Book: What Is This Thing Called Science?

We will know less about what science is at the end of the course than at the start.

Einstein didn't use scientific method, at least by some definitons.

Science didn't really exist before Galileo, but we still count Tycho Brahe as a scientist.

Aristotelian idea: All objects have a natural state that they want to reach. Heavy objects want to go down, heavier objects even more so.

Galileo thought experiment: basket containing ten stones, and a single stone separate. Which of these two objects falls faster? The basket, if heavier, supposedly falls faster. What happens if you tie the eleventh stone to the basket? He arrived to the conclusion that all objects must fall at the same speed.

Experiment with rolling things down an incline so stuff would fall slower and it is easier to compare falling speeds.

Measure time by way of metronome-style clacking on the floor. People (musicians?) can notice an off beat at a resolution of 1/100th second?

Carve lines into the incline so that you can hear when the object rolls over them. This Galileo spent ten years on. He noticed that objects accelerate. The lines had to be further apart to each correspond to a second

Measuring the acceleration: differences in length increased according to some constant.

Fibonnaci a guy who researched number sequences.

The constant varied, it wasn't always 10 as you see above. Galileo couldn't understand it, but we know it was measuring error.

We say that Galileo is the godfather of the scientific method because of this process of experimentation.

Cyclic process, the wheel of science:

hypothesis/model/theory -> predictions -> experiment -> interpretation -> new theory

THEORY -> (generalization/abstraction/simplification) -> PREDICTIONS -> (methodology) -> EXPERIMENT -> (generalization) -> INTERPRETATION -> (new concepts) -> THEORY

The most important aspects of all this are:

• critical examination
• documentation
• reproducibility

Galileo started this loop with the theory part. Way before that, Francis Bacon … induction.

In the 1900s, Karl Popper sort of inverted the process, saying you should falsify.

If you visit Florence, you must visit the Galileo museum. Everything's there, his notes and all. Also two of his fingers.

If the Earth moves, why doesn't stuff fall off?

The Pope was friendly with Galileo(?) and he only had tobe in house-arrest rather than go to prison. Recently the Catholic church revoked their guilty sentence, 300 years after the matter.

We will have a lecture later about religion and science.

Can we describe the solar system well with heliocentrism? At the start, we couldn't, because we were still missing some knowledge; it was not better than the geocentric model, just an alternative.

(Github)

Circle. In a two-dimensional world, with 2D lifeforms, circumference divided by diameter was thought to equal pi. But pi is larger the larger the circle(?). This way you can discover that you live on the surface of at 3D object.

Newton, planetary orbits. Jupiter.

Einstein, the time dimension.

Maxwell. Electromagnetism.

We can connect various pieces of knowledge the more we learn.

We generalize between planets. They're made of different stuff but share some properties.

Symmetry important.

New concept to interpret results

Write books to tell the world what you learned rather than keep it to yourself.

We discussed

• what is science
• what is truth?
  • the accepted truth is only the truth in a pragmatic sense: speak of it as if it was known, to simplify our language. Of course we know it's not set in stone and should be ready to abandon the current best theory for any better theory.
• which part of the wheel of science is most important
  • first, all parts are necessary, of course
  • second, the wheel seems to be missing something, but what?
    • when to publish?
    • what to do when no experiment is possible?
    • the wheel may not be well-suited to social sciences
  • some thought that experiment was most important, some interpretation, some (me) prediction.
    • notably, noone said theory was most important, but i suppose this might be on account of theory, as compared to practice, being unfashionable lately (amongst the sorts of people taking this course)
  • after the discussion, I got the idea that prediction and interpretation are the hardest parts – theory and experiment are easy – so the former take all the work.

Life as a topic for science

• Important steps in the physical and logical understanding of life
• Complement to Chalmers book
• Not the history of biology
• Personal interpretation
• Seven dead white men

Genetics. Bengt started with mathematical logic before getting into biology.

Rene Descartes

• Book: Discours de la methode (1637)
• The organism as a machine
• The laws of optics and mechanics hold
• Important cost - but greater gain
• Animals have no soul
  • Basically said that non-human entities are p-zombies and cannot suffer

The heart is a pump, fulfiling an exact mechanical function.

Carl von Linne

• Systema naturae
• Complete, consistent and hierarchic classification
• Reactions in Paris
• Can systematizing be scientific?
• Yes, if open for revisions

"I, Carl, shall describe everything"

Three kingdoms: Rocks, plants, animals. Classify every object that exists, not just life. Stuff not to be in two kingdoms at once.

Never visited tropical areas. Did not know how rich biodiversity was.

Reactions mixed. Old-school to want to "put everything in boxes". Others adulated him.

The whole world celebrates Linnaeus.

Is systematizing really good science? Sure, if it's open for revisions, because you can learn about little-known members by inferring from the class they belong to. Also he revised his own work multiple times.

Whale? He never saw one. But it was found they belonged better in mammals, so Linnaeus moved them there.

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck

• Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertebres
• Delimits and defines biology
• Opens up for physiology, genetics, etc
• And for evolution

Military service. Accident? Quit.

French Revolution -> King died.

Monument of Lamarck at Botaniska tradgarden.

"Everything we know about plants and animals shall be a science. I shall name it biology."

All living things share some attributes. Metal doesn't share anything with us. Living things change over time, grow and die.

Charles Darwin

• On the Origin of Species (1859)
• Rejects teleology
• Introduces historical dynamics in biology (compare Laplace on solar systems 1796)
• A new way to argue scientifically

Captain of the boat couldn't talk to anyone else aboard because they were too low-class. So he brought Darwin as a gentleman of the higher strata to talk to.

Darwin's book is a lot more fun than e.g. Newton's book. The first edition particularly didn't have the degree of vagueness ("if, maybe, maybe not") that was later added.

Life's not truly cyclic like Newton said. It slowly, slowly changes.

First summary

• The basis for a scientific biology is now in place: delimited, and with mechanics as well as dynamics
• Aristotle is finally dead (though perhaps the greatest "biologist" of all!) – no more talk about "inner vital forces"
• Now for two different but similar advances, both from experimentalists.

Claude Bernard

• Intr. a l'etude de la medicine expeirmentale
• Organisms consist of relatively independent subsystems
• Disease = non-normal physiology in some subsystem

Cut open a live dog to see how food made its way through the digestive tract.

Observed that if you take out an organ you can clearly see that it's an indepndent system.

Erwin Schrodinger

• What is life? 1944
• Question of entropy
• Life = retained order
• Order is upheld by information (memory) plus energy
• Life stabilizes itself, far from any thermodynamical equilibrium

Why the goatee fashionable through the centuries?

Building block of life must be terribly complicated. Protein discovered, must be it! Not quite correct, actually DNA, but he had the right idea.

Life retains order: when entropy increases e.g. a room gets more chaotic, you clean up, put stuff in their proper place. Everything you do, such as standing straight, is an instance of reversing entropy.

When you die, you no longer reverse entropy. Come back to your corpse in three weeks and it smells: entropy has done its work, which was blocked while you were alive.

Universal entropy is universal deadness.

The Enigma machine. How to use the concept of entropy to decode messages.

Other important results

• All life is cellular (modular)
• No current ongoing creation of life
• Photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation
• The details of sexual reproduction
• The complementary structure of DNA
• All life functions basically the same – "The Central Dogma"

Final summary

• Life is not any longer a deep problem for physico-logical scientific analysis
• There are, however, still plenty of interesting problems. For example: How do complex organisms manage with such few genes?

We used to think we had 4 million genes, then 400 000, then 70 000, now 22 000. Homework: is 22 000 genes enough to explain us?

A computer can do very complicated stuff, but is built on basic principles.

Next lecture: think of starting to meet researchers. Also he will talk about philosophical happenings in his life, not educate so much.

E-mail about interview check

Philosophy in the life of a scientist

Philosophy in my scientific life

• should function as tart for your interviews
• should present philosophical ideas about science that differs from Chalmers
• [my background, compared to Chalmers]

I studied math here at the university. Not good enough at it. Studied philosophy.

Work in science, quit studying philosophy. That's one explanation.

Or studying philosophy leads to science.

Or (3) I don't know. Philosophy is almost like air, no plan on how to use it.

one can haven't analyzed self, simply be told you affecte by this philosopher or other

Chalmers physicist. Grew from Chalmers. Chalmers classic philosophyer, me traditional(?) First edition best, got worse. I'm a bit against him

Two philosophical themes

The many ways by which we know things

• Popper
• Kuhn
• Bachelard
• [Feyerabned]

Falsifiction is fine but a too limtied idea

• Question: What is the logical structure of scientific advances?
• K Popper 1959
• Before I started doing research, I found this an interesting quistion
• Very limited and rare practical use
• But the pep's fine: Be brave in your research!

I listened to Popper speak myself. Hard to remember the how of Popperism(?) after a few weeks. Popper just wanted to provoke(?) and made a complicated philosophy influenced by the physics of the 40s.

So, done with school, but at practical science I Was unexperienced. Then found could not use Popper ideas in practice. Looking at chromosomes.

One thing I still liked in his book: the pep. The encouragement to be bold!

The practical use of deductions

• Question: How can thought experiments produce knowledge about the real world?
• T. Kuhn 1977 A function for thoughts experiments, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change
• Thought experiments help check model assumptions., i.e. our way of seeing the world
• More pep: Normal science can be great fun!

How math equations can help us understand how nature avoids inbreeding? I wrote a big article on it.

Shcrodinger's cat, Maxwell's demon

Box containing molecules bopping around . A small demon blocking a hole unless particle fast enough.

Why thought experiment good? We can reason about what happens then if only fast particles exit.

Understanding Population Genetics refers to Kuhn a lot. So we can translate our wrok with Kuhn for use in other fields.

The strength of "non-theorizing"

• Question: is science an improved form of everyday life understanding?
• G Bachelard 1940 La philosophie du non Famous book, read well otgether with Kuhn
• Doing science means being abstract – science is not about tackling what is self-evident
• Great intellectual gains have come from "non-theorizing", non-Euclidean geometry, non-Newtonian mechanics and non-Mendelian inheritance

Linne's ystematizing was science?

The heart is just a pump, like we said last week. Abstract knowledge

Einstein like a special case of Newtonian physics, but still non-Newtonian.

The Selfish Gene a kind of non-Mendelian inheritance. We undestand Mendel much better if we can understand if he's wrong. When I did work on that I understood La philosophie du non

A side-issue Scientific richness doesn't flow from anarchy

• Question: is science restricted by tradition and is anarchy the solution to this danger?
• P Feyerabend 1975 Against Method
• I find this an uninteresting argument
• To me, natural science is similar to crafts requiring tadition and apprenticeship (see Bourdieu's theory of habitus)
• there is no lack of creativity in science

Science is a craft, you learn from masters. Anarchy would hardly work

But "stupidity" and moral defeat threatens everywhere and all the time! Racial biology, oppression.

The many ways by wich we fool oirselves

• Bacon
• Lakatos
• Wittgenstein
• de Beauvoir

We must understand why science can be so stupid

• Why is stupiditiy e.g. race biology so common in science/among scientists?
• Francis bacon 1620 Novum Organum
• Four idols - sources of mistakes in thinking
• Among which are comon beliefs and standard modes of language – inescapable!
• for me: "increasing raitonality" is easy and fun; "not being stupid" is difficulty and problematic

implicitly accepted truths (e.g. white men best) affects your science.

Anti-philosophy is sometimes needed

• Question: can tinking in itself be harful n lead to stupidity?
• Wittgenstein 1953
• Sometimes we become ensnared in the presumed meanings of words
• Then – be brave and stop philosophizing!
• Perhaps you should do something instead?

Quarks

A science's hard core is close to being an ideology

• Question: where in science does stupdiity enter?
• I Lakatos 1970 Falsification and the methodlogy of scientific research programmes
• Should be read as a philosopher in his own right
• His description of research programmes is interesting - and devastating
• There is hardly any difference between an old well-defended research program and an ideology

"I am like Popper but better".

When we ask research grants we must make a research program, why, what. A framework.

A protected pool of beliefs, e.g. the world wasn't created yesteray, and we can expect to put one foot in front of the other. Stuff taken for given. If a student says he's shown Mendel is wrong I'll invite him for a coffee and go over his argument, expecting him to be wrong.

It's like an ideology. The protected pool of beliefs needs not be questioned.

Knowing something doesn't explain everything

• Which is the most common type of stupidity?
• Simone de Beauvoir 1949 Le deuxieme sexe
• Argument: being a woman is different. But not so different that it explains and legitimizes being excluded from voting rights, for example.
• The most common source of scientific stupidity is lack of feeling for effect size; then comes the fetishism of significant differences

Meet Sartre. Good friendship. Bogth existentialists and write novels and philosophy. Her book not easy to read but easier than Sartre.

S de B didn't like having the menses, worrying about pregnacny being weaker than men etc. Didn't get children.

Tiny difference proven with three sigma. So?

A gene affecting schizo, or aclcoholism or whatever. Stat. significance? Ok?

To conclude: what is philisophy good for in science?

Chalmers's key paragraph Kuhn's account of scientific progress contains two incompatible strands, one relativirst and one not. This opens up two possibilities. The first is to follow the path taken by the scoilogists … to embrace and develop the reltivist strand in Kuhns thought .. The second alternative is to rwerite Kuhn in a way that is compatible with some overarching sense of progress in science.

Philosophizing science

Chalmers (easy): A good theory of science helps ensure thar rationality is increased

My alt (more difficult): Reflecting (in a wider context) on how scinece is done and what sicencei s used for may improve the moral/ethical/political qualities of the endeavour

• Did we hear ideas that differ from Chalmers?

• Philosophy tend to lead you to science?

  • Professorn pratade också om att filosofi lockar en person till forskning eller om det bara är löst kul och att man slutar med filosofi när man börjar forska.

  Hur brukar det vara?

  • Hur många av er tror att ni kommer sluta tänka på vetenskapliga metoden när ni börjar forska?
• The ways we know things
  • When he started practical research he found Popperianism limited use.
  • Thought experiments inform us about world?
  • What is "Non-theorizing"
• The ways we fool ourselves
  • Do you feel that researchers do too much philosophy or too little?
  • What is common form of stupidity
  • Why is stupidity so common, [How did we arrive at race biology paradigm?]
  • The protected pool of beliefs we take for given - is it comparable to an ideology?
• What is philosophy good for in science?

viktigt att veta vad man kan härleda. vetensakp är inte retorikmaterial.

Science court -> vaccin inte autism

we use some big theories with many suppositions and when falsified we cant throw away the whole theory cant falsify big theory with many suppositions

"a theory isnt stupid, it isnt intelligent" – sure but we consider old discarded theories stupid . Why? Because (1) hindsight bias and (2) maybe we feel like the old scientists could have done better. Applied more Bayesian rigor in selecting a theory to run with. Or seen immediately its flaws.

ask guy how to friday

c a r

Nobel Prize winners often have multiple Nobel Prize winning students. This means we don't understand fully what makes a great scientist great. Some aspects are passed down from master to student. It could be advice like how to know which hypothesis to bother testing, which Science doesn't normally say anything about. And this is where Bayesian reasoning comes into play. You can guess which hypotheses are likely to be a waste of time before testing them, thru Bayesian reasoning. Thus instead of wasting ten years on a worthless hypothesis you could spend your effort where you rationally can expect great success.

why intrprtr lw

I take it as ethics.

(Questions to coursemates)

• Linnea(?) how come she can recall particular studies like the Waveley whatshisface vaccine thing

Galileo: Dropping things off the tower of Pisa, probably apocryphal story, but he did it as a thought experiment.

Moon landing experiment of dropping things. See on YouTube

Rolled balls of varying mass down inclined planes. Noted that the distance travelled grows with time squared (acceleration). These experiments took him many years!

There were no stopwatches in that time, so how did Galileo time it? With his lute as an incline, he put bells as gates for the ball to break through. Then spacing the bells increasingly distant so that the chiming sounds became equidistant.

Aristotelian physics: Stuff contains water, earth, air and fire. The more an object contains one of these, the faster its motion will be.

If A is the cause (force that moves an object), B the moved object (mass), C the path and D the duration, then

• A will move B/2 the distance 2C in the time D
• A will move B/2 the distance C in the time D/2
• A will move B the distance C/2 in the time D/2
• A/2 will move B/2 the distance C in the time D

How would I summarize LessWrong in an essay?

Aristotelian physics was destructible by a thought experiment, simply logic!

• take a small mass m and large mass M
• Aristotle: t(M) < t(m)
• let us tie them together such that t(m + M) < t(M)
• but m will slow down M, so also t(m + M) > t(M)
• only resolution is t(m + M) = t(M)

Though if I was Aristotelian I would say that objects tied together make one object, so a lighter object wouldn't slow down the heavier, but be added to the total mass.

Even Copernicus had to add epicycles as he considered circular movement.

Galileo writes his books in a particular way. He uses three recurring characters carrying on a dialogue. Simplicio, Salviati, Sacretto? The last one's name means nothing and rarely shows up, but he represents some kind of philosopher.

• Newton introduces the force as an underlying cause of fmovement
• Given a force, one cam compute where things move, and how fast
• He also wrote down the gravitational force between two masses
• Combine the two, and find the planetary motions: Kepler's laws
• Unification of two different physical problems!
  • Domains as everyday stones and balls were unified with that of planets
• Unification is an important feature of modern physics

Popper

• For something to be scientific, it must be able eto be proven false.
• Make bold predictions, which can be falsified
• Easy to apply on some examples
• Duhem-Quine: impossible to isolate a scientific hypothesis.

Following Newton, scientific progress was plentiful. Maxwell's equations integrated Gauss, Coulomb, Orsted, Ampere, Faraday. But then Einstein showed that Maxwell's equations incompatible with Newton. Fortunately, Einstein replaced Newton. Something called action-at-a-distance.

Galileo some thoughe eexperiment with boats. Einstein did same, with a twist. Motivated by Maxwell, speed of light is invariant. Instead the solution was that time could pass differently in different places.

Without relativity theory, GPS would not work.

Kuhn's paradigms are a good model for understanding. Identify:

• pre-science
• anomaly
• crisis
• paradigm change

[a cyclic image]

Diff paradigms are incommensurable.

Kuhn and Popper provide a good language to talk about science.

Hur teckna vetenskaplig kunskap? Nya tecken for vetenskap?

• Did Einstein falsify Galileo and Newton?
• Not in the esame way as the Copernican Revolution and G falsified heliocentrism
• [a different cyclic image]

Descartes

Discours de la methode 1637

• The organism as a machine
  • Heart is a pump, no quintessential Platonic "heart thing"
    • Not "like" or "as if" a pump but exactly what you'd expect of a pump and nothing more
  • Hold up an ox eye to the window and see light diffracting thru the lens
• The laws of optics and mechanics hold
• Important cost - but greater gain
• Animals have no soul
  • You kick a dog and it barks, this is an automatic reflex as befits a machine. It does not feel pain because pain is in the realm of souls, and dogs don't have souls.
    • Descartes did not have any pets growing up.

Maybe afraid after what he heard happen to Galileo [imprisonment], so did not publish book, but small texts at a time. Living in Holland for safety.

Died in Sweden after lung inflammation due to the cold.

Carl von Linne

• Systema naturae 1735
• Complete consistent and hierarchic classification
• Reactions in Paris
• Can systematizing be scientific?
• Yes - if ready for revisions

Went to Lund University in the 1720s. Was a shitty place, war had been happening, poverty, pigs in the streets.

Whales are mammals, not fish, even though they suit heuristics like "must live in the sea cannot live on land" and "have fins".

Lamarck

• Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertebres 1815
• Delimits and defines biology
• Opens up for physiology, genetics, etc
• And for evolution

Quote: "… it has no name but I want to name it biology". Stones are not living things, little in common with living things.

Charles Darwin

• On the Origin of Species 1859
• Rejects teleology
• Introduces historical dynamics in biology (compare Laplace solar systems 1796)
• … and a new mode to argue scientifically
  • Was he a scientist?

Not just looking at animals or digging up fossils, loved geology, looked at atolls and their shapes.

Very nicely written first edition. Not long. Lecturer recommended that we read it, no comments or reflection, just one simple read-thru. (I've heard this about Einstein's relativity paper too).

First summary

• The basis for a sci biology is now in place: deliminted, and with mechanics as well as dynamics
• Aristotle finally dead - no more talk about innere vital forces
• Now for two diff but similar advances, both from experimentalists

Claude Bernard

• Intr a letude de la medicine experimentale 1865
• Organisms consists of relatively independent subsystems
• Disease = nonnormal physiology in some subsystem

Gregor Mendel

• Versuche uber Pflanzenhybriden 1866; Mendelism from 1900
• Complex arguments from experiments
• Organism traits are inherited as fixed and separate units

TLDR on this man, the way Harry taught Draco?

Second summary

• The indiv organism at the centre of life eis now dissolved - Goethe would have hated this
• The road towards biochemical reductionism has started
• But one important step in this story remains, clearly belonging to physics

Erwin Schrodinger

• What is life? 1944
• Question of entropy
• Life = retained order
• Order is upheld by info (entropy) plus energy
• Life stabilizes itself, far from any thermodynamic equiblirium

In 1937 or so he, despite not being a jew, decided he can't put up with the nazi party shenanigans anymore and left. To england?

Other important results

• All life is modular/cellular
• No current ongoing creation of life
• Sexual reproduction in eukaryotes
• Photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation
• The complementary structure of DNA
• Central Dogma of molecular biology

Summary

• Life no longer a deep problem for physico-logical sci analysis
• Thehre are however still plenty of interesting problems. For example: How do complex organisms manage with such few genes?

Conclusion

• Science starts as a characteristic way of looking at the world
• Theories and scientific methods come later to biology than to physics
• It is necessary to mix discussions of science's rationality with studies of science as an actual phenomenon

Philosophy in my life as a scientist

Purpose of lecture

• Should function as a start for your interviews
• Present a practitioner's view on philosophical ideas about science, thereby complement the book

Falsification is fine but a much too limited prescript

• Q: What is the logic behind science?
• Popper 1959
• Before I started to do research, I found this an interesting question
• Now I find it limited and of little practical use
• But the pep is fine: Be brave in your research!

Practical use of deductions

• Q: How can thought experiments often relying on math deductions produce knowledge about the real world?
• Kuhn 1977. A function for thought experiments. In The Essential Tension
• Thought experiments help check model assumptions, ie our way of seeing the world

richness deosn't flow from anarchy

• Q: is science restricted by tradition, and is anarchy the solution to this danger?
• Feyerabend 1975
• Found this an uninteresting argument
• To me, natural sciences like crafts, tehy require tradition and apprenticeship
• Also: problems in science (e.g. race biology) do not arise from any lack of creativity

The strength of "non-theorizing"

• Q: is science an improved form of everyday understanding?
• Bachelard 1940. La philosophie du non
• No! Doing science means being abstract – science is not about tackling what is self-evident
• Great intell gains have been won from "non-theorizing", e.g. non-Euclidean geometry, non-Newtonian physics and non-Mendelian genetics

A science's hard core is close to being an ideology

• Q: Can theories actually be misleading?
• Imr lakatos 1970. Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes
• Should be read as a philosopher in his own right
• Yes, research programs have protected cores - which may become problematic problematic in the long run
• Degenerating research programs are similar to ideologies in being unperturbable

Knowing something doesn't explain everything

• Q: Can scientific results be misleading?
• Beauvoir 1949
• Argument: Yes, being a woman is diff. but not so diff that it explains and legeitimzes being excluded from, for example, voting rights
• Prejudices also inside science ("spontaneous philosophies") may influence the interpretation of results – distort the effect size, for example!

On knowing things

• Popper
• Bacon

On fooling ourselves

• Beauvoir

Bacon: KNowledge and errors

• Task of science is to release the world from faulty thinking (compare Galilelo, Descartes)
• Bacon 1620, Novum ORganum
• There are Idols i.e. sources of errors in thinking
• Bacon: Discuss the hidden sources to mislead, as well as the best methods for doing science!
• I agree – and write on the relation between scientific genetics and political ideologies

I studied math here at the university. Not good enough at it. Studied philosophy.

Work in science, quit studying philosophy. That's one explanation.

Or studying philosophy leads to science.

Or (3) I don't know. Philosophy is almost like air, no plan on how to use it.

one can haven't analyzed self, simply be told you affecte by this philosopher or other

Chalmers physicist. Grew from Chalmers. Chalmers classic philosophyer, me traditional(?) First edition best, got worse. I'm a bit against him

Two philosophical themes

The many ways by which we know things

• Popper
• Kuhn
• Bachelard
• [Feyerabned]

Falsifiction is fine but a too limtied idea

• Question: What is the logical structure of scientific advances?
• K Popper 1959
• Before I started doing research, I found this an interesting quistion
• Very limited and rare practical use
• But the pep's fine: Be brave in your research!

I listened to Popper speak myself. Hard to remember the how of Popperism(?) after a few weeks. Popper just wanted to provoke(?) and made a complicated philosophy influenced by the physics of the 40s.

So, done with school, but at practical science I Was unexperienced. Then found could not use Popper ideas in practice. Looking at chromosomes.

One thing I still liked in his book: the pep. The encouragement to be bold!

The practical use of deductions

• Question: How can thought experiments produce knowledge about the real world?
• T. Kuhn 1977 A function for thoughts experiments, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change
• Thought experiments help check model assumptions., i.e. our way of seeing the world
• More pep: Normal science can be great fun!

How math equations can help us understand how nature avoids inbreeding? I wrote a big article on it.

Shcrodinger's cat, Maxwell's demon

Box containing molecules bopping around . A small demon blocking a hole unless particle fast enough.

Why thought experiment good? We can reason about what happens then if only fast particles exit.

Understanding Population Genetics refers to Kuhn a lot. So we can translate our wrok with Kuhn for use in other fields.

The strength of "non-theorizing"

• Question: is science an improved form of everyday life understanding?
• G Bachelard 1940 La philosophie du non Famous book, read well otgether with Kuhn
• Doing science means being abstract – science is not about tackling what is self-evident
• Great intellectual gains have come from "non-theorizing", non-Euclidean geometry, non-Newtonian mechanics and non-Mendelian inheritance

Linne's ystematizing was science?

The heart is just a pump, like we said last week. Abstract knowledge

Einstein like a special case of Newtonian physics, but still non-Newtonian.

The Selfish Gene a kind of non-Mendelian inheritance. We undestand Mendel much better if we can understand if he's wrong. When I did work on that I understood La philosophie du non

A side-issue Scientific richness doesn't flow from anarchy

• Question: is science restricted by tradition and is anarchy the solution to this danger?
• P Feyerabend 1975 Against Method
• I find this an uninteresting argument
• To me, natural science is similar to crafts requiring tadition and apprenticeship (see Bourdieu's theory of habitus)
• there is no lack of creativity in science

Science is a craft, you learn from masters. Anarchy would hardly work

But "stupidity" and moral defeat threatens everywhere and all the time! Racial biology, oppression.

The many ways by wich we fool oirselves

• Bacon
• Lakatos
• Wittgenstein
• de Beauvoir

We must understand why science can be so stupid

• Why is stupiditiy e.g. race biology so common in science/among scientists?
• Francis bacon 1620 Novum Organum
• Four idols - sources of mistakes in thinking
• Among which are comon beliefs and standard modes of language – inescapable!
• for me: "increasing raitonality" is easy and fun; "not being stupid" is difficulty and problematic

implicitly accepted truths (e.g. white men best) affects your science.

Anti-philosophy is sometimes needed

• Question: can tinking in itself be harful n lead to stupidity?
• Wittgenstein 1953
• Sometimes we become ensnared in the presumed meanings of words
• Then – be brave and stop philosophizing!
• Perhaps you should do something instead?

Quarks

A science's hard core is close to being an ideology

• Question: where in science does stupdiity enter?
• I Lakatos 1970 Falsification and the methodlogy of scientific research programmes
• Should be read as a philosopher in his own right
• His description of research programmes is interesting - and devastating
• There is hardly any difference between an old well-defended research program and an ideology

"I am like Popper but better".

When we ask research grants we must make a research program, why, what. A framework.

A protected pool of beliefs, e.g. the world wasn't created yesteray, and we can expect to put one foot in front of the other. Stuff taken for given. If a student says he's shown Mendel is wrong I'll invite him for a coffee and go over his argument, expecting him to be wrong.

It's like an ideology. The protected pool of beliefs needs not be questioned.

Knowing something doesn't explain everything

• Which is the most common type of stupidity?
• Simone de Beauvoir 1949 Le deuxieme sexe
• Argument: being a woman is different. But not so different that it explains and legitimizes being excluded from voting rights, for example.
• The most common source of scientific stupidity is lack of feeling for effect size; then comes the fetishism of significant differences

Meet Sartre. Good friendship. Bogth existentialists and write novels and philosophy. Her book not easy to read but easier than Sartre.

S de B didn't like having the menses, worrying about pregnacny being weaker than men etc. Didn't get children.

Tiny difference proven with three sigma. So?

A gene affecting schizo, or aclcoholism or whatever. Stat. significance? Ok?

To conclude: what is philisophy good for in science?

Chalmers's key paragraph Kuhn's account of scientific progress contains two incompatible strands, one relativirst and one not. This opens up two possibilities. The first is to follow the path taken by the scoilogists … to embrace and develop the reltivist strand in Kuhns thought .. The second alternative is to rwerite Kuhn in a way that is compatible with some overarching sense of progress in science.

Philosophizing science

Chalmers (easy): A good theory of science helps ensure thar rationality is increased

My alt (more difficult): Reflecting (in a wider context) on how scinece is done and what sicencei s used for may improve the moral/ethical/political qualities of the endeavour

How does this relate to pragmatism?