Theories: How Scientists Explain

Things
Realism
The difference between the nomological and causal
approaches to explanation is a deep one, because they
rest upon very different ideas about what science can
achieve.

Nomological theories believe that all we can hope to do is

describe the world as we find it in experience,
causal theorists believe we can go deeper, penetrating the
hidden causal structure of the universe.

In philosophy of science, this argument is known as the

debate over realism in science.
 The dispute may be historically illustrated by the late 19th century
debate between atomists and anti- atomists. since the late 18th
century, widespread acceptance has been gained by the theory that
various observable phenomena such as the behavior of gases could not be
explained by supporting that objects were composed of infinitesimally
small particles called atoms. yet ,how to interpret the concept of atoms
remained unclear.

 In one camp where the positivistic, led in this battle by the distinguished
physicist Ernst Mach(1838-1916), who argued that because atoms could
not be seen, belief in their existence was faith, not science.

 The atomist Mendeleev’s(1834-1907) view is a realist view of inferred

entities and processes: behind observation lies a realm of unseen but real
things about which science theorizes; observation are regarded as evidence
for the underlying causal structure of the universe.

 The most common form of antirealisms is instrumentalism, which holds

the scientific theories are merely tools instruments by which human
being come to grips with nature. if a theory predicts and explain events,
we retain it as useful, if it fails to predict and explain, we discard it.
 Realist Van Frassen(1980) say that “science aims to give us, in its theories, a
literally true story of what the world is like and acceptance of a scientific theory
involves the belief that it is true”.

 According to Antirealists “science aims to give us theories which are

empirically adequate; and the acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that
it is empirically adequate”.

 Science explain the world with theories, whether they are regarded as true
(the causal-realist view) or merely useful ( Nomological-antirealist
view ). However the study of the nature of scientific theories is the least settled
area of philosophy of science today(savage,1990).

 savage identifies three broad approaches to many variation within-

 1.The Syntactic View - Holding that theories are axiomatized collections of

sentences.

 2.The Semantic View - Holding that theories are counterfactual models of the world.

 3.View called Naturalism, Holding that theories are amorphous collections of

Ideas, values,practices and exemplars.
 Syntactic view
 Logical positivist divided the language of science into
three sets of terms: observational, theoretical and
mathematical terms. unsurprisingly ,they given priority to
observational terms.
 The bedrock of science was protocol sentences –
“Descriptions of the nature that contained only
observation terms.”
 putative generalization from the data - candidate law of
nature – axioms that contained only theoretical terms
connected by logico-mathematical terms.

 Official definition given by positivist-

Mixed sentences containing atheoritical term and a
observational term to which it was linked.
• The resulting picture of science resembles a
layer cake. On the bottom, representing the only
reality for positivists, were observational terms,
on the top were purely hypothetical,
theoretical terms organized into axioms, in
between were sandwiched the operational
defnition connecting theory and data.
• Ex. F =M X A
• HERE- F (force), M(mass) and A (acceleration )
are theoretical term. we do not observe them
directly ,but we must define them in terms of
something we do observe. like mass is defined
as weight of an object at sea level.
 Semantic view
 The semantic approach regards theories as abstract
mathematical structure that apply not to do the world as it
is but to an idealized world purged of irrelevant
consideration.
 A scientific theory is not about the real world as we
experience it, but about abstract ,idealized models.
Ex. A theory of paired association learning describes an
ideal learner as untroubled by factor such as time of the
day or personal stress that surely affect the memory-
performance of actual subject.

 Many of the greatest experiments in physics were thought

experiments never carried out in actuality.
Ex. Einstein built his theory of relativity on many such
experiments.
 Naturalistic view
• Naturalistic approaches to science emerged from
the field of history of science. instead of looking
at scientific theories as abstract objects,
historians examine how science changes
,revealing the human dimension of science.
• According to kuhn-science is practiced by
communities of scientist , not by isolated men
and women. to understand working science ,then
,we must understand the scientific community
and its shared norms, which together constitute
is called normal science .