What is science?

Scientia: Knowledge Epistemology: The science of knowledge

Episteme: Knowledge
Sciences Humanities

Formal Sciences Natural Sciences Applied Sciences Life Sciences Social Sciences Humanities
Mathematics Physics Technology Biology Anthropology Philosophy
Logics Chemistry etc. Bio-medicince Medicine etc. Sociology Linguistics
etc. etc. Psychology etc. Theology
Musicology
etc.

Hard sciences Soft sciences

Science is the body of knowledge and the process of knowledge aquisition (Berkeley University)
Science is the study of the nature and behaviour of natural things and the knowledge that we obtain about them (Collins
dictionary)
Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic
methodology based on evidence. (Science council)
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions
about the universe (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and also Englich Wikipedia)
Nauka jest jednym z rodzajów wiedzy ludzkiej. Pod względem poznawczym wydaje się być wiedzą najlepszą, najbardziej
adekwatnie opisującą rzeczywistość (PWN and also Polish Wikipedia)
 How to do science?

Most scientists completely do not worry about the philosophical and theoretical foundations and implications of science.
They simply do science.
They don’t worry whether we can identify the truth at all.
They don’t worry whether their results are ‚true’ or reflect reality.
They don’t worry whether their results can be formally verified or falsified.

And we have scientific progress

That is a scandal!

The scandal is that science might proceed without any reference to philosophy.
Bah, it might be that the philosophy of science even hampers scientific progress.

Or maybe not?
Is it possible that we completely dismiss reality?
Is it possible that reality as we ‚feel’ it does not exist?
 Some definitions

Creation
Supranaturals Nature
Thales of Milet Aristarch of Samos
(624-546 BC) Causes - (310-230BC)
effects
Natural explanations The heliocentric
of phenomena without world view as a step
Empirism towards scientific
reference to the Theoretical
Observations thinking
supranatural and to reasoning
Experiments
myths. Logic
Rationalism
He tried to define
substances of which all Induction
other natural objects Examples General laws
are composed.
Deduction

The principle method of deduction is logic.

 Reductionism - Holism

In science reductionism states that reality is made of compounds.

Knowledge of these compounds enables to understand reality.

Baruch Spinoza
Reductionism states that living organisms can be (1632-1677)
described by the sum of its parts.

Methodological reductionism argues that scientific disciplines

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
form hierarchical structures where one encloses others.
Does this imply that we cannot explain properties of
Richard Dawkins complex systems by any analysis of the parts?
(1941-)
Evolutionary Biology

Ethology Today, systems thinking is a form of holism.

Theses include
Sociology • Neural network science
• Complex adaptive systems ecology
Psychology • Ontogeny
• Are complex systems computationally reducable?
 Ancient scientific methods
were based on reasoning (logos)

The father of
Organon: six works on logic logic
Aristotle Parmenides
(384-322BC) Axiomatic deductive method (6th to 5th
(all arguments are derived from a set of fixed rules cent. BC)
Inductive reasoning.
Reductio ad absurdum
Syllogisms Classical logic contain 24 valid syllogisms out of 256 possible
Major premise: Every unicorn has one horn. Major premise: Birds can fly. Strawman logic
Minor premise: Aristotle is a unicorn. Minor premise: Penguins are birds. The scientific Socrates
Conclusion: Therefore Aristotle has a horn Conclusion: Penguins can fly literaturę is full of (470-399 BC)
such arguments.
Rules for proofing
P Q P Q ¬(P and ¬P) P The Earth cannot be
flat, otherwise we
P ¬Q P Q ∞ would find people
Q ¬P P and all Q falling off the edge.
Modus ponens Modus tollens Tertium non datur Complete induction Reductio ad absurdum
 A word on logic
In statistics we have two mutually
Modus tollens exclusive hypotheses H1 and H0.
𝐴 → ¬𝐵 If Ryszard is from Poland he is probably not a member of Sejm. If P(H1) > 0.95 H0 is probably false.
¬(¬𝐵) Probably Ryszard is a member of Sejm. H0 is probably true.
¬𝐴 Thus he is probably not a citizen of Poland. P(H1) < 0.95.
This does not mean that H1 is
probably false.
It only means that we don’t know.
Some strawmen logic in publications
1. Bumblebees in Europe have been in steady decline since 1. Climate change might have impact on plant species
the 1900s. composition.
2. This decline is expected to continue with climate change 2. Increased temperatures are suspected to cause
as the main driver. increased extinction rates of kryothermic species.
3. However, at the local scale, land use and land cover 3. Therefore we need better monitoring schemes to
change strongly affects the occurrence of bumblebees. (Gl trace these predictions
Change Biol, 2018). (submission to Oikos)

Logic does not refer to reality.

It is a set of rules to link conjectures about reality.
Logic is part of mathematics, that is of a formal science.
The medieval scientific inquiry Medieval science largely started from
(scholasticism) the 12th century when the works of
Aristotle, Plato, Theophrastus, Euclid,
was largely an explanation and Galen, Archimedes, and the Arabian
interpretation of these ancient texts. texts of Avicenna and Averroes were
translated into Latin.
The principle method was dialectic, based
on arguments and counterarguments
Empiricism Rationalism
• Define a question (Aristotle) (Platon)
• Formulate objections
• Formulate arguments in favour
All knowledge All knowledge
• Weight the arguments
comes from comes from
• Reply to the objections
experience our ratio.

There is no reference to the ‚truth’ Nature has an

What is there? intrinsically
Metaphysics
Arguments are worth of being What is it like? logic (formal)
considered if they have ‚beauty’. structure that
That is if they have a consistent Does mathematics tell is inherent in
formal structure. something about reality our ratio.
 Ibn a-Haytham Galileo Galilei David Hume Albert Einstein
(965-1035) (1564-1642) (1711-1776) (1879-1655)
Science is based on Knowledge must either be All knowledge of
questions. directly traceable to objects reality starts from
Experiments and perceived in experience, or experience and
observations try to result from abstract reasoning ends in it.
test them. about relations between ideas Propositions
These tests must be which are derived from arrived at by
reproducible. experience. purely logical
means are
The rest "nothing but completely empty
sophistry and illusion”. as regards reality.
A first application of (Albert Einstein)
modern scientific inquiry
 Principia Mathematica Logic as the basis of
knowledge

Bertrand Russell Alfred North

(1872-1970 Whitehead
The proof that 1+1=2 takes several tens of pages. 1950 Nobel prize in (1861-1947)
Principia Mathematica aimed at describing a set literature)
of axioms and inference rules in symbolic
logic from which all mathematical truths could Kurt Gödel
in principle be proven. (1906-1978)
The first incompleteness
An unprovable statements theorem states that for any
axiomatic system powerful
The axioms of this theory do not contradict each other
enough to describe the
arithmetic of the natural
Gödel’s theorem tells that mathematics and numbers, there are true
even more other natural sciences cannot be statements that cannot be
grounded on logic alone (a finite system). proved from the axioms alone
 The science of formal structures is mathematics.
b a+g Thus mathematics should tell us something about reality
g a b

g b Mathematics is built on axioms that

cannot be proven.
The basic assumption is that a There is no need that these axioms
parallel line exists in reality. are ‚intuitive’ or even ‚true’.

Since Euclid mathematics

was build on axioms (first
statements)
1.Finite straight lines from any point to any point can be drawn. Goldbach conjecture: Any even natural
2.Finite straight lines van be drawn continuously within a number > 2 can be written as the sum of
straight line. two prime numbers.
3.Circles with any centre and distance can be drawn. It might be :
4.All right angles are equal to one another. True and provable
5.That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the True and undecidable
interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the False and undecidable
two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side Decidable as being false.
on which are the angles less than the two right angles.
 Vienna Circle Most discussion on scientific inquiry was based on physics and mathematics/logic.
(1922-1936) From ancient times on these were sufficiently developed to serve as scientific standards.

At the beginning of the 20th century the scientific world was shaken by mathematics

Logical empiricism (logical positivism) : Theories need to be

There is only knowledge from experience Reality
verified by observations.
The principle scientific method Any contradiction
is logic. Verification Falsification disproves the theory
Moritz Schlick You cannot talk about
Hypothesis
(1882-1936) and study something
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) that is not observable
Verfification Rejection
Ludwig Wittgenstein The world is everything that is the case.
(1889-1951) What is the case (a fact) is the existence Positivism mainly referred to
Theory
of states of affairs. mathematics and physics
A logical picture of facts is a thought.
A thought is a proposition with a sense. Is the general statements „All storks are white” a
A proposition is a truth-function of scientific statement?
elementary propositions. The general
form of a proposition is the general form Verification means we have to test for every manifestation
of a truth function of a proposition.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one Verification is partly possible in physics.
must be silent. Verification is impossible in other sciences.
 Statistics just does it the other way round

To test for the significance of a

correlation we use a t-test
𝑟
𝑃 𝑡 = 𝑃(𝑡 = 𝑛 − 2)
1−𝑟 2
𝑃 𝑡 < 0.001
Egon Pearson Jerzy Neyman
(1895-1980) (1894-1981) We test for the hypothesis that |r|> 0 (H1)
against the hypothesis r = 0 (H0).
We try to reject H0.

A test aims at falsifying a null assumption. The significance value a of a test is the
We test against assumed data that have not been measured. probability (the evidence) against the null
assumption.
We do not verify our hypotheses! Type I error
H1 true H0 true

Reject H0 1-P P
Modern statistical practice is not in line with the positivistic
scientific method Reject H1 Q 1-Q

Type II error
 Old theories are not rejected, they slowely die out (Max Planck)

Evolutionary epistemology

Knowledge evolves by a selection process Coined by

Campbell in
A hypothesis 1974
Sir Karl Popper centred approach Donald Campbell
(1902-1994) to science (1916-1996)

Predictions Verification
Reality Verification
Falsification
Deduction
Falsification Observations

Hypothesis Hypothesis
Modification Modification
Rejection
Modification
Theory Deduction
Theory Experience

According to Popper we are only able to

falsify our theories.
My proposal is based upon an asymmetry between verifiability and falsifiability; an asymmetry which results from the
logical form of universal statements. For these are never derivable from singular statements, but can be contradicted by
singular statements.
Karl Popper, 1934. The logic of Scientific discovery.
Type I error
For a theory to be scientific it must in principle be possible to falsify this theory. H1 true H0 true
Popper rejected induction as a scientific method to obtain general laws. Reject H0 1-P P
All ravens are black. The statement cannot be verified (you would have to
look at all ravens of the world). Reject H1 Q 1-Q
Hempel’s
The statement cannot be falsified (you would have to
paradox Type II error
look at all ravens of the world).
All not black animals Any observation of a coloured animals We do not verify our
are not ravens. supports the view that a all raven are hypotheses!
black. Modern statistical practice is
not in line with the falsifiability
Creationists hold The McLean vs Arkansas ruling (1982) scientific method
that life has been The judge was convinced by the argument that the creationist
created and is not view does not fulfill the criteria of a sound scientific theory as To be so we would need the
only result of it is impossible to falsify their statements. Unscientific strong additional assumption
natural processes theories should not be tought in school. that H1 and H0 are mutually
exclusive (tertium non datur).
 A research programme is a hard core of theoretical The Structure of Scientific
assumptions that cannot be altered without revolutions (1962)
abandoning the whole theory
Parts of the programme can be falsified

Ordinary scientists are not concerned about the philosophical

implications and of whether their work can be called scientific.
They just do.
Imre Lakatos Thomas Kuhn
(1922-1974) (1922-1996)
Standard scientific
How to identify pseudoscience? paradigma
Pseudoscience fails to make any Formation of a
new predictions Core new paradigma
True scientific theories predict
Normal science
new facts
Anomalia
Scientific journals expect to Paradigm shift Observations inconsistent
present theory derived Behaviourism Ethology with the core set of the
hypotheses and testing. paradigma Formation of
Purely descriptive work is Scala naturae Evolution alternative
considered as being of low concepts
Low temperature High temperature Change of
value origin of life origin view
 The modern extended scientific method

Increase Compare
information and observations with New theories
predictions and Formulate a
build data bases
with existing data new theory
Be
curious
Corroborate
Replacement
the theory
Formulate
Modify questions
Make Existing
the theory
observations theories
Theoretical
reasoning is
Reject the hypo- central to
theses but leave scientific inquiry
Accept the the existing Build
hypotheses theory intact predictions Refer these
Design at study questions to
project to test existing theories
these hypotheses Formulate testable
hyptheses
 According to Kuhn scientific theories should be:
1. Accurate – empirically adequate with experimentation and observation
2. Consistent – internally consistent, but also externally consistent with other theories
3. Broad Scope – a theory's consequences should extend beyond that which it was initially designed to explain
4. Simple – the simplest explanation, principally similar to Occam's razor
5. Fruitful – a theory should disclose new phenomena or new relationships among phenomena

Neutral ecology All plant species are equivalent.

All species have identical characters.
Al. Species reproduce identical
All species disperse identical.
Pool of
individuals That’s complete nonsense.
Stephen P. Random
Mutations
10000
All basic assumptions of this theory are
Core species

Hubbell (1942- Birth 1000

Abundance
migration wrong.
Death 100

10

1
0 Ground
5 10 15beetles
20 25 on
30 Mazurian lake islands
Ecological drift Rank order
10000
100
Satellite species Core species
1000

Abundance
Abundance
10
100
1
The theory works often fine to describe 10

Barro Colorado Island ecological communities 0.1

0 5 10 15 20 25 30
1
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Rank order Rank order
100
 Paul Feyerabend Science benefits most from a ‚dose’ of anarchism.

• Individual theories are inconsistent with one another.

• Competition provided by a plurality of possible alternatives drives scientific research.
• There are no such things as “facts.” By definition, all “facts” are theory-laden, and depend on
what people believe or want to believe.”
• We can only progress if “Anything Goes.”

Scientists have more money, more authority, more sex appeal than they deserve. The most stupid
procedures and the laughable results are surrounded by an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them
Paul Feyerabend down in size, and to give them a more modest position in socjety.
(1924-1994)

„Democratization of science”

Citizen science

Do most scientists ‚pseudo-science’?

1975
 Research and pseudo-research Impact factor

Appr. 2.5 Mill scientific papers are published each year. 𝐶𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 (2016 + 1017)
𝐼𝐹2018 =
There are more than 12,000 scientific journals. 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 (2016 + 2017)
Scientific journals are those indexed by Sopus or Web of Science In Biology IF < 1.0 means that an
IF < 1.0 weak average paper got less
According to Clarivate Analytics (Web of
1.0 < IF < 3.0 intermediate than one citation during
Science) 10% to 25% of papers of Web of
3.0 < IF > 5.0 high two years.
Science index get never cited by peers.
IF > 5.0 very high These are often self-
Much more work in not-indexed journals
citations.
don’t get any citation.
In Poland there are more than 2212 journals (2016) not indexed in Web of Science.
Most of them only serve to document that an academic teacher is active in
„research”.
(Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Turystyki i Ekologii w Suchej Beskidzkiej)
13
𝐼𝐹2014−2017 = Most are self-citations
58

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2000. The art of
writing a scientific article. J Sci. Commun. 163 (2) 51–59.
> 400 citations according to the Science citation index.
Lariviere and Sugimoto, Web of Science The paper is only an example for a reference style and had never been published
 Predatory Journals

• Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review

https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/ or quality control.
• Notifying academics of article fees only after papers
are accepted.
• Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit
articles or serve on editorial boards.
• Appointing fake academics to editorial boards.
• Mimicking the name or web site style of more
http://www.cabells.org/ established journals.
• Open access
• Pay for publication
• Full access to all papers
• Full author copyright
• Fast publication

• Death of libraries?
• Double fees (Library and
scientist)?
• Lack of quality control

The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a
critique of the adaptationist programme (1979)
Stephen Jay Gould
1941-2002
Gould and Richard Lewontin
defined biological spandrels
as (necessary) by-products
of adaptation that are not
under selective pressure.
Many features actually are
such spandrels.
Telling just so stories (Rudyard Kipling)
Climate change is an important factor that affects numerous
organisms including insects. Different trophic levels are affected
differently by climate change causing disruption of synchronized
phenology among different species (Thackeray et al. 2010). These
effects of climate on abundance of insects are partly due to
Edward O. Wilson
advanced phenology of insects (Møller 2018).
(1929-)
Less tangible but equally important qualities are creativity,
entrepreneurship, drive, and mental stamina. Let us assume that the
genes contributing to these qualities are scattered over many
chromosomes. Assume further that some of the traits are uncorrelated
or even negatively correlated. Under these circumstances only the most
intense forms of disruptive selection could result in the formation of
stable ensembles of genes. A much more likely circumstance is the one
that apparently prevails: the maintenance of a large amount of genetic
diversity within societies and the loose correlation of some of the
genetically determined traits with success. This scrambling process is
accelerated by the continuous shift in the fortunes of individual families
from one generation to the next.
 Is pure description science?
„All science is either physics or stamp collecting”, Lord Rutheford
Descriptive research generally precedes explanatory research.

Descriptive research areas Explanatory research areas Theory developing research

Plant phytosociology Functional ecology

Animal faunistics Conservation ecology
Classical taxonomy Evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology
Paleontology Paleontology
Biogeography Macroecology Network theory
Molecular functioning research Bioinformatics
Morphology Systems theory Bioinformatics
Brain reconstruction Neural network analysis

Most scientists do purely descriptive work.

Descriptive research should
 provide data for theory development
 lead to new research questions
 provide data for decision making
 provide data for applications
Even bees know basic physics
Evolution and evolutionary epistemology
They can do basic numerical operations
Animals are no tabula rasa
Evolutionary epistemology
contradicts radical empiricism

Evolutionary epistemology combines

rationalism (innate knowledge about Konrad Lorenz, Behind the Mirror
reality) with empiricism.

Where does this knowledge come from? It makes evolutionary biology to the
Evolutionary epistemology holds that central paradigm of the scientific
we have innate knowledge about reality. method
This knowledge comes from our
evolutionary heritage.
We are adapted to fit to reality, other
The picture in the mirror is what
wise we won’t have survived.
our mind creates. The backside is
what our mind got though
Richard Dawkins coined this paradigma evolution to mirror reality.
Universal Darwinism