The nature of scientific knowledge

A topic in teaching science

The nature of science

"…scientific knowledge is entirely conceptual: it consists of systems of concepts interrelated in definite ways."

"…science is interested in impersonal data concerning objective (though perhaps hypothesised) facts, and moreover in such data as can 'make sense' in some body of knowledge…

Mario Bunge

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)

Scientific knowledge

One key idea is that, contrary to what many people think, science does not deal in certainties – scientific knowledge is conjectural and theoretical and always (in principle) open to revision. Theories are not the same as hypotheses (or guesses) and even facts are always constructed within a particular perspective – one that is potentially open to revision.

Scientific knowledge is essentially theoretical (not factual)

"The understanding of the world, in short, is achieved with the help of theories, not of catalogues. Consequently the exhaustive mapping of every single bit of reality – or even of every item of human experience – is not sour grapes: it is no grapes at all.
What factual [empirical] science seeks is to map the patterns laws of the various domains of fact. The conceptual reconstruction of an objective pattern is a scientific law (such as the law of inertia); a system of such law statements is a scientific theory (such as Newton's theory of motion)."

"In a sense the progress of knowledge consists in replacing observation concepts by transempirical concepts, and correspondingly experience or subject-centred hypotheses by fact or object-centred hypotheses."

Mario Bunge

"…a common problem with school science teaching is that it often presents science content as true accounts of nature, so that students see science as about facts…. Yet primarily science is not factual in nature, but theoretical. The essence of science is developing explanatory schemes that make sense of extensive volumes of data and that have predictive value. Scientists often talk as if they are describing how nature is, but they are actually presenting theories and models and other kinds of constructs that derive from the human imagination. Scientists invent categories such as acids and stars which helpfully put order into how we can think about a very complex universe. But often these categories only approximately work. Think about a category such as homo sapiens. A little thought suggests that although we have little difficulty telling humans from non-humans today, it is not always so clear cut whether hominid fossil remains belonged to individuals we would consider part of our own species. Chemists have changed their minds over time in how best to characterise acids and oxidising agents. Physicists have changed their minds about the nature of time and space and for many purposes use Newtonian models they now believe to be flawed (but still very useful) representations of reality." (Taber, 2017, p.28)

Scientific knowledge is provisional

"Assume somebody points out that certainty is an essential part of knowledge in the sense that the meaning of the word 'knowledge' contains the idea of certainty. The answer is very simple: we have decided against the idea of certainty … We have thereby also decided against knowledge in the sense alluded to. If certainty is part of knowledge, then we simply do not want to know in this sense."

Paul Feyerabend

"Scientists refer to laws as if they are universally applicable descriptions of aspects of nature – but usually on the basis of data collection that is limited. (The evidence that 'universal gravitation' applies across the universe is necessarily indirect given how little of the universe we have been able to visit.) Students often think that theories are scientists' guesses or hunches that they are waiting to prove by experiments. Yet actually theories are the very basis of scientific knowledge. They are far more than guesses, as they must be based on extensive evidence, but they are always open to being surpassed when new data or a new interpretation of existing data comes along. All scientific knowledge is technically provisional – that is, in principle open to re-examination in the light of new information. This leads to one of the major challenges in teaching about the nature of science – how science offers knowledge that is generally robust and reliable, yet always somewhat tentative in nature." (Taber, 2017, pp.28-9)

A feature of scientific thinking is "…fallibilism, i.e. the recognition that our knowledge of the world is provisional and uncertain" (Bunge, 1998).

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