Chapter 3.                   Part C

         In the Empiricist model of human "knowing", the human mind notices how certain patterns of details keep re-occurring in some situations from one time that we encounter them to the next. When we notice a pattern of details in encounter after encounter with a familiar situation, then we make mental files, for perhaps "round things", "red things", "sweet things", or “crisp things”. Then we save the information about that situation-type in our memories. The next time we encounter that type of object or situation, we simply go to our memory files. There, by cross-referencing, we discover: "Apple. Ah! Good to eat." All generalizations are built up in this way. 

            To be complete here, we must also say that scientists now know most of the concepts that I use as I recognize things and respond to them are concepts that I was taught by the mentors and role models that I saw as a child. I didn't discover very many by myself. My childhood programming taught me how to cognize things. After that, almost always, I don't cognize things, only recognize them. (Why my childhood mentors programmed me in the ways that they did will be explored in upcoming chapters.)   

               

         Empiricists claim that all human knowing and thinking happens in this way. Watch the world. Notice the patterns that repeat. Store them up in memories. Pull the memories out and - when they fit - use them to make prudent decisions and to react effectively to life. Remember what works and keep trying. For individuals and nations, according to the Empiricists, that's how life goes. The most effective way of human life, the way that makes this process rigorously logical, is Science.

               

            There are arguments against this way of thinking about thinking, arguments against this model of how human thinking and knowing work, in other words. Empiricism is a way of seeing our selves and our minds that sounds logical, but it has its problems. 

            Opponents of Empiricism and Science have long asked: "When a human sees things in the real world and spots patterns in the events going on there, then makes statements about what she is spotting, what is doing the 'spotting'?" That human mind, and the sense-data-processing programs that it must already contain in order for it to be able to do these tricks that the empiricists describe, obviously came before any data processing could be done. What is this "equipment" and how does it work? Explain it to me. Philosophers of Science have had trouble explaining what this "mind" that does the knowing is, and thus what Science, the most rigorous form of knowing, is and is trying to do.

               

            For example, consider what it is that Science aims to achieve. What scientists want to discover, come to understand, and then use in creative ways in the real world are what are usually called “the laws of nature”. Scientists do more than simply observe the events in physical reality. They also strive to understand how these events come about and then to express what they understand in general statements about these events, statements expressed in mathematical formulae, chemical formulae, rigorously logical sentences in one of the languages of humans on this planet, or some other symbol system used by people for conveying their thoughts to other humans. A “natural law” statement must describe one of the ways in which reality works, and, to be scientific, the statement’s claims must be set down in a way such that these claims can be tested in the real world. 

       If your claims about this real-world truth that you have discovered are going to be worth considering, then scientists must be able to test those claims in some real, material way. Thus, any “natural law” statement that you make, to be of any practical use whatever, and to stand any chance of enduring, must first be expressed in some language or symbol system that humans use to communicate ideas with other humans. A theory or model that can be expressed only inside the head of its inventor will die with her or him.

       "Any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."

            (verbal statement of Newton's law of universal gravitation.)

              

                           

                   (mathematical formula expressing Newton's law of universal gravitation) 

                    

                               

                         

               (The Pythagorean Theorem, a mathematical law, but is it a scientific one?) 

            The big problem occurs when we try to analyze logically just how true statements like Newton’s Laws of Motion or Darwin’s Theory of Evolution are. Do statements of these laws express unshakeable truths about the real world or are they just temporarily useful ways of roughly describing what appears to be going on in reality, ways that people follow for a few decades while the laws seem to enable scientists to predict events in reality, but that then are revised or dropped when new problems that they can’t explain are encountered? 

         Many scientific theories in the last four hundred years have been revised or dropped altogether. Do we dare to say about any natural law statement that it is “true” in the unassailable way in which “5 + 7 = 12” is true or the Pythagorean Theorem is true?

               

         This debate is a hot one right up to the present time in Philosophy. There are many philosophers of Science who claim that scientific law statements, once they are supported by enough experimental evidence, can be considered to be true in the same way as valid math theorems are true. But there are also many who say the opposite. For people in this second group, all scientific statements are tentative. They believe that, given a bit of time, all such statements get replaced by new statements based on new models or theories.

               

       Note that anyone who argues that scientific law statements are only our latest guesses about what is going on in reality is arguing against the reliability of Empiricism and its whole way of seeing what human knowing is. This is so because Science is merely Empiricism applied in its most practical form. To say that, in principle, there can’t be ultimate truthfulness in any scientific law statements is to deny Empiricism.