HEIDEGGER’S PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

Just like any great thinker, Martin Heidegger elevates human thinking into a realm where the ordinary seems extraordinary. Not that he’s just making things more complicated by assigning difficult explanations and terminologies to simple concepts. But like the other great thinkers, he only wants to expose the irony that pervades reality: the simplest is often the hardest to explain.

Undoubtedly, Heidegger writes about the simplest of concepts. All throughout his early and later writings, he dwells on the following basic themes: truth, freedom, being, man, and time. In spite of his great mind, he has struggled to put into words the meaning of these basic concepts, concepts we often take for granted. For him, to know the basic and foundational concepts is the first step in climbing the ladder of knowledge.

Some scholars describe Heidegger as a “prophet.” They say there is an element of mystery in his words. A mystery that is derived from the very nature of what he discusses. His words express a sense of unity that unarguably foretell an imminent event in the development of human history. Briefly he says that the truth of reality develops according to its “destiny.”

His philosophy is really a puzzle to the minds of the lay people. More often that not, people simply disregard his thoughts because of their obscurity and seeming uselessness. For them, Heidegger’s thoughts are best left for the philosophers to ponder upon. Sadly, this is the very mentality Heidegger wants to correct. His writings express the importance of “awareness”; awareness of reality, of nature, of others, and of one’s very self. He wants us to be “conscious” about our existence; that we are beings who are capable of directing our very lives and the lives of other beings. We are the beings who are aware of the world flung open for discovery. So that through this awareness of our existence, we may take the responsibility of being agents of truth.

Among the themes in his later thought, technology stood out as one of the more essential things he discussed. This will be the main concern of this article. In his lecture paper entitled “The Question Concerning Technology”¹, he gave his view on technology. This lecture paper will be the main source of our discussion on his philosophy of technology.

Like in any of his works, Heidegger used technical words to explain his thoughts regarding the subject. This often bars away the lay people from reading his works. For this reason, I will explain as simple as possible the meaning of his words although at the danger of discarding their original meanings. What is more important anyway is the message of his work, not the technicalities that articulate it.

 

The Main Thrust of his Philosophy

Before going to his philosophy of technology, let us first discuss some fundamental topics of his philosophy. The first question to be asked is, “what is Heidegger’s philosophy all about?”

The answer: Being. Throughout his career as a thinker, Heidegger probed into the question of the meaning of Being. This question was the binding theme that united his thinking. But what is Being? For the record, Heidegger was not able to answer this question. He wrote about Being but he did not directly express what Being was. It was after all something that always withdraws its full significance.

But to talk about something you do not know is impossible. So in some ways Heidegger already knows the meaning of Being but just can’t get the right word for it. For him, Being is not an entity. It is not this or that object, nor is it a concept or a specific event. Rather, it is the “unfolding” of things around us, and more importantly, it is also the “unfolding” that happens in our very lives.

If this sounds very obscure, consider the following sentences containing the word “being”: 1) It is hard Being (to be) a student; 2) That stubborn being over there is a student. Notice the difference between the usage of being in the two statements. The first statement, on the one hand, uses the word Being² as an occurrence in the life of a person, i.e. “to be” a student. The sense of being here does not denote an entity or an object or a person, but a happening or an “unfolding” of some sort. Being then in this first sense is primarily a “process” as linguistically denoted by its verb-like usage. In fact, Being in the first sense is also expressed by the infinitive verb ”to be.” The second statement, on the other hand, uses the word being to denote an object or an entity. It is taken grammatically as a noun.

Heidegger is concerned with the first sense of the word Being. He is concerned about Being as a process, an “unfolding”, and not as an entity. However, he says that we can only understand this Being as “unfolding” through beings as “entities” because Being happens in beings. The process of unfolding transpires in the existence of beings, as when flowers bloom and become the flowers they ought to be, or when a pony grows into a strong stallion and become the horse it ought to be. Every entity participates in this unfolding process (Being) of reality.

Heidegger elaborates further that it is through the being (second sense) called man that Being sheds its light. It is through man that the reality is revealed in the unfolding process of Being. The key word to understand what Heidegger means here is the word “OPENNESS.” Man is said to be placed in the center of this Openness known as the world. Through man, the unfolding process comes into play. He discovers objects of nature, names them, elaborates them, makes poems and songs about them, and brings them forth into the light of knowingness. What man does, his very existence and connection to things, is itself a process of unfolding. In his existence, Being comes into play.

If in man the unfolding process of reality comes into play, then the answer to the question of the meaning of Being must therefore be found in the very existence of man. And this is precisely what Heidegger took as the course for his thinking. The question of the meaning of Being is also the question of the existence of man. Being and man are always interconnected.

 

How is the Question Concerning Being connected to the Question Concerning Technology?

Being is the unfolding process of reality, and by unfolding we mean a process of letting be known that which was first unknown. For Heidegger, the process of unconcealing something from its previous concealment is “truth.” In short Being is also Truth.

Heidegger favors the Greek rendition of truth as aletheia, meaning unconcealment or revelation. Truth as aletheia is a process from being concealed to being revealed. It is not merely truth as the correspondence of statements to reality but truth as a revealing process. Everything undergoes the process of truth. Our lives are themselves processes of truth. From our childhood to our present age, we have undergone the ongoing processes of revelation. Everything as long as it opens itself to the world undergoes the revelation process.

For Heidegger, truth is very limited. Using his own word words, “truth is untruth.” This statement simply means no truth is absolute. What has been revealed in the revelation process is not, and will never be, the whole truth. Truth is very limited and untruth participates in its very essence. Our existence again is a fairly good example. What is revealed in the process of our lives does not give a final say about who we are. Your being students of Nursing today does not describe the entirety of the truth of your being persons.

Truth is elevated by Heidegger into the level of History. For him, the ongoingness of history is also truth. Reality is revealed in history in different epochs. At the beginning, when man was not yet aware of the world he lives in, truth is in its initial stage, i.e. untruth or concealment. For truth to be, there must be something for it to uncover. From untruth comes truth. The first moment of truth as revelation came when man became aware of the world he lived in. In this stage of truth as unconcealment, the world suddenly flung open to man. The veil of untruth was somewhat removed and man was given the chance to see the glory of the truth of reality. This moment of history signaled an age of “openness” that enabled man to connect with nature. For Heidegger, it was the Greeks who first embraced this moment of revelation.

Like a prophet, Heidegger redirected his gaze to a dangerous spot in history – the modern age. In what sense is the modern age dangerous? Heidegger answers this by invoking that the modern age is the twilight zone of the revelation process of history. This modern age endangers the revelation process of reality. In what way? When the modern age mechanizes not only nature but also man. It is in here that the problem of technology comes into the discussion.

Since it is still part of the revealing process of reality, technology is also a form of “revealing.” Heidegger questions how this “revealing” in modern technology transpires. And this is the topic of his philosophy of technology. He asks in what way modern technology is a form of revelation. Restating it, in what way does modern technology participate in the unfolding process of reality, in Being?

 

What is the main concern of Heidegger’s Philosophy of Technology?

In his The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger states his topic of concern: The Essence of Technology. You might be wondering why Heidegger still seeks for the meaning of technology if everyone already knows what technology is. Two statements may serve as the answer for this question. One, Technology is a means to an end; it is an “instrument” to meet our needs. Second, Technology is a human activity. These two statements about technology are interconnected “for to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity.”³ These two current conceptions of technology are called instrumental and anthropological definitions of technology.

By “essence of technology”, Heidegger does not mean the “nature” of the “concept” of technology, or the definition of technology. By “essence of technology”, he means how the “phenomenon” of technology “comes to presence.” Why he understands it this way is a matter of philological concerns. He understands the word “essence” in its literal sense, and not in its normative sense, which he often abhors. Instead of taking essence as “nature” he maintains that it must bear the meaning of its root word. He states, “The noun (essence) is derived from the verb pre-sencing (wesen) and is the same as to last or endure (wahren).”⁴ In some ways, he retains the verb-like function of the word as manifested in his incessant use of the prefix an to the word essence (wesen). An-wesen means “to-come-to-presence”. Thus, in questioning what the essence of technology is, what we are asking is how the “occurrence” or “phenomenon” of technology “comes into presence.” How does this technological occurrence happen or develop?

 

Heidegger starts with the Greek rendition of technology as techne…

Heidegger found his way back to the Greeks in answering the problem of technology. The Greeks use the word techne for technology. Techne does not only refer to activities and skills of craftsman, but also for the fine arts. This is why techne as craftmaking is also techne as art. More than the idea of making and manipulating, techne is a way of bring-forth something. It is a way of letting something be known. The techne of making a statue for example is a way of bringing forth or showing the nature of the human body.

Techne in this sense is very much related to the idea of poiesis. Poiesis is the origin of the word poetry. Poetry is an “art” of bringing forth into imagery the reality. Like the basic meaning of its etymology, poetry is a way of “revealing” something.

Furthermore, both poiesis and techne are connected to the idea of episteme. Episteme means being at home, to understand, and be expert in something. In other words, episteme has something to do with knowledge in the broadest sense of the word. Today words taking its root from episteme, like epistemology, connote “knowledge.” Epistemology means the study of knowledge.

These three Greek terms (techne, poiesis, episteme), although different, have the same essence; they are all processes of revealing, bringing-forth, and opening up. Thus, going back to the question of technology, what is decisive in techne or technology does not lie at all in making and manipulating, nor in using of means, but in the aforementioned revealing. Heidegger maintains: “Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.”⁵

In what way is modern technology a revealing process?

Much as Greek technology is a revealing process, modern technology too is an event of unconcealemnt. Natural objects in the revealing process of modern technology make themselves open to the light of the epoch’s way of Being. Rivers, mountains, plains, plants, and animals are all brought forth into the center stage so as to be seen in the new light of modern machination. Unlike before, nature is now seen as a “resource we can readily manipulate.” It is not anymore an object of wonder but an object of human conquest. As Francis Bacon said, our knowledge of nature is also our power over it. This is how things reveal themselves in modern technology. They are now just “things ready for any human biding.”

In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger mentions two characteristics of modern technology as a revealing process. First, he says “the revealing that rules in the modern technology is a challenging (Herausfordeen)”⁶; and Second, he says “this challenging that brings forth energy of nature is an expediting.”⁷

1. The mode of revealing of modern technology is a challenging. What does Heidegger mean by this challenging? Using his own language, challenging is Herausfordern which literally means “to come forth by challenge or demand.” Things are revealed or brought forth by challenging or demanding them. It is putting to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored.⁸ The mining technology today is a good example for this mode of revealing of things. Tracks of land reveal themselves as something challenged because man sees them as objects where coal and ore can be demanded. Man sees them as sources of energy. And these energies can be stored so that man can summon them at his bidding. Shortly, nature reveals itself in modern technology as things of manipulation; as things that yield energy whenever man demands them to do so.

“Challenging” as a mode of revealing nature could be sharply contrasted to “Physis”. Also a mode of revealing, physis is the arising of something from itself, a bringing-forth or poiesis.⁹ A flower blossoming or fading in the changes of the season is an example of this form of revealing. The revelation has its own autonomy and, at best, man can only witness. This is a natural way of revealing.

The mode of revealing in modern technology brought about new world ordering. This kind of ordering is best described as “artificial,” in contrast to “natural” ordering. It sees nature as an object of manipulation and not anymore as an autonomous reality demanding respect and admiration. The network of things is now reduced into the network of manipulation.

1. The challenging that brings forth the energy of nature is an “expediting.” In the modern use of the word, expediting means to hasten the movement of something. However, in its original sense, expediting is also a process of revealing inasmuch as it “unlocks” and “exposes” something. But what is exposed is still directed towards something else, i.e. toward the maximum yield at the minimum expense. In short, things that are revealed in an expedited manner are brought forth as resources that must be used efficiently.

In mining for example, man digs coal not simply to know what coals are. Yes, man “exposes” these coals but not simply to know them. They uncover them because he wants to use them. Coals are mined from track loads of land so as to use their energy. This is the characteristic of the things revealed in modern technology. They are there “for” something.

How do we call the things that are revealed in Modern Technology?

Heidegger uses a technical word to name these things. He said : “Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way has its own standing, namely standing in reserve.”¹⁰

Heidegger names these things revealed in modern technology as “standing in reserve.” Things as standing in reserve are not “objects”. Objects, on the one hand, are things that “stand against us” as things with autonomy. They are revealed mainly in human thinking and do not allow further manipulations. Things as standing in reserve, on the other hand, are called to come forth in challenging and expediting. They are reduced into the objectlessness of modern technology. Nothing anymore “stands against us” as objects of autonomy and wonder. Everything is regressed into an interlocking of things that yield what man wants whenever he demands them to do so. Even nature is now revealed as standing in reserve and not anymore objects of autonomy.

Unlike the modern technologies, the old technology still respects nature as an object of autonomy. The modern and the old technologies are of different modes of revealing, the former artificial and the latter natural. Take for example the contrast between how the modern technology of the hydropower plant and the old technology of a wooden bridge reveal the presence of a river. On the one hand, the hydropower plant reveals the river that supplies it energy simply as another thing standing in reserve. It is a source of energy which completes the interlocking of things in the system of hydropower generation. The river in not anymore seen as an object with autonomy but an object on call to be used.

On the other hand, the technology of building a wooden bridge reveals the river not as a key link in completing the bridge. It rather respects it as a part of nature, a “landscape” using Heidegger’s own term, that is somewhat permanent and stands against us as another entity. We move “around” it so to say and we only see what we can do to overcome its dominating presence. In other words, we do not manipulate it, but rather, we act according to its rules.

 

The Process of Revealing in Modern Technology as Enframing…

The world is revealed in modern technology as the interlocking of things standing in reserve. This is the process in which everything is ordered. Heidegger calls this “process” that is set into the context of interlocking shown by standing-reserve as “Enframing” (Ge-stell). For Heidegger Enframing is the “essence” (process of coming into presence) of modern technology.

The word en-framing literally means to put into a frame a certain set of things. By Heidegger’s use of the word, enframing simply means putting into the frame of modern technology everything in nature. This “frame” of modern technology is the network or interlocking of things standing in reserve. It is the world centered on man’s caprices and demands. It is world of manipulation and demystification. In here nothing is mysterious anymore.

This is what Heidegger was afraid of, that the process of truth will revert back into the realm of erring. It must be remembered that for truth to be, it must retain its sense of mystery. Truth is for the most part untruth. To disregard this essentially limited process of revelation is also to disregard the entirety of its essence. We cannot have absolute knowledge of reality, more so, we cannot have full dominion over it. As they say, we are only “guardians” of creation. To disregard this nature of reality is also putting ourselves into the brink of danger.

Because of man’s arrogance, nature is in the verge of destruction. He thinks he knows how nature works and tends to hasten or “expedite” its processes. He demands too much from it and in turn disrupts its natural flow.

Nature is beyond our control. Its truth is beyond our grips. For all we know, it is the one that controls us. And if we ever try to dominate it, nature will surely revolt against us in a very humbling manner.

(to be continued next meeting…)

 

 

1Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. by William Lovitt, Basic Writings, (New York: Harper and Row, 1977) (abbreviated as QT below).

2 For easy reference, I will capitalize “Being” in the first sense to distinguish it from “being” in the second sense.

3 QT, p. 288.

4 QT, p. 305.

 

5 Ibid., p. 295.

6 Ibid., p. 296.

7 Ibid., p. 297.

8 Ibid., p. 296.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 298. Italization is mine.

Popper and His Method of Falsification

“But as for certain truth, no man has known it, nor will he know it; neither of the gods, nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter the perfect truth, he would himself not know it: For all is but a woven web of guesses.”   -        Xenophanes

 WHY IS THERE SUCH A METHOD?

In the 1920’s, scientists have this notion that theories are scientific only if they are provable through observation and experimentation. True enough; theories can be valid only if they have taken series of tests and rigorous studies. Religious statements like “there are angels in heaven” or “God exists” are unscientific because they are not testable through observation and experimentation. What makes a statement scientific therefore is its openness to verification. Scientific statements must be verified through experience, i.e. they are proven through our five senses. In philosophy of science, we call this as the theory of Verification. A statement must be “empirically verifiable” in order for it to be meaningful and scientific.

Verificationism was then the criterion for judging whether a statement is scientific or unscientific. It was the answer to the important problem of Demarcation. This problem of demarcation sought to find the dividing line between what was scientific and what was non-scientific. It was the famous group known as the Vienna Circle – mostly composed of Logical Positivist – that proposed verification as the criterion of demarcation.

In the beginning of the 1930’s, Sir Karl Popper introduced his ingenious theory of Falsification. In this theory, he proposed another answer to the problem of demarcation. However, he did not simply propose this theory just for the sake of having another option for scientists to choose from. His theory was a clever solution to the various problems faced by philosophers of science. Basically, the theory of falsification or rational criticism sought to review the important problems that the theory of verification overlooked, solved the logical discrepancies found in the method (inductive) used by verificationism, and more importantly reoriented the scientists in their authoritarian attitude to the problem of knowledge. 

 SPLITTING THE PROBLEMS OF DEMARCATION AND MEANING

By means of the criterion of verification, one can tell whether a statement is scientific or not scientific. For the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, only a scientific statement can be meaningful. In this case, the theory of verification is not only the proposed solution for the problem of demarcation but also for the problem of meaning. Now, this poses a grave threat to all “non-scientific” or “non-verifiable” statements such as religious and theological statements, metaphysical and philosophical statements, and other purely speculative assertions. This principle renders them all meaningless! That “an all-powerful invisible Being called God exists” is of no meaning and significance to those who embrace this principle.

Karl Popper pointed out that a theory may be meaningful without being scientific. St. Thomas’ doctrine of the Imago Dei for instance may not be scientific but it is meaningful, even more meaningful than most scientific theories. Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas may not obviously be scientific but it is of exuberating significance. Thus for Popper, the problem of demarcation must be differentiated from the problem of meaning; the criterion of demarcation does not necessarily coincide to the criterion of meaningfulness.          

Popper proposed falsifiability in place of verifiability as the criterion of demarcation. He altogether distinguished this criterion of demarcation from a criterion of meaningfulness. For him, falsifiability only applies to distinguishing which statements are scientific, and not which statements are meaningful. Thus, for Popper scientific statements are always falsifiable but not necessarily meaningful.

 POPPER’S ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN ATTITUDE TO THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

Rudolf Carnap, one of the leaders of the Vienna Circle, wrote in one of his later works that “assertions must be justified through observation.” For Popper this criterion is unsatisfactory. To say that our assertions are reliable because of our appeal to the authority of observations as the sources of knowledge presuppose an authoritarian attitude to the problem of knowledge.[1] Popper emphatically states that no amount of observation or source of knowledge can give certainty to our assertions. For one, there has never been any theory that presented itself as error-free. Pessimistically, he states “all sources leads to error” so that no theories can be certain. Scientific theories are just guess works and conjectures. He claims that there can be no such authorities and that a moment of certainty clings to all assertions.[2] Neither observation nor reason is an authority.[3]

Popper’s contemporaries believe that true knowledge is certain and that this knowledge can be achieved. They embrace the classical notion of true knowledge, i.e. that true knowledge is certain. Popper distinguishes true knowledge from a knowledge which is certain. For him, no knowledge is certain and perfectly reliable. No matter how well corroborated and applicable a theory may be, there will always be an error to it. Newton’s theory of gravitation is an attestation to this claim. It is the best-tested and best-corroborated scientific theory but it itself is contested by Einstein’s theory of gravitation. Inasmuch as there can be no amount of observation that can render an assertion certain, we can never be certain whether what we have asserted is true. As Popper states, “no theories are certain” so that, as a consequence, we cannot achieve certain knowledge.

However, science aims at truth. All theories proclaim themselves as a guess about the truth of reality, and we are not really certain about it. Quoting Popper himself, “we are only rarely successful in guessing the truth; and we can never be certain whether we have succeeded.”[4] It may be the case that our theories are already true but we cannot be certain about it.

 UNDER THE GEIST OF SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY        

Popper thinks in the light of Socratic philosophy. He believes that human knowledge is finite, which of course is almost self-evident. The human ability to reason, although it proves to be very beneficial, is by nature infinitely finite. This attitude towards human knowledge which the (Socratic) Greeks also embraced may have come from the experience of being overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. Well man himself cannot fully know his own self. Thus what is certain is not certitude but man’s uncertainty. Socrates once told that wisest is he who knows that he does not know. Yes indeed, the one who knows that he does not know has the upper hand over the one who thinks to know what he truly does not know. Our recognition of our ignorance elevates us from the misleading sophistic all-knowing mentality. The more we know, the more we know of our ignorance.

So what does our ignorance benefit us? Like Socrates, Popper uses this knowledge of our ignorance to advance our knowledge of truth. This may sound ironic to the philosophers of the Vienna Circle but this harbors a very important place in Popper’s philosophy. Although there is no criterion of truth, there is a rational criterion for progress in the search for truth. And it is our knowledge of our ignorance, errors, and uncertainties that underlie this criterion. Here is what Popper says:

“Science is a critical activity. We examine our hypotheses critically. We criticize them so that we can find errors, in the hope of eliminating the errors and thus getting closer to the truth.”[5]       

We are not certain about what we know but we are certain that there are errors in what we know. It is precisely these errors that we ought to remove and criticize in order to advance our search for the truth. If science is the search for truth, then it must be progressive. We progress by scraping little by little the errors (ignorance) of what we know, and from which we clear our eyes from what blurs truth.

So what does this now make of our knowledge? Knowledge is a combination of guess work (theories) and rational criticism. We start with guess works or conjectures. Although these are just guesses they are very important because we cannot start from nothing – from tabula rasa.[6] By modifying and correcting them we come closer to realizing the ideal of science, i.e. the attainment of truth. Popper uses the phrase “Rational Criticism” is naming this attitude towards knowledge. He boldly admits that it is a view he owes to the Greeks, in particular to Socrates. His rational criticism brought forth his method of falsification.   

            

THE IDEA OF FALSIFIABILITY IN GENERAL

The scientific method proposed by Popper is a product of his epistemological view of knowledge. If we cannot by all means prove the certainty of our statements through observation, and if what is only certain is the presence of errors in them, then what we can only do is to prove the errors in our statements. In which case the statements must in themselves be structurally falsifiable. Obviously, we cannot criticize a statement which is not criticizable. It is in this area that Logic plays an important role.

As was stated earlier, falsification was Popper’s principle of demarcation. If a statement, hypothesis, or theory is not falsifiable then it is not scientific. Falsifiable statements must not however be mistaken with “false” statements. There is a big difference between the two; “false statements” need not be proven anymore because they are already proclaimed false, while “falsifiable statements” must be evaluated because they are by nature capable of being criticized using observational reports. If for Popper only falsifiable statements are scientific, then all scientific statements must be open to the possibility of being falsified.      

For example[7], the statement “all men are mortal” is unfalsifiable because there can never be any positive data of an immortal man to falsify the statement. The statement “all men are immortal” is falsifiable because there can be a positive data of a mortal man to falsify the statement. Popper will identify, basing on their structure, the first statement as unscientific and the second scientific. Nevertheless, most unfalsifiable statements can be transposed to falsifiable statements. For all we know, many unfalsifiable statements are derived from falsifiable statements. The example above, All men are mortal, must have been inferred from the falsifiable statement “All men die before they reach the age of 150 years.” This proves to us that falsifiable statements does not exclude the unfalsifiable, it embraces and exceeds it. By restating unfalsifiable statements to its falsifiable form, we can proceed with rational criticism.  

In a way, falsification still lives by the spirit of verification inasmuch as it shows that an assertion is scientific only if it is “open” to data of observation and experimentation. The possibility of being open to experience is after all the main property of all scientific statements. But what differentiates falsification from verification is a matter of logical procedure. Unlike verification which proves a theory by presenting data that support the said theory, falsification aims at disproving a theory by presenting data or experiments that invalidate the said theory. So if we say that an assertion is “falsifiable”, then it has the logical possibility of being falsified using data from observation or physical experiment.

 LOGIC OF FALSIFICATION

There are two types of statements that are of value to scientists: the “observational statements” and the “universal statements.” Observational statements, which are also known in logic as “singular existential statements,” are assertions about the existence of some particular thing. “This is a white swan” is an example of this type of statement. In Logic, a singular existential statement such as the example is stated in the form: “There is an x that is a swan, and x is white.” Universal statements, on the other hand, are assertions that categorize all instances of something.  In logic, they are stated in the following form: “For all x, if x is a swan, then x is white.”

By their nature, scientific theories and hypothesis are all universal statements about the way nature as a system works. If science seeks to find the pattern that weaves nature together, then it must see a cause that could have not only produced an isolated event in nature. Scientific theories, and especially what we call natural laws, must be stated in a way that encompasses the entirety of nature; or else they will not be called as such. From the inductivist point of view, universal statements can be inferred from observational statements. Deductive-wise, this manner of inference is invalid because it leaves an enormous gap of error. But inductivists, spearheaded by Francis Bacon, still claim that this is the method of science. Now how does one move from observations to laws? How can one validly infer a universal statement from any number of existential statements? Philosophers of science consider these questions as great problems that beset the inductivist method of reasoning. These questions were nonetheless answered by Popper’s method of falsification. Popper’s method claims that observational statements (single existential statements) cannot affirm a universal statement. Observations can never be a source of certainly true knowledge. That this is a white swan can never affirm that all swans are white. Nonetheless, observational statements (single existential statements) can be used to show that a universal statement is “false.” The singular existential observation of a black swan shows that the universal statement “all swans are white” is false.       

The method of falsification can be stated symbolically in logic as the Modus Tollens.

U – O           If U, then O

-O                 not O

-U                Therefore, not U

The capital letter U stands for Universal statements, while the capital letter O stands for Observational statements or singular existential statements. The reasoning used in here is hypothetico-deductivism. It is hypothetical because it starts with hypothetical universal statements.[8] It is deductive because it arrives at a necessarily true conclusion. The basic flow of the argument is as follows: (1) start with a hypothesis or universal statement (U); (2) make a prediction of the hypothesis about a certain singular happening (U – O); (3) make an observational statement that contradicts the expected prediction (-O); (4) Falsify the hypothesis or universal statement (-U).

The Inductive method directly breaks this logical rule of Modus Tollens. It has the following form:

U – O          If U, then O

O                 O 

U                 Therefore, U.

In its first premise (U – O), the argument starts with a universal statement and its prediction (1 & 2). In the second premise (O), it states a singular existential observation which corroborates the first premise. And in the conclusion (U), we accept the universal statement. The grave mistake of the argument lies in the second premise and the conclusion. We cannot simply accept the Universal statement using only observational or singular existential statements. Affirming the prediction is not a warrant to affirm the theory that explains it. A singular existential statement is not equivalent to a universal statement.

(To be continued next meeting)   

- Michael Jhon M. Tamayao, Ph.L., M.A.      

  

 ENDNOTES

---

[1] Karl Popper, “On the So-called Sources of Knowledge”, In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years, trans. by Laura J. Bennett (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 45. This section of the book was originally a lecture given on July 1979 at the University of Salzburg when the author was awarded an honorary doctorate.

This book where this article and all other articles of Popper that I will use in this paper will henceforth be referred to as In Search in all the succeeding referrals to it.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., p. 50.

[4] Karl Popper, “On Knowledge and Ignorance”, In Search, p. 37.

[5] “On Knowledge and Ignorance”, p. 39.

[6] “On the So-called Sources of Knowledge”, p. 49.

[7] Examples are taken from Wikipedia free encyclopedia.

[8] All scientific theories are hypothetical inasmuch as they are all guesses.

Plato and Aristotle

plato and aristotle

scientific method

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Science is so identified as such because it studies nature as it is. Unlike astrology and mythology, science looks for answers that are found in nature itself and not from any transcendental reality. Inasmuch as science seeks for natural –and not supernatural – answers, it employs a method that filters all unwarranted explanations about natural processes. And by “unwarranted” explanations we mean statements that do not give a truly objective and rational explanation about nature. Hence, in order to be truly scientific, scientists devise standard procedures that help them examine the cosmic changes and its infinite puzzles in a “rigorous” and “unbiased” way. These proposed standard procedures, being so numerous, fight for the title of “the scientific method.”   

An activity is scientific only if it employs the scientific method. This dictum pervades our view of science and facilitates in the categorization of human endeavors. Science is science, and not mythology for instance, because it utilizes the scientific method. With its eminence in the scientific field, the scientific method is considered as one of the most important subjects of study in science. Unless a truly rigorous method is created, there can never also be a truly rigorous science.  

Because the scientific mind wants to know nature as it is, it must use a rigorous and precise procedure that will blot out everything that hinders the process of discovering nature. Surprisingly, it is our human imperfections that first infect the scientific goal of arriving at reliable knowledge. These human imperfections include the tendency to reconfigure our encounter with nature according to our own idiosyncratic feelings, biases and intuitions. These kinds of things must be prevented in order to arrive at an “objective” and “unbiased” truth about nature.

Simply put, the scientific method is our proper means in acquiring an accurate knowledge about the cosmos. What will thus follow will be a brief commentary on the different methods used by the past and modern scientists in this sort of knowledge acquisition. We will discuss briefly how these then-accepted “scientific methods” operate, and how they fail to give an accurate picture of the scientific method.

Inductivism

During the early seventeenth century, Baconian inductivism was considered the scientific method. It was called as such because it was created by Francis Bacon and it employed inductive reasoning. In being inductive, its procedures start from observations of particular instances and ends with a generalized conclusion about the various particular instances. It arrives at general statements which are based on empirical observations. Inductivism however could still be traced back to Hippocrates and to thinkers such as David Hume.

A classical example of inductive reasoning is the following: “Swan 1 is white. Swan 2 is white. Swan 3 is white… Swan N is white. Therefore, all swans are white.” In the example, the generalized statement (conclusion or theory) is based on the particular empirical observations. This is the most common mode of thinking.  The conclusions can be subject for improvement as it becomes hypothesis or starting points for other investigations.

Basically, the aim of the inductive method is to collect numerous data and observations of physical processes as much as humanly possible in order to arrive at a reliable natural law (generalized conclusion). Although this method works in many instances, it cannot be the ultimate method for science. It still assumes a very dangerous belief which states that the properties of “some” members of a class is applicable to “all” the members of that class as well. This is logically fallacious. For instance, the example above presents an erroneous declaration that “All swans are white.” Aside from the fact that not all swans are white, we cannot declare that all swans are white after observing let’s say only 500 swans. What happened in this instance is that the possibility of the existence of a black swan is put into demise. The procedure takes for granted the idea that one cannot declare something about an entire class if not “all” of its members are studied. Simply put, one cannot project observed regularities to unobserved cases.               

An inductivist may argue that it is enough to study only a good number of a class and generalize about the entire class because nature has uniform cosmic operations. Nature possesses some sort of “uniformity” that enables us to predict the future through the past observations, or give a characterization to unobserved cases through observed cases. And this is the inductive argument; to prove the uniformity of nature because you know that it is uniform. Now in logic, this is begging the question. But nonetheless, this preconception of inductivism holds strong. It is undeniable that natural processes follow some kind of pattern which undoubtedly makes the presumption of a uniform nature highly plausible. But although it stands strong, it does not suffice the deficiency of Inductivism as it still faces other problems. For one, science deals with concepts and explanatory theories that cannot be directly observed, such as the theories of forces, fields and subatomic particles. No matter how rigorous an inductivist may be, in no way will he be able to infer a generalized theory from the data he may have examined because there is not perceivable data to be gathered in the first place. If inductivism is the correct scientific method, then purely mathematical theories or any highly theoretical laws cannot be legitimate science.    (to be continued next meeting…)  

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