Technology and Baked Beans, where is the science? David Miller on page 40 of Critical Rationalism, A Restatement and Defence (1994) states: Applied science is more like history than it is like theoretical science, in that when we are interested in applications we take the laws of physics for granted and search for appropriate initial conditions. How do we do this? How else than by conjecturing that some conditions will be appropriate (to produce, say, enough lift to get an aircraft aloft) and trying to show that our conjecture is mistaken? This elimination of tentatively conjectured initial conditions is characteristically done in one of two ways: theoretically - we use our scientific knowledge to rule out possibilities (that is, we exploit our knowledge) - and empirically - we try the conditions out, and see what happens. The latter method is of course decisive, but it is not using science; moreover, as any test pilot will remind you, it leaves a lot to be desired. What pure science does not do is to suggest any assemblage of initial conditions that would be efficacious in achieving the kinds of practical goals that we desire. It is the business of engineers to discover sets of initial conditions that typically yield the right results. They are not just sitting there in the physics textbooks! Efficient sets of initial conditions are often incorporated later in instruments such as potentiometers, watches, and refrigerators, or in other artefacts such as bottles of aspirin or nail-varnish remover. Miller also states on the same page: There is simply no such thing as the scientific knowledge required for the manufacture of a television set or a can of beans; no amount of science will tell us how to tackle the job - there may be countless ways that will succeed. All that science can do is to tell us what lines of approach we do well to avoid. That is, we do not rely on, or even apply, scientific hypotheses when we act; we exploit them.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 12:35:43 +0000
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