Future Science Epistemology (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 if there is a part of scientific knowledge that is certain and will not be revised 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 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: a gradual shift from the ideal of pure logical rationality to the practical rationality of a 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 was 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 tried 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 inevitably leads to skepticism and agnosticism regarding knowledge. At that time, most scientists merely abandoned the absolutist theory of proofism in favor of its fallibility thesis (e.g., Newton) but did not give up the demand or 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, highlighting the subjective and uncertain aspects of knowledge and fundamentally exposing the one-sidedness and limitations of traditional thinking that pursues absolute certainty. Scientific knowledge has its subjective creative and unprovable aspects.
(4) The progression in philosophy of science from logical positivism's foundationalism 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 its entirety, just as certainty is not the entirety of scientific knowledge. Different schools only see a part of science and generalize from it. All of this is an inevitable result of the Western thinking tradition, which starts from a certain real premise and habitually employs 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 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 judges everything by logical rationality, moving from the pursuit of absolute certainty of knowledge to the recognition of its absolute relativism and nihilism is a very natural thing.
(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 unfolding of certain worldviews under the guidance of logical rationality; at the same time, humans are expanding new beliefs about the world through theoretical understanding of it. In the process of transforming beliefs into knowledge, what truly plays a role is the non-mechanical, even non-logical intellectual creation of thinkers. 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 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 truly progresses in this fallibility. The history of epistemology shows that there is no such thing as 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 being elevated to theoretical knowledge by the subject is the process of the subject constructing rationality under the guidance of ideal goals, 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 involved discarding the uncertain factors of the object world and itself in thought, constructing the certainty of the object world through certainty in thought to achieve 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 objective world and subjective thinking. It constitutes the core of our epistemology and even our new way 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 mere normative defense of the certainty of knowledge nor a subjective and arbitrary description of "anything goes." Rather, it will be a consensus-based understanding and communication in the practice of cognition, achieving a deeper understanding and advancement of human cognition. In such epistemology, we truly touch the depths of the objective world and our thinking.