History and Philosophy of Science

History and Philosophy of Science

The world of science, as we know it today, is a difficult subject to grasp. So many new ideas are present and these new ideas are not interchangeable. Some parts do work together although as a whole they don’t fully coincide with each other. The three basic ideas that science is now based upon come from Newton, Einstein, and Hawking. I call these ideas/theories “new” based on what I classify the state of the scientific community of today. After looking at what is going on in science, it is clear to me that the scientific world is in a crisis state. According to Kuhn, a crisis state is when science is in the middle of choosing a particular paradigm to work under. For scientists, there is a general theme or way of thinking which constitutes how they conduct their work and how they analyze their results. Kuhn goes to great measures to classify this scenario as paradigm. In chapter two of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn states “(paradigms)...provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research,” (p.10). If this is what scientists agree upon as paradigm then it is obvious that science is in a crisis state. At the present time, scientific explanations vary depending on what part of science is being explored.

Until there is an idea/theory that explains science as a whole, science will be in a crisis state. In order for scientists to successfully remove themselves from this crisis state they need to understand how science arrived to this point and why it has stayed there for the past century. In the seventeenth century a scientists known as Newton came forward with his Principia Mathematica. In Shlain’s Art and Physics he states that, “He made sweeping discoveries about gravity, motion, and light.” This Principia explained every part of science that was known to man. (Keep in mind that “Science that is known to man,” is a very important piece to my theory.) In the time of Newton, the three laws of motion were sufficient for explaining how and why the world works as it does.

Newton’s theory consisted of the three laws of motion. The first one, every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion, unless it’s compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. The second law states that the change of motion is proportional to the motive force impressed, and is ma...

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...t both can work. This would then propel the scientific community in to the comfortable hands of a paradigm. There is only one problem that I see with this endeavor. If, and that’s a big if, technology does not advance at the rate that it has in the past century or half century or even in the past two decades I have no doubt that an all encompassing theory could be brought to the table. My question is, what happens to science when technology opens up a frontier that quantum mechanics can’t explain and a whole new theory is needed to explain that? Is the scientific world now compelled to constantly remain in a crisis state because of the advancement of human knowledge? These are questions that only time can answer, but I would like to leave you with one thought; Is the elimination of God in order to know how the universe began really that important?

Bibliography

Calder, Nigel. Einstein’s Universe. Penguin Books. London, 1990.

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books. New York, 1996.

Shlain, Leonard. Art & Physics. Quill William Morrow. New York, 1991. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1996.