LECTURE 5:

TOPIC: OBJECTIVE OF
SCIENCE: EXPLANATION,
PREDICTION & PROGRESS

Module: AT10503
Pengantar Ilmu Saintifik

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Introduction

• The famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1954, p. 90) – once said that
all of science presupposes the truth of the “hypothesis that the
display of Nature can be understood.” This seems absolutely right.
After all, if Nature/the world around us could not be understood (at
least to a significant degree), there would be no science and no
reason to engage in scientific activities. Why conduct scientific
experiments if they aren’t going to help you understand what you’re
studying?

-------------------Kevin McCain (2020)-p.52

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 • LECTURE 5:
TOPIC: OBJECTIVE OF SCIENCE:
EXPLANATION, PREDICTION & PROGRESS
Today’s
Lecture outline • Science and Scientific Revolution
• Sociology and Science
• Explanation and Prediction

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“Science” cannot be easily Scholars in science and
defined. social sciences defined
• The difficulty arises due the term science in
to tendency to confuse different ways and
the content of science employed it in different
with it methodology. contexts.

Science has no special

The word science
derived from the Latin
Science
subject matter of its
own.
word scientia (to
know).
and
Scientific
In general, science is a
knowledge about the
Science is divided in Revolutio
n
two categories – natural
nature of natural and
and non-natural science.
social phenomena.

Non-natural science
can be two categories
– social and
humanities.
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 Scientific inquiry refers to activities and
practices involving scientists’ pursuit of
knowledge.

Contd..
Science as a way of knowing refers to
the belief that the actions of science are
based on logic, evidence and reasoning.

Science is based on empirical research.

Empirical research relies on systematic
observation and experimentation, not
on opinions and feelings.

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 • Greek philosophers PLATO (c.427-347) and
ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.E.), they provided
thoughts on what they believed society
ought to be like, rather than describing how
society was.
• Issac Newton’s (1642-1727) the discovery of
the laws of gravity and motion and the
development of calculas, inspired social
Contd… thinkers to believe that similar advantages
could be made in systematically studying
human behaviour. His name consider
MODEL OF A TRUE SCIENTIST.
• Like natural sciences, social thinkers sought
to develop a scientific understanding of
social life. For example, August Comte, the
founder father of sociology

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 • The Age of Enlightenment (Age of Reason)
• The period in the 18th century when many
writers and scientists began to argue that
science and reason were more important
than religion and tradition.
• Skepticism of the primacy of religion as a
source of knowledge & traditional authority
• Before 18th century the religion and
Contd… traditional authority are the main power of
society, they were the source of knowledge
and welfare of the society
• Society was ruled by Aristocracy (the
political organization) and other political
leadership.

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 • In France, the Enlightenment (age of reason)
was dominated by Philosophes
• Who are they?
-C. Montesquieu
-Rousseau
-Turgot
• These men were optimistic about future,
believing that human society could be
Contd… improved through scientific discoveries.
• Scientific revolution= which could bring
welfare of the society.

• Finally, the Enlightenment produced an

intellectual revolution in how people
thought about social change, progress, and
critical thinking.

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Contd….
Shift to self-
Middle Ages: interest:
Personal liberty
Society is an
and individual
expression of rights
God's will

Gradual attack of French

tradition: Revolution:
Thomas Hobbes Greater break
(1588–1679), with politics and
social tradition:
John Locke (1632– Tocqueville
1704), and (1805–1859)
Adam Smith (1723–
1790)

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Science and Sociology: A New View

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) saw society as product of a

three-stage of historical development

•Theological stage (Church in the Middle Age);

militaries: where society is bound together by force
and fear.
Auguste •Metaphysical stage(Renaissance in the fifteenth
century) (Enlightenment and the ideas of Hobbes,
Comte Locke, and Rousseau); Legal society: where force and
fear replaced by law and constitutions.

•Scientific stage (Modern physics, chemistry,

sociology, and the work of Copernicus, Galileo, and
Newton); Industrial society: where the ruler is
science.
A traditional “progress” narrative

•Consider the tale of astronomy in the

“Scientific Revolution”:
• Ancient cosmology from Aristotle to
Ptolemy: Earth at centre of universe; sun and
other planets orbiting; crystalline spheres
• Copernicus puts Earth in orbit, 1543
• Tycho, though geocentric, abolishes
crystalline spheres and improves accuracy of
readings, 1570s
• Kepler conforms Tycho’s data to
Copernicanism; introduces ellipses, 1609
• Galileo promotes impetus theory, 1632
• Newton synthesises these developments to
describe universal gravitation, 1687
•“Before Kepler, all men were blind. Kepler
had one eye, and Newton had two” (Voltaire,
1730s?)

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Scientific Knowledge

Scientific knowledge is knowledge

that has been systematically
gathered, classified, related, and
interpreted.
• Scientific knowledge is all knowledge collected
by the means of the “scientific methodology”
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 Scientific Knowledge

 Four factors are essential to the classification of an item of

information as scientific knowledge:

(1) independent and rigorous testing,

(2) peer review and publication,

(3) measurement of actual or potential rate of error, and

(4) degree of acceptance within the scientific community.

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Scientific Knowledge

Scientific method
• A method to be use by natural or social scientists to acquire knowledge
of sciences.
 Method are comprising procedures and tools. The scientific method is
not one single thing. It refers to the ideas, rules, techniques, and
approaches that the scientific community uses.

• Scientific Attitude:
It is better to focus on the scientific attitude, or a way of looking at the
world. It is an attitude that values craftsmanship, with pride in creativity,
high-quality standards, and hard work.

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WHAT ATTITUDE SHOULD SCIENTISTS
HAVE?
• According to Thomas A.C. Reydon (2020), Good Academic Practice as
a Precondition for the Production of Knowledge.
• - After all, if scientists cannot be trusted to honestly report the results
of their work, to not make up data and present them as outcomes of
actual measurements, and to not distort the results of their work in
order to make them look better, how can science be trusted to
produce genuine knowledge?
• These worries show how epistemological issues and questions of
good practice are intimately related. In response to such worries, in
the past few decades most universities, research institutions, and
funding organizations have implemented regulations and/or
guidelines to safeguard good scientific practice, and have set up
courses in research ethics for students and staff. V

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Responsibilities Due To Having Knowledge

• The dropping of the two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in August 1945 marked an important point in the contemporary
discussion on the responsibility of scientists and of the scientific community.
The magnitude of the loss of lives and of the material destruction that had
been caused in the two events kindled a feeling of deep unsettlement, which
became widely shared by the scientific community and the general public.
Had science finally gone too far by making the development of such powerful
weapons possible? Had science now lost its innocence as a presumed morally
neutral quest for the truth, or a quest for knowledge in the service for
mankind?
• Bridgman (1947) focused on moral responsibilities and argued that scientists
should not be thought of as having any moral responsibilities in connection to
the knowledge that they helped produce. Wolpert’s (Wolpert, 2005),
consideration, in contrast, is that having knowledge entails an obligation to
think about what this knowledge might mean for society and the people that
are part of it, for better and for worse.

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Journal Articles in • New scientific knowledge appear are scholarly

Science: journal articles

 When the scientific community creates new

knowledge, it appears in academic books or scholarly
journal articles.

 The primary forms in which research findings or new

scientific knowledge appear are scholarly journal
articles. It is how scientists formally communicate with
one another and disseminate the results of scientific
research.
 E.g. A researcher gains prestige and honor within
the scientific community, respect from peers, and
a reputation as an accomplished researcher
through such publications.

 Each discipline or field has over 100 journals, each of

which published many articles every year.

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Science as a You can think of research as the use of
Transformati scientific methods to transform ideas,
ve Process: hunches, and questions, sometimes called
hypotheses, into scientific knowledge.

Transformation means altering something,

converting it from one thing into another.

In the research process, a researcher

starts with guesses or questions and
applies specialized methods and
techniques to this raw material. At the
end of the process, a finished product of
value appears scientific knowledge.

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Steps of the research process: (social
sciences)
The research process requires a sequence of 7 (seven) steps.

Choose Topic

Inform Focus
Others research
Question

Interpret
Data Design Study

Analyze
Data Collect Data

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The seven steps discussed here:
(1) The research process begins with a researcher selecting a topic – a general
area of study or issue such as divorce, crime, homelessness.

(2) A topic too broad for conducting research. The researcher narrows down, or
focuses, the topic into a specific research question that he or she can address in
the study (e.g., “Do people who marry younger have a higher divorce rate”?)

- for this a researcher reviews past research, or the literature.

(3) Design study: After specifying a research question, the researcher plans
how he or she will carry out the specific study or research project. (e.g.
whether to use a survey or observe in the field, which questions to ask).

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Contd…
(4) Collect Data: After design the study, now the researcher is ready to gather the data
or evidence (e.g., ask people the questions, record answers).

(5) & (6) Analyze & Interpret Data : Once the researcher has collected the data, his or
her next step is to manipulate or analyze the data to see any pattern that emerge. The
patterns in the data or evidence help the research interpret or give meaning to the
data (e.g. “People who marry young in cities have higher divorce rates, but those in
rural areas do not.”

(7) Inform others: Finally, the researcher writes a report that describes the
background to the study, how he or she conducted it, and what he or she discovered.

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 A scientific theory is the product
drawn from comprehensive
research, which combines all the
most current, valid evidence to
How Are explain a wide range of phenomena
(scientific observations).
Scientific
Theories
Developed
? A scientific theory represents the
most powerful explanation that
scientists have to offer.

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Explanation

• To begin, we should distinguish between an explanation and

explaining something. Explaining is an action that we sometimes
perform. In successfully completing that action we provide an
explanation.

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Explanation

• Jaegwon Kim’s (1994, p. 68) idea that “explanations track

dependence relations.” The idea is that an explanation consists of
information about how the thing being explained (the explanandum)
depends upon other things (the explanans). For example, an
explanation of a window’s breaking (the explanandum) consists of
information about how the event of the window breaking is causally
dependent upon other events, such as a baseball flying into it (the
explanans). One thing that makes this “dependence” view of
explanation so helpful is that it covers all sorts of relations: causal
relations, constitution relations (when some things make up
something else), mereological relations (relations that exist between
the parts of an object), and so on. This view of explanation is
consistent with all of the major views of the nature of explanation

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Explanation

• An explanation is a set of claims/information about dependence

relations that exist between the explanandum (what is being
explained) and the explanans (what is doing the explaining).
• ---- Kevin McCain (2020)-p.54

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Explanation in Science:
• How to explain social phenomena?

• Carl Hempel’s (1965) widely influential account of explanation and

prediction as the fundamental goals of scientific research.

According to Carl Hempel and his many follower, the fundamental goals of
scientific research are to predict (and , whenever possible, control) the events
that occur in the world, and to explain to them.

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Explanation
Scientific knowledge is what we learn from the scientific process, which
involves experimenting and collecting data. Scientific research is the collecting
of data to investigate and explain a phenomenon.
Jon Elister (2015) says.. All explanation is causal. To explain a phenomenon is
to cite an earlier phenomenon that caused it.
The natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, offer explanation by
law.
What is law? Laws are general propositions that allow us to infer the truth of
one statement at one time from the truth of another statement at some earlier
time.

This kind of explanation is deterministic: given the antecedents, only one

consequent is possible.

Sometime scientists explain phenomena by their consequences rather than

their causes. E.g. biological sciences– the evolutionary explanation
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 In the social
sciences, such
explanation are few
and far between.

Explanation
However, the social
sciences offer few or
many and many.
Many social
scientists try to
model by using
statistical methods.

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 Explanation

• Other philosophers say: “Theories are the

crown of science, for in them our
understanding of the world is expressed.

• The function of theories is to explain.”

--

--Rom Harre, The Philosophies of Science,

1985

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Prediction vs.
Explanation
In science, a prediction is what you expect to happen if
your hypothesis is true. So, based on the hypothesis
you've created, you can predict the outcome of the
experiment.

Prediction:

What will happen next?

Explanation:

Why did it happen? 32

  Scientific Explanations are given in
response to ‘Explanation Seeing WHY
questions’.
 To give explanations is to provide
Hempel’s satisfactory answer to these questions.

Covering
 Scientific Explanations should have logical
structure of argument.

Law  A set of premises followed by a

conclusion.

Model of Example:
Explanati why sugar dissolves in water

on Explanation

Conclusion: sugar dissolves in water

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 Scientific knowledge has basis in
empirical evidence.

Scientific knowledge is based upon

observations and inferences.

Scientific knowledge is heavily dependent

upon theories.

Conclusion
Scientific knowledge is created from
human imagination and logical reasoning.

Scientific knowledge can be obtained by a

variety of scientific methods.

Science is a human endeavor influenced

by society and culture.

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 • Janet A. Kourany. (1998). Scientific

Knowledge: Basic Issues in the

References Philosophy of Science. United States of

America: Wadsworth Publishing

Company. 262-267pp.

• W. Lawrence Neuman (1997). Social

Research Methods: Qualitative and

Quantitative Approaches. third edition.

United States of America: Allyn & Bacon.

Pp. 9 – 11.

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