or services on a
Page | 4 relatively consistent basis. The way ahead here is the conception of science as a cultural
process with alternative avoids the difficulties and shortcoming of the above conceptions.
Science as a cultural process is associated with a distinct view of nature as operating
according to general laws, which remain largely hidden under ordinary observation
circumstances but which can be uncovered through systematically controlled observation and
experimentation as for example Isaac Newton’s one set of propose law; the law of
gravitation, the principle of calculus and the compound nature of light; and his three laws of
motion (Richter 1972:16). Such scientific laws, as they are many, provided an
overwhelmingly impressive demonstration of potentialities of this approach, thus reasonably
clearly differentiated from such related phenomena as philosophy region, technology and
magic among others.
This conception of science argues a position that the role of scientists became differentiated
from other roles and scientists came to communicate with each other systematically in ways,
which mark the beginning of what we call the scientific community. Captured with vision,
Maurice Richter distinguished three perspectives on science, perspectives which are mutually
compatible and capable of beginning integrated into single more comprehensive perspectives,
but which differ in the insights, which they provide. These include
(i) Science as cultural counterpart of individual cognitive development
(ii) Science as an out growth of traditional cultural knowledge
(iii)Science as a cognitive form of cultural development.
Taking together, the aspect of looking at science helps to provide a richer understanding of
the meaning and place of science in human development than any one or two of them alone.
According to this conception therefore, science is a transition in which cultural knowledge
systems with certain characteristics are displaced by other knowledge system sharing these
same characteristics but which also differ in certain in certain respect from those which they
displace. As a process, the direction of scientific development is similar to that of individual
cognitive development which starting is traditional cultural knowledge. Maurice Richter
(p.58) adumbrates the point further thus;
The structure of scientific development is similar to that of the evolution process in general
and the process of cultural evolutionary process in general and the process of cultural
evolution in particular science is an extension of cognitive development from the individual
to the cultural level. And a developmental outgrowth of traditional cultural knowledge, and
a specialized cognitive variant and extension of cultural evolution.
Through this cognitive process, long established systems in the scientist area are displaced,
though unintentionally but which new and genuine contribution is made to science and or
opening up the possibility of further inquires which will expose serious defects and or
frontiers in the system. Linked with this conception is, the understanding that, science as a
cultural process encapsulate the study of the maker of culture; man and his environment. By
extension therefore science could be said to be study of the mastery of man’s material
environment. This nature of science in terms of its employments in solving man’s
environmental or materials problems is what could be said to be the systematically ordered
knowledge of man and his environment. This most obviously explains why philosophers
describe man is an explorer who finds himself on a strange island, without knowledge of his
origin, his mission and the nature of his environment. But which scientific knowledge
provide contours and all the available routes for his journey in life. Rightly understood, the
future of man, and in general cosmic harmony is to a large extent dependent on man’s
creative mind.
This creative mind of man is what could be likened to a cultural counterpart of the individual
cognitive development which involves a process of learning to correct for certain limitations
of man’s observational capacities. This properly speaking is science for us which procedure is
Page | 5 in line with man’s ontology. Our capacity to observe the world is limited by selectivity of
our perceptions and by selective focusing of our attention on some aspects of the
environment to the neglect of other aspects. We are also limited by our restricted locations in
time and space. Richter (p. 59) argues in the spirit of Thomas Kuhns paradigm shift that,
through scientific process of selection on the basis of simplicity and predictive capacity, new
and alternative systems replace the old ones.
A scientist may take a genuine contribution to science in a way, which strengthens an already
established system, e.g. by demonstrating its applicability to a new class of phenomena, but in doing
so he, may very well be contributing to the ultimate displacement of that system by opening up the
possibility of further inquiries which will expose serious defects
in the syste
The Nature and Structure of Philosophy of Science
Scientists are unbiased observers who use the scientific method to conclusively confirm and
conclusively falsify various theories. These experts have no preconceptions in gathering the data
and logically derive theories from these objective observations. One great strength of science is
that it’s self-correcting, because scientists readily abandon theories when they are shown to be
irrational. Although such eminent views of science have been accepted by many people, they
are almost completely untrue. Data can neither conclusively confirm nor conclusively falsify
theories, there really is no such thing as the scientific method, data become somewhat subjective
in practice, and scientists have displayed a surprisingly fierce loyalty to their theories. There
have been many misconceptions of what science is and is not. I’ll discuss why these
misconstruals are inaccurate later, but first I’d like to begin by talking about some of the basics
of what science is.
Science is a project whose goal is to obtain knowledge of the natural world. The philosophy of
science is a discipline that deals with the system of science itself. It examines science’s
structure, components, techniques, assumptions, limitations, and so forth.
The Basic Structure of Science
To properly understand the contemporary philosophy of science, it is necessary to examine
some basic components of science. The components of science are data, theories, and what is
sometimes called shaping principles.
Data are the collections of information about physical processes. Sometimes collecting and
finding data to support theories can be rather laborious. This is because the specific details of
data that come into play can make science such a tricky business that some scientists, when
talking to laymen, sometime leave them out. Also, it is easy to fit a theory in with the data if the
data are vague and overgeneralized. It usually becomes more difficult to fit the theory with
specific data, especially since the details make it more likely for the theory to become less
plausible. Even so, data are important parts of theories and of science.
Theories come in roughly two forms. Contrary to what some might think, a theory in the
scientific sense does not have anything to do with whether or not it is supported by the evidence,
contradicted by the evidence, well liked among scientists, and so forth. It only has to do with its
structure and the way it functions. That is, just because a theory is a scientific theory does not
mean that the scientific community currently accepts it. There are many theories that, though
technically scientific, have been rejected because the scientific evidence is strongly against it.
Phenomenological theories are empirical generalizations of data. They merely describe the
recurring processes of nature and do not refer to their causes or mechanisms. Phenomenological
theories are also called scientific laws, physical laws, and natural laws. Newton’s third law is
one example. It says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Explanatory theories
attempt to explain the observations rather than generalize them. Whereas laws are descriptions
of empirical regularities, explanatory theories are conceptual constructions to explain why the
data exist. For example, atomic theory explains why we see certain observations. The same
could be said with DNA and relativity. Explanatory theories are particularly helpful in such
cases where the entities (like atoms, DNA, and so forth) cannot be directly observed.
But before we proceed, let us come to terms with the meanings of the terms “Fact” “Law” and
theory as they relate to our discussion.
Fact: Denotes actual state –of affairs. It is that which corresponds to a proposition; it is what
makes a proposition true. In order words, fact is synonymous with the proposition. Therefore, a
proposition can be said to be true if it described the state -of- affairs, that is, saying or stating of
what is as it is or of what is not as it is not.
(ii) Law: In relation to science, the law is used in terms of the law of nature or better still,
scientific law. Hey describe how nature works and do not describe anything. For
instance, Kepler’s law of planatory notion only describes how planets actually do
move: it does not prescribe how planet should move, and the penalties they would
suffer if they fail. In a sense, scientific laws describe certain uniformities in nature. It
is true, universal, empirical proposition. It applies to all members of a class without
exception; say “All iron rust when exposed to oxygen” is a true universal proposition
different from a statement of fact like “this piece of iron rusts”.
(iii) Theory: It is a unified system of laws or hypotheses with explanatory force
constructed to explain the laws of nature. This distinguished it from scientific law,
which are discovered. One most distinguished feature of scientific theory is that it
normally contains a number of terms that denote an unobserved entity. Take for
instance “there are protons and electrons”.
While it is an ocular fact that the trio are distinct features in scientific endeavour they all the
same have a systematic relationship. Uduigwomen (pp. 69-70) succinctly states the relationship
thus
While particular facts lead the scientist to discover scientific laws, the need to unify and explain
scientific law lead the scientist to construct or devise theories. Thus, while scientific laws unify
and explain facts theories are devised to unify and explain both laws and facts
Shaping Principles
Shaping principles are non-empirical factors and assumptions that form the basis of science and
go into selecting a “good” theory. Why are they necessary? Can’t theories be selected solely on
the basis of empirical data? Surprisingly, the answer is no. Why not? Describing some mistaken
views of science come in handy for explaining the answer. It is evident that theories and data by
themselves are insufficient for science to work, and thus other factors are needed for science to
operate. This group of factors in the nature of science is that of shaping principles, which can be
used to select theories and form the foundations of science. Many assumptions are made in
science. One example is the uniformity of nature. That is, the belief that natural processes
operate in a fairly consistent manner. This shaping principle is the basis for the idea of natural
laws. For example, Newton’s laws are said to apply throughout the universe. This is believed
even though scientists have not actually tested the laws everywhere in the universe. Natural
laws could not exist in science without assuming the uniformity of nature. Other assumptions
made for science to operate include that there exists an external objective reality, that our senses
are generally reliable, and so forth.
Another set of shaping principles evaluates the empirical evidence to select theories. Because of
the underdetermination of theories, there is always an infinite number of competing theories that
can accommodate any given set of empirical data. Since these competing theories are
empirically indistinguishable from each other, if science is to pick out a theory from among
these numerous competitors and claim that it is correct, then such a selection must be based on
nonempirical principles (whether they be philosophical, personal, societal, or whatever). The
law of parsimony is one of them. This principle of logic states that, if all other aspects are equal,
the simplest theory is preferred over other theories involving additional factors. This is also
called Ockham’s razor (sometimes spelled as Occam's razor). The law of parsimony is often
used because a theory conforming to this principle fits the data more easily. This principle
especially applies to theories with ad hoc hypotheses. The lower the number of ad hoc
hypotheses a scientific theory has, the better. Other principles include (but are not limited to)
empirical adequacy (covering the pertinent data in some suitable way), self-consistency,
fruitfulness (giving rise to other understandings and having stimulated pioneering investigations
and advancements), and explanatory power. Another key principle is how well a theory ties in
with other scientific theories and concepts that are rational to believe. It is only when these
kinds of shaping principles interact with data can science then provide rational support for a
theory over its competitors.
However, there are a few exceptions to the idea that there is no conclusive proof in science.
Logic is the closest we can get to rigorous proof and falsification. For example, suppose our
friend Bob has this theory: hairless men have no hair. By the rules of logic, Bob’s theory must
be true. Of course, Bob’s theory is a tautology (needless repetition of an idea, in this case it’s
the repeated concept of hairless men), and tautologies are typically not very helpful. Sadly, not
very many helpful theories can be thoroughly proved by logic, and logic disproving a scientific
theory is almost never used because seldom does a scientist propose a theory that is logically
impossible. Most of the time science relies on other shaping principles to pick theories.
It becomes easier to understand these principles when they are put into action. In the “moon is
made of cheese” example, we can reject it because of the law of parsimony. It uses an ad hoc
hypothesis, whereas the theory of the moon being like a rock does not. Often times, of course,
more than one shaping principle becomes applicable. For example, suppose Bob’s computer is
malfunctioning. One theory he has is that an invisible gremlin has caused such problems, and
another is that a computer virus has invaded his machine through his modem, computer
programming, and some fairly complex electronic systems in his computer as well as on the
Internet. The gremlin theory is simpler, and thus it would seem to appeal to the law of
parsimony. Yet the gremlin theory hardly seems empirically adequate in this case. This is
because other considerations need to be taken into account. Another fact to consider here is that
the computer virus theory ties in with electronic concepts that are supported by evidence,
whereas the gremlin theory does not. Because so many shaping principles are used and because
they can often conflict with each other, we should be careful about justifying how much the
evidence supports a theory.
Unfortunately, there are still limitations involved in scientific practice and shaping principles do
not solve the entire problem, even in the basic foundational beliefs of science. Take the
uniformity of nature, for example. We believe nature is consistent enough so that the
experimental data (such as from testing physical laws) obtained from two years ago on Earth
will essentially be the same if the experiments were to be conducted in identical conditions on
Mars next week. But there really is no logical principle to tell us that physical laws will hold
true in places where we haven’t tested them (even if that place is the future).[36] A similar sort
of problem arises when we choose between empirically identical theories. When using shaping
principles to select a theory, we must have some philosophical basis for believing that nature’s
preferences are similar to ours. And for many of these principles there is no logical rule to imply
their reliability. For example, in picking out a theory from among it’s empirically
indistinguishable competitors (and when all other factors are held constant), the notion that
reality favors simple theories over complex ones is nevertheless a philosophical principle.
Although these indicators of theoretical truth are necessary for science to work, they are
significantly indirect, circumstantial, highly fallible, and are still unable to prove/disprove
theories. While science may be the best we can do, the limitations should still be recognized.
On top of that, there is no known clear-cut method that tells us to what degree the evidence
confirms a scientific theory, despite attempts at finding one. This becomes problematic when
scientists must decide on what theory to accept as the most rational one. Scientists intuitively
feel how rational scientific theories are, rather than having a precise logical method for such
judgments. These intuitive feelings result from shaping principles. The interactions of shaping
principles in the minds of scientists are so complex and so numerous that we may never come
up with a rigorously logical system to select theories. Most of the shaping principles are
frequently unspoken and sometimes scientists themselves do not know they are using them.
Although some shaping principles are based on logic, others are not always so sensible and
objective. Scientists (and regular human beings) are also affected by cultural, social, and
personal beliefs. Indeed, such factors have been significant influences in scientific revolutions.
This is because many activities in science, such constructing theories, involve numerous aspects
of oneself. In the case of making theories, the theories themselves are creative inventions that
come from the minds of scientists. Science is a human activity, and what affects scientists will
have an effect on science. One may think that having such unscientific factors affect theory
judgments is bad for science. That may very well be true, but unfortunately there is no known
way to separate the helpful principles (explanatory power etc.) from the unfavorable ones
(personal biases etc.) in the subconscious minds of scientists that make these theory judgments.
Because every human being has their own unique set of shaping principles, different scientists
(and regular human beings) can look at the exact same set of data and disagree about which
theory most rationally explains the observations. Rather than the traditional view that science is
to be protected from biases and other imperfections of people, it turns out that science is
inescapably infected with humanness.
Tapestry
It would seem that there is a delicate tapestry in interpreting the data. It is uncommon for a
theory to be tested in isolation because of the Duhem-Quine problem. Because we often rely on
background assumptions to derive predictions for a theory, and because those background
theories depend on other auxiliary theories and principles for their empirical expectations etc., it
would seem to follow that the collection of theories combined with their shaping and
background principles thus make up an explanatory matrix, or conceptual grid, in which to fit
the data. Modifications to the explanatory matrix can be made in attempts to get a better fit, but
because of the interwoven nature of the tapestry, often times one cannot supplant aspects of the
grid without changing things in some way elsewhere. So it’s possible that the need would arise
for an entire conceptual system to be replaced. Additionally, the nature of science can make it
difficult, if not impossible, to empirically test an individual theory completely independent of
this matrix. However, it is also quite possible for nature to teach us some things in carrying out
our investigation. That is, the interaction between the explanatory matrix and the data can be a
sort of two-way process. As we uncover more data, we can learn better ways to shape the grid
and how to go about it.
Mathematics
Mathematics is the oldest of the sciences. It began with man’s need to count objects and to
measure distances. It is the most exact of all the sciences; proper use of its methods can provide
only one correct answer to a specific problem. It is the language used by all the other
sciences/all things (Onigbinde 1999:258)
It is divided into:
i. Algebra: The study of relationships between numbers as they are presented by symbols,
though multiplication, division, raising to a power, and extracting a root.
ii. Arithmetic: The science of computation by the use of numbers, through addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division.
iii. Calculus: The system used to figure the rate of change of a function. It is further
subdivided into:
Differential calculus which deals with the rate of change of variables and is a means of finding
tangents of curves.
Integral calculus which concerns 1 belt with the limiting values of differentials and is a means
of determining length, volume and area.
Geometry:
This branch deals with the measurement and relationships of line angles. Subdivisions of this
branch includes:
Analytic geometry – application of algebraic to geometry.
Descriptive geometry – used to solve problems dealing with the space relationships to geometric
forms which comprise an object.
Differential geometry – application of calculus to the study of flat surfaces and curves.
Elliptic geometry – deals with symmetrical forms that are not true cycles.
Plane geometry – concerns the study of polygons, triangles and cycles that can be drawn with a
ruler and compass. It is restricted to magnitudes of two dimensions in a single plane.
Trigonometry – geometric treatment of triangles. Spherical trigonometry involves triangles
inscribed in cycles.
Solid geometry – deals with figures of three dimensions such as cubes, cylinders and spheres.
Topology – geometry of distorted geometric forms.
iv. Statistics:
The collection of numerical facts, together with the processes of tabulation and interpretation. It
is a science of reaching conclusions from materials that are variable and of predicting result in
forms of probability. It is divided into:
Descriptive Statistics – which concerns itself with collecting and tabulating of data and
summarization of processed data.
Mathematical Statistics – this area deals with mathematical proofs used in statistical methods.
Mathematics finds practical relevance in the following areas of human learning.
Actuary studies which involves the calculation of risks and the establishment of premiums and
dividends for insurance companies.
Accounting – the analysis of the financial records used in business industry and the preparation
of statements and reports based on these records.
Similarly, mathematics finds practical relevance in the field of engineering.
In statistics as well, practical application is very much in use. This involves collecting,
tabulating and analysing data to discover relationships between variable happenings so as to
predict the probable outcomes under known conditions e.g. population census as it affects both
birth and death registrations. This help nations to plan their economics, social and infrastructure.
Descartes thus argued that nothing was more sorely needed than precisely this extension of
mathematical reason into wider fields (Collins J. 1967:3). Mathematics thus acts as a key and
primary science. It excludes the false and probable, but also proves its own conclusions by the
most certain and universally accepted demonstrations.
Thus, as the study of symbols, terms and mathematical methods, mathematics as a branch of
science is the key of science which practical application in human relationships is no doubt
indispensable, especially for the purpose of establishing consistency. In its applied nature,
mathematics find expression in literally every area of science (unlike the character of the other
sciences) in the service of all mankind in a practical way. Such is what informed Descartes to
generalize the use of the mathematical method in understanding the operator of nature. Thus,
theories for him, argues Onuobia should be trimmed down to those susceptible mathematical
development (1991:15) perhaps such was what Pythagoras means when he says “numbers
furnished a conceptual model of the universe” (Ibid p. 9).
a)
b) The Nature of the Physical Science
Philosophy is closely linked to science (and technology). All scientific and technological
innovations (and inventions) have conceptual basis.
Man being a rational creature, seeks rational answers to his needs through his rational faculties
by devising systematically techniques modifying and utilizing his environment methodically
and creatively. This as it were brings in philosophy in science and technology, Understood as
the knowledge of the ultimate or basic principles or causes of all things and of knowledge of
ultimate cause of all being, philosophy investigates nature (cosmology). Natural phenomena in
the direction of utility i.e. in order to utilise its resources and forces for human needs, This
involves the explanation of the phenomena of nature from the aspect of their existence and
traces them back to the conditions of their possibility, There are three major aspects of
cosmology and each of them provides man with fundamental knowledge of nature that helps
him to generate techniques and skill to tap the resources and forces of nature.
There is the aspect which inquires into the problems concerning mans knowledge of nature – the
epistemology of nature. This controls both pre-scientific and scientific knowledge of nature.
There is the aspect of cosmology that investigates the natural phenomena and the basic
categories and concepts of the physical science like motion, time, space, power, energy, matter,
weight, life, change etc. – the metaphysics of nature.
This aspect of cosmology is entangled with technology because its investigation of the natural
phenomena and the basic concepts of the physical science in forms far adequately in the
formulation of techniques and skills to confront nature methodically. For instance, it is from the
metaphysical understanding of the principle of motion or change, power or force or energy
matter or mass, space or time etc that man is able to conceive, fashion and establish techniques
about the proper utilisation of motion, power and energy, space and time, improvement of life
etc. this is a clear crossing from philosophy to science, and technology.
Metaphysics of nature, lays effective foundation for techniques (science) “it tries to understand
them as best as it can by reducing them to the ontological conditions of their possibility which
are implicit in the concrete world of nature and by grasping the metaphysical essence of
corporeal existence” (Junks p. 270) the ruling method here is aposteroristic.
Natural philosophy (cosmology) controls the demand of the metaphysics of nature and man’s
actual knowledge of concrete nature in order to arrive at concepts which give an answer to the
question about the natures of things and which show the proper relationship between natural
reality, man and the whole of reality including the Absolute.
Generally, then natural philosophy gives man the fundamental knowledge of nature, answering
the question about the nature of things, in order to be able to generate workable science and
technology to tap resources and forces of nature. It also controls, directs and orients man
towards the proper telos (end) and nature with reference to the whole of reality, the good of man
himself and in reference to the ultimate being: the Absolute.
It may be argued here that there is a rational relationship between the principles that are the
immediate objects of philosophical reflection, the theoretical (scientific) principles and the
practical principles that ‘hardens’ into techniques which we can call technological principles.
Both are drawn from ontological ratio which is the base of every given reality.
Basically every reality draws its meaning from three levels of reason (ratio) namely:
a. Ontological Ratio, Methodological Ratio,
Logical Ratio
1) Ontological Ratio has to do with the basic principles which forms the foundational
meaning of each “given reality”. unraveled in its natural state; and this defines the
amplitude which nature has in every given reality that opens for man’s approach e.g.
There is a ratio in a virgin land that presents it as a cultivatable its natural amplitude
for cultivation
2) Methodological Ratio has to do with the principle which forms the meaning which the
human reason in complimentarity with the ontological season gives as practical
principles workable for man’s appraisal land utilization of the given.
3) Logical Ratio is the deposit of the methodological principles in scientific form
coordinated for further application.
4) The basic question here is that of rationality in science and technology. This to us is a
philosophico-anthropological question. It is the question of how well man uses his
rationality in the exploration of the natural environment or investigation of the
natural phenomena to the telos of man; respecting both the material and spiritual
destiny of man.
The details required by this, postulation may be reserved fro later discussion but suffice it to say
that no better deal could be possible here without venturing into the basic issue of the methods
of the physical sciences which study is architectonic to exposing how well the physical sciences
could be used in healing humanity or how worse it could be in the disservice of humanity – to
kill humanity (attack and destroy man). But such also, can be discussed after a historical
development of science is ventured into.
Scientific Methods
The primary attempts of the philosophy of science are to elucidate the various elements
involved in the process of scientific inquiry. This, though not universally patterned follows the
observational procedures, pattern of argument, method of representation and calculation,
metaphysical presuppositions. Additionally, philosophy of science sets out to evaluate the
grounds to the validity of scientific inquiry from the points of view of formal logic practical
methodology and metaphysics.
Largely the scientific world harbours men with very different professional backgrounds and
interests. This to a large extent has resulted to a barrage of different methods of arriving as a
scientific truth.
It is however noted that, the scientific method is historically traced to Francis Bacon who in his
Novum Organ on (New instrument) showed how scientific method could be applied to the crafts
and experimental facts. That “we should start scientific enquiry with empirical facts”.
Following from this Descartes moderated Bacon’s position insisting rather that “we should start
with general principles which are provided by mathematics. This suggests to us that scientific
method proceeds by deduction rather than induction.
More recently dialectical materialism has been suggested by Karl Marx as the most accessible
methodology. Such for him is the point of departure for any science matters he argues exist in
eternity and alters its modes of existence and occurrence continually. Marx upheld that
All phenomenons are interconnected and this fact is discoverable by scientific method.
(i) The origin of a phenomenon gives the key to its understanding.
(ii) Each natural process is inherently limited because it develops its own
contradiction, which is usually overcome to produce new process.
It suffices to say therefore that the acquisition of scientific knowledge is multi-methodological.
According to him dialectical methodology is the triadic interpretation of things and process viz:
thesis – anti thesis – synthesis or universal particular – individual.
Generally, the most acknowledged characteristics which clearly distinguish scientific
knowledge from other sorts of knowledge come about though the following me thods;
(i) Hypothesis
This is usually a proposal, a statement taken as a starting point of an explanation or reasoning.
Used as a method of scientific inquiry it is a principle of investigation, which is not itself proved
as true. Its acceptance is therefore tentative until proved. Researchers go into the creation or
postulation of hypothesis in cases where an indefinite wait for proved theories constitute great
hindrance or handicap to further investigation.
It is therefore a formal position taken for granted and tentatively used as a means of explanation.
The logical positivist’s on the other hand identified hypothesis and proposition as two
dimensions of verifications. A hypothesis, they say is a proposed law connecting various
observations or much different immediate expression. A hypothesis is potentially testable or
verifiable and when it is eventually verified to become a law, each record of an observation is a
proposition. A hypothesis consists of many propositions, which are many verification of it.
Hypotheses are confirmed only by an appeal to the verifying propositions. This method of
basing general statements or laws on accumulated verifying propositions is known as induction
and is seen by the logical positivist as the haillinare of science.
(ii) Observation
This has to do with the general behaviour of natural phenomena. Apart from mathematics all the
disciplines under the classification of physical science begin with the observation of facts.
Galileo was the first in the history of science to start studying or observing the “behaviour of
falling bodies. From this observation or study, more facts were collected about moving bodies
which refuted earlier theories (or hypothesis) of motion such as that of Aristotle which asserted
that “the rate of fall was prepositional to the weight to the body” in question.
The argued position here is that observation as a method of science seeks to legitimize or reject
a proposal which was argued above is but a starting point of an explanation it is an attempt in a
practical way at proving or disproving a stated position (tentative, yet to be proved position).
Thus progress in science has been largely assumed by the observation of things as regards how
they as a rule behave. This methodology is also referred to as position methodology of science
which spirit is expressed in the attempt to study facts by observing the constant relations
between things and formulating the laws of science simply as the laws of constant relations
between phenomena (Stumpf 1971:343) it was this spirit that prompted Galiled to seek to
understand the involvement and relations of stars without probing into the their physical
constitution. The same spirit dragged Newton to seek to describe phenomena of the physical
without probing into the intricate issue of the essential nature of things. Similarly Fourier
discovered the mathematical laws of the diffusion of heart, without asking of questions
bordering on the essential nature of heat, and curvier formulated some laws about the structure
of living things without delving into the intricate question of the nature of life.
This method is clearly positivistic tic by its insistence on observation as a basis for verifiability.
Hence the logical positivists adopted the verification principle according to which a proposition
(hypothesis) is meaningful if it can be verified directly or is capable of being verified in future
experience.
The use of this method helped to serve as a criterion of demarcation between science of non-
science or Psenso-science and so enhance the unity science of all metaphysical notions. e.g
Epistemological Metaphysical or Ethical assertions are all debunked as meaningless. They do
not live up to condition of empirical verifiability such is why charmers says science is a
structure built out of facts” (1982:1).
It must be said that this method of inquiry is itself inductive. Statements (singular and general)
so inferred from are products of observation or experience, when one infers a general statement
from singular statements he does so provided (when) the number of observation are repeated
under a wide variety of conditions and provided no acceptance observation statement conflicts
with the Derived Universal law or theory, it is legitimate to infer a universal law or theory from
a limited list of statements. For example, concerning heated metals, we can legitimately draw
the universal law that “All metals expand when heated” i.e. generalizing from a finite number of
observation statements to an universal law or theory (we shall explain leads that if a wile variety
of conditions and if all these observed. As without exception possessed the property B then all
as have the property B.
Analogously this method scientific knowledge to a building resting on the secure basis provided
by observation. Chalmer corroborates this thinking succinctly when he says
As the number of facts established by observation and experiments groups and as the fact
become more retuned and esoteric due to improvement in our observational and experimental
skills, so more and more laws and theories of over more generality and scope are constructed
by careful inductive reasoning. The growth of science is continuous, over onward and upward,
as the fund of observation data is increased (p.5)
It is to be said then that scientific method begins with observation, moves to theory and
produces a generalization (or Universal statement with a predictive ability. If the generalization
is a good one, it is (or will be) considered a law of nature. Here understood, science produces
objective results which can be confirmed by anyone who want to go out and repeat the original
tests.
But this simple view of scientific method though widespread even among practicing scientist),
is unsatisfactory in a number of ways. e.g. The assumption that our knowledge and expectations
do not e=affect our observations, and that it is possible to make observation in a completely
unprejudiced way is an inaccurate description of what observation is all about. Our
understanding of psychology/perception argues for us here that seeing something is just having
an image of on your retina. As the philosopher N.R Hanson put it; “There is more to seeing than
meet the eyeball (Nigel Warburton, 1999:115) our knowledge and our expectation of what we
are likely to see affect what we actually do see. Our professional background affect what we see
(e.g. ordinary person seeing telephone cable sees a chaotic tangle of coloured wires. but a
telephone engineer sees patterns of connections order and purpose or trained physicist looking a
an electron microscope and someone from a pre-scientific culture looking of the same
equipment the physicist would understand the inter-relationship between the different parts of
the instrument and would appreciate how to lose it and what could be done with it.
Secondly the simple view of science neglects the nature of observation statements. The
language the scientist uses to move these observation built into it, there is no such thing as a
completely neutral observation statement. Observation statement are theory laden – even an
everyday statement as:
“He touched the base wise and gave himself an electric shock”
Assumes that there is such a thing as electricity and that it can be harmful. By using the word
electric, the speaker presupposes a whole theory about the causes of the harm experienced by
the persons touching the wire.
INDUCTIVISM
The notion of induction was first introduced into public vocabulary by Aristotle as a method of
learning distinct from demonstration. Aristotle stamps his authority in the scientific community
as a pioneer of scientific methodology. In this prior analysis or summative induction, Aristotle
talks of induction as a kind of syllogism in which we reach a universal conclusion from an
exhaustive survey of the cases it covers. In his posterior or intuitive induction, he talk of
induction as the establishment of a universal truth by consideration of an instance or instance
which reveal to though the necessity of the connection asserted. In his estimation therefore
science is knowledge of causes. Thus. Francis Bacon. David Hum, and J.S Mill all assumed that
the business of the empirical scientist was to establish universal propositions about causal
connection though, they differed from Aristotle in the account that they gave of causes.
Inductivism is then methodology of arriving at scientific fact or laws, and theories. Science is
not based on speculative imagination, but on what we observe. This most obviously instigated
the thinking of the textbooks of nature and the treaties of philosophers like Aristotle and Bacon
who both argued that the most reliable source of knowledge is experience for science is a
structure built on facts.
It is pertinent to note that the means to this end is what is called inductionism; the use of which
scientist establish general laws derived rigorously from a great number of particular observation
of facts or experience. This is the principal concern of a scientist. Bacon thus acknowledges that
it is the business of the scientist to discovered the forms of phenomena; a necessary and
sufficient condition for scientific knowledge. He says, ‘we should start scientific inquiry with
empirical facts”. This method involves moving from a limited number of observation statement
to the justification of universal statement. Chalmer (1982:1) restates the principle of induction
thus:
If a large number of A’s have being observed under a wide variety of conditions, and if all the
observed A’s without exception possessed the property of B. then all A’s have the property of B.
The inductivist thinks of scientific knowledge as a building resting on the secure basis provided
by observation. This method proceeds through rigorous arguments to establish a truth. If the
premises are known to be true, then it is probable that the conclusion will be true perhaps the
logic of inductionism is more correctly stated by Chalmer thus:
As the number of facts established by observation and experiment grows, as the facts become
more refine and esoteric due to improvements in our observation and experimental skills, so
more and more laws and theories of over more generality and scope are constructed by
careful inductive reasoning.
This methodology referred to as empirio-criticism is concerned for all or most of the time with
generalizations from experience, through the process of scientific experimentation i.e what is
not empirically verifiable does not qualify as true knowledge.
Tapestry
It would seem that there is a delicate tapestry in interpreting the data. It is uncommon for a
theory to be tested in isolation because of the Duhem-Quine problem. Because we often rely on
background assumptions to derive predictions for a theory, and because those background
theories depend on other auxiliary theories and principles for their empirical expectations etc., it
would seem to follow that the collection of theories combined with their shaping and
background principles thus make up an explanatory matrix, or conceptual grid, in which to fit
the data. Modifications to the explanatory matrix can be made in attempts to get a better fit, but
because of the interwoven nature of the tapestry, often times one cannot supplant aspects of the
grid without changing things in some way elsewhere. So it’s possible that the need would arise
for an entire conceptual system to be replaced. Additionally, the nature of science can make it
difficult, if not impossible, to empirically test an individual theory completely independent of
this matrix. However, it is also quite possible for nature to teach us some things in carrying out
our investigation. That is, the interaction between the explanatory matrix and the data can be a
sort of two-way process. As we uncover more data, we can learn better ways to shape the grid
and how to go about it.
Limitations of Science as a Result of Scientists
Some have pictured the scientist as a completely objective individual who is free of bias and
preconceptions, and who is willing to quickly abandon even the most well accepted theory if it
were shown to be scientifically inadequate. This belief is not close to the truth. The reality is
that scientists are humans, and humans are fallible beings. They have weaknesses just like the
rest of us. For one thing, a bias towards favored theories is actually built into all scientific
research. (Recall the necessity of background assumptions to make predictions and test
theories.)
A related imperfection, and to many a startling one, is a shaping principle called tenacity (also
referred to as belief-perseverance by psychologists). Scientists throughout history have shown a
surprisingly severe loyalty to their theories, even with theories that are in trouble with the
evidence. Furthermore, this sort of tenacity persists in scientists for rather long periods of time.
Why is this the case? The reasons become clear when one considers what scientists do in their
field of work. When people put enormous amounts of effort into something over great lengths of
time, as scientists often do with their theories, they have a tendency to become attached to it.
Scientists in such cases have an inclination to want the theory to be true and it becomes
psychologically more difficult for them to reject it as false, even if they are presented with
strong evidence against the theory. The satisfaction of destroying a theory one has arduously
worked for can be small compared to watching the theory become successful. Furthermore, the
reluctance to give up long-held beliefs is part of human nature, and scientists are not immune to
it. Not many of us would renounce the idea that two plus two equals four even if we were
presented with a mathematical proof disproving that idea. Consequently, a scientist whose
career and livelihood are invested in a scientific theory will probably not give it up effortlessly.
Needless to say, not everyone has been aware of this, including scientists. How is it then that
new theories emerge in science? Nobel prize winning physicist Max Planck has said, “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.”
However, tenacity is not necessarily a bad thing. Ironically, belief-perseverance is one of the
reasons science has advanced as far as it has. This is because scientific theories are not perfect,
and the only way to make real progress with a theory is to be committed to it. Virtually every
scientific theory has some sort of problems with the scientific evidence; which are sometimes
explained away by ad hoc hypotheses, at times there is some waiting for the problems to be
eventually solved, sometimes the problems are unnoticed, at times they are simply ignored, and
from time to time a theory is kept because there is no better alternative. If science abandoned
every theory that had contradictory evidence, science would barely have any theories at all.
Furthermore, if a theory’s problems are eventually solved, then we have tenacity to thank for
preventing the premature abandonment of the theory. Besides that, consider this hypothetical
case. Suppose a scientist who possesses no tenacity writes a paper for a scientific journal and
points out all the ways a concept or experiment might be flawed. Such a paper is likely to be
rejected. Part of the responsibility of a scientist is to provide the most favorable case for his
theories and leaving the criticism of the theories to other scientists. Belief-perseverance helps
accomplish this and thus can work well when science deals with theories that only a few
scientific workers really care about. When significant tenacity to an accepted theory is only
limited to a single scientist or a small group of scientists, the theory can easily be weeded out.
So some amount of tenacity is reasonable, and is part of what makes science function.
Nevertheless, tenacity can become a major problem when the majority of scientists fervently
accept a scientific theory that does not have enough rational support. Naturally, there is an
extent where the amount of tenacity becomes excessive and it’s time to abandon the theory in
favor of a different theory that has more evidence behind it. Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut
agreeable procedure to decide when such scientific concepts should be discarded. Feelings and
other shaping principles play a part in deciding when that time should come, and scientists can
sometimes disagree reasonably on that issue.
Another imperfection is that of observation. Because scientists are human, we cannot obtain
completely objective observations even if there could be total theoretical neutrality. One time it
was believed (because of direct observation) by Thomas Huxley that he discovered a being
halfway between a living organism and a dead one. Many other scientists made observations
that came to support that view. Later, however, it was discovered to be purely mineral. Over a
hundred independent observations corroborated Rene Blondlot’s concept of N-rays, but later it
was discovered that there were no such things as N-rays. These are, of course, extreme cases,
but it does demonstrate that data are not totally uncontaminated by humans. In practice, data are
somewhat subjective. This is because shaping principles influence the data we perceive, and
also because of the tendency for the mind to unconsciously fill in patterns based on these
notions. Such human contamination is called internal theoretical orientation of data. As a result,
totally objective data cannot be obtained.
Besides honest confusion of data, there is also deliberate distortion. Often times the scientist
who commits the fraud thinks he knows the answer. Some people may have justified faking the
data by thinking they were just speeding up the process. Some examples include that of Cyril
Burt; a psychologist who forged data on identical twins to support the idea that intelligence was
inherited. It is possible this was done because finding thirty-three identical twins who were
separated at birth would be a bit tricky. A more famous case would be that of Piltdown man, an
alleged missing link in human evolution. This is also an example of internal theoretical
orientation of data, because the fraud was an obvious one and yet persisted for over forty years.
Of course, these things do not happen all the time, but it should be noted that scientists are not
perfectly moral beings either, and sometimes this can have a debilitating effect on science.
Religion, Philosophy and Science
The notion that religion and science have constantly been at war is not without foundation. It is
true that there have been some religious people who have disagreed with the scientific
community (e.g. Biblical creationists). It is also true that many religious people once held views
contrary to what is now accepted (such as the Catholic Church accepting geocentricism).
However, these sorts of events should not be overgeneralized. While many attempts have been
made to show that religion is unhealthy for science (particularly in the 19th century),
contemporary historians see that work as more propaganda than legitimate history.
Even so, some believe that religion and science are utterly incompatible. Actually, that view is
relatively recent. It dates back not to Galileo, but to the liberal theologians of the Enlightenment.
(Incidentally, Galileo was not actually branded a heretic, the sentence he received was for
disobeying orders.) Not every educated person believes that science is against religion. There
are a growing number of people who believe otherwise, and that have rational support for the
idea that theology and science cannot be totally separated. Many scientists (including Newton,
Faraday, and even Galileo) have been deeply religious. To add to that, some scientists have
actually implanted their religion into their scientific work, including Newton, Boyle, Maxwell,
Pasteur, and others. Clearly, religion and science are not always bitter enemies.
Also, the evidence suggests that religion (and more specifically the theistic philosophy that
stemmed from the Christian worldview) was a significant factor in the birth of modern science,
at least partly because it provided some unique philosophical principles that science requires.
Why, for instance, would a rational investigation of nature be successful? Because a rationally
orderly God created the universe. (Nature consistently operating in mathematical patterns would
especially be confirmative for this belief.) According to the Christian religion of that time and
area, the universe is orderly, this orderly world can be known, and there is a motive to discover
this order. Indeed, many of the founders of modern science were Christians trying to
demonstrate that humanity lived in an orderly universe. Why should the investigation of nature
be empirical? Because God could have created an orderly universe in more than one way. This
sort of mindset is rather different from classical atheism (which was even accepted in the 16th
century), which holds to the metaphysical view of a universe dominated by chance events. This
philosophy hardly implied an orderly universe.
Conclusion
So what exactly is the scientific method? Although scientists certainly do something in their
field of work, there really is no such thing as the scientific method. This is true for a number of
reasons. First, the majority opinion in the scientific community is often wrong. Someone not
going along with what the majority does can produce something scientifically useful, and this
has been done many times. This is the position advanced by Paul Fayerabend in his Anarchistic
method of anything goes. Second, science has many specialized fields, and scientists in those
fields require certain craft skills unique in that field to conduct experiments. Such experiments
do not involve precise rules that give detailed instructions on what to do at each step. What may
appear to be misconduct to an outsider may actually be quite valid scientific practice in that
field. Furthermore, rapid progress in science will be more likely if scientists do not follow a
single standardized method. Individual scientists have numerous ways of making theories and
evaluating them, which explains why there can be disagreements among scientists. The different
shaping principles that interact with data can produce different results with each scientific
worker, including on how scientists should approach things. Sometimes these disconformities
help to produce useful scientific revolutions. At times revolutions in science happen in large
part because these kinds of shaping principles that are accepted by the majority change over
time. Great changes in shaping principles create another reason why there has never been a
single scientific method used by all scientists. Although there are some general objectives to
achieve in science (e.g. finding scientific theories that are rationally supported), there are a
number of ways to go about this, and not every scientist shares the same method.
It does seem that science contains various imperfections and some serious limitations on
certainty. Many have pointed out the existence of technology as a sign that we are on the right
track. But just because technology works doesn’t necessarily mean that our theories of why it
works are correct. Often, the reliability of technology depends more upon empirical
regularities, rather than explanatory concepts. For example, candles and light bulbs have
worked and will continue to work even though our theories of why they work have changed over
time (light as particles, waves, or some combination of the two; the rejection of the phlogiston
theory of heat, etc.). The underdetermination of theories applies to explaining the effectiveness
of technology just like any other data. Some have believed that science has been successful in
acquiring knowledge, yet there really is no way of verifying this. Data are incapable of
conclusively proving theories, and we can’t exactly read an omniscient “book of truth” to see
how often our theories have been correct. Historically speaking, almost every theory in science
eventually becomes discarded as wrong. Consequently, there have been so many false starts in
science that it would be rather incredible if we were the ones who are finally on the right track.
It would be especially amazing considering that the theories that we’ve already discarded have
not even been conclusively falsified by the data. Even so, this is not to say science isn’t worth
having around. On the contrary, science provides significant benefits for humanity. For one
thing, science has helped us to alleviate the struggle to survive. Whether or not we are on the
right track, it seems clear that science is conducive for useful technology. Various aspects of
science can be used for the needs of people, understanding ourselves and even our place in the
universe. Although there is a very real possibility of being wrong, we can increase our chances
of being right through further accumulation of data. Despite all its imperfections and limitations,
science may very well be the best tool we have for discovering nature.
Introduction
Professor S. B. Oluwole (1991:40) once argued that, “one of the fundamental
problems of the philosophic enterprise today is that philosophers themselves are not fully
agreed on the definition of the main tasks, goals, and the challenges of philosophy”. Suffice
it to say that, the suggestion by R.J. Hirst (1968:8) that, “philosophy is the rational
investigation of certain fundamental problems about the nature of man and the world he lives
in” gives us cause to argue that philosophy attempts to provide rational solutions to such
problems. How this is done or can be done, is what we shall soon undertake; most obviously
by going back to the traditional claim that the philosopher possesses a special intuition which
enables him to draw peculiarly philosophical conclusions from everyday experience. In
venturing into this undertaking, we are not unmindful of our mission; to argue out a necessary
link between philosophy (rationalism, idealism) and technology (the art of doing things) by
which implication we shall conclude that scientific technology involves the application of
reason to techniques.
Understanding Science:
Science means “knowledge”, used in a wide sense, science is the systematic study of
anything according to laid down intrinsic principles (i.e scientific methods). Thus, any study
carried out using this model is a scientific study. The knowledge derived from such a study is
scientific knowledge. In the narrow sense of the word, science is restricted to the positive or
empirical sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology among other areas of the physical
sciences. Our work adopts its wide sense of usage in the tradition of Aristotle through the
medieval to contemporary scholars who as it were used the term to mean episteme i.e
theoretical knowledge
Etymologically, the word science is derived from the Latin word scientia, i.e.
“knowledge”. Understood as a human activity, science seen as “knowledge” is a human
undertaking to learn about the world around us through a special method called “scientific
method”. Suffice it to say, however, that, there is no univocal definition of science. This is
partly because the standpoint from which authors look at science differs. In his book What is
Science? (1952) Norman Campbell writes that science can be looked at from two aspects:
firstly; science is a body of knowledge and a method of obtaining it. Secondly, science is a
pure intellectual study, and so in this regard akin to painting, sculpture or literature rather
than the technical arts. Understood in this light, science aims only at satisfying the needs of
the mind and not those of the body. It appeals to nothing but the disinterested curiosity of
mankind.
We may say perhaps that though limited in scope, the second definition of science is
closely linked with the first. Both project science as a whole body of knowledge, logically
interconnected and directed at achieving some desired goal; spiritual or material. Such an
endeavour requires systematic coherence, objectivity and standardised method as its
important ingredients. This conception of science may have informed Amadi’s definitions of
science, that it could also mean (i) knowledge, especially of facts or principles gained by
systematic study. (ii) a particular branch of knowledge especially one dealing with body of
facts or truth systematically arranged and showing the operations of general laws as the
science of mathematics. (iii) systematised knowledge especially of the laws and facts of the
physical or material world. He thus sums up science as,
the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social dimensions of our
world of observations, formulating descriptive systems by controlled experiments to
determine the degree to which these systems represent the phenomenal world etc. (Amadi,
1991:185).
Understood as such, science is concerned with both man and his ways as much as
everything that is foreign and external to man. It is a branch of pure learning which is
concerned with the properties of the external world of nature; its business is to find out
accurately what those properties are, to interpret them, and to make them intelligible to man.
The intellectual satisfaction at which its aims would be secured completely if this external
world could be reduced to order and be shown to be directed by principles which are in
harmony with our intellectual and moral desires. As an intellectual endeavour, science arose
ultimately from man’s desire to understand the world. Perhaps it is this understanding of
science that the complex adjectival form of the world “science”, namely “scientific” i.e.
knowledge – making has today come to be accepted as the real province of science which in
the early beginnings was the original enterprise of natural philosophy. No wonder, therefore,
that science has come to be accepted as “the making of knowledge i.e. research instead of
knowledge as such. Thus, science described as such is the systematic process of making
knowledge; of building knowledge.
It is this quality of science that Ogbinaka (1998:178) writes that the intellectual
frontiers of science have ever been expanding, with very little of its contents being dropped.
Quoting from the Encyclopaedia Britannica vol. 6, he argues further that, this conception of
science has provided very strong basis for the following concepts of science;
(a) Science can be taken to be a mood in which the world is considered. Being a mood, we
should accommodate its changing states. Just as no man is always in the same mood, and no
man of science remains permanently in the same scientific mood.
(b) Science is always developing. It is not a static body of knowledge.
(c) Science is more of the making of “knowledge” (i.e. in contradistinction with a claim that it is
“knowledge itself”, so it is close to be called a research; a method employed in pursuit of a
goal which involves “the acquisition of systematic generalised knowledge concerning the
natural world; knowledge which helps man to understand nature, to predict natural events and
to control natural forces.”
This again involves the use of previously accumulated knowledge to construct general
theories or systems from which testable hypotheses can be derived, and the testing of such
hypotheses is carried out quantified observations under controlled conditions.
One may ask whether such a conception of science, as argued above is adequate for
the analysis of the impact of science on human development, but in particular African
development. We argue that such a conception of science reduced to a “method” employed
in pursuit of a goal is inadequate on the following grounds:
(a) As the acquisition of “systematic” generalised knowledge concerning the natural world,
science is made to be a scarce commodity reserved only for the west to the exclusion of the
developing world. But this is clearly fallacious, for science is a widely distributed
commodity, found in every culture and tradition.
(b) Science as a whole is a process, which transcends particular scientists, research teams, and
institutes. Hence, to argue that scientific goals encompass outcomes toward which movement
occurs is to miss the point. Put in proper perspective, a “goal” as usually understood is an
outcome toward which people strive, or more generally toward which the internal functioning
of a system is directed. Suffice it to say, then, that the meaning of a statement attributing a
“goal” to such a process would require clarification. No doubt, science produces certain
outcomes, and some of these outcomes are goals of individual scientists and research teams;
but it does not necessarily follow that science must be defined in terms of movement towards
that goal. As rightly confirmed by Richter:
It is entirely possible that the most significant aspects of science involve movement, over a
long time span, in directions which have not been intended or recognised by scientists
generally, and which have emerged accidentally, even if there has also been movement in
directions, which may be identified as corresponding to a “goal” of science (Richter,
1972:4).
(c) Even if science is defined as a process of moving toward a goal, it does not follow that
science thereby becomes equivalent to a “method”. Rightly defined, a method is a process
employed deliberately in pursuit of a goal. It refers to the specification of steps, which must
be taken in a given order, to achieve a given end. As a function in scientific inquiry,
“methods are used within scientific inquiries. “However, the concept of method cannot
reasonably be applied to some important types of events through which the findings of
different inquiries are interpreted and integrated by the scientific community as a whole.”
This is because the nature of the steps and the details of their specification depend on the end
sought and the variety of ways of achieving it.
We may thus argue here that the concepts of goal and method used as a quality of any
scientific endeavour can only be recognised as applicable at relatively microscopic levels. As
Maurice Richter (ibid.) concludes on this matter, that, when we seek instead to analyse
science macroscopically, taking into account not merely what happens within particular
research projects but also the integration of findings of many such projects in different
disciplines over centuries, the concepts of goal and method appear to lose their relevance.
The method of science therefore vary according to whether its end is taken to be the conquest
of nature or the discovery of truth and in the light different theories about the relation
between those ends and man’s primitive condition of impotence and ignorance.
The conceptions of science as a social institution, as an occupation and, lastly, as a
profession are also inadequate insofar as they imply a comparatively stable relationship
between science and society, with science performing certain functions or services on a
relatively consistent basis. The way ahead here is the conception of science as a cultural
process which alternative avoids the difficulties and shortcomings of the above conceptions.
Science as a cultural process is associated with a distinct view of nature as operating
according to general laws which remain largely hidden under ordinary observational
circumstances but which can be uncovered through systematically controlled observation and
experimentation as for example Isaac Newton’s one set of proposed laws; the law of
gravitation; the principle of calculus and the compound nature of light; and his three laws of
motion (Richter 1972:16). Such scientific laws, as they are many, provided an
overwhelmingly impressive demonstration of potentialities of this approach, thus reasonably
and clearly differentiated from such related phenomena as philosophy, religion, technology
and magic, among others.
Metaphysical Character
Philosophy is a body of knowledge methodically acquired and ordered, which
undertakes to give the fundamental explanation of all things”. Understood as a “body of
natural knowledge, philosophy is here distinguished from theology and ranks it as dealing
with rational knowledge. Furthermore, philosophy is seen as a “methodically acquired and
ordered knowledge”. This view of philosophy put it as proceeding from observation and
experience, to a reasoned explanation of both of them. Lastly, philosophy understood as an
exercise that “undertakes to give the fundamental explanation of all things”, distinguishes
philosophy as a natural form of inquiry and puts it above other everyday activities. It is
fundamental and foundation to scientific endeavours. It is a search for ultimate reality; the
source of all things in their ultimate causes as known through the natural light of reason.
Rational Dialogue
This is a rational process of asking questions and questioning answers until we come
to answers that are unquestionable and questions that are unanswerable. It is a conscious and
rigorous pursuit of truth without which there are no answers, but which answers, when found,
are further subjected to critical scrutiny so as to obtain clarity, change or reject beliefs or
positions formerly held to tenaciously. Such an approach, Bertrand Russell (1959: ii) says, is
a scientific spirit of a prudent man who according to him will not claim that his present
beliefs are wholly true, though he may console himself with the thought that his earlier
beliefs were perhaps not wholly false.
Basic to the above conceptions of philosophy is the common-thread notion of
philosophy as a process of generating ideas, which are further processed and put into practice
through the art of doing things – techniques. Thus understood, philosophy is meta-science –
conceiving rational ideas which, when translated into science, is conceived as a means of
getting to know the world. For Russell therefore, the question whether objective truth belongs
to human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. The truth i.e. the
reality and power of thought, must be demonstrated in practice. The contest as to the reality
or non-reality of a thought, which is isolated from practice, is a purely scholastic question.
Karl Marx voiced a similar view when he says philosophers have only interpreted the world
in various ways, but the real task is to alter it (Egner and Dennon 1959:636).
Philosophy is both fundamental and foundational to science and technology. Being
an endeavour whose knowledge encompasses the whole, and which seeks to explain the
interconnecting link between things and events of the universe, philosophy (which is
complete knowledge) thus guards, and guides both science and technology rationally toward
a people-centred development. This, is the real enterprise of philosophy in science, and
technology.
We may, therefore outline the main tasks or goals of philosophy in relation to science
and technology, starting with a discussion of the very basic descriptions of philosophy as:
A Rational Basis to Life
Socrates stated long ago that “the un-examined life is not worth living”. Similarly,
Thoreau maintained that “to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts… but to
love wisdom so as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence,
magnanimity and trust”. Thus philosophy is not a sterile discussion of abstract notions lying
outside experience but a resolute and rational attempt at understanding life in all its
immensity, variety but above all, its totality. For life has meaning; to find its meaning is what
man’s activities is all about. It is a rational basis to life.
A Method of Reflective Thinking and Reasoned Inquiry
The second description of philosophy which has implication for science and
technology is its conception as a method of reflective thinking and reasoned enquiry.
Described as a reflective endeavour, philosophy proceeds by way of argument and criticism,
and not by experimental verification. It supposes experience and experiment, but goes
beyond the empirical (experience) while it reflects on it.
Secondly, philosophy is general in its method. That is, it inquires into the general
nature of things or the meaning of general concepts e.g. knowledge, value etc.
Thirdly, philosophy is definitional. It concerns itself with typical questions with a
view to discovering the essence or definition or at least the description of concepts and things
e.g. What is progress? What constitutes development? What constitute a good science, or
technology? are usually a request for definition.
Fourthly, philosophical method is reflective. By this we mean philosophy is
concerned with the meaning and relations between various concepts. It presents a way of
“seeing” the world; a distinctive approach or insight on things.
An Attempt to Gain a View of the Whole
Philosophy is an attempt to gain a view of the whole. This is an invocation of the
traditional view of philosophy; as a search – an activity through which man reaches the
unknown, into that which is hidden from him, but which he already has at least some initial
notion of what he is looking for. The drive behind the search is exactly the desire to verify
and elucidate our knowledge of reality. Thus, philosophy does not introduce to man a new
world of knowledge, but to a new knowledge of a world he or she knew.
The point at issue here is that the philosophical search goes far beyond the values and
events of everyday life. It opens a new horizon, which though strange, is all the same
fascinating, revealing and beneficial. It is a search for reality.
Analysis of Language and the Clarification of Concepts
Philosophy is also described as the logical analysis of language and the clarification
of the meanings of concepts. G.E. Moore (1903) writes in his book Principia Ethica that: “in
philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreement of which its history is full, are mainly
due to a very simple cause; namely to attempt to answer questions without first discovering
precisely what questions it is which you desire to answer” (Moore, 1906:30). Perhaps a
careful study of how language is actually used, taught and developed in everyday discourse
can illuminate, and even transform or dissolve, time-honoured philosophical problems.
These problems are seen as arising, often if not invariably, because thinkers, misled by
superficial grammatical similarities or their own fondness for uniformity have ignored
relevant differences in the function of terms and hence misused them. The result being that
they have drawn wrong conclusions based on a misunderstanding of the function of language.
We may thus argue, like Witgenstein, that whenever there exists a perennial and irresolvable
dispute concerning so-called philosophical problems, it is language that has gone on holiday.
A Group of Problems as Well as Theories about the Solutions
As an endeavour that concentrates on the wide range of problems, philosophy
attempts through analysis and criticism to raise theories that find solutions to these problems.
Thus character of philosophy oiled the great machine of the early centuries to engineer to the
fore, our present day scientific endeavours. It is fashionable today, to ask “what (if anything)
to expect from today’s philosopher”. Such was the title of a remarkable article that appeared
in the Time Magazine on January 7th, 1966. A similar title appears in one of the chapters of
Kwasi Wiredu’s recent book, Philosophy and an African Culture (1980). The chapter in
question is “What can philosophy do for Africa?” Such titles, provocative though, seem to
suggest that there is some doubt as to what philosophers (or philosophy) have (has) to offer to
the world today. There may even be the suspicion that it has nothing to offer. Perhaps such
question are not asked or may not be asked of engineers, doctors or bankers because it
appears to be quite obvious that they have something to offer and what they have to offer is
obvious to the society.
Philosophical Science
Now, the philosophical enterprise, in science and technology yesterday and today has
ever remained the same. That is, the meta-scientific enterprise, which made philosophy
fundamental and foundational to all human endeavours. Perhaps a retrospection of three
centuries ago argues for the reinvention of the philosophical spirit of the antiquity. Although,
at that point in time, there was confusion in the air, the importance of philosophy was not
seriously in question. We discover in particular that philosophy was held in high esteem,
even though some of its practitioners may have been severely criticised. In antiquity,
philosophy was understood as the science of life which enables people “to think well, to
reason practically – neither too much nor too little because it is the means of living well as
circumstances permit us to live and to see clearly into the causes of things, to analyse our
own acts and motives, and to try to understand those of others.
Admittedly, such rational behaviour of man provided a base for what came to be later
delineated as science which found practical reality in technical application in the quest to
fulfil man’s essential needs. This, according to Abraham Kaplan, is the essential business of
philosophy, which he says, “is to articulate principles by which man can live; not just as a
scientist, citizen, religious Being or whatever, but as the whole man that he is” (Kaplan,
1961:4). It means for us, then, that philosophy is a technical discipline, that intertwines all
areas of human knowledge, and which in pursuit, helps men to think more clearly and more
truly about themselves and the world in which they inhabit. Drawing inspiration from John
Wild in this direction of thought, K. C. Anyanwu argues that “any man who thinks, speaks,
and lives necessarily needs philosophy, and true philosophy, is a therapy for the common
intellect of common men, and true therapy does not try to destroy what it is trying to heal or
perfect” (Anyanwu, 1983:40).
Informed by this thinking, Plotinus (d. 270 A.D) says philosophy was a dear delight.
On the other hand, Plato would place philosophers over the affairs of men. He died because
of this conviction. Protagoras of Abdera (d. 411 B.C.) made the human mind the measure of
all things and philosophising itself was the greatest activity of that mind. Marcus Aurelius (d.
180 A.D.) loved philosophy more than his throne. Boethius (d. 524 A.D) consoled himself
and even wrote a book while in prison entitled The Consolation of Philosophy (Green, 1962).
Little wonder then that the Time Magazine article chronicles what at best remains the
outstanding legacy of philosophy:
The world has both favoured and feared the philosophers’ answers. Thomas Aquinas was a
saint, Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great, and Voltaire was a confidant of Kings. But
Socrates was put to death, and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. (Green, 1962:8)
Thus, the power of philosophy, the burning desire to ask questions and question
answers, found proper relevance in the 6th century B.C. when the men from the coast of Asia
Minor began asking questions that had never been asked. They began to ask what the world
was made of, and how it originated. Such questions, which are scientific in content, elicited
scientific answers, which activities today can heal, or kill. Suffice it to say however, that the
question about the origins and nature of things were questions that might be resolved by
rational discussion. Precisely, such questions, philosophical in nature though but scientific in
content assisted not only to enrich man’s consciousness, but ultimately led to man’s control
over the forces of nature. Essentially, such questions led to the emergence of science as
presently understood. Perhaps we may reserve such discussion for the later part of this thesis
but argue here briefly that the search for the ultimate reality jointly carried out by the natural
philosophers (c 600. c 300 B.C.) started not only for information but also for understanding.
Thus, the method of examination and critical analysis took the centre stage. This means that,
appeals to tradition and authority were replaced with appeals before the court of human
reason.
Such was philosophy in relation to science in Greek antiquity that philosophy (then
called philosophy of nature) and science (then called natural science) were one and the same
discipline- Philosophy of Nature. It is on record that Aristotle considered as a single science
what is now called philosophy of nature, cosmology, chemistry and biology. V. E. Smith in
the New Catholic Encyclopaedia (NCE) (Vol. II:317), acknowledges succinctly that, “such a
unified view of philosophy and science survives in the title of Isaac Newton’s work, The
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), and more than a century later in John
Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy (3 v. 1808-10-27). This is in addition to
another title under the caption, Experimental Philosophy, which philosophies, are today
considered as science, a term that, with the foundation of the British Academy of Science in
1831, came into vogue to designate modern physics, chemistry, biology, and related
disciplines (ibid.). Notwithstanding the subject matter of natural science in present day
organised society, which province is the study of the material world, philosophy still
functions as a lubricant to all human learning.
Though still taken as an endeavour which object is to explain material realities in
terms of the four causes: matter, form, agent and end, the physical sciences are still largely
carried out under the rules of reasoning long formulated by philosophy, of asking questions
and questioning answers, of examination and critical analysis of the basic constitution of the
particular beings that enter the world of human experience. In particular, what is the nature
of the physical universe? How are scientific laws established and validated? etc are some of
the interrogatives which provoke scientific research. Understood in this light, philosophy,
thus, becomes the science of all things in their ultimate causes as known through the natural
light of reason.
Such is what is called science in the Aristotelian – Thomistic tradition, which
designate a type of perfect knowing (scire simpliciter). Knowledge of any object, argues
Aristotle, is obtained when one knows its cause, when one knows that cause is what makes
the object be what it is, and when one knows that the object could not be otherwise than it is
(NCE Vol 12:1190). Following from Aristotle’s reduction, St. Thomas Aquinas similarly
taught that science is knowledge of something through its proper cause. It is a purely
intellectual act as opposed to sense knowledge; mediate intellectual knowledge as opposed to
immediate knowledge of concepts and first principles in so far as it is acquired through the
prior knowledge of principles or causes (ibid.).
It may be said, thus, that science in the spirit of Newton and his successors was left as
the only legitimate body of speculative knowledge concerning existing things. Science stood
alone as a study of things, whereas philosophy, with respect to science, was purely critical
and epistemological, thus acting as a catalyst to the scientific endeavours of our twentieth
century world. Such new philosophical currents which were put in motion to raise science
and technology to its present height include among others, idealism, positivism, realism, and
pragmatism. We shall single out positivism, pragmatism and realism for discussion in this
chapter.
Positivism
This philosophical current was begun by Auguste Comte. Unlike Aristotle whose
concern was with causes or origins of things, Comte on the other hand was concerned with
their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Thus, scientific methodology is
according to this school, apparently descriptive as opposed to being explanatory. No wonder
then that Spencer, a later positivist, assigned to philosophy the role of synthesizing scientific
results. However, most positivists conceived the main burden of speculative philosophy as
one of accounting for the apparent necessity and universality in the laws discovered by the
sciences (Smith 1967:317).
Before then Kant had argued that valid knowledge come through phenomena, The
phenomenal world, he argues, could not give rise to the universality and necessity found in
physical laws, and that such universality and necessity had therefore to come from a priori
structures in the human mind (ibid.). Perhaps this attack motivated Comte who posited three
stages in the development of the human mind:
(a) a theological stage, wherein the world is explained by an appeal to supernatural deities.
(b) a metaphysical stage wherein things are explained by abstract essences
(c) and a positivistic stage, wherein reality is accounted for by sciences like that of Sir Isaac
Newton.
This historical syllogism argues out properly a position of a self-contained logical
relationship empirically verified as valid under given conditions, in contrast to the dogmas of
theology and unobservable facts of metaphysics. As argued by Galileo in his Dialogues
Concerning Two New Sciences,
Anyone may invent any arbitrary type of motion and discuss its properties, but we have
decided to consider the phenomenon of bodies falling with acceleration such as actually
occurs in nature… And this at least, after repeated efforts we trust we have succeeded in
doing. In this belief we are confirmed mainly by the consideration that experimental results
are seen to agree with and exactly correspond with those properties which have been, one
after another, demonstrated by us (Smith, 1967:160)
Such is the positivists’ contribution to science that Ernst Mach regarded scientific
laws as economies of thought that make it psychologically easier for man to study nature.
Argued on this score, Philosophy is fundamental and foundational to science and technology.
It is the method of scientific engagement.
Pragmatism
This philosophical outlook owes its origin to Charles Sanders Peirce, who held that
ideas could be made clear only by looking to their effects. Somewhat almost like Aristotle’s
postulations, but in complete contrast to positivism, Peirce regarded man’s first questions
about nature as being “the most general and abstract ones”. For him therefore philosophy
comes before science, meaning then that rationalism breeds science, and complements
science.
Perhaps it is this complimentary role of philosophy that made William James and
John Dewey, compatriots of Peirce in the pragmatists’ camp to step down distinctions of any
importance between philosophy and science. They insisted, however, that experience extends
beyond the phenomena of Kant or the sense data of British empiricism. There is personal
experience, religious experience, experience of values etc. Such an enlargement of the
Kantian and positivist notion of experience, while important in itself, prepared the way for
philosophies of science like Whitehead’s. If we have only empirical facts, only individual
things, only one thing after another, then we can find no general laws but only summaries of
events, lists of observed regularities. As Whitehead writes “we must not ascribe, we must not
expect, one step beyond our direct knowledge. The (empiricist) has no foothold on which to
rely for specification beyond the region of direct observation. There is no probability beyond
the region of direct observation” (cf. Lewis 1962:126). John Stuart Mill, himself an
empiricist, failed in his attempt to justify the validity of inductive logic, which arrives at
general laws from particular instances. Such scientific mind may have influenced other
scholars like David Hume and Immanuel Kant who in their wisdom argue forcefully that a
regular succession is not a sufficient reason for believing in the inevitability of that
succession continuing, it only accounts for our expectation.
Realism
Scholars under this philosophical current are common in their opposition to
positivism and to idealism. Prominent among these scholars are Emile Meyerson, Henri
Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead. Meyerson is of the view that there was ontology in all
science, as shown by the scientist’s commitment to the existence of abiding identities in a
changing world. Another philosopher of science, Henri Bergson, maintained that science as
such presents a geometricised, hence, static view of a world in motion, and that motion can
be grasped only by an intuition that lies beyond the techniques of science. Whitehead on his
part proposed that the scientist in advance of his science commits himself to “half truths”, to
which the philosopher must examine (ibid. p. 319).
This commentary on science by these philosophers of science argues for us an
interesting point in the relationship between science and philosophy, that what today is
referred to as the physical science or the modern sciences known by the general name
empiriology from which we have empirioschematic and empiriometric was one and the same.
In particular, it is argued in this same spirit that empirioschematic knowledge i.e. science
which uses qualitative models, is not a distinct science, but a continuation of the philosophy
of nature – (cosmology and the science of nature).
Generally taken to be an intuitive endeavour, philosophy assists science to investigate
into the constitution of the physical universe. Perhaps we may say here that, both philosophy
and the physical sciences are two complementary old friends, which acting in concert could
make nature a completion. Such a thought is more cryptically captured in Smith’s The
General Science of Nature (1958) that, since the 19th century, efforts to construct a priori
philosophies of nature such as idealism, or to deny a philosophy of nature, as with positivism,
important 20th century western philosophers seem to have rediscovered the need for a
realistic evaluation of nature, one that considers mobile being at a level more general than the
specialised natural sciences and at a level more natural than mathematical physics. Such is
the philosophy we seek to advance in this thesis; a philosophy of human sustainable
development. That, though dualistic in matter and form, there is directionality in the cosmos,
which Whitehead describes as the causality of the end; by which all our physical causes are in
more or less a conscious way.
Furthermore, a better understanding of the essential connection between philosophy
and science can be located in Bertrand Russell’s conception of philosophy as a field of study
which seeks to explain the relationship that man shares with the universe. He posits:
Philosophy as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and
science. Like theology, it consists of speculation on matters as to which definite knowledge
has so far been unascertainable; but like science it appeals to human reason rather than to
authority… All definite knowledge, so I should contend - belong to science; all dogma as to
what surpass definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science,
there is a No Man’s land exposed to attack from both sides; this no man’s land is philosophy
(Russell 1962:35).
The relationship between philosophy and science is in its joint appeal to human
reason rather than to authority. While “a better philosopher” is not made through knowing
mere scientific facts, he all the same learns from its principles and methods and general
conceptions. Philosophy, Russell argues then, should be piecemeal and provisional like
science. He stated the essential relationship of the two disciplines thus:
Philosophical knowledge… does not differ essentially from scientific knowledge. There is no
special source of wisdom which is open to philosophy but not to science and the result
obtained by philosophy are not radically different from those obtained from science. The
essential characteristic of philosophy, which makes it a study distinct from science is
criticism (Russell, 1927:2-3).
The implication here is that both philosophy and science are in agreement on the
question of method, which, according to Russell, is the logical analytic method according to
which objective knowledge is possible. This kind of knowledge gives unity and system to the
body of the sciences, the kind of knowledge which results from a critical examination of
grounds of our convictions, prejudices and beliefs. Philosophy fulfils an intellectual role for
the sciences, and as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible,
this subject ceases to be called philosophy and becomes a separate science (Ogbinaka,
2000:38).
It, thus, appears that science and philosophy are two distinctive, unrelated disciplines.
Russell himself had seemingly implied this when he distinguished science as “what you
know” from philosophy as “what you don’t know”. But such conception of the two
disciplines, dangerous though, has turned out to be valuable on epistemic grounds. This is
because, the dialectical spirit of philosophy, its critical comparative analysis and synthesis
argues for further and better interior reconstruction of fundamental scientific facts, the end of
which is the institution of exact scientific knowledge. Such is what should be the
epistemological attitude of the philosopher who should be critical of scientific knowledge not
from a point of view which is ultimately different from that of science, but from a point of
view concerned with the harmony of the whole body of special sciences.
True, science has been able to solve certain problems that philosophy could not solve
but to argue from this and assert that the philosopher has no business in the conclusions of the
scientist is fundamentally fallacious. For even after science has solved certain problems,
there remains the need to understand, interpret and evaluate the body of facts accumulated by
science. The human quest for a rational and fulfilling destiny, thus, imposes on philosophy
the double role of clarifying and analysing scientific concepts and theories which aim at
making their scientific usage clear, and secondly, functioning as a second order discipline
that attempts to answer the following questions: What characteristics distinguish scientific
inquiry from other types of investigation? What procedures should scientists follow in
investigating nature? What conditions must be fulfilled for a scientific explanation to be
correct? What is the cognitive status of scientific laws and principles?
Such interrogatives while not taking away the function of the scientist as the one who
judges one theory to be superior to another, all the same stamps the philosopher’s feet as one
who evaluates the criteria of acceptability implied in the judgement of the scientist. Most
obviously, the two disciplines are indispensable to each other. Hence, the convinced words
of John Losee:
The scientist who is ignorant of precedents in the evaluation of theories is not likely to do an
adequate job of evaluation himself. And the philosopher of science who is ignorant of
scientific practice is not likely to make perceptive pronouncements on scientific method.
(Losee, 1972:2)
This informing drive of the men from the coast of Asia Minor in the 6th century
marked the advent of modern science, to which we shall now turn – the evolutions in science.
We shall endeavour to discuss this subject as a philosophic-scientific endeavour to unravel
the secrets of being, a vision of a single, undivided universe, of unrealised potentialities of the
human mind and heart, of an ideal order lurking behind the manifold appearances of things.
It thus stands to reason that, the philosophic spirit of interrogation enriches the human
mind to question traditions and dogmas in search of verification. Such is when it is said that,
the more mature a science the richer and better tested theories it includes – the more accurate
projections it can make and the more it can learn from both successes and failures in
projecting. Such is the spirit that defines the endeavour of the rationalists to whom science is
more or less a method of knowledge acquisition or knowledge making.
For the rationalists therefore, philosophical science cover such areas as the
methodology of scientific research, the status of scientific theories and the factors that could
enhance the development of science. The four most notable ones include: Raymond Karl
Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. Popper hangs on the falsification,
Kuhn on what he called Normal Science. Lakatos stresses on essence of hard core’ theory in
science whereas Feyerabend did not hide his resentment to methodology in science. We will
state briefly the positions of these philosophers on the issues already raised.
Popper on Falsification
Popper conceives science as a dynamic discipline. It is an open system that is characterised
by inputs of new ideas and abandonment of obsolete ones. There is no limitation to the
acquisition of scientific knowledge. Thus, progress in science consists in the constant
evolution of new ideas, testability and refutation of old and porous theories. And it (science)
continues to be exciting as long as it remain an open system that welcomes criticism. In
essence “science is essentially critical that consists of bold conjectures, controlled by
criticism and … may … be described as revolutionary”. This does not mean that Popper was
entirely opposed to any kind of dogmatism. A dogmatic scientist has significant part to play.
“He did not advocate that we should give in easily, for if we do so we shall fail to notice
where the real power of our theories lies”.
A scientist, Popper stresses is faced the problem of getting close to the truth. The line with
this tradition, he is confronted too with the task of how to falsify theories or replace falsified
one or replace adhoc hypothesis, he also attempt to see the possibility of a merger of two
already existing theories.
The totality of the endeavours here is meant to source a very effective way of surmounting a
giving obstacle in quest of truth. If a scientist eventually achieves success in producing a
theory that serve as a solution to the problem at stake then, his achievements would have
been immense. Nonetheless, this is not the end to the challenge of a scientific enquiry; there
are still much more requirement that are meant to be tackled.
The point is that we have at hand a problem to be tacked and there is a new theory meant for
settling the problem. There are a number of requirements this new theory must have to meet.
The new theories proceed from some simple, new and powerful, unifying idea about some
connection or relation (such as gravitation attraction) between hitherto unconnected things
(such as planets apples) or facts (such as inertia and gravitational mass).
The second requirement of out new theory is that it should be capable of facing independent
testability. This is to say that, in addition to explaining all the explicanda, the new theory
must have new and testable consequence (especially novel consequences); it must also lead to
the prediction of phenomena that so far have not been observed.
The imperative of our requirements as stated above is that in its absence, our new theory
might be adhoc, as it is always possible to produce a theory to fit any given set of explicanda.
The first two requirements are meant to check the range of our choice among the possible
solutions - many of which not relevant to the issue at hand.
We would have made some progress whatever are outcome of our new tests if the second
requirement it met. This is because its testability is enhanced than the previous theory, as it
capable of explaining all the explicanda of the previous theory, in addition to giving rise to
new tests.
Another significant impact of our second requirement is that we are assured that our new
theory, will to some extent fruitful as an instrument of experiments lead to the refutation of
the theory, we will have made an addition to our factual knowledge resulting of the theory,
we will have made an addition to our factual knowledge resulting at least from the
unexpected outcome of the new experiments. Besides new problems will emerge from them,
which are to be solved by new explanatory theories.
However, satisfactory and thorough the above two requirements might be the need to add the
third one is very pressing. This is the requirement that the theory should pass some new and
severe tests. The difference between the third requirement and the previous two ones is that in
the third requirement its fulfillment can only be established by testing the new theory
empirically. This is a material requirement, a requirement of empirical success. And this third
requirement more crucial than the previous two as in indispensable in the decision as to
whether the theory in question is to be accepted at all as a member within the scientific
structure and also if it is an interesting and promising theory.
It is noteworthy, however, that it does happen at time that some of the most interesting
theories are refuted at the first step of its testing.
This shows that not even the greatest physicist can anticipate the secrets of nature his
inspiration can only be guesses, and it is no fault of his, or of his theory, if is refuted.
Newton’s theory is spite of its influence and general acceptability was after all refuted. It is
only by such happening in the science arena that we keep on the tempo of sourcing for new
theories in addition to improving on the existing ones. A theory can be new theories in
addition to improving on the existing ones. A theory can be refuted at any point in time – 10
months or 10 years after its promulgation: it is all simply a matter of historical accident. If a
theory is met be sudden death, Popper believers that the scientist that propounded the theory
should be remembered for various reasons, foremost, the scientist should be remembered for
making available to us in theory that unearth to us new and perhaps still, unexplained
experimental facts coupled with new problem, and for the services it has by doing rendered to
the progress of science during its successful but short life.
What this suggests is that even it a theory is incapable of meeting up to the stipulation of our
third requirements, it can still make contribution t o scientific growth. Nonetheless the third
requirement cannot be dispensed with. Scientists, as matter of fact, aim more than just
contributing importantly to the growth of science. They aim to solve problems with their
theories. Which is to say that “if the progress of science is to continue and its rationality not
to decline, we need not only successful refutations, but also positive successes”.
We should also aim always to produce theories that entail new prediction moreover
predictions of new effects, new testable consequences as embedded in the new theory that
could be seen in many significant well to novel. Instances of such predictions obey Kepler’s
law; of that light, despite its zero mass, would prove to be subject to gravitational attraction
that is Einstein’s eclipse effect. The progress of science centers essentially on the predictions
of this nature and a possible corroboration for them, this is necessary in view of the fact that
scientific theories are meant to achieve conquest of the unknown, a new success in prediction
what had never been thought of before. When a predicted theory is corroborated a reasonable
advancement is made in science.
An unbroken sequence of refuted theories would soon leave us bewildered and helpless: we
should have no clue about the parts of each of these theories or of our background
knowledge – to which have might tentatively attribute the failure of that theory.
As earlier noted, science will be dormant and lose its empirical character if we are unable to
obtain refutations. In the same vein science would stagnate and lose its empirical character if
we are unable to obtain corroboration of new predictions that is if we are only able to produce
theories that meet out first two requirements, and fails the third. If for instance, we are to
produce an unbroken sequence of explanatory theories, each of which would explain all the
explicanda in its field, the experiments that refuted its predecessors inclusive, each would
also be independently testable by predicted effects, yet each would be at one refuted when
these predictions were put to the test. Thus each would satisfy first two requirements.
Kuhn on Normal Science
What a scientist does, according to Kuhn in his daily enterprise amount to what he calls
“normal science’. Any scientist that does not pre-occupy himself with spurious scientific
research must meet up to the requirement of ‘normal science’. To Kuhn “normal science
means the research that is firmly rooted upon one or more past scientific achievements. Such
achievement must be acknowledged by a given scientific community for a given point in time
and it is such that provide the basis for further scientific enterprises. This kind of
achievements, argues, are today recounted though not often in their original form, by science
textbooks elementary and advanced. Such books expound the body of accepted theories
illustrate many of all of its successful applications and compare these application with
exemplary observation and experiment.
Some accepted instance of actual scientific practice according to Kuhn includes law, theory,
application and instrumentation given models from which emanate particular coherent
tradition of scientific research. A scientist possesses two essential attributes. Their
achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away
from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently to resolve.
Achievements that share these characteristics Kuhn calls “paradigms” a term which he say
relates these closely to normal science’. These constitute the tradition that the historian
describes under such rubrics as ‘Polemics astronomy’ or ‘Copernican’ or Aristotelian
dynamics’ or Newtonian corpuscular optics’ or wave optics.
The study of paradigms including many that are far more specialized than those already
stated above is what fundamentally prepares the students for membership in a given scientific
community with which he will later practice. Men whose research is based on shared
paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That and the
apparent consensus it produces are prerequisite for normal science i.e. for the genesis and
continuation of a particular tradition”. The ability to be acquainted with a paradigm in
addition to the more esoteric type of research it permits signify maturity and advancement in
the development of any scientific field, e.g. the wave theory that is embraced by almost all
the practitioners of optical science. In the 18th century however, the paradigm for this field
was provided by Newton’s optics which taught that light was materials corpuscles “The
transformations of the paradigms of physical optics are scientific revolutions, and the
successive transition from one paradigm, to another via revolution is the usual development
pattern of mature science”.
In biology, for instance, part of its study center on the study of heredity which is a most
universally received paradigms. The essence of having paradigms in the view of Kuhn is
essentially because history reveals that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinary
arduous. Where there are no paradigms all the facts that relate to the development of a given
science may seem equally relevant.
As one theoretical system gradually receives general acceptance, a paradigm is established.
Kuhn argues thus, that during normal science, rather than attempt to falsify theories, scientists
engage in puzzle-solving activity. All paradigms, he says, have inherent anomalies which, if
and when they become so large that cannot be contained by the ad hoc hypothesis lead to loss
of faith by members of the scientific community. This according to Kuhn may result in the
articulation of several other alternative theoretical structures or paradigms. If, and when the
new paradigm achieves general acceptance, these occurs what Kuhn calls Paradigm Shift.
Lakatos on Hard Core Theory
Lakatos enunciated what he terms ‘hard-core’ in his methodology. This resembles to a
reasonable extent Kuhn’s paradigm shift, for scientists involved in research programme are
bound to agree with the fundamental tenets. The difference however is that in Lakatos thesis
there are several ‘hard-cores’ competing at any state in history. And
The hard-core is a set of statements, which are protected from refutation by the attempt to
modify other assumption when apparent refutation arises.
It consists of a family of theoretical assertions and for a theory to be part of scientific
research programme (S.R.P) it must share those assumptions. There is also the negative
heuristic to the programme. And this “is a methodological principle stipulating that the
components in the ‘hard-core’ not to be abandoned in the face of anomalies”. For instance,
the Newtonian gravitational theory, the three laws of dynamics and the law of universal
gravitation are seen by Lakatos as constituting the ‘hard-core’. The essence of the appeal to
the negative heuristic is to ensure that anomalies emanating from the application of the theory
are not taken as refuting these postulates. The heat produced by anomalies is to be cushioned
by the modification of auxiliary hypothesis, observational hypothesis, or hypothesis stating
initial conditions. As to what is to be done in the face of anomalies, the guidance is provided
by the positive heuristic of the programme. And this comprises of a partly articulated set of
suggestions or hints as to how to change develop the refutable variants of the research
programme, how to modify, sophisticate, and the ‘refutable’ protective belt.
When successive modification by the ‘positive heuristic’ is unable to produce any new
independent tests, which are passed, the research programme is ‘degenerating’. If there is
marketable success in the research programme in guiding us to new discoveries, then it is
progressive; in the long run progressive are chosen over degenerating research programme.
Feyerabend on Method in Science
Paul Feyerabend was anti-methodology. He was opposed to any kind of methodology in
science and he believes he did not recommend any science as a versatile and dynamic
enterprise does not need any methodology. A methodology for science is like a chain tied
round it which in essence is only a disaster to its advancement. And progress he argues, is
very crucial as far as science is concerned. He argues the conclusion that, the only principle
that does not inhibit scientific progress is, anything goes,
He believes that there is no single rule if we should go by historical research, however
plausible and however firmly grounded in epistemology that is not violated at some time or
the other. Such violations certainly, he argues cannot be attributed to accidental events, just
as they cannot be seen as results of insufficient knowledge or of in attention that might have
been avoided. Rather than see it in any of the stated ways, they are to be accepted as
imperatives for progress. He emphasizes that one of the most salient point that is visible in
the history of philosophy and science is the fact that,
That event and development such as the invention of a atomism in antiquity, the Copernican
theory (Kinetic Theory emergence of the wave theory of light occurred only because some
thinker either decided not to be bound by certain ‘obvious’ methodological rules or because
they unwittingly broke them.
The practice of science is in consonant with this pragmatic attitude and it is only when
practitioners of science conform to this requirement that progress in science could be assured.
No matter how fundamental or crucial rule in science may be, there are always circumstances
when it is most available to ignore the rule and adopt the opposite, he asserts.
Aristotle’s Philosophy of Science
Aristotle produced the first great philosophy of science, although his work in this field is
widely denigrated today. Among other problems, his discussions about science were only
qualitative, not quantitative, and he had little appreciation for mathematics. By the modern
definition of the term, Aristotelian philosophy was not science, as this worldview did not
attempt to probe how the world actually worked through experiment and empirical test.
Rather, based on what one's senses told one, Aristotelian philosophy then depended upon the
assumption that the human mind could elucidate all the laws of the universe, based on simple
observation (without experimentation) through reason alone. In contrast, today the term
science refers to the position that thinking alone often leads people astray, and therefore one
must compare one's ideas to the actual world through experimentation; only then can one see
if one's ideas are based in reality.
One of the reasons for Aristotle’s conclusions was that he held that physics was about
changing objects with a reality of their own, whereas mathematics was about unchanging
objects without a reality of their own. In this philosophy, he could not imagine that there was
a relationship between them.
Aristotle presented a doctrine of their being four “causes” of things, but the word cause
(Greek: αἰτἱα, aitia) is not used in the modern sense of “cause and effect,” under which
causes are events or states of affairs. Rather, the four causes—material, formal, efficient, and
final causes—are like different ways of explaining something; the material and formal causes
are internal to the thing and separable only in thought; the efficient and final causes are
external.
The material cause is the material that makes up an object, for example, "the bronze and
silver ... are causes of the statue and the bowl." The formal cause is the blueprint or the idea
commonly held of what an object should be. Aristotle says, "The form is the account (and the
genera of the account) of the essence (for instance, the cause of an octave is the ratio two to
one, and in general number), and the parts that are in the account." The efficient cause is the
person who makes an object, or “unmoved movers” (gods) who move nature. For example,
“a father is a cause of his child; and in general the producer is a cause of the product and the
initiator of the change is a cause.” This is closest to the modern definition of “cause.” The
final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve. This includes
“all the intermediate steps that are for the end ... for example, slimming, purging, drugs, or
instruments are for health; all of these are for the end, though they differ in that some are
activities while others are instruments.” An example of an artifact that has all four causes
would be a table, which has material causes (wood and nails), a formal cause (the blueprint,
or a generally agreed idea of what tables are), an efficient cause (the carpenter), and a final
cause (using it to dine on).
Aristotle argues that natural objects such as an "individual man" have all four causes. The
material cause of an individual man would be the flesh and bone that make up an individual
man. The formal cause would be the blueprint of man, which is used as a guide to create an
individual man and to keep him in a certain state called man. The efficient cause of an
individual man would be the father of that man, or in the case of all men an “unmoved
mover” who breathed (anima: breath) into the soul (anima: soul) of man. The final cause of
man would be as Aristotle stated, “Now we take the human’s function to be a certain kind of
life, and take this life to be the soul’s activity and actions that express reason. Hence the
excellent man’s function is to do this finely and well. Each function is completed well when
its completion expresses the proper virtue. Therefore the human good turns out to be the
souls’ activity that expresses virtue.”
Aristotle also investigated movement and gravity. He did not know about the principle of
inertia, and held that movement must always be caused by something.
The ancient Greeks, and especially Aristotle, noted the difference between natural objects and
artificial ones or artifacts: Natural objects have self-movement, or the principle of their
motion within them, whereas artificial things have their existence and motion through human
agency. An elephant or an oak tree, for example, are natural objects that move from
principles within them, while an automobile or a bicycle are artifacts that move by principles
external to them and dependent on human agency.
Kant's Philosophy of Science
First published Tue Oct 21, 2003; substantive revision Tue Nov 13, 2007
Kant's philosophy of science has received attention from several different audiences and for a
variety of reasons. It is of interest to contemporary philosophers of science primarily because
of the way in which Kant attempts to articulate a philosophical framework that places
substantive conditions on our scientific knowledge of the world while still respecting the
autonomy and diverse claims of particular sciences. More specifically, Kant develops a
philosophy of science that departs from (i) broadly empiricist views — such as David
Lewis's, according to which purely contingent events in space and time (along with
considerations of simplicity, etc.) determine what the laws of nature ultimately are — and (ii)
certain necessitarian views — such as David Armstrong's, according to which the laws of
nature consist of necessitation relations between universals, which place constraints on what
events occur in space and time. Kant does so by holding that (i) scientific laws do involve
necessity, but that (ii) this necessity is based not on (purely metaphysical and hence
inaccessible) relations between universals, but rather on certain subjective, a priori conditions
under which we can experience objects in space and time.
Kant's scientific writings are also of interest to historians of modern philosophy, historians of
science, and historians of philosophy of science. Historians of modern philosophy are
especially interested in determining how Kant's views on science might complement or
clarify his distinctive metaphysical and epistemological doctrines (e.g., as expressed in the
Critique of Pure Reason). Historians of science reflect on the way in which Kant's position
fits in with the views of other natural philosophers of the period, such as Newton and Leibniz,
including his novel account of the formation of the solar system according to Newtonian
principles. Historians of philosophy of science investigate, among other things, Kant's work
in the conceptual foundations of physics — in particular, his matter theory (e.g., the infinite
divisibility of matter, attractive and repulsive forces, inertia, atoms and the void) and his
dynamical account of the laws of mechanics.
Because physics was Kant's primary (though not exclusive) focus over the course of his
lengthy career, his views on physics during his pre-Critical (1746-1770), Critical (1781-
1790), and Post-Critical periods (after 1790) will be discussed in separate sections.
Subsections will be devoted to each of the chapters of Kant's most influential work in
philosophy of science, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). Kant's basic
positions on other sciences, including psychology, chemistry, and history, will be presented
thereafter.
1. Physics: The Pre-Critical Period
Kant's early pre-Critical publications (1746-1756) are devoted primarily to solving a variety
of broadly cosmological problems and to developing an increasingly comprehensive
metaphysics that would account for the matter theory that is required by the solutions to these
problems. Kant's first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746),
explicitly attempts to solve the vis viva controversy, which had been hotly contested ever
since Leibniz's attack on Descartes' laws of motion in the Acta Eruditorum in 1686. While
Kant attempts to occupy an intermediary position between the Cartesian and Leibnizian
positions by maintaining that both mv and mv² could be conserved in different contexts, what
is of particular note is how his solution in Parts II and III rests on the conception of force
developed in Part I. According to this conception, force is understood in terms of the activity
of substances, an activity that Kant then uses to explain how the motions of bodies are
generated, to solve the mind-body problem, and to account for both the possibility of other,
actually existing worlds and the three-dimensionality of space.
Kant develops his account of the nature of substance in greater detail in A New Elucidation of
the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755). While the first two sections of this
work undertake revisions of Wolff's principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason, the
third section argues for two substantive principles that are alleged to follow from the
principle of sufficient (or rather, following Crusius, determining) reason, namely the
principles of succession and coexistence. The main thrust of the principle of succession is
directed against Leibnizian pre-established harmony, arguing that only causal connections
between substances can bring about changes in their states. Kant's position appears to be
designed to account primarily for changes of bodily states (with changes in mental states
being parasitic upon them, as was explicitly asserted in the True Estimation). For he
maintains that mutual changes of state require mutual interaction, where it is clear that
changes in motion are precisely the kind of mutual change that he has in mind (since one
body cannot move closer to another without the other body moving closer to it). The principle
of coexistence then argues that harmonious causal interaction between otherwise isolated,
independently existing substances is possible only by means of God's coordination (just as
Leibniz thought was required for harmonious relations between the states of such
substances).
Kant's Physical Monadology (1756) takes as its task the reconciliation of the infinite
divisibility of space, as maintained in geometry, with the simplicity of substances, which
Kant believes is required in metaphysics. As was the case with his earlier works, the essential
feature of his reconciliation lies in the way in which his matter theory is supported by his
metaphysical views. Specifically, Kant asserts that simple substances fill space not by means
of their mere existence, but rather in virtue of their spheres of activity. As a result, any
division of the relevant spheres of activity does not compromise the simplicity of the
substances themselves, since the spatial properties of substances (including the infinite
divisibility of space) arise from the interaction between their activities rather than from their
intrinsic features. In the course of the Physical Monadology, Kant also argues for the
necessity of attractive and repulsive forces and attributes a significant role to the force of
inertia. Kant's acceptance of such Newtonian principles represents an important change of
position over the True Estimation, where Kant rejects the principle of inertia and pursues a
dynamical theory much more in line with Leibniz's views.
In addition to these works, which bridge the gap, as it were, between physics and
metaphysics, during this period Kant is interested in a series of specific issues in cosmology
and empirical physics. For example, Kant writes several short exclusively scientific essays
between 1754 to 1757, including “Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire,”
“Investigation of the question of whether the Earth has suffered changes in its axial
Rotation,” “The Question of the Aging of the Earth, considered physically” as well as three
papers on earthquakes. Of much greater significance is his Universal Natural History and
Theory of the Heavens (1755), which represents an important contribution to science as such.
For in it Kant explains how one can explain the formation of the solar system from an initial
state, in which matter is dispersed like a cloud, solely by means of the interaction of attractive
and repulsive forces. In 1796, Laplace, unaware of Kant's argument, would develop a very
similar derivation, with the result that the view is now typically referred to as the Kant-
Laplace nebular hypothesis.
Later in his pre-Critical period (1763-1770), Kant attempts to build a comprehensive
metaphysical account on the basis of the framework that he had established in his first works.
Thus, in his The Only Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763) he
attempts to extend his reasoning to fundamental issues in both philosophical theology and
teleology, presenting, for the first time, his now famous criticisms of the three traditional
arguments for the existence of God, while developing a new theistic proof, based on the idea
that God is necessary as a real ground of the possibilities of things. After reading Hume's
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding in German translation sometime after 1755, Kant
distinguishes between real and logical grounds/opposition in his Attempt to Introduce the
Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (1763) in order to avoid Hume's objection
that there is no logical contradiction in the existence of one thing not following the existence
of another. But in this work he is also interested in exploring the notion of a real
ground/opposition further by applying it more widely, e.g., to bodies, mental states, etc. Also
relevant is Kant's Concerning the Ultimate Foundation of the Distinction of the Directions in
Space (1768) which modifies his earlier account of space insofar as he seems to hold that
certain spatial properties may not be able to be explained entirely on the basis of the
interaction between fundamental substances. In his so-called Inaugural Dissertation (1770),
Kant continues to develop a more comprehensive philosophical system, which would
encompass the principles of both the sensible and the intelligible world, and in so doing
modifies his account of space and time even further. Over the course of the next ten years,
during which he published almost nothing, Kant would revise his views more systematically,
with the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 representing the first major step
in his “critical turn.”
Adickes (1924), Harman (1982), Friedman (1992), Laywine (1993), Schönfeld (2000),
Kuehn (2001), Lefevre & Wunderlich (2000), and Watkins (1997, 2001, 2003) have
emphasized the importance of scientific issues in the development of Kant's thought during
his pre-Critical period, as he reacted to Leibniz, Newton and other, more immediate
predecessors (such as Christian Wolff, Christian August Crusius, Leonard Euler, Pierre Louis
Moreau de Maupertuis, and Martin Knutzen).
In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has
built a system of production that ravages nature and a type of society that mutilates man.
Such is the philosophy of exaggerated materialism, which we here challenge as inadequate
for the purpose of human development. This philosophy promotes a narrow vision of reality
and emphasises the accumulation of goods and the manipulation of techniques, to the neglect
of the development of persons. In the past, scientists could disclaim direct responsibility for
the use to which mankind had put their disinterested discoveries. We cannot today take the
same attitude because as Uchii, Soshichi (2000 says, “the success which we have achieved
in the development of nuclear power is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all
the inventions of the past." The destructive forces of the modern world cannot be brought
under control simply by mobilizing more resources of wealth and knowledge – to fight
pollution and chemical hazards, preserve wild life, to discover new sources of energy, and to
arrive at more effective agreements on peaceful co-existence. Wealth and knowledge are
needed for any civilization though, a revision of the ends and aims which these means are
meant to serve must be in accord with the logic of right knowledge; wisdom. This implies,
above all else, the development of a life-style, which accords to material things their proper
and legitimate place. The paper views human development in Africa as the progressive
humanization of society, a movement away from the materialistic, and towards the
humanistic. The paper argues in particular that, the logic of development expressed through
the creative application of knowledge should be shifted in favour of a wisdom that is
anchored on the aims of science and technical knowledge that takes cognizance of the
knowledge systems of the receiving community. Such is what is argued here as a development
paradigm for Africa of today.
Introduction
Advocates of scientific neutrality argue that, science as a body of knowledge has no
moral or ethical quality substantially, value judgements, cultural biases and that, political
standpoints do not in any way influence or determine scientific knowledge. They argue
further that, there is nothing ‘good’ or ‘bad’ about scientific knowledge. Such position is
acknowledged by the great Galileo himself that “the conclusions of natural science are true
and necessary, and the judgement of man has nothing to do with them” (Joan Lipscombe &
Bill Williams 1979:6).
While acknowledging the quality and weight of such informed position, it suffices to
say that this position is a contradiction in terms for the simple reason that the pursuit of
knowledge in itself, which aim the scientist claim is the province of science, is in itself a
good thing. This inherent implication of the scientist’s claim is perhaps more reasonably
understood in the language of Black (1975) who draws a distinction between the pursuit of
knowledge as information and knowledge as understanding. He points out that the collection
of information in itself is a product of value judgements. Better still, human interaction has it
on record that science (or at least its application) could be a power for good or evil.
Indeed, the interaction of science and technology considered in the last chapter attest
to this fact; science has been seen as the means of relieving human burdens, and this, and not
the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, has often motivated scientists. It is perhaps this idea
of science and technology and its impact on man and society, and the consequences of such
impact that Bertrand Russell provocatively remarked that in, discussing the effects of science
upon human life we have therefore three more or less separate matters to examine (1) the
nature and scope of scientific knowledge (2) the increased power of manipulation derived
from scientific technique (3) the changes in social life and in traditional institutions which
must result from the scientific technique demands. This chapter concerns itself with the
second and third matter.
The understanding here is that, man, aided by science and technology, has the
capacity to make or mar a world of his choice. Two issues arise from this. The first is whether
the world of man’s choice may be the best possible world and, or, the most desired world for
the greatest number of people. The second issue is whether such a choice is a free one or can
be a free one that is blame worthy. Bertrand Russell argues that:
In so far as he is wise this new power is beneficent; in so far as he is foolish it is quite the
reverse. If therefore, a scientific civilization is to be a good civilization it is necessary that
increase in knowledge should be accompanied by increase in wisdom. I mean by wisdom, a
right conception of the ends of life. This is something science itself does not provide.
Increase in science itself, therefore, is not enough to guarantee any genuine progress though
it provides one of the ingredients which progress requires (Russell 1962:ix-x).
The implication of this thinking is that science and technology is a mixed blessing.
Such an explosive impact has far reaching consequences which, according to Jim Unah
(1998:344), “potend good and bad for man; consequences that spell good and evil for society;
consequences that snatched humankind out of the cruel forces of nature and yet threaten them
with collective suicide”. It means for us against this backdrop that science and technology
have both demonstrated that they constitute a double-edged sword, if man is wise in the use
of the instruments of his brains and hands, he would conquer nature and make it subserve his
essential interest. If, on the other hand, he becomes foolish, he would wipe out human
existence and the entire earth with its habitation.
Such is the nature of man that he can be described as a bundle of paradoxes, a being
empowered by God to create itself thus “you shall have the power to degenerate into the
lower forms of life, which are brutish. But you shall also have the power, out of your soul’s
judgement to be reborn into higher forms which are divine” (Ehusani, 1991:16).
This chapter is a critical exposition of the impact (positive and negative) of science
and technology on the human society. It argues that the phenomenal technological
advancement notwithstanding, our new world has seen “the emergence of the machine and
the disappearance of the person”. I.e. science and technology have both healed as well as
killed the society.
The Neutrality of Science and Technology?
The concept of neutrality associated to any human activity suggests an inherent
quality of perfection. In relation to science and technology, the neutrality theory argues for
itself the omniscience, which suggests and elevates the scientist (and to some extent the
technologist) to the role of a high priest expounding its truths. Whether such dogmatic
posturing is true or not, accepted or rejected, this theory grants to itself the self-contained
completeness of knowledge – truths especially when science is considered in the context of
what is normally defined as pure and applied science.
Sir Ernest Chain more clearly states the thesis of scientific neutrality thus: …science
as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical
quality, and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences (1970).
This position is traditionally inherent in scientific thinking more so that science seeks
to ascertain the truth about nature, which hypotheses which aim to move nearer and nearer to
an accurate description of natural laws, which are seen as universal truths. Such thinking is
also anchored on the fact that objective reasoning cannot deny scientific facts and all
scientists must inevitably reach the same conclusion.
It means, then, as Joan Lipscombe and Bill Williams (1979:6) posited, that “value
judgements, cultural biases or political standpoints do not in any way influence or determine
scientific knowledge. There is nothing ‘good’ or ‘bad’ about scientific knowledge”. Such
understanding of science has been carried forward and is strongly supported today which
perhaps may have informed the thought of Bronowski who attributes to science “an
unrelenting independence in the search for truth that pays no attention to received opinion or
expediency or political advantage (Bronowski, 1971:25).
The neutrality of technology unlike science does not very well find convenient
application. Indeed, there is no way in which we can talk about “the pursuit of knowledge for
its own sake” or the objectivity of observations, experiments and theory as applied to
technology, for it necessarily implies the application of science, invention and industry and or
commerce to matters which are of importance to our life style and must, therefore, have a
social effect. Notwithstanding such position, technology is, undoubtedly, commonly
regarded as being neutral in some senses of the word. Considered as a collection of
machines, techniques and tools, technology is here said to be neutral in the sense that in itself
it does not incorporate or imply any political or social values, and that it is neither ‘good’ nor
‘evil’.
Taken, therefore, as a blameless tool, any beneficial or harmful effect is said to arise
out of the motives of the people applying a particular piece of technology and the end to
which it is used. It means, then, that where a particular application, chosen for its beneficial
results, produces harmful side-effects, these are blamed either on inadequate social policies or
on lack of sophistication in the control of the effects of technology. Whichever is chosen as a
whipping boy, concludes Joan Lipscombe and Bill Williams (p. 19), technology itself is
‘neutral’.
But the most challenging question is, “to what extent is science and technology
neutral?” The question of the neutrality of science and technology is essentially the question
of the rationality of science and technology. This is perhaps where the essential link between
science and technology very clearly bears on man in his integral whole, in both his material
and spiritual life, but more so in the spiritual towards which the material must serve. Suffice
to say here that the argument in support of “an unrelenting independence [of science and
technology] in the search for truth that pays no attention to received opinion or expediency or
political advantage” is an exercise in the promotion of ignorance and scepticism. To quote
Andrew Efemini:
Anyone with scientific consciousness, understands the place of science in man’s struggle to
improve his living… (science is not) something that should be pursued for its own sake but
something that should be pursued for man’s benefit (Efemini, 1982:18).
It thus means that, traditionally, practical knowledge i.e. techne which is concerned
with making (recta ratio factibilium) directed to the perfection of the object of knowledge,
combines with theoretical knowledge i.e. scientia or episteme comprising also contemplation
of nature, which goal is the perfection of the subject (the knower) to bring about the ultimate
end in the perfection of the whole man. Such an endeavour is a conscious and goal oriented
one, which not only reflects the value systems of the society at that time, but are value laden
in themselves.
Granted that science is a move towards the unknown according to which “it is
impossible to foresee the practical results of any research in pure science”, it is neither a blind
move nor a goalless move. Matthew Nwoko aptly suggests here that:
At least a scientific research worthy of the name must be a planned venture. Even if the
scientist does not foresee the remote consequences of his venture, but the planned structure
of his work carries or must carry an ultimate intention of discovery for the good of man
(Nwoko, 1992:143).
It is, thus, the inherent vocation of the scientist to lay bare the richness of nature,
which practical use the technologist will bring to bear for the good of man. This is the
rationality of scientific inquiry, and such is the rationality of technological practice.
Understood as such, both the scientist and the technologist are said to be humanists who
“must not only reach out to the world’s wealth of knowledge and practice, but must also
pursue the solution of our problems (of industrial, manufacture, environmental pollution,
economic progress etc) with dedication, conviction and patriotism (Newswatch Feb. 12,
1990:14).
Furthermore, to argue that science is unaffected by extraneous factors, which
pontification justifies scientific neutrality, is an overstatement to say the least. The dialectics
of science is intertwined with theological, ethical, ideological and other non-scientific
arguments, which at some points become impossible to separate them, and stand-points on
reality were determined by considering all these aspects. R. M. Young (1971:31) thus, argues
that, “what people were prepared to accept as the ‘truth’ was not determined by science
alone” but also by subtle and often un-acknowledged influence of social factors.
The deliberate suppression of scientific knowledge or the active promotion of
particular theories, which conform to a specific political situation, similarly counts against the
neutrality theory of science. A ready example, here, is the Lysenko affair in Russia in which
a whole area of genetics was eliminated from Russian teaching and his theories imposed
because they were more supportive of the political system. Russian scientists worked within
the framework of these theories believing them to be ‘true’, at least as far as the existing
evidence was concerned (D. W. Caspari and R. E. Marshak 1965:275-278). The case of
Jeremiah Abalaka, a Nigerian, is another example in which the scientist’s search for the truth
and or scientific knowledge is substantially tempered with to bolster up the Nigerian/foreign
interest. Pursued to a logical conclusion, and in the extreme case, ‘scientific facts’ (if
Abalaka succumbs) may be the invention of a political regime instead of results from
disinterested pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Again, proponents of the neutrality theory say that science concerns itself purely with
a description of the world as it is, and so argue out the impossibility of scientific knowledge
giving rise to normative and evaluative statements. Arguably it cannot give rise to statement
about what should or should not be (normative), nor can it pass judgement on what is good or
bad (evaluative). Indeed orthodox philosophical argument has it that the only valid
conclusions of deductive arguments are the ones which contain only material which is
already in the premises, consequently scientific premises (factual) cannot lead to normative
or evaluative statements (Lipscombe and Williams 1979:8).
But, this argument collapses because of the difficulty in identifying which premises
are factual – normative statements, it is argued could be expressed in the same way as factual
ones, and there are considerable difficulties in clearly distinguishing one from the other.
Black thus asserts that:
Some normative evaluative propositions are objective (generally accepted and not subject to
individual values) and this removes the distinction which separates scientific propositions
from others (1975:40).
It is, thus, possible for science to provide factual statements that could lead to
normative or evaluative statements. An example of this could be:
Plant defoliants can cause food shortage (factual)
Food shortage lead to people starving (factual)
It is wrong that people should starve directly because of man’s action (Normative)
Therefore, plant defoliants should not be used (Normative)
The base of our argument, here, is that the scientist has a social responsibility for the
application of his work. This is informed by the logic of distinction between the abstract
concept of ‘science’ which argued position is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, from
the practical manifestation of that concept. This is science in the context of an overall
activity. Black mentions that:
Science as an overall activity can no longer be considered as the disinterested pursuit of
truth. Even where scientists are working on the purest science, which has no apparent
applications, scientists cannot escape the dilemma of responsibility because the speed of
development is such that discoveries are often harnessed very quickly to industrial, military
or other practical uses. (Black, 1975:40)
Besides, much of today’s pure research is consciously directed at serving specific
objectives and or solving some problems. Black argues further that:
It can no longer be considered neutral and is carried out with a definite purpose in mind: to
increase the profits of industry or strengthen the power of government. Scientists involved in
such projects know this and because the science is no longer neutral they have forfeited any
claim to moral neutrality; they cannot subsequently plead ‘not guilty’ when this purpose is
achieved and horror (or praise) is expressed at the results (ibid).
We may, perhaps, argue further that such state in which science has found itself, of
developing and applying its results to specific objectives, thus, removes it out of this old
argument of scientific neutrality (as for example the work in plasma physics carried out
specifically with the aim of generating electricity from nuclear fusion). In such
circumstances, there is no realistic way of separating basic research from its application and,
hence this harnessing of science to specific ends implies the end of scientific neutrality and
with it the end of any legitimate claim to moral neutrality.
W. H. Ferry convincingly that “technology has a career of its own, so far not subject
to the political guidance and restraints imposed on other enormously powerful institutions”
(Ferry, 1971:120). Obviously, such conclusion sounds like the distant drums of science which
pays no regard as to whether people accept the ‘truth’ it claims to have as part of its very
nature, or not. At best, such assumed neutrality of technology has arisen because certain
characteristics associated with science have, unjustifiably, been transferred to technology
hook, line and sinker. Richkover more correctly presents this scenario when he says:
A certain ruthlessness has been encouraged by the mistaken belief that to disregard human
consideration is as necessary in technology as it is in science (Richcover, 1965:154 ).
But such conclusion is founded on illicit premise. Technology understood as an art or
skill, entails in its essence the employment of means to accomplish some end: opposed to
nature, which in itself is a product of the rational faculty. Essentially, technology thus means
a set of principles, or rational method, in the production of something or in the achievement
of an end. By its nature, technology is not and cannot be neutral, because human needs and
values remain its essential ingredients. It is, perhaps, this conclusion that the German
language (especially in the philosophical usage) explains the term Technik as the utilization
of the knowledge of method or mode of production of material goods to serve human needs.
That is, technology by its nature is determined by the society. In the words of Dickson:
In general we can say that a society’s technology, when viewed as a social institution rather
than a heterogeneous collection of machines and tools, is structured in such a way that it
coincides with its dominant modes of action and interaction… Technology does not just
provide in its individual machines, the physical means by which a society supports and
promotes its power structure, it also reflects, as a social institution this social structure in its
design. A society’s technology can never be isolated from its power structure, and
technology can thus never be considered politically neutral (Dicson, 1974:25).
This explains the fact of our being dominated by technology and which our generation
has seen “the emergence of the machine, and the disappearance of the person”. The reason
for this, according to Dickson, is the political nature of technology. This dominating
technology, he says reflects the wishes of the ruling class to control their fellow men.
Looking back into history, we cannot but agree with this simple but thought provoking
truism. The very process of industrialization, for example, did not arise from an objective
assessment of production needs determined by economic factors. It arose from the desires of
the dominant social class, the providers of capital, to dominate and control both nature and
work force. Consequently, these set of values and desires were built into the design of the
machines and factories which benefits are confined to the members of a particular social
class.
To understand properly this argument of the neutrality of technology, it suffices to
clarify the distinction between science and technology. While the work which the scientists
do varies considerably along the spectrum from pure research to applied technology, that of
the technologists is concerned almost exclusively with developing and implementing specific
ideas with a definite end in mind. In putting this issue into proper perspective therefore, two
questions come to mind, namely, the question of the intended product of the work of the
technologist: how far, if at all, should the technologist make judgement about the desirability
or otherwise of the end product in considering whether or not to apply his technical skill to a
particular project? And the question which arises from the unpredicted harmful or
undesirable consequences which often arise from the application of a particular technology:
how far is the technologist ‘innocent’ or responsible for such consequences?
The answers to these questions are not far-fetched. It is argued here that, the
professional status of technologists makes them culpable for the work of their hands. If they
are truly professionals, they have a responsibility to relinquish their neutral role and to take
steps to limit the harmful consequences of their works. As professional automotive engineers
worth their salt, for example, they have the capacity to construct cars that may reduce road
deaths and injuries, high noise levels, congestion, pollution and despoliation of the
countryside among other harmful consequences. To argue the opposite view that
technologists are not in any way responsible for the intended consequences of the use of their
product is to create an artificial distinction between responsibility for the development of a
product and responsibility for the use of that product. Such distinction, is simply a question
of conscience which does not find relevance in this consideration. Einstein was here clear on
this issue when he forcefully writes: “we scientists whose tragic destination has been to help
in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it
our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
being used” (Time, December 1999:59).
More unacceptable is even the question of unforeseen consequences of technological
invention and development. The question put in context is, is it still acceptable for the
technologist to plead innocence when his device intended for human benefit turns out to do
more harm than good? The answer in this regard is No! Hardin (1972 especially chapter 7) is
vehement on this score and, thus, introduces the concept of guilty until proven innocent,
suggesting further that this should be applied to all technical development. Professor C. S.
Momoh canvasses a similar idea in his “Philosophy and Moral Scientism”, according to
which all scientific and technical inventions are allowed to play out their effects in the
scientists’ laboratory, and those with harmful consequences disallowed to see the light of
application. He says:
For any scientific invention to be worth its salt, its consequences and purpose for mankind
and humanity must be seen to be moral… the simple test is: will the application of scientific
invention or discovery advance the moral worth of mankind? If ‘Yes’ such a discovery
should be developed and embraced. If the answer is ‘No’, such an invention should be left to
cool away in the laboratory. (Momoh, 2000:82)
The concern in both thinking is that, the burden of proof of both the effectiveness and
harmlessness has been placed on the proponent.
All this boils down to the fact that the technologist (and technology in general) is
clearly denied any shelter behind the neutrality shield. Technology is not and should no
longer be seen as, a neutral tool. It should be assumed to be harmful until proven otherwise.
While accepting that such action on the part of man is likely to delay benefits and so limit the
maximization of human creativity, it serves as a call for the critical examination, and re-
examination of the product of man’s mind and hands so as to confirm them as rational action
which they truly are, to serve man better and maximally.
Technology as part of the human culture, is for the good of man and his society,
which basis it is judged as valuable, as having proper meaning. M. I. Nwoko (1992:136)
confirms this lucidly as he says; So genuine technology draws its values from the good it
serves man. Actually, the goal of technology is its service to man to help him realize more
his being.
It is to be said, in conclusion that both science and technology have been mis-
presented over and over as neutral endeavours. Our postulations have proved this to be false
cultures seeking relevance in history. Indeed, science and technology in social context reveal
to us living and astonishing testimonies; that once generated by human culture, science or
technology in turn becomes a determinant factor in the social transformation, a
transformation which may be good or evil, beneficial or destructive, depending on the
manner of its appraisal in the society. Genuine science or technology is a system of rational
endeavour (action), which in itself presupposes organization of all the elements of the
endeavour (or work). Mudimbe and Appiah both acknowledge this intellectual attitude to
collapse the concept of scientific (and technological) neutrality. Hear them; scientists, like
the rest of us, hold on to theories longer than may be justified to: they suppress unconsciously
or half-consciously or consciously… evidence they do not know how to handle: lie a little
(Oluwole 1999:34).
As activities of our ingenious minds and hands, science and technology are not and
cannot be value-free. Hence, the burden of proof (of evidence of marked injury to man)
should lie on the man who wants to introduce any change (or scientific or technological
breakthrough) before the change or the breakthrough will proceed for public use. The
complicated planet, inhabited by more than a million and half species living together in a
more or less balanced equilibrium, in which they use and re-use the same “facilities” cannot,
and should not be improved by aimless and uninformed tinkering. Thus argued, “all changes
in a complex mechanism involve risk and should be undertaken only after careful study of all
the facts available. Changes should be made on a small scale first so as to provide a test
before they are widely applied. When information is incomplete, changes should stay close
to the natural processes which have in their favour the indisputable evidence of having
supported life for a very long time” (Schumacher 1979:130-131). Some two decades ago, the
emergence of nuclear energy was astonishingly progressive, and promised salvation and
solution to human production related problems. Today, the same product is at damnation best
described as a “hazard with a hitherto inexperienced ‘dimension’, endangering not only those
who might be directly affected by their radiation but their offspring as well”.
It is, thus, a disastrous abdication of moral responsibility for scientists or technologists
to ignore the consequences of their inventions or who resist questions of societal need and
engage in wilful blindness that cannot lead to the good of all, humans and the environment.
Whether it is science or technology, it concerns a body of organized rational modes of
theoretical foundation or making, involving also the analysis and judgement of the value
orientation of the patterning of the action whereby resources are mobilized for the attainment
of the common (greater) good.
Human Decline
Science and technology are two modes of human activity that are organised around
interaction with nature. Such interaction is neither random nor casual, but conscious and goal
oriented, which character derives from the need to understand nature in its diverse structures
and patterns of working. But, even within these two modes of human activity, there exists a
symbiotic relationship; science provides information to technology, and technology in turn
provides science with ingenious precision instruments, which extend the scope of human
sources of knowledge and also provides avenues for practical utilization of scientific theories.
It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to argue on this score that science and technology
have reached a pyramidal stage in our time, most probably because the scope of human needs
has attained weird and bizarre dimensions. This has led men and women into many
inventions and discoveries. Starting from the very humble beginning with the use of
railways, carriages and cars, then steamships and the invention of airplanes, man conquered
the land, water and the airspace. Today, man has penetrated outer space thus enabling
engineers, technicians and scientists to explore and exploit the outer space for limited periods
of time and to return to earth with the product of their effort. Today mankind has started to
make active use of outer space for its own purposes. Artificial satellites orbiting the earth are
employed to relay television programmes, transmit communication over long distances
forecast the weather, discover deposits of minerals and so on
These are clearly phenomena advancements in science and technology which qualify
the twentieth century to be described as the ‘fastest’ century in human history and in which
the human being of today could also rightly claim to be the most mobile homo-sapiens that
ever existed. Thus, the global scientifico-technological development has several
characteristic features though, one most important element in each of the great technological
breakthroughs is that each can be used to further the progress of man. No doubt then that
humanity is in common agreement that scientific technology has brought many good things
to man and society, which perhaps has elicited peacock’s conclusion that “in spite of
scepticism in certain circles about the long-term effects of science (and technology), our
contemporary world is a world of science (and technology) in the sense that science (and
technology) is/are generally thought to command the dominating heights of the cultural
landscape” (Peacocke, 1987:3), and shaping the outlook of mankind everywhere and
everything positively.
Put together therefore, the breakthroughs in science sourced from the advent of the
miletians culminating in the achievements of the 20th century homo faber in the fie4lds of
technological medicine, food and agricultural technology, communication and information
technology and even ammunition technology have altered the lives of humanity positively.
We now posses the tools to fulfil the creator’s charge to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth
and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). In Africa, such western technological endeavours have changed
the once “dark continent” and opened it up to benefit from the most glamorous of human
civilizations in the areas of economics, education, medical care, communication and industry
among others. For,
without the possibilities offered by modern science and technology, life would be impossible
for many. The weak could become extremely vulnerable, since they would be unequipped to
deal with an otherwise hostile and unyielding nature (Ehusani, 1991:7).
The argued position here is that, globalization opens new chances for developing
countries (but African countries in particular), but involves new challenges and dangers. Most
of what is given to the public as objective knowledge and or scientific technique portends
health risk or utter destruction due largely to public ignorance on the part of the consumers,
or greed on the part of the inventors. The American Journal of Medicine is reported to have
given a clean bill of health to cellullar phones (most obviously influenced by greed
economics), but recent studies in 1999 by Joseph Kallol has established a relationship
between the use of cellullar phones and brain damage. A Science News Programme
monitored on VOA (January 27, 2001) argues that there exists a genetic damage resulting
from the use of cellular phones, and that in children cells and bones tissues are affected most
due to radiation.
Understandably, it cannot be argued that broadcasters are merely responding to
changes in public taste, as they play a major part in shaping that taste. Information
technology, specially the hi-tech of the western world creates and maintains its market share
which accompanying foreign cultures have downward taste implication for Africans rather
than upwards, thus, resulting in the decay of public standards, dehumanisation of the mass
population and decline in regard for the common good.
Revolution in informatics and communication no doubt thinned the world and made
the world a truly global village, it has also fairly made knowledge a universal commodity,
but, it has also rubbished human dignity in this universal beneficence. This picture is more
eloquently stated by Professor Alexei Vassiliev thus:
The western media impose their own problems, their own world vision, their own system of
values, their own ethical and religious approaches to the Africans to whom they are totally
alien by and large… The inflow of show business and mass culture from the west breaks the
earlier ideas, distorts the population’s system of values and life orientation. It implants the
consumer ideology, sexual licentiousness, violence, worship of the golden calf, material
success at whatever price (Vassiliev, 1997:17).
Nothing could be added more than a statement of the fact that, combined with mass
(foreign) culture and advertisement, the mass media both western and African, dictate
people’s taste and behaviour, form their political, economic, religious and social likes and
dislikes, inculcate evaluations of events and facts. Our university campuses and urban towns
have become show rooms in this regard. It is not an exaggeration to say here that when the
television demonstrates an imaginary event, it becomes a fact that affects reality, though
haven happened in the visual world. Such is the state of mental slavery which modern
technical endeavour has afflicted on developing nations, but Africa in particular, which is yet
unable to overcome.
The paradox here is that, though surrounded by innumerable spiritual forces and
littered with abundant resources and fertile land-mass, and endowed with the capacity to turn
its many rivers into good and clean drinking water, Africans still look to foreign lands to
satisfy their religious ecstasy, she still depend on genetically engineered food in form of aids
to fed its teaming and ever growing population, and struggling to deal with the AIDS,
migration, orphan-hood and refugee problems resulting from terrorist and ethnic conflicts.
While all these are problems which should engage the intelligent mind of the African,
he still overlooks such problems in place of foreign television or internet programmes which
inspire his interest most, either to watch football, Michael Jackson or to source for more
information about the latest fashion style or video CD from the Hollywood, even when clean
drinking water is not available within his immediate environment.
The suffocating impact of this digital information technology on the developing world
(but Africa in particular) is best described by Ngugi Wa Thiongo as a Cultural Bomb which
effect is to annihilate a person’s belief in his cultural heritage and ultimately in himself. He
says:
The effect of this cultural bombs is to annihilate a person’s belief in their names, in their
language, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in
themselves, including their thought process (Wa Thiongo, 1986:4).
It may be said, here, that the atomistic view of western scientific technology and its
reductionist view of reality has encouraged and promoted collective selfishness of one class
of people against another, thus, reducing a vast segment of humanity to the culture of the
ghetto, making them more vulnerable to diseases and epidemics, drug addiction, crime and
countless social and psychiatric problems. At best, the legacy of western scientific and
technological civilization for the African could be summarised in what Thoreau says is an
“improved means to an unimproved end” (King Jr. 1968:172). The men and women of
Africa have been empowered with every technique of information and communication, yet
they remain unschooled ignoramus in the experience of communion. We have perfected and
erected bureaucratic structures where communication thrives and communion is nonexistent;
and so “every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible” (De Marco,
1982:61). It is no wonder that today traditional African society experiences intense
loneliness and alienation, and the modern city dweller suffers while in the midst of many, and
city life in Africa is, millions of people being lonesome together.
These paradoxes of human nature, but in particular, those which prevails in Africa,
appears to inform the thinking of Vatican II when it says that; “there appears the dichotomy
of a world that is at once powerful and weak, capable of doing what is noble and what is
base, disposed to freedom and slavery” it continues: Man is growing conscious that the
forces, he has unleashed are in his own hand and that it is up to him to control them or be
enslaved by them. Here lies the dilemma (Vatican II, 1973:105).
The African predicament lies truly in this dilemma in the fact that the creations of
man (science and technology), have been more of a curse than a blessings, while Africans
never cease to speak of noble ideas, they watch the continent, as it were, helplessly
degenerating in humanity. The many wars, terrorist activities, ethnic and religious clashes in
which sophisticated weapons are freely used attest to this. Dr. King Jr. exposes what could
be described as the true African situation that, the African Heads of State continually issue
calls for world peace, yet, “they come to the peace table accompanied by bands of brigands
each bearing unsheathed swords”. On leaving the disarmament talk table, they go directly to
launch latest nuclear missiles (King Jr. p. 182).
Perhaps, the most devastating blow to the soul of Africa is located in the nineteenth
century when most of Africa was colonized by various European powers. The several years
of colonial experience sapped the African heritage, which involve both material exploitation,
cultural expropriation and anthropological impoverishment. Though highly certificated in the
disciplines of western thought and knowledgeable in the technique of the west, the African
suffers gross ego distortion. In general terms, the African continent has become the most
bastardised and misused continent, and they themselves have been milked of their self-
confidence. In one word, they have been dehumanised.
Perhaps the account of an American journalist reveals the African experience in more
greater details.
The colonialists left behind some schools and roads, some post offices and bureaucrats. But
their cruellest legacy on the African continent was a lingering inferiority complex, a
confused sense of identity. After all, when people are told for a century that they’re not as
clever or capable as their masters, they eventually believe it (Lamb 1986:140).
The implication here is that, the clashes of the two world views; western,
macrocosmic “superior” new world meant a displacement of the smaller “inferior” old order,
in place of which the new western “superior” order that succeeded it became a disaster. In
the language of Chinua Achebe, “the ‘Whiteman’ has indeed put a knife on the things that
held Africans together and they have fallen apart”. Western scientific and technological
civilization thus means for Africa, the collapse of a whole vision of life, of all beliefs, of
every authority, the loss for a people of their identity, i.e. the collapse of African humanistic
heritage.
This neo-technical culture has engendered wars and terrorist activities, tribal and
communal clashes in which lethal weapons are freely used. Today too, our towns and cities
are being brutally terrorised by armed robbers, hired assassins, thuggery and banditry.
African citizens have become prisoners in their homes, with high walls, iron bars and metal
gates. Africa has become a battle ground in which everybody is fighting everybody. Ehusani
captures this ugly scenario most vividly:
Thirty-years after independence of most African nations, not one of them is yet to boast of
political stability. As one country launches a return to democracy another reverts to military
dictatorship; as one country begins a national reconstruction after a bitter civil war, another
declares the onset of a religious war, and as the workers of one country return to work after
a period of total strike, the students of another country go on the rampage. Africa now
records the highest number of refugees, most of whom are not being displaced by natural
disasters but are rather on the run from totalitarian regimes, military dictators or rural
ethnic militia. It is a continent in turmoil (Ehusani, 1991:20).
The question to be answered here is whether the loss of humanity by Africans has got
something to show for it. Africans want scientific knowledge and technical know-how.
Though they have traded out their humanism, they have not been able to gain what they want;
scientific technology. They have lost their humanity, and so have become children without
heirs and so slaves of the creations of their minds.
This scenario is best described by K. C. Anyanwu as the crisis of science which
entails the crumbling of man’s beliefs, assumptions, and ideas about reality, a situation that
portends grave consequences on human conduct.
It means that reality no longer fits into our presuppositions about it, and this crisis has
profound consequences on our conduct… It means that we are no longer able to determine
the direction of change, to control events and to know how we are related to the world
(Anyanwu, 1983:70).
Perhaps, this state of affairs of science means also a crisis of perception i.e a condition
which prevents humanity from having a holistic view of reality that would enable it to
organise its actions positively; to determine the line between the permissible and the
forbidden, order and disorder, so as to deduce the principles of human association and
determine the standard of our values. But in particular, the crisis of western science is
founded on the mistaken assumption that there are absolute authorities in cultural modes of
thought, and that the Europeans and, or the west are dictators in this regard, who must lord it
over the rest of the world. In human situations, it must be said, all our cravings for truth, all
our disputes about knowledge and quarrels about conscience are cultural activities or cultural
quests, and they have all arisen from our desires as human beings to fulfil ourselves. This,
Macneile Dickson argues, is why “all reasoning is in a manner biased, and the bias is due to
the nature, surroundings and education of the thinker”. He posits further that,
There are in the realm of thought no absolute authorities, no dictators. No man, living or
dead, can claim oracular powers… All philosophies are in the end personal… systems of
thought are the shadows cast by different races, epochs, and civilizations (Dickson,
1958:13).
Surely, the situation is worse in Africa, a continent which is outside the scientific
culture of the west. While there are still more discoveries and breakthroughs, the crises in
science still persist and human consciousness would not grasp their realities. Science has
power and knowledge, but lacks wisdom to use the power and knowledge properly. The
issue here is that, the basic assumptions about reality, the principles of its understanding, its
worldview, its methods and standards have collapsed. So, science and technology which are
said to be architectonics of progress are, themselves no longer regarded as sources of benefits
to humanity. In reality, they are the causes of new forms of evil variously expressed in
degradation of the environment, effects on human health, the dehumanising and the
robotizing of society, the deepening of social and political inequalities. Put paradoxically,
modern science, having endowed man with unrivalled powers of transformation of the world
has, at the same time, conferred on him an unrivalled potential for the destruction of the
planet. The human being has the capacity for good as well as for evil, for hate and conflict, as
well as for love and co-operation. In the present chaotic world of technology and mass
culture, these mixed qualities of humanities have been too freely exercised that the individual
too often feels lost and meaningless.
Conclusion
This is the revolution we need to bring about in our traditions and institutions of learning, if
they are to be properly and rationally designed to help us learn how to make progress towards
a wiser world.
Introduction
“Technology and its instruments are appreciated not as extensions of man’s physical
faculties but as participating in his intellectual insight with its spiritual values” (Mclean,
1984:11).
Technology like any rational work of man has as its effect the achievement of
the destiny of man, which destiny includes the good and happiness of man. So, it is the fruit
of both the spiritual and material life of man. Today however, the interplay of science and
technology stands in great confusion and increasingly assuming paradoxical dimensions,
more purposeful and purposeless, more meaningful and bizarre, and more useful and
destructive. While the achievements in science and technology have served to prolong life,
they have also served to provide resources for its brutal extermination. Science and
technology provide the material ingredients which human development requires though,
happiness, ethical values, spiritual well being and wholesomeness of the human person are no
less needed as important elements of a humane society.
This paper argues here that, scientific technology (i.e. human creativity), interacting
with nature (i.e. natural environment) is not and should not be “a journey outward away from
home but a homecoming”; a discovery of the essence of ourselves on earth, and within our
environment in the world. Such an endeavour is uniquely the function of man whose active
life involves a rational principle; an activity of the soul. Man’s moral action, it is contended,
entails the conscious, rational control and guidance of the irrational part of the soul in its
conception of ideas, and or active creation and use of technique for sustainable humaniniy.
Four philosophers, namely, Socrates, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Herbert
Marcuse shall be our focus as we attempt the evolution of an ethical approach to sustainable
human environment.
Socrates and Environmental Ethics
That Socrates was at once a moral and intellectual reformer is not, and cannot be an
issue in dispute. History books state in non-contradictory tones his dogged preoccupation in
transforming and restoring moral conduct through knowledge. Human conduct, it was his
belief, is central to every other human activity. For Socrates therefore virtue i.e. knowledge
of the good, is science as much as science is virtue. This thesis is further and better
established in a celebrated dialogue between Socrates and Aristippus (Xenophon, 1925. Bk
III, Ch. VIII).
Thus understood, the basis and content of Socratic ethics is fundamentally relational.
That is, the idea of utility is essentially the idea of a relationship between a means and an end;
nothing, he says, is useful intrinsically, it is useful for something or someone. He thus echoes
in the dialogue above that “nothing is good in itself, that all good is relative”. Without
regressing into the intellectual dogmas of the different strands of ethical theories of
objectivism, subjectivism, relativism and individualism, and their psudo adequacy debates,
one would want to argue that Socrates ethics as a science of the sciences transcends such
limited analysis of the contemporary ethicists. The informed thinking of Socrates is founded
on the nature and function of MAN, who according to him is a soul and not a body.
Accordingly, our attempt at determining the good of man must itself involve considering the
good of the soul and not the good of the body.
It is to be argued though that, there cannot be a soul without the body, and essentially
too that, the good of the soul makes no meaning without corporeality. Truly, such argument
is sound only to the extent that man is not studied dualistically which fallacy Albert
Schweitzer (1961:20) laments that western civilization is a disaster because it is far
developed materially than spiritually, but that it balance is disturbed. The central argument of
Socrates is not that which is canvassed in ethical relativism. Far from that, it rest in the
reasoning that, at the individual level, every body must take care of himself, hence the maxim
know yourself. Thus, the good of man will consist in developing his reason by controlling as
much as possible the desires of his body which are disastrous for the health of the soul.
Such is the overwhelming position of the Socratic ethics that instruments in the hands
of man are said to be neither good in themselves, but worthy relatively to the use we make of
them. Apparently, Socrates is a candidate of the neutrality theory of science and technology.
But this is not the true interpretation of Socratic philosophy. Interpreted to mean wisdom or
reflection, virtue signifies excellence which upon further investigation has nothing in
common with modern day endeavours of science and technology which have no self-limiting
measures or restraints. Such adumbrations by the revered philosophers argues cogently for a
grund norm which universal application will engender biospheric harmony. The philosopher
himself had argued that “to be virtuous is to be fully developed; being good at something,
realizing one’s power. Professor E. K. Ogundowole more clearly understands this state of
affairs as liberation, which according to him is self-liberation, hence, self-reliance supported
by a mental disposition. This mental disposition he argues “must be such that eschew
exploitation of the abilities, enterprise, intelligence and hard work of others, deplore
acquisitiveness for the purpose of gaining and or consolidating power, and reject personal
wealth accumulated or concentrated as to be tantamount to, or effect a vote of, “no
confidence in the social system” (Ogundowole, 1992:255).
Obviously, the development type inspired by such unethical paradigms contradicts the
essential nature of man whose unique and true good is to grow more and more reasonable.
Fundamentally, such moral basis and content as promoted and propagated by Socrates
is definitive of the human environment which essential features of civilization he consistently
points out does not lie in material achievement but in the moral and spiritual development of
the individual i.e. the good of the soul not the good of the body. Placid Tempels (1959:172)
also echoes similarly that “material possessions; housing, increase in professional skills are
no doubt useful and even necessary values. But do they constitute civilization? Is not
civilization above all else progress in human personality?” It is understood here that
‘progress in human personality’ entails a liberated individual with a creative approach to the
human environment, who is constantly guided by the good, and able to consistently live up to
its demands.
Argued as such, ethics (Socratic ethics) is the greatest science (knowledge), and it
identifies virtue with knowledge (science) which true science is architectonic to the essence
of man; “to become a good man.” In what seems to be a global challenge, Socrates queried:
What is it good for to know all the rest, if you do not know the only thing which is essential?
What use will you make of a science if you do not know how to use it for the good? It will be
in your possession like a tool in the hands of a man without experience he manipulates it a
random and injures himself more than he makes progress at work (Diogenes, 1925:179).
By interpretative analysis, Socrates enunciates a true science as encased in the domain
of ethics, the science of excellence, which knowledge can promote human interaction; within
human beings on the one hand, and between human beings and other beings in the biosphere.
That humanity has the capacity to do everything and to be everything. Most rightly enthused,
it is in ourselves that we find the science of good and evil. It is through the examination of
our inner state that we learn and we must seek for whatever we must avoid. The inner
reflection provides us all the solutions sought (Ahoyo, 1997:58).
Truly, science and technology have powerfully helped man to free himself from the
immediate material constraints imposed by the search for security though, they have similarly
caused new evils like degradation of the environment, effects on man’s health, the
dehumanising robotizing of society and the deepening of social inequalities among others.
Prevalence of such noticeable evils of science according to Socrates is a product of ignorance
“Know yourself and you will know what convenes you” is what Socrates commands.
What then counts as an ethical approach for sustainable human development is
founded on the Socratic assumption that all men have the same nature and whatever is good
for one is also good for the other. Methodically, humanity engages in self-search to unravel
objective values, that self-introspection engenders a higher practical value which according to
Hegel is self-discovery. It is a Socratic principle which aim is that,
…man must discover in himself, his destination, his end, the ultimate end of the world, the
truth that is what is in itself for itself, he must attain by himself the truth. It is the return of
self-conscious which is on the contrary determined as getting out the particular subjectivity.
It is thereby that it is eliminated the accidental character of consciousness, the particular
whim, the particularity, by having deep down oneself, this exit, having what is in itself and
for itself. Objectivity has in this context the sense of universality, that is in itself and for itself
and not an external objectivity (Ahoyo 1997:62-63).
Self-knowledge which here means a rigorously rational introspection obviously
avoids contradictions but promotes harmony between convictions and actions. Such
condition is what life is said to be a moral one. Thus, as a basis for human activity in a
biosphere, ethics acts as a guide in the promotion of a true moral life. Human endeavours,
which results from self-consciousness, does not (and cannot) disrupt the link between
conviction (belief) and action.
In truth, such ethical approach more properly defines authentic human beings and
hence sustainable human development. Understandably, ethical knowledge (self knowledge)
amount to good ethical conduct which knowledge unites conviction with will, thought with
action, under the guidance of an inner lucidity, of reason, or of reflective wisdom (Ahoyo, p.
64). This knowledge guides (or should guide) the products of our brains and the works of our
hands to avoid contradictions, and so to be in tune with human existence. But human
existence, it must be unequivocally stated demands meaning in the universe. The
meaningfulness or meaningless of the universe itself starts from the meaningfulness or
meaninglessness of human existence. Every human endeavour, using this ethical approach as
a guide must be subordinated to the human person long acknowledged by Socrates as the
focal point of philosophy. It is here argued that, absolute devaluation of the human person as
is common in todays techno-polis is most unethical. Sustainable human development process
with its purview an invitation to the understanding of the nature and value of the human
person to which Professor J. I. Omoregbe (1990:196) readily provides; that,
man is the key to the understanding of the whole reality. The human person transcends the
infra-human world. The human person posses an inviolable dignity an inalienable liberty
and an inseparable moral responsibility.
This high premium on the centrality of the human person as the absolute value and the
Supreme Being in the universe isolates him out never to be used simply as a means to an end.
In the thinking of Socrates, virtue, which quality is self-knowledge can set us free from the
illusion of reliance on individual ability, and so liberate us from the servitude of the
selfishness, calculation and anti-social ego to fit into the universality of moral laws where in
contradictions are non existent, with man always thinking and acting rightly in the promotion
of the common good. Arguably, such a civilization is wholistic, which human (sustainable)
development, individuals are able to express their inner talents fully in the creation of a happy
and peaceful community, just as they bring about an ecologically prosperous natural
environment, which nurtures them. Such is what is argued as an ‘ethical approach” towards
the evolution of a sustainable human development, wherein, the interests of the individual
and society and humans and nature become congruent. The question is, how does the
SCIENCE of Socrates regulate the modern sciences (and technologies) in the achievement of
this noble goal of sustainable human development?
To answer this all-important question suggests to us a little knowledge of the person
of Socrates. Socrates, we are told was not a metaphysician, but a practitioner, a physician of
souls. It is business was not to construct a system, but to make men think and act morally.
He calls this endeavour the only true science, which engenders the good of man. Captured in
fragments as handed down to us by Plato and Xenopho, Socrates dictates such a true science
as is flavoured by narrowly utilitarian motives thus:
What I ought to do is, what is good for me, and what is good for me is what is useful to me –
really useful (Jacques Maritain, 1979:51).
It is to be understood here that, Socratic ethics seems at first sight to have been
dictated by narrowly utilitarian motives though, he went beyond utilitarianism of every
description. “What is good for me is what is useful to me – really useful” means only that,
the good is not just the material, physical or transient things, but what is really useful to man;
and at this point Socrates compelled his hearers to acknowledge that man’s true utility can
only be determined by reference to a good, absolute and incorruptible i.e. man’s sovereign
good which is his last end. Regulated as such, Socrates seems to be arguing that, humanity is
saved from the catastrophe which trails the trend of development of human knowledge
(science) and skills (technology) that are constantly in the direction of seeking more
comforts, conveniences and control on the natural environment.
More than ever, humanity is today confronted with a new reality, the increasing
knowledge of nature and the ready capability to manipulate it which capability and
understanding have conferred on him a power able to destroy the delicate network which he,
is himself, as a creature of the nature, involved for better for worse Ahoyo (1997:76) argues
in support here that, “to that effect, he (man) has stored in his armouries forces of nature
which, if they escape his control, could annihilate the whole mankind.” When and where this
happens, humanity is said to be acting in the fashion of cancer cells, which when they run
amok and burst out of the prostrate and take over the liver and lymph glands, it kills
everything in the body including the cancer cells themselves.
Obviously, modern science and technology has given today’s humanity more than he
bargained for; serious and burning problems ranging from ecology, exhaustion of the natural,
non-renewable raw materials and the problems of scarcity, starvation and misery of the great
majority of people in the third-world. But as it is said, “where the danger is, grows also the
saving power”, which saving power is the ethical approach of Socrates. This approach
emphasises inwardness, subjectivity and self-knowledge. It is perhaps the absence of this self
knowledge, this self-consciousness that blinds our knowledge of human essence s graphically
presented by Eric Fromm. He says:
He (man) works and strives, but has an obscure consciousness of the usefulness of his action.
Whereas his power on the matter increases, he witnesses his powerlessness on the twofold
level of personal and social life…. Becoming master of the nature, he has become slave of
the machine he has made with his hands. His knowledge about matter is great, but his
knowledge about himself is nil (Ahoyo 1997:138).
Rightly self-consciousness or introspection which quality is self-examination and
hence the capacity to realise what is more authentic in man, is for us the saving power. This
endeavour in human knowledge remains undirected towards the inward dimensions of man
offers the only gateway to the true essence of man on the true human condition. Working
within the framework of this true science (ethics), human aspirations are made to rule self-
interests and short-range perspective, and profitability subordinates sustainability. For,
“nature has to be considered as the whole of which human beings form one component. As a
very important component, they are meant to serve nature rather than make it subservient to
their own needs and wants, for each generation must pass on what it has received in good
order to the next.
The argued conclusion here is that science is truly useful to human kind only and only
as it is ethically sensitive. Correctly rephrased, science without conscience is but ruin in the
soul. This subordination of science to the human spirit is lucidly interpreted by Pope John
Paul II (The Common Good, 1997:31) to signify the kingship and dominion of man over the
visible world, which task consists in “the priority of ethics over technology, in the primacy of
the person over things, and the superiority of spirit over matter.” Humanity totals, and society
tumbles in the event that there is the growing priority of technology over ethics, in the
growing primacy of things over persons and in the growing superiority of matter over spirit.
This is a contradiction of the human will resulting from absence of self-knowledge. In order
to act well, which thought links with action, the stake, according to Socrates is to acquire the
science of the good, and virtue is that science. This according to Socrates the good of the
whole man; the truncated man who is caught between two poles; a material pole, which, in
reality, does not concern the true person but rather the shadow of personality of what in the
strict sense, is called individuality, and a spiritual pole, which concern true personality.
Sustainable human development is derivable from this spiritual pole, the source of
liberty, meaning and bountifulness of man, the form or soul of the whole man. Material
entities have their meaning or rationality because of the impress of the form or soul
(metaphysical energy) the spirit is ordained to inform matter. This is the primary duty of
philosophy which Socrates has recasted in his principle of self-examination which functions
to control the excesses of the sciences by critique and controversy in the attainment of the
ultimate good of man. As the sciences are ever developing and progressing, and responding
to the diverse needs and expectations of Homo technos, ethics (philosophy), the supreme
science must ever trail them, judging and governing them to accord with the pursuit of the
common good, even against strong economic forces that would deny it so as the feared evil of
turning science into an endeavour that devotes itself to organised murder and mass
dehumanisation. The perfect thought of St. Thomas Aquinas may here suffice, that, “any
culture or society or age that does not submit the sciences to the critical leadership of
philosophy (ethics) heads to confusion and low rationality” (Nwoko, 1992:12). Meaning then
that, public life needs rescuing from utilitarian expediency and the pursuit of self-interest. In
human affairs, the twin principles of solidarity and subsidiary need to be applied
systematically to the reform of the institutions of public life.
Husserl and Heidegger on the Ethical Approach
Phenomenology as adopted and used by both Husserl and his student Heidegger
suggest a method of investigation where from the essences of Beings are made known as they
are in themselves as they are. While Husserl insists that phenomenology as a method is
characterised by ‘what’ of the object of philosophical investigation as to its subject matter,
Heidegger argues otherwise that it is the ‘How’ of that investigation. Notwithstanding their
special emphasis, phenomenology etymologically formulated means “to let that which shows
itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself” (Heidegger,
1978:58). It means by this descriptive statement that, true knowledge (science) of being is
possible only through phenomenology; that ‘phenomenon’ is the being of entities, its
meaning, its modifications and derivatives. Thus, the argued conviction of both Husserl and
Heidegger is that, behind the phenomenon there is nothing else, but since the phenomenon
itself can be hidden – proximally and for the most part, there is, need for phenomenology
which maxim is “to the things themselves”.
But as human knowledge has made progress, it has not and cannot come to anything;
it has rather raised more problems than solutions. Such paradoxical situation, to which
knowledge (science and technology) has led us to, convinces us that knowledge itself is a
disability. This is what we call the crisis of science and technology to which Husserl and
Heidegger offers a phenomenological rescue mission. Science and technology are products
of the essentially metaphysical character of the western intellectual tradition which
technocratic reduction of everything to planning, calculation and predictable laws, wrest
objectivity from what is, the quest for certainty in our ways of knowing and the passion for
totality or the total dominance of everything.
Such is the real source of the problem of modern science (and technology). As Dr Jim
Unah rightly alludes, “by forcing things to appear which he (man) does not need, man turns
himself into the conqueror of nature, into an overlord who wills to thoroughly exploit and
dominate the earth”. But he concludes rightly too that, “he who exploits and dominates the
earth ends up thoroughly debasing the earth” and destroying the entire biosphere, including
himself (1998:362).
It remains to be seen how Husserl and Heidegger have adopted the phenomenological
method as an approach to true humanism and hence removing “Abstacles to the Building of a
Beautiful World” (Read Easlea, B, 1973). They both argued that, what leads to a distortion
of reality is not any inherence of a distorting element in things themselves, but the way we
position ourselves to view them. They argued further that we can position ourselves to view
things and relate with objects and see the objects the way they are, without bias, prejudice,
preconceptions and predispositions of particular circumstances. Thus inquisitional
methodology for Husserl is epoch and phenomenological reduction, while goes for the
explication of Dasien. Phenomenology, they argued in conviction, promises to be a vehicle
for authenticity as it purges the metaphysical attitude of viewing what is presented to ones
consciousness from the cognitive imposition of another.
Martin Heidegger
The thoughts of Heidegger on science (and technology) are not too expressly distinct
from those of Edmund Husserl. But more than Husserl, Heidegger made a successful attempt
at distinguishing between modern science (or technology) and ancient science (or
technology). He thus argued like Husserl that, modern science had developed losing sight of
the original foundation on which it has been erected and that neglect was responsible for the
crisis it is getting across in spite of its success. According to Heidegger, (1997:3-37)”
technology (in its everyday sense) is not equivalent to the essence of technology” to be free
of misunderstandings, to relate technology intelligently, we must fund its central meaning and
that can be done only by discovering its essence; we must think of its relationships with all
else. To view technology as a complex of contrivances and technical skills, put forth by
human activity and developed as a means to our ends is an error of judgement. “We are
delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral”, he
says. On the contrary, the essence of technology reveals it as something far from neutral or
merely an instrument of human control; it is an autonomous organizing activity within which
humans themselves are organised.
The argued position of Heidegger is that the true essence of technology is to be
located in the modes of occasioning, the four causes; Causa materialis, causa formalis causa
finalis and causa efficiens. As he put it “every occasion for whatever passes over and goes
forward into presencing from that which is not precencing is poiesis, is bringing-forth”
(Heidegger 1977:10). This bringing-forth is, in its most generally understood sense what the
Greeks called aletheia, which Heidegger expressed in the German word Entbergen and his
English translators have expressed in the word ‘revealing’, that is truth revealing which
objective significance is the expression of the actual coming into presence of something.
Put in proper perspective, Heidegger here locates technology within its Greek
etymology as essentially that which belonging to the general notion of bringing-forth,
Poiesis. he thus adumbrates this position further and better thus;
techne… reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us,
whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another… Thus what is decisive in
techne does not lie at all in making or manipulating nor using of means, It is a revealing, and
not as manufacturing, that, techne is a bringing-forth (1977:13).
By this assertion Heidegger means to insist that the basis essence of technology has
remained the same unchanged and that this essence is most readily observed in the Greek
origins of our thinking about these things. The problem with modern technology and the
dangers of modern science and technology is that they have evolved outside this essential
nature as a mode of revealing. What we understand as modern technology can hardly be
recognised as having a common origin with the fine arts or craft. Instead modern technology
is distinguished in having made its alliance with modern physical science rather than with the
arts and crafts.
It is thus not farfetched to conclude that modern technology destroys, and
dehumanizes. Indeed, humanity journeys and involves with nature to the point of intrusion
upon it. Thus, instead of diverting the natural course co-operatively (wherein lies the essence
of technology) modern technology emphrames and achieves the unnatural by force. Not only
is it achieved by force but it is achieved by placing nature in our subjective context, setting
aside natural processes entirely, and conceiving of all revealing as being relevant only in
human subjective needs.
The essence of technology originally was a revealing of life and nature in which
human intervention deflected the natural course while still regarding nature as the teacher
and, for that matter, the keeper. The essence of modern technology is a revealing of
phenomena, often far removed from anything that resembles ‘life and nature’ in which human
intrusion not only diverts nature but fundamentally changes it. As a mode of revealing,
technology today is challenging – forth of nature so that the technologically altered nature of
things is always a situation in which nature and objects wait, standing in reserve for our use.
We pump crude oil from the ground and we ship it to refineries where it is fractionally
distilled into volatile substance and we ship these to gas stations around the world where they
reside in huge underground tanks, standing ready to power our automobiles or airplanes.
Technology has intruded upon nature in a far more active mode that represents a consistent
direction of domination. Everything is viewed as “standing-reserve” and, in that, loses its
natural objective identity. The river for instance, is not seen as a river, it is seen as a source
of hydro-electric power, as a water supply, or as an avenue of navigation through which to
contact inland markets. In the era of techne humans were relationally involved with other
objects in coming to presence; in the era of modern technology, humans challenge forth the
subjectively valued elements of the universe so that, within this new form of revealing,
objects lose their significance to anything but their subjective status of standing-ready for
human design. Thus everything in the universe, including humans, have been transformed in
significance leading to a loss of humanity. It may be said to that extent that, humanity has
been conducted out of its own essence.
Obviously, our attempt at converting ‘science and technology as tools of human
development but which have become standing reserves has effected the greatest threat to
humanity by carrying humanity away from its essential nature. On the one hand we consider
ourselves, rightfully, the most advanced humans that have peopled the earth but, on the other
hand, we can see, when we care to that our way of life has also become the most profound
threat to life that the earth has yet witnessed. Medical science and technology, it is argued,
have even begun to suggest that we may learn enough about disease and processes of aging in
the human body tat we might extend individual human lives indefinitely. In this respect we
have not only usurped the god’s rights of creation and destruction of species, but we may
even usurp the most sacred and terrifying of the god’s rights, the determination of mortality
or immortality (Tad Beckman, 2000:13) Thus maternally and spiritually, human life and its
environment have been profoundly transformed, and humanity no longer has a correct
relationship with the environment.
For Heidegger therefore human development is not and cannot be a product of
modern technology, for it has lost its essence. As human beings become progressively more
involved as the orders of reality conceived as standing reserve, they too become standing
reserve at a higher level of organization. That is, as human beings come to see other beings
in the world only for their potential applications to human dispositions, humans themselves
come to mirror this shallowness of “being” and to see themselves merely in terms of potential
resources to the dispositions of others. Understood within this human disposition, our
essence as human beings falls into concealment which activity Heidegger calls enframing.
As Tad Beckman is to argue in explication,
Emframing challenges us forth in the decisive role as organizer and challenger of all that is
in such a way that human life withdraws from its essential nature. Within this role the
essence of our humanity fall into concealment; we can no longer grasp the real nature of life.
We withdraw into a conception of reality that is subjective and isolated (Beckman 2000:15)
But, Heidegger asserts that the human essence is not a being in isolation. Human
beings unlike most beings that are simply in existence with no relationship to one another, no
consciousness, are unique, they are beings among beings, beings who witness other beings.
Such essence of human life is founded in the facticity, or objectivity of Dasein; not only do
we humans come into relationship with other beings through our characteristic consciousness
but they come into their own beings as objects through us. They are witnessed by us. This is
why Heidegger insisted that from the position of our own essence, “we can never encounter
only [ourselves’” (Adams; 1946:27). So argued, any conception of our environment that
perceives only ourselves and our dispositions is necessarily flawed from the point of view of
essential human nature.
But is there a way out of this human predicament? The answer to this complex and
difficult question may simply be YES. We agree with Holderlin that “where the danger is,
grows also the saving power”. We must stare into the depths of all that is and was and can be
and recognise, above all, that what humans essentially are is, in some mysterious way, a
“grant.” So Heidegger says, “only what is granted endures. That which endures primally out
of the earliest beginnings is what grants” (Heidegger 1977:31) If technology is seen as an
imminent threat to humans, it comes to focus attention upon that which is granted to human
life, since what is granted is precisely what is most threatened. Thus Heidegger suggests that
the saving power begins to grow precisely within the greatest danger. The saving power is
found in the arts, which saving power is “more than hauling something back to its original
form; instead, it should be construed as bringing something back into its essence. Thus the
saving power that arises through art and within the danger of modern technology must be a
power to bring humanity back into their essence. Heidegger’s attempt could be summarised
within this thinking, that “we must proceed into the future, as we interact in the techno-polis,
from where we stand but, while we proceed, we should use these things and our talents to
come back into our own essential nature.
Technology carries humanity outward from ourselves and to that extent humanity fails
in the essential task of human fulfilment as beings whose very essence is to be – there, to
witness the whole of what is. Through the art, which nature is homecoming, that is,
discovering the essence of ourselves on earth and within our environment in the world, we
are healed by coming back into our on essence. It is not an exaggeration to say that the art
does bring us the power that can save us from the people that we have become. Art might be
able in some way to drawn us back into a more original form of bringing – things forth. It is
perhaps to be understood that Heidegger is well informed on this consistent and well
developed picture of art, especially the art of poetry. In this picture,
art is a mode in which life is experienced in which life is experienced in which truth happens
for us. …art is a mode of revealing, a setting forth, in which humans and other objects-
beings come to presence in an organization that is far closer to the essential nature of human
life on this earth. (Heidegger, 1971:25).
As a saving power that returns humanity to its essential nature, art carries us into the
essential tension between earth and world and to the essential need of humans to fund a
joyous home within for just as technology in the epoch of enframing has effected the greatest
threat to us by carrying us away from our essential nature, art possesses the capacity to
become the mastering theme of a new epoch in which we are healed by coming back into our
own essence.
Such is what Heidegger calls a bringing-forth which means the liberation of man from
the hold of technology and a modification or a redefinition of our relationship with them.
Instead of being fascinated and dominated by them, we can in using them normally keep a
certain distance to them, that is allowing them to reveal themselves the way they are in
themselves as they are in themselves. This condition of science and technology is sine qua
non for human fulfilment nay sustainable human development. For Heidegger therefore,
We can say “yes” to the inevitable use of technology but at the same time say “no”, which
means that we should impede them to monopolise us and thus to miss stifle and finally empty
our Being (Heidegger, 1977:49)
Such temperament is what Heidegger calls the “serenity of the soul” which condition
entails a communion between the body and the mind. Since a human person is possessed of
both mind and body requiring both spiritual and material fulfilment pursuit of wealth and the
satisfaction of the physical needs of man must be tempered by the cultivation of the mind.
Outer satisfactions of a material kind should be enhanced by the inner satisfaction of the
mind and spirit. This is the goal of wholistic human development which the physical needs
of man are achieved through science and technology (from nature) though, they are not used
in a manner that they will dominate us and finally empty our Being. They are used in a way
that we are at peace and a piece of nature, at peace with our emotional needs by maintaining
peace between the individual and society, from which we also derive intellectual and spiritual
peace.
Conclusion
The task of philosophy, it is often said is the critical examination of the ideas we live
by. This supposition further argues that, philosophy has always announced and justified the
task of a rational reorganization of the world, which implies the recognition of the specific or
at least the potential rationality of the universe. Candidates of this school of thought are
quick to conclude here that, one might rationalise the existing, though it is not immediately
rational. That, what the rationalization of the world has led us to through science and
technology is the worsening of human condition, perhaps without a saving power. The
present alienation of human condition, they argued is a by-product of this condition which
remains caught in the trap of positivism whose evils it has so brilliantly unmasked.
In our preceding analysis, we have shown that philosophy is not only the critical and
rational examination of the ideas we live by, but that it is also the saving power of the ideas
that govern human existence. Basking in the era of the crisis of science and technology,
which consequent effect is the disappearance of “the person, but the emergence of the
machine”, we have argued in a reverse order that, the ‘person’ is the measure of all things.
The person, it is argued in this work, is the totality which the self achieves in the individual
entity in the unity of his spiritual and physical aspects understood as such, the human person
is the basis of our practical judgement of the good.
It is based on this thinking that we conclude that “science without conscience is ruin
of the soul.” The implication here is that, science and technology necessarily needs to be
inward directed so as to avoid the feared danger of conducting humanity out of its real
essence on this earth. Sustainable human development is more than mere growth and
progress in material terms, it means growth and progress in reference to the human person
who is the reason for all values in the world; material and spiritual. This, to us is what counts
as an ethical approach to sustainable development.
Informed by the thinking that humanity always poses problems that it can solve, we
proposed three options as a way ahead (out of) the present crisis in science and technology.
Option one argues that the way out of the radical upheaval caused by science is a
return to morality. Humanity, Socrates says, is at the crossroad and can only be returned
back into natural human essence through his moral philosophy which characteristic features
are inwardness, subjectivity and self-knowledge. Ethics he says, is the queen of all sciences
and without ethics science cannot stand.
Option two argues out the rehumanization and healing of the positivist contagion
through phenomenology. Pioneered by Edmund Husserl, this, line of thought argues that the
restoration of human wholeness which positivism has destroyed is possible through
transcendental consciousness. Phenomenology, in its search for immutable foundations of
philosophy, he says, directs knowledge towards. “Pure consciousness”, towards total
subjectivity. Philosophy, hitherto, he says, has remained naively objectivist; the ontological
constants brought out by that philosophy are without any relationship with human existence.
Hence, it is the task of philosophy to rediscover this sense of wholeness. So, he says
philosophers are the civil servants of humanity (Husserl, 1965:23).
Option four closely associates itself with option two, and extends its garb to
existentialism using it as a war against the project of a scientific philosophy propounded by
Martin Heidegger, a student of Husserl, existentialism like phenomenology argues the role of
philosophy in the restoration of moral and spiritual confidence of men, against the
dehumanisation and scepticism sowed by science and technology.
Whether it is the moral philosophy of Socrates, or the phenomenology of Husserl, or
the existentialism of Heidegger, the synergy is that, ethics define relationships between
beings; beings who witness other beings as beings among beings, and that, the nature of a
relationship defines the essential human nature or otherwise. Such conviction may have
informed the observations of the French philosopher and mathematician, Michel Serres, that,
…we (i.e. the scientists) have henceforth the responsibility to manage the infinite cone of the
possible that the ethics of our fathers named reality, inventory, speculative activity seems to
pose non-ethical problems; choice on the contrary, a serious one. Once you have for a long
time combined, you have to choose what may pass from the possible to the actual (Ahoyo,
1997:122-123).
What this observation reduces to is that, the age long paradgm of scientific neutrality
is replaced with the phrase “to know amounts to choose”, for as Heidegger rightly suggests,
“from the position of our own essence, we can never encounter only ourselves”. We have
thus argued that, human action must always be informed by an attitude of the mind, in the
promotion of the human person. Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative may
suffice here, that human action should be always directed “as to treat humanity, whether in
thy own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end in all, never as means only”
(Ozumba, 2001:89). While we support Kant’s position that the motive of the will is good if
and only if its motive is solely one that emanates from duty, we hasten to say that such
motive should not emanate from duty for duty sake. Such sweeping conclusion has the
capacity of promoting the culture of scientism.
It is thus argued that, human dignity, of everyman should be topmost in human
presencing. Arguably, human presence is crucial to other beings coming-to-presence, to truth
happening. That is to say that, the human essence is fundamentally involved in all revealing,
in all objects coming into unconcealment. Technology as a mode of revealing, is one part
within many possible parts that open up within the essential nature of that human role; each
of these parts develops a specific aspect of our relations to beings. That relationship is
always reciprocated in the sense that, in so far as being-there is our essential mature, the way
that we are there, the way that we relate, is the way that we ourselves come into being during
that period. Heidegger, an authority in this insight allays with this conclusion and adds in
particular that, “the way we treat other things is determinant of the way we ourselves will be
treated.
True, science and technology have made tremendous progress and growth, we have
mastered gravity and space, we have driven back the limits of life or death, we can now
choose the sex of our children and may tomorrow reproduce our own kind asexually and treat
any type of complicated disease, thanks to the breakthrough in the study of genes. But
herein, that power, lies all our problems. It is thus no longer what could I know , which is the
question of science, but what should I know and do which is the question of sense (ethics).
What is being argued for is a responsible human environment in which humanity is called
upon to integrate in its present actions the care to preserve the life of its descendants, nay its
environment.
In what appears as a summary of our position, Hans Jonas has formulated in a Kantian
formula the following ethical imperative:
Act in such a way that the effect of your action be compatible with the permanence of an
authentically human life on earth. (Ahoyo 1997:136).
This imperative itself is a call for a meaningful relationship of openness and dialogue
within human being on the one hand and, with nature; the environment on the other. Yersu
Kim (1999:42) in his “A Common Framework for the Ethics of the 21st Century” provides in
addition, a four point agenda in this regard:
(i) The view of nature as accessible through causal mechanistic law has enabled
humanity to control nature and provide for itself the good life on earth. The same
view has contributed to the destruction of the natural environment and alienation
of human beings. We must therefore seek a balance such that we may maintain a
sustainable harmonious relationship between the human species and nature.
(ii) As nature is a finite quality, we must learn to manage the economy to sustain the
complexity and stability of nature while at the same time to manage nature so as
to sustain our economy. As our desires are insatiable, we must learn to
accommodate our desires to the limits nature sets, not to push the limits of nature
beyond its capacity for generation.
(iii) Humanity needs to develop economically and technologically in order to deal with
the problem of poverty in which a great majority of human beings still live.
Continuation of economic development at the present rate endangers the rights of
the future generations to life and a healthy environment. We must therefore, learn
to balance short-term thinking and immediate gratification with long term thinking
for future generations by shifting the balance towards quality rather than quantity.
(iv) Consumption contributes to human well-being when it enlarges the capabilities
and enriches the lives of the people. Consumption, when excessive, undermines
the resource base and exacerbates inequalities. Consumption therefore must be
such as to ensure basic needs for all, without compromising the well-being of
others and without mortgaging the choices of future generations.
This is the agenda for sustainable development which corpus entails that nature has to
be considered as the whole, of which human beings form one component, which important
component, they are meant to serve nature rather make it subservient to their own needs and
wants. The human species, with all its attributes of intelligence, inventiveness and capacity
of intervention is called upon to use these qualities in a positive manner to serve the whole of
which they are a part. Instead of exploiting nature in a manner of forcing things to appear
which man does not need, instead of dominating nature which action backfires and ends up
thoroughly debasing the earth with man inclusive, humanity should act as sentinels of nature
and help maintain the multifarious delicate webs of the eco-systems that make it function in a
sustainable manner. “We could learn from the bees” recommends Dr Devendra Kumar, “the
manner to serve nature and get its sustenance simultaneously. The more the honey it collects
from the flowers, the more it serves, in the propagation of the plants by helping in their
fertilization. We could emulate the bees by fulfilling our needs through a similar symbiotic
relationship with nature.” (Kumar 2001:2). Perhaps too, the Delphic Method of Rushworth
Kidder, the founder of the “Institute for Global Ethics” (USA) could help reinvent a new
world order for sustainable human development. In his Shared Values for a Troubled World,
Kidder (1994), identifies a number of cross-cultural core values: love, truthfulness, fairness,
freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility and respect for life as architectonics of sustainable
human development; a wholistic development which entails a combination of the physical,
emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions. This should be in a way that humanity is at
peace with nature; at peace with our emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs. This, John
XXIII (1963) argues can be established only if the order between men and nations, laid down
by God, and rooted in the nature and dignity of the human person is observed.
This is a call for the regulation of human activity which activity proceeds from man,
and which human activity is also ordered to him. The development of his life through his
mind and his works should not only transform matter and society, but it should also fulfil
him, his spiritual realm, for it is what a person is rather than what he has that counts. Thus,
technical progress is an important compliment of human development though, it is of less
value than advances towards greater justice, wider brotherhood and a more humane social
environment. It is here argued that, the norm for human activity is to harmonise with the
authentic interest of the human race, in accordance with God’s will and design, and to enable
men as individuals and members of society to pursue and fulfil their total vocation – the
better ordering of human society.
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I briefly talk about why we don't have any hard proof that memory, testimony, and sense
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Woodward, James and David Goodstein “Conduct, Misconduct, and the Structure of
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I know I wouldn’t.
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American Association for the Advancement of Science 1993, p. 7; Ibid.
Woodward, James and David Goodstein “Conduct, Misconduct, and the Structure of
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Ratzsch, Del The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution
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Ratzsch, Del The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution
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