"Does science describe or explain nature?" what do we mean by that question? What is the difference between describing and explaining?
I think the difference between descriptions and explanations can be synthesized as that existing between the questions beginning with 'how' and those whose main particle is 'why'.
Our scientific theories are like fishnets used to catch data from the outside world, then interpreted by scientists in a provisional frame, taken for true as long as they are useful for our initial purposes. According to the metaphor of the 'net', the 'fishes' caught by the scientific enquiry are the empirical data coming from the Universe. But all such theories are soon faced with unsolvable challenges, being unable to answer many questions that lie outside their field of supposed validity. Karl Popper, a 20th century English Philosopher created this analogy, according to which when a 'fishnet' reveals incapable of dealing with many available data, a new theory is needed to catch 'smaller fish' which are escaping the larger holes of the former. But while the human knowledge remains forever finite, these 'small fishes' infinitely become 'smaller'.
When someone describes something, to ask HOW data may have come to appear as such before him may be enough. When Newton concluded that material bodies attract each other with a force inversely proportional to the square distance, this result was enough for his purposes. His universal gravitation theory was a good description of HOW celestial bodies interact in the skies and HOW apples fall from trees.
Would it be useful then to keep on questioning WHY that is the right equation for gravity? Could he ask WHY proportional to the square distance and not to its cube?
To ask WHY with the necessary logical rigor leads always to a never ending questioning, since every answer requires another search for its causes. The only final answer would be a causa causarum, God, outside the reach of science.
I think the difference between descriptions and explanations can be synthesized as that existing between the questions beginning with 'how' and those whose main particle is 'why'.
Our scientific theories are like fishnets used to catch data from the outside world, then interpreted by scientists in a provisional frame, taken for true as long as they are useful for our initial purposes. According to the metaphor of the 'net', the 'fishes' caught by the scientific enquiry are the empirical data coming from the Universe. But all such theories are soon faced with unsolvable challenges, being unable to answer many questions that lie outside their field of supposed validity. Karl Popper, a 20th century English Philosopher created this analogy, according to which when a 'fishnet' reveals incapable of dealing with many available data, a new theory is needed to catch 'smaller fish' which are escaping the larger holes of the former. But while the human knowledge remains forever finite, these 'small fishes' infinitely become 'smaller'.
When someone describes something, to ask HOW data may have come to appear as such before him may be enough. When Newton concluded that material bodies attract each other with a force inversely proportional to the square distance, this result was enough for his purposes. His universal gravitation theory was a good description of HOW celestial bodies interact in the skies and HOW apples fall from trees.
Would it be useful then to keep on questioning WHY that is the right equation for gravity? Could he ask WHY proportional to the square distance and not to its cube?
To ask WHY with the necessary logical rigor leads always to a never ending questioning, since every answer requires another search for its causes. The only final answer would be a causa causarum, God, outside the reach of science.
No comments:
Post a Comment
The author looks forward to reading your comments!
O autor aguarda seus valiosos comentários, leitor.