What is that science thing?
By Emilio López- Barajas. University Professor
The scientific method Applied to achieve knowledge, it does not always allow a full apprehension of reality. The one who is anchored in the idea that everything that is seen is the true is wrong. Observation allows you to say what things are, but not why.
The astronomer Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) used a didactic image that can help us understand the importance that the methodology has in the task and scientific knowledge of things, and that enunciates, at the same time, some of the current problems. It proposes the following environment: Suppose an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. And, in that biosystem, he throws a net into the water and pulls out an assortment of fish. Examining their fishing, it proceeds systematically, as scientists usually do, and comes to two generalizations:
a) No sea creature is less than two inches in length;
b) All marine creatures have guts.
Both generalizations are true in relation to what he collected in the network, and he provisionally assumes that they will remain true every time he repeats the experience.
In this analogy, knowledge about fishing represents a knowledge that, in this case, is of a physical nature -the object of research-, and the network, the sensory and intellectual equipment that we use to obtain it -the method-. Throwing the network would correspond to the technical action planned in its day, typical of the methodology of observation, but would obviously not allow a general conclusion - as did the ichthyologist of our narrative - about the "structure" of reality.
The experience of observation, as a heuristic methodology, by itself, does not allow, for lack of control, explanatory conclusions, but only descriptive, that is, it allows only saying "what is" in reality, but not "why", which is the assumption for generalization, even if only in cases of probability.
The science, therefore, must be systematic and methodical knowledge about the principles, the causes, and the essential and material nature of things. Human knowledge certainly starts being sensitive, but reaches the intellectual level, through abstraction, where it comes to consider, together with immanence, the possibility of ontological transcendence through concepts, which is possible through abstraction.
Operationally say, before going forward, who does not want to say vagueness, empty notions of content, common places, about physical things, as would be the case we discussed, must previously know the status of the issue of physical sciences and biological and their respective methodologies. And if you wish to know not only about the sensible and material, but also about the essential, fundamental things, such as what is freedom, love or beauty, you should study and proceed by the methodology of the demonstration, of great classical tradition in metaphysical science. And if you want to know about divine things, your attention and learning should be applied to the methodology of the science of theology, whose object will be revealed truth. Of course, it must be introduced in this last case, to the knowledge that is found, at least, in the Theological Sum and the Sum against gentiles of Thomas Aquinas.
Says Choza (1997), Spanish philosopher, to those who wish to "naturalize epistemology", that is, reduce science only to the physical and material, as would be the case of the ichthyologist, which, in man, the thought is so radical and as natural as biology itself. Moreover, the same knowledge of human biology, when formulating its laws and theories, is only understood from the intellectual condition of man. Rooted and intertwined in these notions are, among other issues that we should know as part of our intellectual baggage, the following: the creation and origin of the universe, the appearance of life, of species or man, physical laws, the dialogue between immanence and transcendence of knowledge, genetic explanation, the process of modern skepticism, etc.
Science, of course, is not false. Science is of the true.
And, therefore, it is not reality that must adapt to the method, but the other way around. Some consider, as in the case of the ichthyologist, that true is only what is seen, a consequence of a "naive realism", which proves popular knowledge in the traditional "I do not believe it if I do not see it". The true, in this sense, would be only what appears to the one who knows, as it happened in the case of the ichthyologist, but it would be difficult to give testimony about it.Just to point out a less naive example, Newton's apple did not fall to the ground because it was mature, but primarily and primarily because every body left in space falls by virtue of its own weight, that is, the law of gravity in the atmosphere acted on her.
The opening of the diaphragm of the object of science, in short, the knowledge of its status, allows the methodology not only analysis, synthesis, and criticism, but also demonstration and contemplation, since: "Blessed man who knows of science, but even more, the man who has acquired wisdom, and who is rich in prudence, whose acquisition is worth more than silver, and its fruits are more precious than pure gold "(Proverbs, chapter II , 13,14).
