Transcript Document 7358003

Research: Theory, Method, Practice
Stefan Arnborg, KTH
Courses FD3001: 7.5hp
DA2205: 3hp of 7.5
Examination: Presence on lectures with external lecturer
Homework: 2 papers:
DA2205: 2 from list
FDD3001: 2 from list, except 1 and 2
1: Self-presentation
2: Press Release
3: Grant Application
4: Paper Analysis
5: Fraud Investigation
6: Proposal Review
7: Media Event
8: Self presentation and press release
9: Elective (must be approved by me)
Norms of Academic Science:
Merton 1942
• C communism (or communitarianism)
• U universality: universal knowledge
• D disinterestedness: no personal stakes(except
honour)
• O originality: NEW knowledge
• S scepticism: try to falsify
• Merton’s context: relation between power and scientist in
dictatorships (Hitler, Stalin). Border between society and
science demarcated.
Post-Academic Science:
Ziman 2000
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•
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•
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P proprietarian ( IP, business opportunity)
L local: related to local network of stakeholders
A authoritarian: hierarchical control
C commissioned (researcher is ’consultant’)
E expert: role is problem-solver
• Ziman’s context: Universities are like any
corporations, and output directly economically
measurable. Globalization
• Etzkowitz: Triple Helix: Academy/Region/Industry
CUDOS, PLACE, or both?
Fuller(2000) criticized the idea that an
ancient CUDOS system was recently
replaced by Mode 2 or PLACE or triple
helix, since the two sets of norms have
(almost) always co-existed, as they do
today with occasional outburst of
activity to ‘change the balance’.
EXAMPLE: Kaiser Wilhelm Institute,
now Fraunhofer Institute.
What is Truth?
• Plato: Rationalistic, Cave simile, observations unreliable. Cf Meno.
• Aristotle: Deductive truth: What follows from true assumptions is true. Whats
opposite can be deductively refuted is true. (cf proof by contradiction,
statistical hypothesis tests) Aristotle: Inductive truth: What regularly obtains
is true (cf statistical inference)
• Peirce: What a community of scholars eventually agrees upon is Truth.
• Latour: Something is True if it cannot be resisted, tied into a network of
irresistible microsociological relations between humans, ideas and material
artefacts.(ANT)
Progress of Science
• Accumulation of observations, experiments and
theories (Francis Bacon, Comté). Naive positivism.
• Theories are prior to observations, the latter Confirm
(Carnap) or Falsify (Popper) theories. Logical
Positivism
• Scientific progress is revolutionary (Kuhn,
Feyerabend). Paradigms, or ANYTHING GOES.
Kuhn: Paradigms in Science
• Normal Science: Exemplar to take after,
filling in gaps, ’goldplating’
• Anomalies: Try to explain anomalies by
interpretation of experiments and
observations. No rejection of theory
• Crisis: Anomalies are serious enough to
reject theory and force a new PARADIGM.
• Typically, a new paradigm is not universally
but only gradually accepted.
Feyerabend - Against Method
Science is an essentially
anarchistic enterprise
The only principle that does
not inhibit progress is:
ANYTHING GOES
Hypotheses contradicting
well-confirmed theories give
us evidence that cannot be
obtained in other ways
If there is a driving force in
science, it is aesthetics.
Hawthorne and Placebo
• Clients of Healers & Homeopathists, subjects
in the ‘no-intervention’ group
can also see positive changes
• Is this pseudoscience?
(Kathy Sykes TV programmes)
• Brain’s reward system releases
signal substances that have the
same type of effect as drugs?
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Paradigm shifts in
mathematics?
• Environment: Computer and Biology
challenge. Internalized.
• Scientific Computing, SIMULATION
• Stochastic computations (MCMC)
• Neural and bioinspired computation?
This book argues that
conceptual metaphor
plays a central,
defining role in
mathematical
ideas within the
cognitive unconsciousfrom arithmetic and
algebra to sets and
logic to infinity in all of
its forms: transfinite
numbers, points at
infinity, infinitesimals,
and so on.
Is Praxiteles’ work already in the
marble?
NO: Structure of Science (and Truth) is
the outcome of a practice
Which claims can be resisted?
Which can be made?
Which allies can be brought in?
Which links resist?
Scientific truth defined
in centers of calculation
and verified in galleries of
a community of practice
extending through society
as an actor network
Callon, Latour ca 1985
Lyotard
• The post-modern condition:
Commissioned work for Montreal
Education authority - prophetic
• Fight against concept of ’Grand
Narrative’ as opposed to complex web
of ’micro-narratives’
Goals in Research, sketch:
• Humanities: Understanding Phenomena
• Social Sciences: Improve society
• Natural Science: Predict outcome of
experiments
• Mathematics:
1:Solve problems - prove theorems
2:Create Landscape in which theorems
can be defined and proved.
Qualitative Research
• Margaret Mead: Best known
(to American public) scientist
before Einstein
• Coming of Age in Samoa,
≈1925 - controversies settled
or not?
• Immersion, constructing
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Three Inconvenient Germans
• Karl Marx (1818-1883) Class,
Organization of Production, Revolution
Founder of latest state religions
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
Aesthetics revolutionized, existentialist
and post-modernity icon
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1938), discoverer
of the unconscious
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QuickTime™ and a
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Why Greek science??
• Well studied and documented
• Greek classicism shapes our way of
seeing the world.
• Greek society cruel: Slaves, Wars,
Racism,Oppression of women
(i.e., like Europe)
Thales -585
Anaximander 611-547
Anaximenes -502
Pythagoras 570-508
Parmenides 510Zenon 488Empedokles 450
Herakleitos 540-480
Anaxagoras 500-428
Protagoras 420
Demokritos 460-370
Sokrates 469-399, Antisthenes
Platon 428-348
Aristarkos
Aristoteles 384-322
Herodotos 425
Arkimedes -300 E
Euklides
Appolonius
Epikureos 342-270
Selevkos
Epiktetus 50-125
Hipparkos
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Poseidonius 100
Theory of Evolution
• First account by Anaximandros,
including sketch of natural selection
• Based on mechanistic view, not
Intelligent Design
• Restated by Empedocles
• Rejected by Aristotle as implausible.
Teleological explanation. Important
paradim shift (in ’wrong’ direction).
Modern theory of Evolution
• Based on careful collection of supporting observations
(many of which can also be found in Aristotle: Parts of
animals)
• Refutable by age of earth (Kelvin could not know about
heating by radioactivity ) and lack of understanding of
genetics (Mendel’s work had been unnoticed)
• Still considered somewhat daring, but (almost) only
remaining hypothesis.
Greek Astronomy
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Relied on Eastern knowledge (Persia, India,…)
Predict eclipses (Thales, 585 BC)
Sizes of earth, moon, the zodiac to within 1%
Size of sun : Aristarkos 180 times earth ->
Heliocentrism as a plausible model
• Poseidonius (teacher of Cicero):
Size of sun 6000 tim es earth (50% low)
Explanation of tidal water (sun, moon) made possible tidal water tables
Greek Astronomy
•
•
•
•
Relied on Eastern knowledge (Persia, India,…)
Predict eclipses (Thales, 585 BC)
Sizes of earth, moon, the zodiac to within 1%
Size of sun : Aristarkos 180 times earth ->
Heliocentrism as a plausible model
• Poseidonius (teacher of Cicero):
Size of sun 6000 tim es earth (50% low)
Explanation of tidal water (sun, moon) made possible tidal water tables
Astronomy
• Aristotle Hipparkus and Ptolemai geocentrists
• Appolonius: Defined both conic sections and
the epicycle system.
… and in the west?
• Copernicus: Sun might be the center because of its majestic
appearance?
• However, predictions based on heliocentrism inferior
• It took more than 100 years before Kepler saved the
heliocentric view by using Appolonius conic sections instead of
his epicycles.
If the heliocentricists had followed a scientific method, they
should have rejected their hypothesis.
Tycho Brahe’s system
• The moon and sun
circle around earth,
but planets around
the sun
• Absence of stellar
parallax indicates
geocentrism
• Also convenient
and safe wrt church
Atomism
• Not unique for Greek philosophers
• Democrit, Leukippos, from observations of life
cycles and chemical processes
• Epikuros combined it with an ethics of no
after-life, explicated in one of the great
antique works of literature, Lucretius ‘ De
Rerum Natura’, On the Order of Nature.
The ‘Dark ages’
• Greek science and literature survived in the Byzantine and
Muslim worlds
• Applied to rational analysis of theological problems (Ibn Rushd,
Ibn Sina, Ibn Khaldun)
• Grinding halt after destruction of Baghdad (1258) and conquest
of Constantinople (1453)
• Translated to Latin from Greek and Arabic (Plato, Aristotle)
• Aristotle surpasses Plato as ‘the Philosopher’,
treated as semi-god rather than human.
• Scholasticism - fascinating, but not in line with course
Islamic Science
• The first islamic law schools (ca 800)
developed the academic degree system
and CV concept (Doctor’s degree,
promotion and hat) which were taken
over by Bologna and Padua, and still
exist
Islamic Scholars
• Ibn Sina (Avicenna), ca 1000, practice
based medicine (antibiotics, vaccines
(inoculation).
• Ibn Rushd (Averroes), ca 1200,
precursor of scholasticism, mixing
‘axioms’ in the form of Quran
statements with observations, deriving
new truth by syllogism. Saved Aristotle.
Ibn Khaldun (ca 1360):
Muqqadimah
• Politician, social scientist, historian, economist.
• First statements of market theory, importance of
stable institutions, property right, stable currency
• First scientific Marxist (without political program):
Power and wealth distribution depends on how
production is organized
• ‘Anyone can have ideas, but only through words and
language can you convince’
Newton,
(1642-1727)
1665 - Alchemy
1666 - Calculus
1667 - Fellow, Trinity College
1669 - professor
1682-4 Principia
1689 - Parlamentarian
1692 - Opticks
1696 - Royal Mint
1703 - Royal Society
1733 - Daniel and Apocalypse
First modern or last ancient??
Cambridge Wranglers
-Created the math you studied:
Green, Stokes, Macauly, Routh
Maxwell, Larmor,
Cunningham, Dirac…
-Competitive math
examination aimed at ranking
candidates for fellowships --Appointments for life with no
particular duties -- often
awarded at age 20-25