Future Science Epistemology: A Historical Examination and Reflection on the "Uncertainty" of Scientific Knowledge: (A Historical Examination and Reflection on the Uncertainty of Scientific Knowledge)

Author: Wang Rongjiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: Traditional epistemologists pursue certainty knowledge with universal necessity. They strive to obtain self-evident axioms as the starting point of cognition and defend the certainty of knowledge through logical argumentation. Modern philosophers of science wonder whether there is a part of scientific knowledge that is certain and unchangeable under any conditions, and how it achieves such certainty. However, such efforts seem impossible (the spread of relativism). Scientific knowledge not only lacks the certainty we seek but seems to be heading toward its opposite—"uncertainty." How did this happen, and what does it mean? This book examines and interprets the history of philosophy of knowledge and the history of scientific thought from a specific perspective—the certainty and "uncertainty" of knowledge—to reveal the characteristics of the development of scientific thinking: from the ideal of pure logical rationality gradually to the practical rationality of the dialectical unity of complex experience and reason, logic and non-logic. The basic arguments of this book are as follows:
(1) Ancient Greek philosophers constructed and established a cognitive model for acquiring ideal certainty knowledge on the path of essentialist proofism: starting from what are called self-evident axioms and seeking deductive logical arguments to obtain certainty knowledge. From the Milesian school onwards, including Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all contributed to this cognitive model. It is precisely the scientific thinking established by ancient Greek philosophy that sowed the seeds for the later emergence of uncertainty in scientific knowledge.
(2) Modern scientific knowledge, exemplified by Newtonian mechanics and based on experience and induction, is probable rather than absolutely certain with deductive logical necessity. Although scientists and philosophers have attempted to defend the certainty of scientific knowledge, modern scientific knowledge based on experience and induction can only be empirical probability rather than logically proven certainty. If deductive logic is carried to its extreme, it will inevitably lead to skepticism and agnosticism regarding knowledge. At that time, most scientists only abandoned the absolutist theory of truth of proofism and advocated its fallibility theory (e.g., Newton), but did not give up the demand and effort to prove the certainty of scientific knowledge.
(3) The modern science reveals the inseparability of subject and object in the micro-world and the incompleteness of mathematical theories in mathematical foundations, highlighting the subjective and uncertain aspects of knowledge and fundamentally revealing the one-sidedness and limitations of the traditional mindset that pursues absolute certainty knowledge. Scientific knowledge has its subjective creative and unprovable aspects.
(4) The progression from foundationalism in logical positivism in the philosophy of science to Quine's holism and then to the relativism of the historical school reveals the subjective, relative, and non-logical aspects of scientific knowledge. However, this aspect of scientific knowledge is not the entirety of science, just as certainty is not the entirety of scientific knowledge. Different schools only see a certain aspect of science and generalize from it. All of this is the inevitable result of the Western thinking tradition, which starts from a certain real premise and habitually relies on deductive reasoning. In the thinkers' minds, there is only a logical reasoning movement from one to another. Thus, in their view, conclusions logically deduced from a real should be acknowledged and accepted, regardless of how one-sidedly reasonable they may be. Relativism in the philosophy of science is the logical deduction of the overall irrationality of science from the partial irrationality. It can be said that under a way of thinking that takes logical rationality as the criterion, from pursuing the absolute certainty of knowledge to acknowledging the absolute relativism and nihilism of knowledge, is a very natural outcome.
(5) Whether as axioms or hypotheses as premises for scientific cognition, or as logical reasoning under certain premises, all have presupposed unprovable beliefs. The rationality of such beliefs is relative and develops and changes with the deepening of cognition. Our understanding of nature is the theoretical expansion of certain worldviews under the guidance of logical rationality; humanity is also expanding new beliefs about the world through theoretical understanding of the world. In the process of transforming beliefs into knowledge, what truly plays a role is the non-mechanical, even non-logical intellectual creation of thinkers, and logical consistency is only an ideal direction and requirement. Although logical consistency is necessary, it cannot ultimately be fully achieved. The absolute certainty of knowledge pursued by epistemology has not ultimately been achieved, and thus it is impossible to present an argument that completely overcomes the claims of skepticism. However, this does not mean that we must adopt a skeptical relativism and agnosticism toward the reliability of knowledge. Certainty and skepticism constitute the two extreme attitudes toward the knowledge we acquire. Although skepticism provides deeper and broader intellectual space, its hypothetical requirement (unless we have absolute certainty about anything, unless we are absolutely free from the possibility of error, we should not claim knowledge of anything) is also unrealistic. Because even if we do not have absolute certainty about anything, we will inevitably make mistakes, but our cognition has indeed advanced in this fallibilist theory. The history of epistemology shows that there is no unquestionable absolute certainty knowledge, and the possibility of knowledge is not necessarily dependent on such unquestionable absolute certainty. If we regard cognition as our reflection of the objective world, then the process of the objective world rising to theoretical knowledge under the guidance of ideal goals is the process of the subject constructing rationality, during which there are factors of falsity, irrationality, irrationality, and illegitimacy. We see that every revolution in the history of science has occurred in the process of revealing the one-sidedness and relativity of existing knowledge, whether in the objective world or subjective thinking, both are full of various possible uncertainties. In the past, cognition always discarded the uncertain factors of the object world and itself in thinking, constructed the certainty of the object world through the certainty in thinking, and thus achieved certainty in the understanding of the object world. Today, the simple, non-contradictory linear thinking no longer meets the needs of deepening cognition, and we must face the "uncertainty" that cannot be artificially excluded in the object world and subjective thinking, which constitutes the core of our epistemology and even our new ways of cognition and thinking. The impossibility of absolute certainty knowledge and the prominence of knowledge "uncertainty" are not the "death" of epistemology but its "rebirth." Future epistemology will neither be a purely normative defense of the certainty of knowledge nor a subjective and arbitrary description of "anything goes," but rather a consensus-based understanding and communication in the practice of cognition, thereby achieving a deeper understanding and refinement of human cognition. In such epistemology, we truly touch the depths of the objective world and our thinking.