Is Science Progressive?

The scientific community in contemporary society is so big, and its achievements so numerous, that people forget about the origin of science itself. What is science? Answering this question will allow us to answer the question “Is science progressive?” as it will provide us with a scope in which we can answer the question, and limit the possibilities of responses, which could be infinitely long if it had no scope. But the problem is: how do we answer “What is science?”. Not once, in the entire chapter of our TOK book, has science been clearly defined. One can interpret that the reason behind this is because the complexity within science is so vast, that defining science would limit the scope in which we see it in, thus making the definition not a complete representation of Science. But, if there is no concrete definition for science, how do we know what science is? Everyone has an idea of what science is, but to put this “idea” accurately into words is the real challenge.

It is important keep in mind that the since science is undefinable in a simple way, the answer to this blog post question can vary a lot from person to person, and how they perceive science, which can be associated with that person’s schema.

In order to give you, the reader, an idea, the following is the definition of science from the Merriam - Webster dictionary: “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation”. The definition of “progressive” is, on the other hand, is “moving forward” or “happening or developing gradually over a period of time”. Now that we have both our definitions, we can now answer the blog post question: Is science progressive?

Firstly, one could argue that since the definition of science above states that it is a “study”, and given that “study” is defined as the “process of learning”, one could easily conclude that science is progressive, since it is “happening or developing…over a period of time”. Also, one must not look very far for evidence in favor of science being progressive. The philosopher Popper devised the idea of falsifiability. In essence, what he stated this, he said that for any hypothesis to be considered scientific, there  must be a way to test it. For example, the hypothesis “Does God exist?” is not scientific, since there is no way to test this. The fundamental idea is that there must be the opportunity  to disprove a hypothesis, even if there is nothing to disprove. This is crucial for progression of science because it allows more accurate and deeper hypothesis to take place. A great historical example is the example of Galileo. At the time of his existence, the accepted theory about the universe was geocentrism, that everything orbited the earth. Galileo said that the earth was part of a greater heliocentrism, which meant the earth orbited the sun. This is a clear example of when Popper’s principle of falsifiability was put into practice, since the original hypothesis was scientific since it could be disproved, and replaced by a new one. It is also an example when science was progressive as it shows a development of science over time, since the theory improved over time. Even though the idea of heliocentrism is widely accepted in the scientific community, it is still scientific, according to Popper, since it can still be disproven.

It is interesting to note that at the time, Galileo was met with adversity from the Catholic church, a firm believer of geocentrism. The Church would not accept the idea of heliocentrism and instead accused him of “heresy”, and persecuted Galileo and placed him in house arrest. This shows that there might be opposition that may delay or even stop science progression, showing that there might not be scientific progression. However, it is important to state that this is relative to time. Since progression deals with time, it is important to set a scope to limit the time being observed. This suggests that in a short span of time, science may not be progressive, and that eventually, like Galileo, who wrote his finest work under house arrest, science will progress in the long-run.

This ties in nicely to Kuhn’s idea of of paradigm shifts. Paradigms are distinct set of patterns, including theories. A shift in a paradigm can be inferred to be a change in a distinct set of patterns, like heliocentrism in comparison to geocentrism. Kuhn suggests that science progresses does not solely progress linearly, but that scientists take different approaches which shift the scientific knowledge in many different directions at the same time. But, if we think about it, what is linear progress? How can we define the correct direction progress is supposed to go if we do not know where the place we are going is? In a sense, these multiple paradigm shifts are essential for us to find the “linear” path to progression. Galileo was taking scientific knowledge a whole new direction from what was commonly accepted.

Furthermore, we must address the following question: what happens to science once it is complete? When there is nothing to disprove? When everything is perfect? As unlikely as that may sound, there is a possibility for us to achieve perfection. Will science progress when we get there? Is science always progressive?  This implies once more that the idea of progression needs a time frame in order to be defined.

Moreover, it was not by chance that I decided to start off this blog through stating the difficulty of defining science. I wanted to show how if defining science for us is hard, defining things and making statements in the scientific community is also a very challenging task. This is an important link to language as a way of knowing. Language is essential in the scientific community as it is the medium through which science is shown and taught to people. This further emphasizes how dependent we are to language, and how defining wrongly could affect the entire outcome of a situation. In our books, there is a very interesting table showing words that have different public and scientific meanings. For example, the word “enhance” can mean improve in a general meaning, but in science it means intensify or increase. This can be crucial for the progression of  science. A miscommunication or misunderstanding within our society can change completely how we see science, and could hamper science more than help it develop. A very common example can be found in high school labs, where students do not precisely communicate with their colleague results, affecting the entire conclusion and processed data of the experiment. Because of our dependency to language in science, inaccurately communicating may affect the progression of science. Yet, we need language to progress. Without it there is no way in which we can create as detailed shared knowledge, which is what science is, through other ways of knowing.

All in all, I truly believe that science is progressive in the long-run. If the scope in which we see science is limited, like for a month, science may not be observed to be progressive, perhaps it may even be regressive. But behind the ideas of Kuhn and Popper, sometime regression is progression in a different direction. I am a true advocate of science, and I truly believe in its role in society and I believe its progression is key for the development of our society as a whole.