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Berlian Permatasari(1300201)
Ceshilia Putri Palaguna(1300468)
INTERNATIONAL Syifa Qalbiyatul Layyinah (130698)
PROGRAM ON
SCIENCE
EDUCATION
2013
PM IS O
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Realism

Language

Reductionism

The End
Scientific Realism

* Scientific realism is the term used for the view that the objects with which
science deals are seperate from, and independent or our own minds.

* Scientific theories are therefore literal descriptions ( wether true/false)

of the external, objective world.

* Scientific realism involves two basic positions.

First, it is a set of claims about the features of an ideal scientific theory; an

ideal theory is the sort of theory science aims to produce.

Second, it is the commitment that science will eventually produce theories

very much like an ideal theory and that science has done pretty well thus far
in some domains.
Types of Reality
Phenomenological reality
Consensus reality
Non-reality
Reality and Observation

Protagoras
 Protagoras argued that all we
could know were the
sensations we received. We
could know nothing of what
was out there causing those
sensations.

Democritus
 Democritus insisted that
‘things’ existed independently
of our perception of them.
That is an equally logical view.
Example:

(1) ‘ I see the red ball in the box’. That is true or false depending
on whether my eyes see or taste. The sensations remain the same
initially, but my mind interpretes them as one thing or the other.

(2) By contrast, Democritus insisted that ‘things’ existed

independently of our perception of them. That is an equally
logical view, since the red ball surely continues to exist if I shut
my eyes.
Observation in Quantum Theory
* In term of scientific realism, there was a fundamental disagreement about quantum theory between Bohr and Einstein

 Einstein
On the other hand, took the view
that there was indeed a reality that
existed prior to our observation of
it. But, of course, it remains
essentially an unknown reality, since,
as soon as we try to observe it.

 Bohr
Bohr stated: “ What is there is
what we perceive, our observation
creates the reality of what we
observing
SCHONDENGER’S CAT

> SCHONDENGER WAS OPPOSED TO BOHR’S INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM THEORY.

> HE ILLUSTRATED HIS POINT BY SUGGESTING THIS THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:

Suppose one were to put a cat into a sealed box

along with a bottle of cyanide, which will be
smashed by a hammer if there is any decay of
radioactive substance within the box, is the cat
alive or dead..............(?)
Realist and anti-realist
Realist is someone who thinks that scientific theories
aim at describing the world as it is (of course,
within the limits of human epistemic access to
reality), while an anti-realist is someone who takes
scientific theories to aim at empirical adequacy, not
truth.
 You have the eye colour because you inherited DNA that
codes for eye colour
you have a fever because a virus is attacking your immune
system.
radiation from distant stars has a slightly lower frequency
than we expect, because the universe is expanding

These questions divide philosophers of science into scientific realists (who

believe in the reality of theoretical entities)
And anti-realists or instrumentalists (who believe that theoretical postulates are
just instruments for generating predictions) who do not.
Generalizations
Theory are generalizations, they attempt to
show and to predict across a wide range of actual
situations. Indeed the experimental nature of most
scientific research aims at eliminating irrelevant or
particular factors in order to be able to develop the
most general theory possible.
The ‘Miracle’ Arguments
David Hume's three assumptions :

 A miracle is an event that violates a law of nature.

 Law of nature are established on the basis of the
best and most extensive evidence available
 A wise person proportions belief to evidence
If a theory is succesfull (i.e. That we can make
accurete predictions). Which of the following
conclussions is more likely?
1. That the theory is successfull because it is “true”
in the sense that it of reflects reality.
2. That the theory is false : that it does not reflect
reality but just happen to work successfully.
The miracle argument says that realism about science is the best
explanation of the success of science, which would otherwise be
‘miraculous’. It is a special case, or special type of case, of ‘inference to
the best explanation’

The best Explanation example :

I hear scratching in the wall, the patter of little feet at
midnight, My cheese disappears—and I infer that a mouse
has come to live with me.

Here, the mouse hypothesis is supposed to be the best

explanation of the phenomena, the scratching in the wall, the
patter of little feet, and the disappearing cheese.
Language
Ludwig Wiggenstein
(Tracratus Logico-Philosophicus)
State that :

Where of we can not speak,

there of we must remain silent.

Science doesn’t make the atom DNA, nor shape the universe from the Bigbang.
Science is not the shame thing as world investigates.

Science is network of words, ideas, mathematical calculations, formula and

theoris. It is form a language.
Language is active in shaping experience, it is not
simply. We can understand scientific theory only
because the words and ideas in which it is express
are already familiar to us. If we misunderstand the
words, we fail to understand the theory.
The Important of language in science

aspect in the Natural Sciences that increases the importance of

language :
1. size and distance to objects or pieces of nature being
described,
2. the complexity of nature and restrictions of the human
brain, that ultimately demands the use of mathematics.
3. Mathematics can be considered a language on its own, and
is vital in many branches of the natural sciences, physics as
an example. In order to gain knowledge from experiments,
data needs to be collected, interpreted and processed in
language.
Clarity and Correspondence
Clarity
Clarity is a key feature in any language that is to convey
scientific theories accurately.
All such vague use of language gave the impression that the
speaker was pretending to offer a reason, but without any
concrete evidence, and therefore had a tendency to mislead.
Correspondence
The truth of stetement or theory depend on being able (at least
in theory) to check it against evidence for the physical
reality to which it corresponds
Dispositional Properties
The property which describe how something is
likely to behave in particular circumstances.

e.g : the glassware is easily broken.

dispositional properties of glassware is
“fragile”
Reductionist Language
 L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951) suggested that philosophical
problems would be solved if the language which is used was
more precise, and limited to statements for which there could
be evidence.
 There are two types of statements :
1. Analytic statement which is true by definition
e.g : the triangle has three sides
the frozen water is ice
2. Synthetic statement which is true by sensory data and
experience.
e.g : Ice will be melted at temperature of 2oC
railway line becomes longer when the
temperature increase
 The Logical Positivists
 It is a way of making language simple, transparent, and
scientific.
 it claims that:
 theology is literally ‘meaningless‘ since they are
neither matters of logic (and therefore true by definition a
priori) nor provable by empirical evidence

 Analytic propositions tell us nothing about the world.

They are true by definition, and therefore tautologies.

 Synthetic propositions are dependent upon evidence.

Therefore there can be no necessary synthetic propositions.
The Logical Positivists
Therefore, synthetic statement in the complex form
could be reduced to basic statement.

e.g : when temperature of 10L of gas increase from

20oC to 40oC, it makes the volume of gas will increase
to be 20L.

basic statement : the change of volume of gas is directly

proportional with the change of its temperature.
Reductionism
 Reductionism is an approach to understanding
the nature of complex things by reducing them
to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler
or more fundamental things.

e.g : human body is formed by cells, and cells

is formed by chemical compound, and
chemical compound is formed by atoms.
Types of Reductionism
Theoretical reductionism

Theoretical reduction is the process by which one

theory absorbs another.

For example : both Kepler's laws of the motion of

the planets and Galileo's theories of motion
worked out for terrestrial objects are reducible to
Newtonian theories of mechanics.
Types of Reductionism
Methodological reductionism

Methodological reductionism is the attempt to

reduce explanations to the smallest possible entities.

Methodological reductionism would thus hold that

the characteristics of somebody have to explained
by DNA mechanism. that an explanation based on
even smaller particles would be even better.
Types of Reductionism
Ontological reductionism

Ontological reductionism is the belief that reality is

composed of a minimum number of kinds of
entities or substances. In effect claiming that all
objects, properties and events are reducible to a
single substance.
Holism
- Holism, which claims that complex systems are
inherently irreducible, and more than the sum of
their parts, and that a holistic approach is needed to
understand them.
Emergentism
- Emergentism (or Emergence), which claims that
complex systems and patterns arise (emerge) out of
a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions
… Keep Spirit
Thank’s  !
For Watching