A topic in teaching science
"Since Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, who respectively promised omnipotence and omniscience, and whose followers have continued to brandish these hopes, science and science-driven technology have worked hard to penetrate into and transform this whole triad of power, production, and belief."
Holton, 1993
An authentic science education asks learners to both learn about some specific scientific ideas and also to learn something of the nature of science – the practices of scientists and the processes by which new scientific knowledge is constructed and developed. There are a number of nature of science (sometimes abbreviated to 'NOS') themes that might be thought important to teach young people about.
Read more about teaching the nature of science
There are different views on the range of phenomena that fall within the remit of science. So there are live questions of:
- does science have limits (are there topics or subjects that must be outside science)? And, if so,
- what are limits on science?
"Some scientists seem to feel that science can (and perhaps will) ultimately explain everything, whilst other scientists see science as an important way of knowing, but one that has a limited range of application (so that there are some aspects of human experience that will always be beyond scientific explanation).
There is a sense in which anything in the natural world could be reduced to a description in terms of particles, forces, energy etc. So – in principle at least – it may be possible one day to explain why a person falls in love with one suitor and not another in terms of physics: however, even if such an account was feasible, it would not be presented in terms that would seem to relate to the human experience of love." (Taber, 2017: 31)
Reductionism and science
This links to an important issue in the philosophy of science – how sciences 'reduce' to each other. Even in chemistry, a discipline closely linked to physics, there are concepts which could (in principle) be redescribed in purely (but in some cases necessarily convoluted) physical terms but which reflect emergent phenomena at the 'level' of chemistry and which are useful as chemical concepts in their own right (acidity, oxidation, resonance, hydrogen bonding, electrophile, halogen, indicator, nucleophilic substitution, covalent bond, etc., etc). (Taber, 2017: 31)
Complexity
A reductionist perspective has historically proved very valuable in science. Yet increasingly scientists are recognising that complex systems often need to be studied at different levels, and that important new phenomena can arise when systems become complex. A particularly important example might be life itself emerging from the evolution of increasingly complex physico-chemical systems and providing the phenomena studied in biology.
Science teachers should be careful not to imply in their teaching that science (the best means we have of developing knowledge of the natural world) is able to tell us everything about everything. There may well be areas that will always be outside the effective remit of science, and features of human cognition may limit how well we can understand even the natural world. (Taber, 2017)
Scientism
The ideas that everything can be studied as part of science, and that in time science will find al the answers to everything, is known as scientism. Some professional scientists, but by no means all, adopt a scientistic perspective.
The idea that the natural sciences are only concerned with 'natural' phenomenon, and so have nothing to say about 'supernatural' entities is a widespread (in effect, consensus) view among scientists. This is sometimes referred to as methodological naturalism.
The view that all that exists is natural, and so there is nothing supernatural is adopted by some, but by no means all scientists. This position is sometimes referred to as metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalists reject the existence of a God and believe that any apparent miracle has a natural explanation that could in principle be found.
We might suggest that
- methodological naturalism is essential to being a scientist (essential as in necessary, like assuming there is a stable underlying physical reality which gives rise to the phenomena we experience)
- metaphysical naturalism is accidental to being a scientist (in the sense of being coincidental, much as some scientists play a musical instrument, but it is by no means a necessary criterion for being a scientist)
Read about science and religion
Scientific certainty
Technically, science produces knowledge in the form of laws, principles, theories, and models, which represent aspects of the natural world, but comprise provisional knowledge open to revioew in the light of new information.
Read about the nature of scientific knoweldge
However, sometimes scientific findings and results are reported as if they are certain and not opt to further questioning. This reflects a central challenge in sicencee education, that in many areas science offers robust knowledge which has well-proven its worth as the basis for guiding action – where scientists do not expect any future refinements to require major revisions; yet, scidnce-in-the making – current active areas of research – are by their nature concerned with areas where scientists are still developing reliable and robust knowledge.
Read about scientific certainty in the media
Work cited:
- Holton, Gerald (1993) Science and Anti-science. Harvard University Press
- Taber, K. S. (2017). Reflecting the nature of science in science education. In K. S. Taber & B. Akpan (Eds.), Science Education: An International Course Companion (pp. 23-37). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. [Download the chapter.]
