Confirmation, Underdetermination, and Observation - The Scientific Method

Tonight was an interesting night.



I tutor at Self Enhancement, Inc. on Monday nights and tonight turned out to be a very special occasion. I have to be honest and admit that the tutors and I really weren't doing what we should've been doing -- tutoring -- because we were engaged in what my mom and I say mockingly, "an intellectual exchange." The subject of our conversation was Kosso and Latour's claims. We were playing with the ideas of conspiracy theory and how it relates to the supposed venir pandemic of swine flu, and many other topics when we came to the discussion of medicine and science. It is then that I blurted out with oodles of enthusiasm, "I'm taking this class at PSU called Science Power Knowledge and it's amazing! It basically flips the idea that science is objective right upside down on its head." Immediately, feathers started ruffling; I think it safe to say that I think I saw a few plucked from the skin. My primary "competitor" in the conversation threw out words like, "pseudoscience", "sociology", and "wackos" when I was explaining the concepts of Kosso's book.

I say all this as a prelude to my discussions of chapters 7, 8 and 9 -- Confirmation, Undetermination, and Observation.

The ideas of confirmation, defined by Kosso as being incremental (or varying by degree) are interesting to think about. This was part of the discussion between my colleague and I. We were discussing the activities of rocket science. His argument was, "Science works. Rockets go into space, satellites orbit the earth and that is due to science." My contention with that statement was simply, "some satellites blow up. Some don't make it out. Some rockets disintegrate in the air, some rockets don't launch successfully. These circumstances occur even in the event of the math and formulas done correctly...what do we say then?" This comment, I feel, was a direct example of Kosso's claim of incremental confirmation -- or inching closer to the truth. Why? Because when it really comes down the "nitty-gritty" or the "truth" of the matter -- if you will -- there is always a chance that we could be wrong or have one part of the equation mixed up and hence -- rockets fall out of the sky, satellites leave the gravitational pull of the earth and are sucked into space, and rockets disintegrate in the air.

When Kosso further explains how, in the above mentioned cases, we usually turn to the methods of executing the experiments, I had nothing to say. Because this is also absolutely true. Sometimes the methods by which we go about experimenting or testing a hypothesis are done incorrectly and thus give the result of appearing to "falsify" a claim. However, I think it pertinent not to forget this question, what if the experiments themselves in their presence, or in their execution, in their instrumental and cognitive involvement contribute to the confirmation of a theory? Could we really say that a theory is correct? Usually the experiments are performed under strict controlled circumstances -- we can't forget that the very existence of the controlled environment plays a role in the outcome of testing hypotheses.

The concept of auxiliary theories are also and interesting part of the discussion of confirmation. Now, here I would like to spend a little more time because I love the notion of auxiliary theories -- this term really frames my own pondering on this issue (but were unnamed). When you think of a musical ensemble, or a jazz/r&b group that's playing together there are these instruments that are called auxiliary instruments. These instruments, although they are not apart of "foundational elements" of the band that's playing, they play an important role in a musical piece. As a musician -- to hear that an auxiliary keyboardist will be playing at your gig is more than a smile on the face. Auxiliary keys (theories) add so much juice, strength, so much power, and authority, beauty, emphasis, and invitation to a song. Just as Latour explains in Chapter 2 of his book, Laboratories, a good claim withstands a trial of strength (listeners, in the case of music) when the other claims/black boxes supporting it (ATs) push back. I use this as a reference point to understand auxiliary theories. Without the auxiliary theories about instruments' use and structure, gravity, relativity, and things of the like to support a claim -- there really wouldn't bee too many claims held together. These "ATs"/"AIs" make for an inviting, engaging, and all around good song...

For the sake of reading time I will now harbor on the notions of instrumentalists, realists, and empiricists. The stark contrast between these three scientific "parties" is intriguing and I would really enjoy exploring it further. I like the idea of instrumentalists in that, they are ready to work and want to continue moving. In some aspect, it think this attitude is very healthy in some scientific respects. However, when it comes to crucial things like medicine, global warming, and stuff like that -- instrumentalism can be dangerous, harmful, and potentially life-threatening. Why? Because instrumentalists are wiling to move on without fully coming to the truth. One can only imagine the far-reaching and numerous negative implications this type of scientific bearing would be.

With respect to empiricists, I can pretty much appreciate who they are and what they do and what they consider important. It makes me comfortable to know that some people are pushing to find out the real truth instead of just trying to move on on shaky grounds.

The realist, myself included is an interesting idea to discuss as well. When it really comes down to everything, God made things a certain way and gave us abilities, voices, songs, instrumentalism, and the like to engage in discovering what it is He created. Therefore aiming to discover the truth and THEN deciding to move forward is a GREAT IDEA. Why? Because when we can actually locate the real one-choice truth, we can move on with certainty and things like medicine, or solutions to global warming hold greater force in execution, to actually SOLVE the problem. People say the first way to understand you have a problem is to understand that you do, acknowledge it, and get educated about it....OBSERVE IT, if neccessary, see what others experience.

This brings me to my next discussion of Kosso's Observation claims. Observation is generally the meat and tender of science. In order to bring about confirmation of a claim, observe it. See what it does, hear it, taste it. However, as Kosso explains there are only some things that are "observable." I love the fact that Kosso made this point. It is one of the sole arguments I use when addressing scientists in their "Science can know and does know everything" attitudes. An example we could look at is our understanding of the universe. The universe is a GIANT thing (if it is a thing) that may extend to infinity...Scientists say it does, but we could never really know. One of the key aspects of Science, observing, is not possible in this arena of thought. Why? Because we'd die before we could get out there...unless we come up with a way to find the edge and go to the edge. Another claim to doubt is the fact that the planets orbit the sun, or the sun is the center of the universe....how do we know this? We can't! We've never been there.

An example my fellow tutor used the was the story about the guys who supposedly "replicated" cold fushion -- although we don't even know if cold fushion exists because the sun would kill us before we could go onto it and find out. He said that the guys who did it, their experiments were not replicable and thus they got laughed out of the building because the others could not observe and see what it was. I dare to be "pig-headed" as Latour claims and say, "Well, what if they did and it's just not replicable? Could be unlikely or not...we don't know because we weren't there. What if every time the other scientists tried, the conditions weren't right?" It is simply unobservable. So while the ability to onserve is a very key aspect to scientific work, it simply is not the bottom line for discovering truth and thus seeing something does not make it neccessarily true, nor does the absence of the ability to see something make that something false. Instead, it makes it unobservable -- there are limits.