Realism:  What science seems to be telling us.
The hypothesis we are examining here is that we can expect to make progress if we pursue the scientific method.  The progress we have already made in the physical and biological sciences using this methodological approach is impressive.  We can claim that the biophysical paradigm is very highly coherent, internally consistent and systematic.  Certainly much still remains to be discovered (see, as a recent and readable survey, Maddox, J, What Remains to be Discovered, Macmillan, 1998 - Sir John Maddox was twice editor of Nature, so can be taken as a considerable authority).  But, on the whole, our physical and biological sciences talk the same language and subscribe to the same general and apparently rather complete story (theory or paradigm) of how the (biophysical) world works.  It is a story which makes very considerable sense of what we think we can see of the universe.  It may well still be wrong, but so much of it actually works and fits together that it cannot be substantially misconceived;  incomplete, certainly, but not fundamentally wrong.

Application of the Scientific Method

There are (at least) three rather curious conundrums, however, in the present scientific paradigm from the point of view of the scientific method and its application to social science.

  1. the Theory of Evolution (natural competition and selection), on which rests a substantial part of our ecological and environmental understanding, as well as explanations of higher animal embryo development etc., is (the only?) scientific theory not capable of falsification - and thus is not consistent with the scientific method.  Karl Popper himself argued that the theory of evolution was not capable of scientific falsification and therefore must be considered a pre-scientific or a-scientific theory.  One must either believe it or not.  It cannot be tested (and thus cannot be proved).  So, the classical exposition of the scientific method itself is incomplete, then.  It is not the only recipe for progress and understanding (whatever progress and understanding might be).

  2. The theory of evolution and natural selection is nothing more than a plausible story of how we came to be here - but it is a very good story, which is both substantially coherent (it hangs together and makes logical sense) and consistent with our observations of the world.  It allows us to explain how things came to be.  But it does not allow us to make predictions about what they will become. So it is not a science in the strict sense that science requires there to be a symmetry between explanation and prediction, on the grounds that unless we can test the predictions, we cannot be sure of our explanations.  So, perhaps the theory of evolution is better suited to our conception of what a good social science ought to look like, then?
     
  3. the Laws of Thermodynamics - which are a major part of our collection of incomplete but very widely workable and well-fitted science - say, in prosaic terms, that any closed system will run down and dissipate into chaos - maximum entropy - complete disorder.  Indeed, that is how we define total disorder and absence of anything see-able, tangible or identifiable - absolute zero, the tabula rasa, absolute simplicity.

  4. But, what we see in the Universe, the world, natural and biological life forms, the human race appears to be working in the very opposite direction - towards more order, more complexity.  How come?  Well, either what we are dealing with is not a closed system, and is continually being replenished with massenergy from somewhere beyond our ken (which we might want to call god); or what we see is so far from equilibrium that we cannot yet see the dissipation into chaos happening.  Or, of course, both at the same time.
    This second thesis - that chaos and complexity are far-from-equilibrium conditions and states which betray patterns and processes which are emergent phenomena (generated from interactions and behaviours of whole systems rather than simply being sums of parts) and which are locally stable so long as they remain within certain (but mostly unknown) boundaries, but which are (possibly) ephemeral and unsustainable in the grand order of things - is explored (inter alia) by Fritjof Capra in the Web of Life, Flamingo, 1997 (well worth a read).  A similar conclusion is reached by David Deutsch (referenced in the main notes).
    How does this story work?  Far-from-equilibrium systems are better thought of as flow systems - a flow of something from one place (source) to another (a sink).  So, we all began as star stuff (Carl Sagan), born from the Big Bang of massenergy and processed through super nova explosions, solar system formation, and the enormously happy accident of one such planet circling one such rather small and insignificant star in the outer fringes of the western spiral arm of a rather insignificant galaxy (the Milky Way) being somehow well suited to the emergence of biological life forms.  But, the sun is running down.  So, too, we think, is the Universe - though whether it is contracting or expanding is still open to question.  But, either way, the system will run down eventually.  So the Laws of Thermodynamics are safe and work, but while they are working the flow systems through which they work generate a lot of heat and light, and a lot of gravity and mass, and a lot of motion and happening, a lot of emergent phenomena.  Simple, isn't it?
    Well, no, it isn't.  It is massively complex and interactive.  It is what the mathematicians call a chaotic system - its outcomes cannot be predicted.  But it can be modeled, represented as an analogue or digital reflection of the processes at work.  We can build models of wave and current systems and watch their behaviour, and then test our models by changing the states and circumstances and see how the flow systems of our models behave then.  And, so long as our models have enough of the 'truth' embodied in them, they can then be used to help us both understand the systems we live in and help us live in them better.
    A good example of the sorts of models we are talking about here is the Mandelbrot set and the fractal patterns such sets produce.  You know those wonderful complex patterns that replicate but never exactly repeat themselves?  Well, they are the product of Mandelbrot sets - dynamic and interactive equations which are deceptively simple but whose solutions (the patterns) are a never ending flow of related but different outcomes, which are path-dependent - their present shape and character depends on where they have come from.  These patterns (which we can call emergent phenomena - like life) are subject to boundary conditions - if the particular parameters of the equations which generate them are set in one way, then one sort of pattern to the patterns (called an attractor) is generated.  But if the parameters are changed (which could be a consequence of feedback lops from the patterns themselves) beyond certain limits, then the attractor also changes - and the patterns disappear into chaos until a new attractor becomes established and a new set of patterns emerge.
    David Deutsch describes these systems as follows:  ìunder special circumstances the stupendously complex behaviour of vast numbers of particles resolves itself into a measure of simplicity and comprehensibility.  This is called emergence:  high-level simplicity ëemergesí from low level complexity.  High level phenomena about which there are comprehensible facts that are simply not deducible from low-level theories are called emergent phenomena.î  (Deutsch, op cit., p.20-1).
     
  5. A New Aspect on the world?:

  6. Meanwhile, the quantum mechanics and particle physicists have made some remarkable discoveries of the way the fundamentals of our existence - the sub-atomic particles - seem to behave, which call into question the traditional and seemingly obvious assumptions about what is fact and what is fiction. The quantum mechanics and particle physicists are the scientists exploring the fundamental nature of matter and energy.  They are puzzled by their present understandings of these things. For an account of their puzzles, see, for example, Maddox (op cit.) or John Gribbin: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, Black Swan, 1991, and other titles by the same author.  A key part of their puzzle is the results of their Aspect and double-slit experiments,  which are set up to determine whether light is really a particle or a wave - the classical scientific method in action, aimed at discovering the fundamental properties of our existence.
    The following account of the Aspect experiment is taken directly from John Gribbin's book: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat (p 2 - 4), with my own emphasis in italics, and my own comments as footnotes.
    "In the world of quantum mechanics, the laws of physics which are familiar from the everyday world no longer work.  Instead, events are governed by probabilities.  A radio active atom, for example, might decay, emitting an electron, say, or it might not.  It is possible to set up an experiment in such a way that there is a fifty-fifty chance that one of the atoms in a lump of radioactive material will decay in a certain and that a detector will register the decay if it does happen.  Schrodinger, as upset as Einstein about the implications of quantum theory, tried to show the absurdity of those implications by imagining such an experiment set up in a closed room, or box, which also contains a live cat and a phial of poison, so arranged that if the radioactive decay does occur then the poison container is broken and the cat dies. In the everyday world, there is a fifty-fifty chance that the cat will be killed, and without looking in the box we can say, quite happily, that the cat inside is either alive or dead.
    But we now encounter the strangeness of the quantum world.  According to the theory, neither of the two possibilities open to the radioactive material, and therefore to the cat, has any reality unless it is observed.  The atomic decay has neither happened nor not happened, the cat has neither been killed nor not killed, until we look inside the box to see what has happened.  Theorists who accept the pure version of quantum mechanics say that the cat exists in some indeterminate state, neither alive nor dead, until an observer looks into the box to see how things are getting on. Nothing is real unless it is observed.
    The idea was anathema to Einstein, among others. "God does not play dice," he said, referring to the theory that the world is governed by the accumulation of outcomes of essentially random "choices" of possibilities at the quantum level.  As for the unreality of the state of Schrodinger's cat, he dismissed it, assuming that there must be some underlying "clockwork" that makes for a genuine fundamental reality of things.  He spent many years attempting to devise tests that might reveal this underlying reality at work but died before it became possible actually to carry out such a test.  Perhaps it is as well he did not live to see the outcome of one line of reasoning that he initiated.
    In the summer of 1982, at the University of Paris-South, in France, a team headed by Alain Aspect completed a series of experiments designed to detect the underlying reality below the unreal world of the quantum.  The underlying reality - the fundamental clockwork - had been given the name "hidden variables", and the experiment concerned the behaviour of two photons or particles of light flying off in opposite directions from a source.  It is described fully in Chapter Ten, but in essence it can be thought of as a test of reality. The two photons from the same source can be observed by two detectors, which measure a property called polarization.  According to quantum theory, this property does not exist until it is measured. (1)  According to the hidden variable idea, each photon has a "real" polarization from the moment it is created.  Because the two photons are emitted together, their polarizations are correlated with one another.  But the nature of the correlation that is actually measured is different according to the two views of reality.
    The results of this crucial experiment are unambiguous. The kind of correlation predicted by the hidden variable theory is not found; the kind of correlation predicted by quantum mechanics is found, and what is more, again as predicted by quantum theory, the measurement that is made on one photon has an instantaneous effect on the nature of the other photon. Some interaction links the two inextricably, even though they are flying apart at the speed of light, and relativity theory tells us that no signal can travel faster than light. (2)  The experiments prove that there is no underlying reality to the world. "Reality", in the everyday sense, is not a good way to think about the behaviour of fundamental particles that make up the universe; yet at the same time those particles seem to be inseparably connected into some indivisible whole, each aware of what happens to the others."
    As you might expect, these results are so curious as to raise considerable suspicion amongst scientists.  Have they been careful enough in the design and implementation of the experiments?  So they try again, and again and again.  Surely this cannot be right?  But it is reliably replicated time and again - it is what actually happens.  What, then, is the explanation?  Or, if not explanation, what are the possible implications?



    1.  This fact (that is, logically valid deduction from the maths of quantum mechanics), stems from the principle which can be thought of as the foundation of quantum mechanics:  the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle. This is the principle which says that it is impossible to determine both the position and the direction of travel of a particle at the same time.  More exact determination of one property necessarily destroys the accuracy of measurement of other properties.  The simplified reason is that determination of the position requires the interaction of some energy source with the light particle itself, which thereupon necessarily alters the speed and direction of travel of the particle (its velocity). The property of polarization concerns the so-called "spin" of particles, which is indeterminate until the light particle is stopped (detected).
    I conjecture that there is an equivalent principle in social science - the more exactly we seek to determine the character and culture of an individual or group, the less we can know about their contexts and circumstances and thus about the way they will behave.  This is true since the more we examine people or groups, the more we necessarily alter their contexts and circumstances, and vice versa.
    2.    The holy grail of current theoretical physics is to reconcile Einstein's relativity theory (which so accurately explains and predicts the behaviour of the macro universe (stars, galaxies and the way light and other electromagnetic waves are affected by gravity) that it cannot be substantially wrong) with quantum mechanics - the theory which so accurately explains and predicts the behaviour of sub-atomic particles.  Gribbin's sequel to In search of Schrodinger's Cat - Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1995, describes some of the searches for this holy grail: a grand unified theory (GUT) or theory of everything (ToE).
Implications for a committed neoclassical (modern) social scientist

Well; we certainly seem to be very close to reaching the limits of our capacity for understanding, if the latest efforts of the particle physicists and quantum mechanics are any guide.  It is simply inconceivable that these people have got the world substantially wrong - far too much fits with their theories, and far too many of their predictions about the way the world works are not only born out in practice, but are made to work in practice too - lasers being one obvious example.  Yet, at root, their understandings seem quite ridiculous, or else to be very close to glimpsing an unobservable god of some sort.  The scientific method seems to have failed us.  Or, rather, we need a little more than simply a conjecture and an experiment in order to make sense of the world.  We need a metaphysic, because our old one, which we thought our sciences would reveal, seems to be either broken or non-sensical.

Surely there is some story we could tell to make some sort of sense of these incredible but incontrovertible findings?  Well, yes, there probably is - those who are searching for the GUT or ToE certainly believe so.  But will they be able to tell us mere mortals and non-physicists what they have discovered?  Perhaps, so long as people like John Gribbin are around to interpret their findings.  And what, then, might be the implications?  How could we possibly tell unless we have some idea of what the GUT or ToE might look like?  Presently, the main chance of discovering the ToE seem to involve notions of eleven or so dimensions,  rather than the three of space and one of time, so the interpretation is going to be pretty fierce if this turns out to be correct.

Well, again:  I have been worrying about the apparent end result of the pursuit of the scientific method as far as fundamental physics is concerned.  I have my own theory about what the nature of the ToE will look like, and here it is - Knowledge: what it means and how we come by it. (a pdf file of a nine page essay).  I am willing to bet that this will turn out to be not far removed from the eventual solution to the ToE problem.

Meanwhile, there are some curious,  possibly spurious, parallels between what we think we know about our biophysical worlds and what we experience in our social worlds - the objects of our social enquiries:

Back to main notes.