A simple way to think about science

Physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, engineering, computing, and artificial intelligence all fall under the umbrella term: "science". What is science?

I got a C in physics and biology at school and a D in chemistry. Back then, science to me was confusing and largely inaccessible; I just didn't get what was going on and found science to be both daunting and overly complicated.

This post is about a way to think about science which simplifies things, makes it easier to understand, and has personally helped me develop a deeper understanding of this mysterious thing people call science.

This post also asks the question: OK, but does science take away from the beauty, meaning and purpose in the world? The answer for me is a resounding no.

Finally, it also asks the question: if science is so good, will it replace other ways of thinking, like philosophy or the arts? Again, the answer is no. Is there a need for people in science to learn about philosophy and the arts? In fact, yes there is!

Good explanations

As humans we absolutely love to attribute cause and effect to things, people and places.

As far we know, all of humanity looks for causes in the world in most places and at most times. We have explained the weather through Gods, human behaviour through inborn sin or as evolved social animals, and we design our political systems based on our tacit assumptions of what it means to be human.

The physicist David Deutsch traces these developments back arguing that we are always seeking to understand the concrete world around us through our abstract explanations (1). He suggests that science is nothing more than another explanation about the world, but that it generally represents a better explanation than what came before.

This is because of it's emphasis on empirical evidence, deductive* theory, and a culture of fallibilism - the recognition that anyone can be wrong because they are human.

For all the complicated mathematics and equations of physics, chemistry and biology, we may zoom out and simply say:

science is simply our best guess about how things are working in the world, and we test our guesses against others over time; we encourage criticism to improve our ideas and recognise that everybody has the ability to be wrong because they are human.

Deutsch argues, then, that we will always explain the world. Because of the reasons above, science is a better explanation - a good explanation.

Science can only deserve the term "good explanation" if it remains sceptical of itself, gives empirical evidence, encourages fallibilism and criticism, freedom of speech and inquiry, and humbly recognises that it us - human beings - who are guessing about the world.

Our guesses and theories about the world are what Karl Popper has called theory laden. Put simply, we have our own biases built into every idea we think up, every scientific guess and theory.

Science must strive for objectivity - to be disinterested, removed, balanced - but this an ideal; the reality is much more complex, messy, biased, and human.

Good explanations, then, simply mean making better guesses. To me, this is a good summary of what science is about, whether you label it with fancy sounding words like physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, engineering, computing, or artificial intelligence.

Of course we need the labels and they are useful, but they can also obscure the central idea that: what is happening is simply making guesses about the world. Moreover, we're trying to give good reasons for these guesses, while remaining open to other competing guesses, and sceptical of those guesses put forward without evidence that we can see, infer, deduce etc.

Does science take away beauty, meaning and purpose from the world?

One criticism of science is that it takes the beauty out of the world, the meaning, the purpose. For me it has been quite the opposite: a scientific mindset encourages curiosity about how things in the world work and if anything, this actually encourages me to see the beauty, meaning and purpose in the world.

The idea that the world is meaningless or that science takes away meaning for me is a bit silly. Meaning is all around us, just look at the way trees grow, how dogs bark, how humans create movies, works of art, and fall in love!

Science is about explaining these things, and in my view does not remove the beauty, meaning or purpose; if anything it actually adds to it - looking at the world with a scientific eye is to be astounded at how amazing the world in which we live in actually is!

When you realise that you're a human being made up of cells that you cannot see and that these cells work in a very similar way across all animal species including bacteria that you cannot see, then that really is something to be amazed at!

Our cells go through life and death cycles and are constantly recycling themselves while we go about our day to day lives. Part of us is constantly dying and being reborn and we have no idea it is going on as we walk through the isle in Tesco.

This is just one example of the wonder that looking through the microscope and applying rationality gives us (although, it is actually the case that I have never looked down a microscope! But I have read a wonderful short book by a cell biologist who discovered how cell cycles work and who puts forward the idea that science adds to our sense of beauty, meaning and purpose, not takes away from it! (2)

Will science ever make other schools of thought like philosophy or the arts redundant?

If science is such a good explanation for things, do we need other ways of thinking? Will science replace philosophy or the arts?

No, it won't.

A scientific mindset is a combination between curiosity and scepticism. And yet this is not the only mindset worth having.

The purpose of philosophy, for example, is to ask questions we currently possess no answer for, to ask about what things mean, how they relate to us, what we think about them, and if they are true, how we will react to that (3).

Or the arts, which asks us to look toward our history or the history of others, to read about ideas and to take the perspective of other people in other places. There will always be a place for this kind of thinking, and science will never make other ways of thinking redundant.

Orwell wrote that he who control the past controls the present (4). Indeed, there will always be a demand for people to understand the story of what came before, or how we got to where we are today, no matter how far our science and technology takes us.

In fact, the further we develop probably drives up the demand for people to understand how far we've come and what other people have been through paving the way for us, or to attempt to learn from the mistakes that were made along the way.

That said, humanities graduates are not exactly in the demand in the sense of a economically booming job market.

Science, the arts and education

There are always positive gains to be made for scientists interested in the arts, and artists interested in science. What scientists bang on about at first seems complex and inaccessible, but once we realise that they are just trying to explain the world as humans always have done, we may find their ideas more accessible.

Of course, good writing can help with this and thanks to a global world of feedback and cheap printing costs writing styles have improved. I think that ideas really are more accessible than they are compared to times gone by, both conceptually and economically.

So, by my estimation, whether education by traditional reading, listening to podcasts or watching YouTube, there has never been a better time to understand scientific concepts or those ideas in the arts.

It's been helpful to me to imagine complex things are simply our best guesses about how things are, and that I think is a useful broad definition of what science is, and what it attempts to do. It is crucial not to forget about the arts, which can generally each us things science cannot**

Notes

*for something to be deductive it simply means: we have an idea about something in the world, then from it we make predictions. This is opposite to inductive, where we observe something in the world, and then generate our idea about what is going on.

** that said, some of the best books I've ever read are when we apply scientific concepts to the arts, or when artists discuss science. Examples include:

C. P. Snow, The two cultures (1959)

Jared Diamond, Guns, germs and steel: The fate of human societies (1999)

Steven Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2012)

Michael Pollan, How to change your mind: What the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness... (2019)

Jonathon Haidt, The righteous mind (2012)

Richard Dawkins, The selfish gene (2016)

Charles Darwin, The descent of man (1872)

References

David Deutsch, The beginning of infinity (2011)

Paul Nurse, What is life? (2020)

Isaiah Berlin, The power of ideas (2000)

George Orwell, 1984 (1949)