Science is the area where humanity attempts to understand and discover itself
and the natural and artificial environment that surrounds us all. It is often argued that
reality is out there, and we must find the right tools or sets of glasses needed in order
to visualize it objectively and come to terms with it. Many schools of thought were
very productive in this quest of universal knowledge and understanding, with one
basic classic distinction, that of rationalism and empiricism, creating a centuries old
dichotomy in the ways we perceive reality.
In the last century one such center of philosophical thought was developed in
Vienna, just after the devastating World War One and became known as the Vienna
Circle. For the majority of the interwar period, they developed a series of ideas in
how scientific knowledge should be acquired in an approach labelled “logical
positivism” of “logical empiricism”. According to them, the world of philosophy has
many incomprehensible parts, such as the German Idealism of Hegel, that should be
totally discarded. Following the tradition of many classic empiricists, such as John
Locke, they attacked the idea of innate knowledge, as an a priori knowledge, claiming
that knowledge should be understood in terms of external observations and through
the senses. They presented an attempt to revitalize empiricism and clear up the past
rationalist theories.
Even though inside the Vienna Circle ideas varied, they all had in common the
interest in scientific development, mathematics, and the philosophy of language,
interested in dispelling the world from mysticism and cryptic philosophy. As they
said, they wanted to be so clear with their arguments than when they die, nobody
would need to reinterpret them again. Their main viewpoints were that in language
there are two main propositions, analytic and synthetic. The former means that a
proposition is true in virtue of its meaning alone, where the latter is depended on how
the world is and functions. Following this logic, mathematics are analytic
propositions, since two plus two equals four is a convention and hence true as a human
invention. Scientific and empirical statements on the other hand were considered to be
synthetic propositions since they were depended on observation and the observer.
Another theory they developed was that of the Verifiability Theory of
Meaning, according to which a sentence gets its meaning if what it claims can be
verified by external observation. If not, then the statement is less than wrong, it is
simply meaningless and as such it is of no importance and use. Experience is for this
school of thought the only source of knowledge and meaning about the world. This
leads to a main argument, that also was one source of the downfall of the school in the
1950s, that they were purely interested in the justification of the argument that
legitimizes science and not in the historical process that led to its discovery.
One of the main critics of Vienna Circle was W.V.O. Quine, who in his paper
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism” explains that both meaning and testing should be
viewed as a holistic process that would stem from inductive reasoning. That means
that there are no analytic statements since the whole argument with a system of
variables and auxiliary hypothesis that surround a theory must be tested
simultaneously. There are no ideas in isolation, and no analytic proposition that needs
not to be constantly revaluated.
One other influential scholar interested in the system of producing knowledge
and theories was Karl Popper, who in the 1950s in Vienna developed his own ideas in
an attempt to solve the demarcation problem. The latter simply means, how can we
distinct science and scientific knowledge from pseudoscience. In this quest he
considered Einstein’s theory of relativity together with Freudian psychoanalysis and
the Marxist ideology. He understood that the latter two can potentially offer solutions
in all the problems they would face, in personality and society, respectively. They are
too broad, and their supporters could find arguments in their favor in every
circumstance. The theory of relativity on the other hand was a different case since it
had to be constantly tested for its validity and series of examples that could prove it
wrong since it was such a bold idea.
From this comparison he came to understand that both Marxism and
Psychoanalysis are not properly scientific theories since they cannot be tested for their
validity and be rejected as a whole. So, for Popper a scientific theory, like that of
relativity, was one that could be tested and proven wrong. He claimed that we can
never be sure of any theory that is correct, no matter how many times we tested it,
because there is always the possibility to be proven wrong in a future testing.
Therefore, we can only prove they are wrong and thus refute them and start again the
argumentation. The falsability therefore is what can distinct scientific knowledge from
pseudoscientific. Popper having as an axiom the Humian rejection of induction as
unjustified, he claims that all knowledge is produced by the hypothetico-deductive
method if the hypothesis is bold and that the predictions in no way justify the
hypothesis.
Many objections have risen to defuse Popper’s argumentation mainly focusing
on the deductive paradigm he proposes. One main point of criticism is that of
falsification that some hypotheses, such as the moons of planet after they were
observed cannot be falsified. Does this mean the observation of moon is unscientific?
The second main argument against his theory is that both probabilistic and non-
probabilistic hypotheses cannot be falsified since they would need an inductive
reasoning to be verified together with a series of auxiliary hypotheses and not simply a
deductive reasoning as he proposes.
One other important scholar that was in Vienna in the 1950s and was
considered by many as “the worst enemy of science” was the philosopher Paul
Feyerabend. According to him, there is no universal scientific method, since not all
scientists adhere to the same methods and there are countless examples that
researchers broke the rules, and the result was the rapid progress of knowledge. One
such example was that of Galileo Galilei and the rejection of the heliocentric
paradigm. Furthermore, he claimed that science is not superior to other traditions and
instead it can benefit greatly if it is associated with other ways of thinking rather than
rejecting them in a purist manner. Dialogue only advances knowledge. To reject the
plurality of opinions upon various matters, he considers, influenced by J.S. Mill, is a
danger to democracy that could lead to the tyranny of science. There has been a series
of objections to his rhetorics, taking for example that this relativist view could have
chaotic outcomes, or that even though breaking the rules does occur, modern scientific
projects have a series of variables and people involved that not one person can create
ex nihilo a brand-new scientific discovery.
We could take these interesting philosophical points of view that the scholars
from Vienna have to offer and reflect upon the anthropological inquiry in order to get
a better understanding of our involvement in the production of knowledge.
Anthropology is a social science interested in creating a universal understanding of the
humanity in its many different societies, cultures, mind sets and complexities. What is
of great importance is the idea that anthropological knowledge does not have a
universal methodology, not do ethnographers understand the field in one particular
way. As a scholarship, anthropology attempt to collaborate with its participants who
inhabit each time the area or areas in question and attempt to depict the reality in a
comparative, multivocal and multilocal way. We should not approach anthropological
knowledge in a purist way and since we cannot falsify our theories, we have to be
attentive in the plurality of voices and ever-created ideas in order to reflect our
position and role in this chain of knowledge we aim to acquire and present.
Philosophy of Science 3 [Kane B YouTube channel] visited: 23/1/2021.
Philosophy of Science 5 [Kane B YouTube channel] visited: 23/1/2021.
Philosophy of Science 6 [Kane B YouTube channel] visited: 23/1/2021.
Philosophy of Science 10 [Kane B YouTube channel] visited: 23/1/2021.
Philosophy of Science 11 [Kane B YouTube channel] visited: 23/1/2021.
Philosophy of Science 12 [Kane B YouTube channel] visited: 23/1/2021.
Classical Empiricism and Logical Positivism (Part 4-1) [SisyphusRedeemed
YouTube channel] 23/1/2021
The Rise of Logical Positivism (Part 4-2) [SisyphusRedeemed YouTube
channel] 23/1/2021
The Fall of Logical Positivism (Part 4-3) [SisyphusRedeemed YouTube
channel] 23/1/2021
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