I. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Our planet, the Earth, is one of the millions of planets, infinite perhaps, in the immense Universe. Since the very beginning or maybe it has always happened, living beings in general and humans in particular have tried to understand life and seek out the logic of the world; which explains the origin and the development of philosophy.

In order to understand why both the evolution of science and the scientific method have considerably failed with the acceptance of very weak scientific paradigms and theories from the common sense viewpoint, I had included in Molwickpedia books some remarks on the philosophy of science and the concept of science.

The thinker - Rodin
(Public domain image) 

While designing the present book of the Global Scientific Method I have decided to move them here.

At the same time, the defense of the current scientific method seems important because it is one of humankind and life’s great conquests. However, I think that it would be convenient to cast off some of the nineteenth century millstones and twentieth century obstacles, among which I would emphasize their atheistic complexes and utilitarian shroud respectively.

I.1. Concept of science

If we contemplate the concept of science, or simply ask ourselves what is science, we will have to turn to an external discipline: the philosophy of science.

From my perspective, with no doctrinal presumptions, philosophy divides into three vast groups: the methodology of pure philosophy or epistemology, the study of scientific knowledge or philosophy of science, and the study of possible things or metaphysics, or meta-science, if preferred.

Using a less precise terminology, philosophy analyzes the world of what can be possible and science is limited to the proven world. If the philosophy of science has no proofs, it restricts concepts; while general philosophy needs proofs in order to limit a concept.

The Philosophy of science understood as a level of reasoning which leads us to the concept of science and not as an academic discipline that uses many Latin or Greek words and quotes countless authors. The Philosophy of science is like the self-limitation that the little boy philosopher sets for himself in order to discover those wonders of the new world that have profound common sense.

The aim of this book is not to be an exhaustive treatise of the scientific method; on the contrary, it just presents some reflections on certain relevant aspects of said method.

Chapter I dedicates a whole section to scientific knowledge and another to its sources and characteristics.

Perception, intuition, and logic are the three weapons used by man in order to strengthen his control over nature. As we will see, the so-called scientific method of the philosophy of science has three principal variants based on these three instruments.

In this sense, perception and logic are the two polar concepts while intuition would be in the middle, which allows it to formulate theories that in some cases surpass the theories developed through logic and perception, or the combination of both. To a certain extent, all theories are a combination of the three.

On another hand, even from the perception of the philosophy of science we cannot deny that sometimes madness made possible science evolution, by proposing topics that previously seemed impossible. On other occasions, what has made science advance has been love, which perhaps Newton referred with his wonderful story of the apple.

Chapter II discusses the characteristics of the scientific method, criticizing some parts of its terminology as well as proposing a simple categorization of its stages and steps. Taking the opportunity, two new scientific methods and a brief section about the sociology of science, regarding the problematic in the stage of acceptance of scientific theories, are also therein included.

For sociological reasons, I think that philosophy of science distorted in the twentieth century with an almost constant rejection, due to an unattainable idealistic perfectionism, of unquestionable advances of logical and scientific knowledge; while the illogical is embraced as far as it represents the interests of individuals or groups. Perhaps this happens because the development of both the philosophy of science and the very concept of science is still in the stage of intrepid adolescence.

In other words, the scientific community tries to hide its own limitations in the complexity and supposed nature’s lack of logic; yet these apparent characteristics are the reason for its existence; because human beings still have not understood the majority of nature’s complex logic.

Chapter III of this book talks about the philosophy of science applied to complex systems research.

Regarding scientific advance, I should mention that included in the book of Fairy Tales is a horror story about the Sly ones of the Inquisition, which, as far as possible, is better to ignore. He who warns is not a traitor! In other words, this book is devoted to modern skeptics.

Chapter IV focuses on revising the most relevant historical errors that the scientific method has made and continues making since it uses a philosophy of science adapted to sociological needs.

Let us look now at some examples that have always surprised me for their lack of common sense and its regular recurrence in human beings, I guess that happens due to an erroneous implementation of the philosophy of science.

• The existence of extra solar planets

  Why has the existence of planets not been scientifically accepted until they have been detected as seeming to be planets, and yet it has been accepted that the speed of light is constant in the entire universe when it has not been proven either?

  Of course, the probability of planets existing outside of the solar system was very close to one, for the probabilities that the human brain normally handles.

  Probability is, without any doubt, an element linked to the concept of science.

  In my opinion, the logical reasons for their existence are much more powerful than the new discoveries that indicate their existence.

  I imagine that science did not accept it as true because it was not necessary nor urgent, but in fact, most humans thought that they did not exist or had more doubts than what was reasonable, which is quite different from being completely certain. On other hand, the mere possibility of absolute certainty is not clear due to the influence of philosophy.

• The existence of extraterrestrial organic life

  It is the same with the existence of organic life, from a logical viewpoint, there can be no reasonable doubt of its existence outside of our planet or solar system, accordingly with the game of purely mathematical probabilities.

• The existence of other concepts of life

  Other more modern or classic concepts of life, depending on how you look at it, have another more immediate problem, its existence is not even recognized or it cannot be scientifically recognized on Earth. Obviously, that is fine. However, another thing is to deny it, as many scientists, with Darwin leading the group, attempt to do. With denial occurs exactly the same thing as with affirmation: It needs proof!

  Given the significance of an accurate interpretation of the scientific method and the goal of personal neutrality, when evaluating the new concepts in evolution, a special section has been included in the aforementioned chapter IV. It deals with the limits of knowledge from the personal and social psychology and the sociology of science that could affect the acceptation of one or another evolutionary theory.

  In the book General Theory of the Conditional Evolution of Life, we can find a detailed exposition about both the criticism of Darwin’s theory and an alternative proposal consistent with my concept of science.

• The controversy about the definition of intelligence

  This subject is very emotional. Not only attempts are being made in order to deny its genetic nature (it is obvious, at least, at a biological species level!), but in numerous occasions even the existence of the very concept and the possibility of its quantification are denied.

  Lately, people have even invented the term emotional intelligence!

  A natural development of the General Theory of the Conditional Evolution of Life has been the Global Cognitive Theory divided into four books about the brain, intelligence, memory and the will.

  In order to demonstrate this new theory about the elegant intelligence, with greater success than expected, I carried out the EDI Study - Evolution and Design of Intelligence based on the longitudinal data from families’ IQ (father, mother, children, siblings and twins) which exists thanks to the Young Adulthood Study, 1939-1967.

• Physical reality

  To maintain the progress and evolution of science, the temptation of easy explanations of reality must be resisted, as well as to adamantly reject certain elements of witchcraft or black magic within the domain of the philosophy of science, such as:

  • Empty space with content
  • Negative energies
  • Objects that are in two places at the same time
  • Tautologies presented as scientific theories
  • Effects preceding their causes, or things that go out before going in
  • Instruments that change their measurement without their measuring mechanisms being affected
  • Forces at a distance or pure telepathy
  • Dimensions and imaginations that cannot be confirmed or refuted
  • Effects on the physical world of pure mathematical abstractions
  • Playing on words, and scientific requirements for how language is expressed in physics

  Finally, as expected, chapter IV contains sections about both Classical and Modern Physics.