ToK Prescribed Titles (2010) Question 5

“What separates science from all other human activities is its belief in the provisional nature of all conclusions” (Michael Shermer, www.edge.com). Critically evaluate this way of distinguishing the sciences from other areas of knowledge?

The essence of the Q: The focus is on 'science', but you have to compare the Natural and the Human Sciences, especially the method that scientists use to reach their conclusions. Once again, you'll need to grapple with the problem of induction; the idea of verification and falsification and the thought that science only presents its theories with a high degree of probability. What does it mean to say that scientific conclusions or theories are 'provisional'? Doesn't this idea undermine science and everything that is based on scientific knowledge? Doesn't the statement explode all the assumptions we make about science and harm the objectivity and certainty that it appears to give to us? What other 'activities' is Shermer thinking about here? And is he implying that there are certain intellectual activities or AoKs that provide more certain conclusions than science? Or is he implying that knowledge in the 21st Century is becoming relative: everybody is permitted to reach their own 'provisional' conclusions and we have to get along somehow.

Knowledge Issues: Are scientific conclusions purely rational? To what extent are scientific conclusions only 'provisional'? How far does mathematical knowledge give more certainty to scientific conclusions? Can science provide an objective view of the world? In what way do our assumptions drive our conclusions? Is all knowledge 'provisional'? Can the scientific method preserve us from relativism? Are 'provisional' conclusions necessarily subjective? Does the provisional nature of knowledge lead to national/cultural/personal conflict? How can knowledge help us to tolerate differences of opinion/conclusions?

Approaches: one of the main differences between the Natural and Human Sciences is the object of study: while the Natural Sciences observe and experiment on the world of nature, the Human Sciences focus more on human behaviour. Humans are, arguably, less predictable and stable than the natural world, so the conclusions about our behaviour should be more provisional than the conclusions reached, for example, about the atomic properties of hydrogen. However, if you take account of Quantum Theory, then even the conclusions about the physical world become highly provisional - reality is no longer deterministic and mechanistic and all our conclusions about this reality end up being provisional. Is this what Shermer is thinking about? Now take each of the other AoKs in turn and you find that all of them, except Mathematics, provide 'provisional' conclusions about their objects of study: the Arts provide only provisional judgements about music and art and these judgements are subject to change over time (can there ever be a tradition of great art?); History can only provide a provisional account of the past since we can never have all the relevant material about past events at any one time and surely the method of selecting what counts as history is highly subjective and shaped by our present cultural and national biases (can we change the past by manipulating the present?); Ethics, perhaps, presents the most provisional of all conclusions: although we have a global code of ethics (the UN-based Human Rights code), not every nation on the planet subscribes to it. When it comes to worldwide problems, such as tackling nuclear disarmament, nations reach conclusions based on their own agendas. When it comes to national problems, such as how to allocate funds to education and health, there is a suggestion that politicians make decisions based on their own political needs (ie. will the decision get me votes to stay in power?), rather than the needs of the populace. When it comes to the sphere of personal morality, such as in deciding if a poor person should steal medicine from pharmacy to help his ailing child, there will be mixed views again. Does this mean that every branch of knowledge ends up in relativism? That there are no right or wrong answers? Indeed, are there no answers at all except the ones I decide for myself - of course, you're allowed to decide your answers for yourself. Can we ever agree on the same conclusions in the fields of Art, History, Ethics and the Sciences? How?