Indeed, it is so easy to show that science roots in philosophical assumptions and has philosophical implications that it is hardly worth pointing out. Then again, it is often the painfully obvious that gets glossed over.
Science is a human pursuit .. philosophy helps us humans in understanding how thinking varies across the set of 'healthy' (normal) thinking human minds.
Until the role of the scientist's thinking is objectively re-integrated into science, the influences of philosophical worldviews/ideologies held by them, is purposefully regarded neutrally, yet distinct from, the resulting outcomes.
Catholic Philosophy said:
Try an exercise. Are the "empirical curves" wholly empirical? If they are, what does that mean?
(Depends entirely on what your mean by 'empirical').
Catholic Philosophy said:
Could such a graph be considered a scientific hypothesis? If it is a hypothesis, what would that mean? If not, why not? These questions -- whose answers stand coordinate with different conceptions of what a scientific method looks like -- bring us into the domain of philosophy.
So?
That question is also mostly irrelevant when it comes to producing a graphical representation of operationally interdependent quantities.
Catholic Philosophy said:
The sort of textbook description (if there is just one) of science may do little more than impede scientific progress. A mature scientific theory is a hypothetico-deductive system, and the matter of empirical testability is anything but straightforward. One could say that a scientific hypothesis is empirically testable if it implies testable statements or if it is implied by higher-level hypotheses with testable consequences. In no case are hypotheses directly confronted with data sets, since even seemingly naked observations are generally theory-laden.
All of science's conclusions are inferences and a properly formed hypothesis' test results are accepted as being objectively real.
There's no
'ifs' (implying assumptions) called for.
Human
perceptions are integrated with being human, but that doesn't make them real.
Objectively produced observations and their hypotheses, contain the necessary information needed to track back to explicit (deliberately made) assumptions made along the way.
Hidden, or 'undistinguised' assumptions, are a different (human) matter.
Catholic Philosophy said:
Moreover, theory selection often comes down to philosophical considerations like economy, elegance, and aesthetics. For example, Einstein knew either classical mechanics had to go or else classical electrodynamics, and he chose to keep classical electrodynamics out of a philosophical preference for field theories. Or take another example: Given two theories of anything like equal explanatory value, the more economical theory is bound to prevail.
Since the goal of theory is to understand, and the simplest theory that agrees with data is the best path to understanding, then that's clearly the best theory.
The idea that this all leads to 'how things
actually work' is distinguishable as being just another belief .. as if the universe was a simulation made by a fairly inexpert programmer who therefore had to
'keep it simple'.
Catholic Philosophy said:
Take another example of great importance, namely: Given the standard operationist interpretation of relativity, where does the concept of observer occur in the union of all Lorentz-covariant theories?
In the mind of the operationalist, of course! .. Simple!
