What comprises science – what are the boundaries that define science?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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I think so. So, what are the definitions for science? What are the boundaries that define science? This is a matter of huge debate. And in the last decade or so, a field of science has emerged, a field has emerged in science called intelligent design, which tries to prove that by observing features of the things in the world, they infer that natural process, unguided natural processes could not have made those happen.
And therefore, we point to some intelligent design. Now, he thinks, reacted very strongly against it. And he said, no, intelligent design is unscientific.
And they gave a set of credit, this, this, this, this. Because of these reasons, it is unscientific. But then, the idea eroded.
They turned around. And if you apply these criteria, even evolution cannot be considered scientific. Because those same criteria, you know, cannot, just like evolution, theory, there is no mathematical formulation for it.
You cannot mathematically say that, okay, humanity is at this stage in its evolution and 50 years down the line it will be like this, 100 years down the line it will be like this, or 1000 years down the line it will be like this. Evolution itself is not a mathematical science. So basically, the boundaries of science are not very well defined.
And that is why critics often use the derogatory label pseudoscience to refer to anything which they do not agree with. In fact, you know, when Newton proposed the theory of gravity, Kekul was his contemporary, but not Kekul, no, no, not Kekul, Leibniz. Leibniz was contemporary.
And Leibniz criticized theory of gravity, he says, how can some object is far away, how can it exist a force through space? So this is just spooky action. So he criticized it as unscientific at that time. And Newton replied, he says, I am not talking anything about the ontology, what is the nature of the space.
I am simply giving a mathematical formulation for observability. So the limits of science have been, or what are the delimiters, what are the defined characteristics of science, they have often been debilitated. And there are no clear criteria, rigid criteria.
But broadly speaking, what scientists say is that there should be some empirical observation to begin with. And then after that, from there, there should be some, as you say, pattern recognition, by which we infer the existence of some, infer some theory. And there are further experiments to try to verify that theory.
But this does not apply in many cases. So for example, when science goes towards origins, now with respect to origins, we cannot do any experiments. If scientists say that we, basically the three fundamental questions, how the world came, how life came, how we came, how we humans came.
These three fundamental questions about origins, none of them can be subjected to any controlled repeated experiments. So that is why much of the credibility of science comes from science when it is about things as they exist now, where we can do repeated experiments. And in this science, using the method of induction, make 100 observations, postulate the theory based on those observations and make 100 more observations to check whether the theory is correct or not.
But when it comes in science, when science goes to the origins, it cannot use induction. So it is another form of reasoning called abduction. Abduction doesn’t mean kidnapping.
Abduction basically means inference to best explanation. And that is never as reliable as induction. Because okay, this is the evidence, we observe this A, B, C, D, E, F, G. What is the best explanation for this? Then in that abductive logic is more like solving a mystery.
Who done it? In this room, this person was murdered. And then at 3 o’clock, when the assistant maid came, he was alive. At 9 o’clock, when a guest came, he was dead.
So between 6 hours, who was he? No, there was a 5-year-old child who came. No, he couldn’t have put a knife. There was an 80-year-old grandmother who came.
She couldn’t have had the strength to stab him. So there, oh, there is a 25-year-old butler who had also gone. That is what the security camera showed.
He must have murdered him. Now, when a murder happens, you cannot tell the murderer, please come and murder once again and we will photograph you on camera. So what we have to do is inference to best explanation.
Now the inference to best explanation works only if we know the parameters well. And what is in that house? There is a trapdoor and that opens somewhere outside the garden. And somebody came in through the trapdoor, killed the person and went back.
Security camera won’t catch that at all. Isn’t it? So inference to best explanation is always very speculative. And when it comes to origins, okay, life, how did it come about? You know, this happened, that happened, that happened.
That’s how life came. So there is no experiment to find it out. So when it comes to origins, science becomes far more speculative.
And that is why, that is where philosophy of science is very important to understand. That what atheists do is, they take the credibility of science, which has come from knowledge acquired through induction. And they use that credibility to prop up theories about origins, which have been acquired, which have been developed through abduction.
So all science is not born equal. So Newton’s laws of physics are of a different level of science than say theories about origins. In the Big Bang or evolution or whatever.
So one is obtained through induction, the other is through abduction. So now is abduction scientific? There are debates about it. But as of now, in mainstream scientific books, it is talked about.
But broadly speaking, science should, as it is natural experience, natural phenomena, that’s the basic principle of science. So then there should be repeated experiment, repeated observation, and experiments to take that as an observation. That’s when it can be considered science.