Is science progressive ?

Scientific paradigms contain features that makes it progressive. Progress in it’s meaning states there is a cumulative growth of knowledge over time. Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher which obtained Popper’s view on where to set the boundary or limits in science. Kuhn criticized Popper for characterizing “the entire scientific enterprise in terms that apply only to its occasional revolutionary parts” (Kuhn 1974, 802). Popper's focus on falsifications of theories which leads to rare instances when a whole theory is at stake. According to Kuhn, the way in which science works on such occasions cannot be used to characterize the entire scientific enterprise. Instead it is in “normal science”, the science that takes place between the unusual moments of scientific revolutions, that we find the characteristics by which science can be distinguished from other enterprises (Kuhn 1974, 801). Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution states a paradigm the "normal science" of an age, in which he emphasis the way that science is not a step-by-step progression, but a dynamic progress involving bursts of change that is mainly significant in the overall theory. Kuhn describes paradigm when scientists work within an accepted theory to fill in the details of the overall pattern of connections due to the enlightenments, and use its overview explanation to point the way towards further research. He mentions scientific theory to be successful when there are no novelties of fact or theory. Normal science can be seen when scientists come up with ideas as an conceptual framework of an accepted theory before they invested vast resources. With that being said, normal science may accumulate abnormal results that cannot be explained with minor adjustments to accepted models. The result of its research might even seem to contradict features of the explanation itself. The change from one paradigm to another enables improvement and understanding of its casualties, this can either foreshadow what will occur in the future or reveal it can be proven wrong. Science has contrapositions when arguing whether it is progressive or not, this can be seen through Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Science can be seen as progressive in the view that it has a certain built-in-self-correcting features, which is experimentation, evidence and falsification. However, we have to always question this built-in-self-correcting evidence because we never know if some scientist later on will prove the knowledge claim wrong.  Charles Darwin’s describes the evolutionary theory in which organisms who develop better traits from their parents are the one’s who will have a higher chance of surviving and passing their traits to next generations. For example: The selective breeding of dog for a certain desirable trait will lead its offspring to have that trait. This carries on for generation after generation until a breed of a dog is developed. Many different types of dogs can be developed this way, but they can never develop a cat by selectively breeding dogs. Natural selection can never extend outside of the DNA limit. This creates an limit to which natural selection can be progressive. DNA cannot be changed into a new species by natural selection. When looking at Darwin’s theory of evolution, we can say natural selection is progressive as species with desirable traits are chosen over other species to pass on their desirable traits. However, it is not progressive in the view that it can never extend outside of the DNA limit. So a dog could never change to an extent in which it could become another animal because DNA can’t be changed by selective breeding. Having said that, there is a contra argument whether Charles Darwin’s theory is reliable. Natural selection is not completely reliable as there are some contradictions to it. Scientists claim there is no prove species has evolved, some believe it’s a conclusion formed from incomplete information without scientific proof. The contradictions can be seen as Eskimos do not have enough fur to keep them warm or humans in the tropics would have silver, reflective skin to keep them cool. Instead humans who live in the topics tend to have a darker skin, which contradicts the theory of evolution. Black skin absorbs the heat from the sun's rays more than white skin. Humans show no sign of natural selection based on the environment. The theory of natural selection can be proven wrong because it cannot create something in the DNA that wasn't there in the beginning. We can predict, on the other hand that humans didn’t change in their skin color or Eskimos doesn’t have enough fur to keep them warm nowadays because evolution, in both of these cases, didn’t take place so far, but will eventually in the future. Nevertheless, scientists prove Darwin’s theory as incorrect because there hasn't been an evolutionary change in these species for an extended period of time in relation to the species that has changed with the existence of better and adapted species.

Language is essential to understand the natural science. Language has to be precise and denotative, with as little ambiguity as possible. For language to have a precise meaning it needs to make clear definition of terms. When looking at precise definition, mathematics is a preferable form of communication due to its precision, compactness and usefulness when identifying quantities and abstracting to relationships between phenomena and concepts. There are some difficulties when communicating scientific knowledge to the general public, this is because of the ambiguity of language. Language and its scientific meaning is extremely important because the findings of science normally have serious implications that the people of a society need to consider. For example: the word error for the general public means mistake, wrong or incorrect, therefore its scientific meaning means the difference from the exact true number. With that being said, when scientists inform the general public beyond their professional communities misunderstanding frequently arises. This is because scientists often use the same words as the public does, but with slightly different meaning, which can generate confusion. However, language is what enables us to share our knowledge and experience. Without language scientific claims wouldn’t arise in the zone of exchange from personal to shared knowledge.