7. The Scientific Philosophy
Where are we now? We are trying to answer the What Is? question. We want to explain the subject(ourselves), the object(the world) and the nature of knowledge, put together as ontology and epistemology. We walked through the potential types of knowledge. We started with a clean slate. What have we built so far? We built the blueprint of an informal philosophical system. We then built a layman’s philosophical system using the framework, which is something which we all agree on in our day-to-day lives.
From here, we take it to the next level which is a Scientific Philosophical System which adds scientific laws to the system. What tweaks are we going to make to the Layman’s system to build the Scientific System?
We are going to add 2 new rules along with the existing rule of logical reasoning and inferences and the necessity to posit truths about the nature of reality and knowledge. Remember that we said that it is fine to add rules to the system but not remove any of the existing rules. The new rules set more conditions on when a physical law can be added to the system.
The law must make observable predictions and be falsifiable.
Occam’s razor - When you have two competing theories that explain an event equally well, you should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions or has the least complexity.
We also add one Brute statement to the system.
The general physical laws are symmetrical across space and time
Predictions and Falsifiability
This is what makes a scientific law different from any random statement and makes science so powerful compared to the other methods we have to understand reality. Newton came up with the law of Gravitation. It wouldn’t have become a scientific law if there was no way to verify if it was true. The law stated exactly how planets would move around the sun. Those are verifiable predictions and falsifiable. We could observe the planets and if there were any discrepancies, we would have considered Newton’s law of Gravitation to be false. If one fine day, Mars decides to move in a zig-zag path like it’s drunk, we would have stated that Newton’s law of gravitation is wrong, unless we have some other explanation.
In fact, we found that Newton’s law of Gravitation has its limitations. It could not explain certain anomalies in Mercury’s movement around the Sun. Later, Einstein’s general theory of relativity was published. Einstein’s theory also had experimental predictions which could be used to falsify the law. The predictions of Einstein’s theory also turned out to be correct and it even explained many natural phenomena that Newton’s theory could not.
Now, we could either drop Newton’s law entirely from the system, or retain it with a caveat that it works only on specific conditions. We did the latter because Newton’s law of Gravitation covers our needs for most cases. It is only in some extreme circumstances like motion around black holes, do we need Einstein’s law.
Occam’s Razor
Repeating the definition of Occam’s Razor
When you have two competing theories that explain an event equally well, you should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions or has the least complexity.
Take the following two proposed statements:
Earth has a gravitational force, because of which objects dropped from a building fall to the ground with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s²
There is a God who pushes all the objects around the surface of the earth towards the earth at the acceleration of 9.8 m/s²
While both the statements could be experimentally verified by just dropping objects from buildings and observing their acceleration, we tend to pick up proposal 1 scientifically because it makes the fewest assumptions(No God) and it has least complexity. Proposal 1 has less number of entities than Proposal 2.
Why should the Occam Razor be true? It doesn’t have to be. But science follows this rule to choose between competing theories explaining the same phenomenon and giving the same results and hence it is a rule in the scientific philosophical system.
Laws of Symmetry across Space and Time
There are multiple laws of symmetry. To build the scientific philosophical system, we need the law of symmetry across space and time. It says that the fundamental laws of physics remain unchanged regardless of where or when you perform the experiment. We need this as a brute law because it is fundamental to our rule of predictions and falsifiability.
Imagine a world where the laws of gravity change every day. The force of attraction increases and decreases every other day. One day, you would struggle to get out of the bed and walk even a few steps. The next day, you jump around like the whole earth is a trampoline. Evolution might have resulted in us being able to adapt to it in weird ways. So it might be more fun after all. But from a scientific perspective, how can we even experimentally verify a proposed law if the laws are going to keep changing every day? There won’t be any law in that case. From our millennia of observations, it looks like this is a fair brute law to accept.
Putting them all together, we have the final Scientific philosophical system.
It has the following rules to add any statement to the system
The statements are about reality and knowledge which are considered true in the philosophical system that is proposed.
You can’t have two statements in a system saying logically contradictory things.
Any inferred statement must follow one of the rules of inferences.
Any law added to the system must make observable predictions and be falsifiable.
Occam’s razor - When you have two competing theories that explain an event equally well, you should prefer the one that makes the fewest assumptions or has the least complexity.
It has the following brute statements
We assume that an objective world exists.
We assume that people around us have minds just like us.
The physical laws are symmetrical across space and time.
How did the brute statements from the layman’s philosophy sneak in here? Do they agree with all the rules of the system? It is a grey area because neither of them are easily falsifiable. But they are still part of the scientific system. Assume that the rules around falsifiability and occam’s razor only apply for any new physical law we are going to add.