What is the science?

The adventure of the the phylosophy in science.

During my degree of physics other partners and me used to ask us what the science is. Later I realized that the answer to this question is not a scientific issue, it is a phylosophical issue. Is a knowledge of second order: to do a rumiation about a topic.

I was accompanied during my degree years with the reflection of the possible answers to this question and through discussions with quite a few fellow I came to a conclusion on how we could approach a a first analysis:

For many of my fellow, science discovered the internal structure of things and what we did in physics was to find this structure. Instead, they were neither few we though that science was a tangible way to achieve our understanding of the world around us, without meaning that the world around us as we were saying science.

What was a simple question at first, and a logical question for someone who is dedicated to science studies had a surprising effect on my partners and the most ardent passions aroused among commentators.

According to Russell “It’s not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; are based on evidence, not on the activity or intuition.”

There is a widespread view that everything in science has a true value, but Russell reminds us that although their beliefs are based on evidence, they are beliefs. Whatis a belief? A belief is something that we can not know for sure. I mean, we can not represent that it is true or falso, is a belief issue.

The previous sentence makes us think: If science claims to be objective and provide new knowledge, how the scientists may have beliefs?

There is a definition that says that a theory is something that do some logical arguments and derives in a prediction. And the success of this theory is that this prediction occurs.

But, here, there is a controversial point. A concatenation of cause and effect, governed by a series of logical arguments, and its prediction, need not have truth value. For example, today we have no doubt in general of the heliocentric model. But, the anthropocentric model could predict the position of the planets in the sky.

This relation between cause and effect will be true according to fllow the laws of logic, but not true or false in the world nature. It’s not the same be true in logic than in science. For this reason, in he continuation of my analysis we will differentiate between two key points: theories and facts.

The theories have no true value. They are beliefs, based in evidences. The facts, can be true or false.

In my view, the germ of scientific theories is subjective, and it is influenced by knowledge and all stimuli that a person has had throughout his life. The Bohr atom, certainly reminds us a little solar system. With the uncertainty principle and the Schrödinger equation then changes our picture of the atom approaching a position closer to the experiments. Then, if scientific ideas in the beginning are subjective, how science can explain objectively what happens in a given phenomenon? Remember the words of Einstein in which he told us that a single experiment could disassemble a theory.

Physics, which is the science in which I focus, are not just theories. But, theories are one of its pillars. How some theories become facts and how other theories remain a paradigm of a particular time is a matter of study.

If we return to our initial analysis:

A) Scientists discover.

B) Scientists make logical arguments.

We realize that the facts belong to that theories A and B.

So while we do not know how to explain it, we see that science gives us knowledge. This knowledge is far from a cumulative way. Scientific knowledge is not something that has accumulated throughout history. Things we take for granted today, in most cases refers to those beliefs, not dogmatic, but attempts, which are theories, and glimpse, within a paradigm, what is the truth now and what is a belief not is a simple task.

So, we can conclude that we live in a particular paradigm, and the future is full of new truths, new lies and new questions.