Scientific Thinking (1) What is science?

Introduction

From “Scientific Thinking” by Kazuhisa Todahyama, author of “Creating a Logic” from “Science Not Taught in Schools”. What does it mean to think scientifically? What does it mean to think scientifically?

Lessons in Scientific Thinking

The first step is to clarify the difference between “the language of science” and “the language of science. The “language of science” is “scientific concepts” such as DNA and entropy, which are defined in scientific theories. On the other hand, “words that describe science” are “meta-scientific concepts” that appear in various theories such as theories, hypotheses, laws, equations, etc., and their meaning must be understood precisely in order to think scientifically.

Among these “meta-scientific concepts,” “theory” and “fact” are the first to be discussed. Here is an example of people who try to understand the history of life and the earth as written in the Bible (creationists) denying that “evolution is a theory, not a fact” (there are a certain number of such people in the US today). This is the idea that, assuming the existence of an absolute God (100% existence), only the facts supported by that God are accepted as 100% truth (in this case, creationism), and that scientific theories, including the theory of evolution devised by imperfect humans, are not true because they are not perfect (dichotomy ). In other words, in dichotomy, there is only true or false 1/0, and no intermediate state is accepted.

On the other hand, scientific theories and hypotheses are based on the premise that the world is indeterminate and ambiguous (100% truth either does not exist or will take a lifetime to know), and are created from a relative perspective of whether they are better theories/hypotheses or not, rather than an absolute one or zero.

The better theory/hypothesis is explained by comparing the Ptolemaic theory of celestial motion with the Copernican theory of geocentric motion, which is based on Newtonian physics. Both are “theories” that explain the movement of celestial bodies, but Ptolemy’s theory is based on complex hypotheses that were added later to fit the facts (data), while Newton’s can explain many things with a simple framework, and even predict new facts (the existence of unknown planets). ). In this case, we can say that Newton’s theory is a better theory than Ptolemy’s theory because it is more flexible.

The criteria for “better hypothesis/theory” that appear above can be summarized in three ways

1. Able to make and predict more new predictions
2. Contain as few ad hoc assumptions and unidentified or unexplained elements as possible
3. They can prove more things than we already know, in as many/as many of the same ways as possible.

Thus, scientific thinking is not just something that statically meets these criteria, but something that dynamically changes and constantly improves. This area of thinking is similar to the Zen philosophy I mentioned earlier.

The functions expected of science here include “prediction,” “application,” and “explanation. Among these, I will discuss “explain”, which appears frequently in the above.

There are three patterns of “explaining,” as shown below.

1. Identifying the cause
2. To derive a more specific hypothesis/theory from a general/universal hypothesis/theory
3. Identifying the true cause

First, let’s talk about “explanation,” which is the process of finding out the cause of something. This literally means to understand the cause and effect of things, to identify and clarify the underlying causes, and to clarify the underlying correlations of things as mentioned before.

In the second case, taking Newton’s case as an example, first Kepler discovered the three laws of planetary motion (ellipse instead of circle, planets rotate faster in short diameters and slower in far diameters (law of constant area velocity), and the law of planetary orbital period). Then, Galileo discovered the law of inertia (an object moving at a certain speed will go as far as it can go at that speed if no external force is applied) and the law of falling bodies (an object becomes faster and faster when it is dropped), and derived a law that integrates them.

The third explanation is why the boiling point of water is higher than that of methane, which has a similar molecular weight. The third explanation is to reduce the macroscopic story (boiling point) to the microscopic story (ionization of molecules), saying that the boiling point of water is higher because water molecules ionize and bond with hydrogen.

The approach of 3 is a “downward relationship” approach that looks at things in detail, the approach of 2 is an “upward relationship” approach that looks at more abstract things, and the approach of 1 is a “horizontal relationship” between things. It can be said that explanation is due to some kind of connection (relationship).

Here, in the religious world, this relationship starts from the existence of God, while in the scientific world, it needs to start from some other (well-confirmed) scientific evidence or theory.

In the next article, I will discuss the various methods used to infer these relationships.