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www.iop.org/journals/physed
Abstract
‘How Science Works’ is now the focus of the national science specifications
in English schools. This article is a brief introduction to the philosophy of
science from the Greeks to the present day that underpins this notion.
From September 2006, the emphasis for teaching title: ‘How do we know that we know what we
science at GCSE is on ‘How Science Works’. know?’.
This focus will also shape the revisions of the
AS and A2 specifications from September 2008. My truth is a dream unless my dream is
Ideas about how science should be done and why true; George Santayana
it works have changed over time. In essence,
Ridley in his book On Science [1] suggests that
this article is an introduction to the philosophy
there are many types of truth, which those of
of science that underpins the notion of ‘how
science stand beside:
science works’. The author is a physicist not a
the revealed truth of religion;
philosopher. The short bibliography at the end
the persuasive truths of the social sciences;
of the article represents the source of most of the
the demonstrable truths of mathematics;
ideas presented here.
and the magical truth associated with the
The article itself originated as a presentation
humanities.
to students taking the International Baccalaureate
For the latter—poetry, music, the fine arts
(IB) diploma and formed part of their Theory of
etc—uniqueness is the key virtue. In contrast,
Knowledge course. It consists of a brief summary
the scientist focuses on the recurrent, and the
of the contributions of nine philosophers and/or
repeatable.
scientists to the debate: Aristotle, Roger Bacon,
Francis Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Wittgenstein,
Popper, Kuhn and Gödel. ‘All men by nature desire to know’,
The title of this article derives from Coperni- Aristotle (c 384–322 BC)
cus’s assertion that ‘To know that we know what Francis Bacon (who we shall look at in a moment)
we know, and to know that we do not know what effectively described Aristotle’s method of doing
we do not know, that is true knowledge’. The dis- science and finding what was true in the following
cussion will be less dogmatic than Donald Rums- way. Gather a group of clever people and
feld’s more recent version of Copernicus’s apho- encourage them to argue. If they are clever enough
rism, ‘. . . as we know, there are known knowns; then the truth must emerge!
there are things we know we know. We also know The Greeks seem to have been the first to pro-
there are known unknowns; that is to say we know pose that Nature is logical. Greek science however,
there are some things we do not know. But there was ‘non-instrumental’—they did not carry out ex-
are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t periments. Any evidence they used came from hu-
know we don’t know’. Hence the more tentative man observation and their conclusions relied upon