Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

III. Methods and tools
unrecognized and often unstated simplicity
This
sanitization have important implications
and
theories arising from them, as the example
for
Mendelian genetics and the Bateson–Weldon
of
Sismondo, professor of philosophy and
Sergio
studies of science, provides a perspective
social
the social forces that lend legitimacy to
on
experiments.
scientific
articiality of experiments was one of the
The
that many natural philosophers of the
concerns
century had about them. … Particular
seventeenth
and spaces that served as laboratories
places
to the legitimacy of experiment—for
contributed
the location of laboratories within the
example,
describes the lengths that early
Sismondo
went to, to convince the public that
experimenters
experiments were not flukes. The concern is
their
of an old problem: how can we know if
indicative
experiment is working? Usually, we can test it
our
a known quantity and see whether it gives
with
correct answer. But what if we do not know
the
that answer is, not even remotely? How does
what
discern signal from noise? This challenge,
science
looking for answers with a tool that we cannot
of
sure is working, has been called the “problem
be
experimenters’ regress” by sociologist of
of
knowledge, Harry M. Collins (1981). It is
scientific
a trivial problem, but it is also not
not
In the article linked here is the
insurmountable.
story of a group of astrophysicists who
riveting
to incredible lengths to overcome this
went
in their search for gravitational
problem
terms: Nautilus Issue 42
Search
who faked it
Astrophysicists
attention to the discrepancies between
Paying
artificial purity of the laboratory and the
the
of the world can hold keys to new
messiness
An example from the history of
knowledge.
In the last years of the 19th century, Lord
here.
and Sir William Ramsey observed that
Rayleigh
extracted from chemical compounds
nitrogen
the laboratory was 0.5% lighter than nitrogen
in
from the atmosphere. It was a small
derived
difference to have been an artifact of
enough
experimental set-up, or anything else.
their
were curious, though, and their research
They
to the discovery of argon and other noble
led
and a Nobel Prize.
gases,
her book True Enough, Catherine Z.
In
(2017) argues that scientific facts and
Elgin
are never strictly speaking true,
theories
experiments and theories describe
because
simplified and controlled reality, not the
a
things around us.
natural
thus refers to science as a set of
Elgin
falsehoods”—falsehoods that
“felicitous
useful for helping us to understand the
are
but are not accurate descriptions of it.
world,
is a radically different conception of
This
truth and certainty, and more
scientific
with the simplified models used in
aligned
human sciences, discussed in Chapter 8.
the
is not just a junior assistant to
Observation
it is an astounding human
experimentation,
scientific activity deserving attention in its
and
right. own
as a scientific method has often
Observation
a collective dimension. Edmond
involved
1686 map of the trade winds is
Halley’s
one of the most successful early
considered
at collective observation. It was based
efforts
the accounts of seafarers, travellers and
on
as it was global, and therefore too
adventurers,
for any one person to observe.
big
7
debate (in II.5, Box 7.5) reveals.
For discussion
True enough? Science as “felicitous
falsehoods”
of English gentlemen helped establish
homes
… . trust
(Sismondo 2010)
III.3 Learning to see: Scientific
observation as method
waves.
the periodic table of elements is revealing
196