Is Science Progressive?

To be able to answer the question, we first have to know what science and progressive means. According to the Oxford Dictionary, science is "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment”. In our daily lives, there are many things that can be attributed to scientific practices. From watching bread rise in the oven to a chemical reaction of Caesium and H2O, scientific behaviors are all around us in the natural world we live in. We can simply see how science works by doing the very things the Oxford Dictionary has detailed - by observing (watching bread rise) and experimenting (making two substances react). Anything that is "developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step", can be considered progressive. Then can we consider science progressive? Most of science is a process, where ideas and concepts are being gradually developed in stages. However, accuracy and precision may be a concern to whether science is actually progressing or not.

To a certain extent, science is progressive. Normal science is when theories anticipate discoveries. In our physical and natural world, there is nothing "new". Something being progressive, does not mean creating new things, but developing in stages. Scientists are simply discovering ideas and concepts through experiments and observations that are already in our natural world. When studying the structure and behavior of certain things in our world, scientists are not looking for new ideas that are outside of the expectations of theories. The periodic table, for example, is a scientific discovery in which elements, when found, are added to the table. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, scientists found new elements. It wasn't unexpected, they didn't have to change the paradigm of chemistry or physics, to add these new elements. For example, when oxygen was added to the periodic table, nobody is credited for the discovery. This is because oxygen being added to the periodic table was part of a process, and so bottling pure oxygen isn't a discover. It is similar to puberty. Puberty is a whole process that reorganizes your whole world. Most of science is all about progress. The paradigm, a set of rule, opens up new approaches to understand ideas that before were considered invalid. Ideas and questions help develop a theory as a process, just like oxygen was discovered.

Language in science plays an important role to the progress of scientific knowledge. Without language, how would scientific knowledge be shared and archived? Science cannot be discovered or studied solely by objective criteria but instead is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Scientists work in research groups and contribute to a larger scientific community so that other people can question the hypothesis created. When questioning or adding to an idea, the scientific language has to be precise and denotative, restricting any ambiguity. Language is essential to build common knowledge and be able to examine people's work in peer review, in order to build and develop central ideas and concepts. However, not all the language used to scrutinize people's work can be considered ways to develop science. But it can also be used to falsify a statement, hypothesis, or theory. When scientists communicate, misunderstandings due to different definitions of words for scientists and the general public may arise. This leads to how accurate can science be. If a scientific concept is being developed, but questions and arguments arises that falsifies the statement, is it still a progress? A statement can be called falsifiable if it is possible to formulate an observation or argument that proves the statement in question is incorrect or false. According to the text, Science as Falsification by Karl R. Popper, Einstein's theory of gravitation could be an example of falsifiability. At the time the theory was announced, there were no instruments that allowed them to pronounce the results of their experiments and observations as completely accurate, but there was a clear possibility that the theory was false. Einstein's theory cannot be considered progressive, since it was falsified. Scientific progress is when an idea is being gradually developed in stages. However, according to the Oxford dictionary, to develop means to grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate. In this case, the theory wasn't developed since it did not have any more advanced and elaborated idea of gravitation.

Throughout time, people are always trying to categorize certain things to observe and experiment, similarly to the activity in our TOK class, where we had to categorize certain objects and observe its similarity. Eventually, cultures were also been categorized. The indigenous are classified as people with a culture that is specific to the land in which they live in. Their way of studying the structure and behavior of nature through observation and experiment is somewhat unique to a certain extent. Both the natural sciences and indigenous knowledge use ways of knowing to observe and learn about the natural world. But it is important to see how accurate the indigenous scientific knowledge is. Indigenous knowledge generalizes so they can classify and name certain terms, draw correlations between natural phenomena, make connections and predict. Similarly to the indigenous, scientists study science the same way, but they have tools to expand their observations and measurement, quantitative written records, communication of evidence, procedure and theory, etc. Scientists have a greater quantity and quality of resources to help reinforce their ideas to come up with a proven theory. Whereas in indigenous knowledge, their mechanism for sharing knowledge is different, which makes it hard to see their ideas and concepts as valid. For them, the transfer of knowledge is not between research groups that question and add new information and explanations, but instead it is shared between generations respecting traditional understanding. Therefore, if an idea is not valid and can be falsified, it is not progressing. They don't have resources to prove their certainty about the structure and behavior of our world, but they trust inherited wisdom, which makes it hard to prove if their study of science is correct. If something is falsifiable, it cannot be considered a progress since the idea isn't growing to become more mature, advanced, or elaborate.

Science is almost everything we see and feel around us. Scientist don't create a new scientific element, but they discover within a process. Nothing is found from just one day to another. They need language to develop the idea or concept studying and share knowledge to prove its accuracy. Using language to question people's work and sharing their knowledge to the scientific community, are all a matter of progressing. However, if a hypothesis is falsifiable, it cannot be considered as a progress since it isn't growing to become more useful in the future. Therefore, if a concept of science is proven to be correct, it will be a progress since scientists are in a process to prove to be accurate. But if it is proven to be incorrect, it won't be progressing since it isn't developing.