This article discusses the nature of science, focusing on the theories of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, and explores whether science is a system of knowledge in which irrational and rational elements coexist. It distinguishes between the activity and logic of science and analyzes how the status of science can be justified in the modern world.
In the modern world, science has become an entrenched institution, with enormous resources invested in it. Some would even say that the authority of science in the modern world is comparable to that of religion in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are often referred to as the “Dark Ages” because religion dominated and stifled many advances. So, is the modern dominance of science as a symbol of rationality and objectivity inherently different from the dominance of religion in the Middle Ages? Paul Karl Feyerabend argues that the dominance of science is unjustified and that science has no inherent superiority over other systems of learning. However, many believe that the status of modern science is different from that of medieval religion. Science has made many discoveries that have really benefited the world, and its influence and objectivity is enormous compared to other disciplines. In this blog post, we will focus on the nature of science, which distinguishes it from other disciplines. The nature of science is what distinguishes it from other disciplines and is similar to Karl Popper’s “demarcation problem”. In this article, we will focus on the arguments of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper and explore whether their opposition can be explained by the distinction between theories and hypotheses, activity and logic in science. In the conclusion, we will consider whether the nature of science can justify its status in the modern world.
Thomas Kuhn viewed the nature of science as a paradigm. He describes the scientific community as a community that shares the same ‘paradigm’, and presents the changes in science as ‘normal science’ and ‘scientific revolutions’. According to Kuhn, science, unlike other disciplines, has a paradigm, a single view that is widely accepted by members of a particular scientific community, and paradigms are the essence of science. In the 16th century, a theory emerged that could successfully explain many problems and overwhelmed competing theories to become the first paradigm, and under this paradigm, research was directed toward the implications of the paradigm. Research advances primarily through the redefinition, validation, and clarification of paradigms. As normal science progresses, the paradigm becomes more precise, and the number of problems it can solve increases. However, when the number of phenomena that the paradigm fails to interpret increases, the scientific community faces a crisis and emergent research is undertaken. In this process, competing new arguments are put forward, and a new paradigm is accepted through a scientific revolution. Kuhn saw science as progressing through a process of paradigm shifts, but he argued that this progress is not about getting closer to the truth of nature, but simply about being able to “solve more puzzles.” Scientific revolutions are therefore irrational, and each paradigm is non-committal.
Karl Popper, on the other hand, saw the essence of science as “disprovability.” He explained that science is the activity of proposing various hypotheses to explain phenomena and then working to disprove them. Popper did not see it as the essence of science to support theories inductively; rather, he argued that scientific theories must survive attempts to disprove them. If a theory has withstood many attempts at disproving it, it gains the status of a theory in science, but it does not affect its likelihood of being true. Therefore, in Popper’s view, disproved theories should be revised or discarded, and science is a discipline that is constantly evolving to get closer to the truth.
Kuhn and Popper’s arguments clash in terms of how they view the nature of science. Kuhn argues that science is irrational, while Popper argues that science is rational. The conflict stems from a difference in interpretation of the inability to directly prove a theory is correct. Kuhn sees science as a process of selecting successful theories and testing them, while Popper sees it as getting closer to the truth by disproving theories that are wrong.
I propose to interpret science in terms of scholarly activity and logic by dividing it into hypotheses (theories) that are not widely accepted and hypotheses (theories) that are accepted. Scientific activity can be interpreted as the process of examining a hypothesis and then transferring it to a theory and disproving it, and scientific logic can be interpreted as the process of discarding a wrong theory with disprovability at its core. The distinction between hypotheses and theories is determined by their general acceptance in the academic community, regardless of attempts at disproving them, and is of an irrational nature.
The paradigm of scientific activity is irrational as an academic activity, but scientific propositions are developed into rational logic through disprovals. This makes science an academic system in which irrational and rational elements coexist.
In this article, we have presented the unified nature of science’s irrational and rational characteristics. However, it is necessary to further discuss whether scientific activity and logic can be clearly distinguished. It is also necessary to discuss how to evaluate the irrational nature of science if it is inevitable. Despite its irrational nature, science is a rational process that uses disprovable propositions to rule out objectively false theories. The status of science in the modern world can be justified by this process.
