This article is the second in an ongoing series on the history and philosophy of science. See here for the first article in this series.

Imagine a world where everyone is born with orange-tinted glasses. These glasses are permanently attached to your eyes. They are part of your mind, your tool through which you not only view the world, but constitute it. You perceive all things as orange and are incapable of perceiving anything other than orange because your mind renders all things as this specific colour. You believe orange-ness is out there in the world as a real quality that is inherent to all things because everything you experience is in orange. However, this belief is mistaken because this experience of orange-ness does not come from the world as it really is but, rather, from your glasses. Now let us imagine that our minds are like orange glasses, too finite and limited to perceive the true state of the world.

In the most basic sense, there are two different worlds. The first world is called mind-independent reality. It is the world of things external to us, the world of things as they truly are, the world of trees, dogs, stars, particles, and nebulas, in their most unadulterated form. However, our minds are designed in such a way that we cannot comprehend this world as it really is. Instead, what we perceive is akin to a modified version of this reality. Just like the man with the orange glasses in our example, the world, as it appears in our mind, is different to the external world. Our senses, being finite and limited, filter out certain aspects of reality. This is the mind-dependent world. The mind-dependent world is the world that we perceive or, put differently, the view we have of the world that is inside our heads. This is not to say that we should not trust our senses but merely that our human faculties are too restricted to comprehend this true unfiltered mind-independent reality. To better understand this point, we can draw upon the example articulated in an article by Ustadh Daniel Haqiqatjou:

“Imagine a deaf, blind person who only has his sense of touch available to learn about his surroundings. But it gets worse than that. This person can only feel his surroundings by using a needle. He holds the needle and rubs its tip over the surfaces of objects around him. The tip of that needle is his only window into the world. That tiny needle tip is his only source of information about the entire universe. So imagine our surprise when this man tries to tell us about the nature of reality. Imagine our confusion as he explains to us what “it all means.” Imagine our amusement when he insists that the only things that exist in the world are what he can feel through his needle.”

Science is an attempt to describe reality as it truly is—the mind-independent world.

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However, there is a problem here. The history of science is replete with countless instances wherein theories that were upheld for many generations are replaced by newer ones. In our previous article, we had discussed the example of Ptolemaic astronomy. This theory of the cosmos predominated for 1400 years and posited a geocentric model, with the Earth at the centre of the universe. Like all scientific theories, it came to be rejected. Given that even the most robust and enduring scientific theories were later falsified (there is not one example to the contrary in the history of science), how can we be confident that later and more current theories are increasingly better descriptors of mind-independent reality than earlier ones? In other words, is science really getting closer and closer to providing us with an accurate understanding of the world as it truly is? Does science truly progress towards truth?

There are two schools of thought in relation to answering this pertinent question.

1. Those who support the thesis of progress argue that each succeeding scientific theory provides increasingly truer descriptions of mind-independent reality or, in other words, the world as it truly is.
2. Proponents of the thesis of no progress do not merely argue the opposite. They go even further and argue that it is impossible to even know whether one scientific theory is more approximately true than another. They conclude that we cannot know whether science progresses towards truth.

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The Case for Scientific Progress: The No Miracles Argument

There is little doubt that, in terms of predictive power and practical utility, there has been immense progress. Later scientific theories make more precise and accurate predictions than previous ones. Equally, later theories have had more practical utility than prior ones in that more efficient engines have been designed; historically incurable diseases, such as leprosy, have been cured; and men have been sent to the moon.

The “No Miracles” argument states that “since our theories become increasingly more accurate and precise in their predictions, this can only indicate that we gradually uncover the inner structure of the world.” If science keeps making increasingly more accurate predictions which are proven correct, it is not due to miracles or luck. Rather, it is because our scientific theories are likely giving us an accurate picture of how the world operates.

In our earlier article, we had also dealt thoroughly with the distinction between practical utility / predictive power and truth. Later theories having increased practical utility or predictive power does not necessitate that they are true. We worked through many examples from the history of science to demonstrate that even theories with immense utility and predictive power can have fundamental contradictions and flaws. In doing so, we separated the idea of predictive power from the idea of truth. Predictive power may indicate truthfulness, but it is insufficient on its own to establish it. The instrumental value of science should not confuse or distract us from appreciating its limitations as a descriptor of “Truth” with a capital t.

There is an even more powerful argument against the scientific progress thesis.

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The Case Against Scientific Progress: Pessimistic Meta Induction

To enunciate this argument clearly, let us begin by establishing some robust definitions which will be pivotal to understanding the points made.

We can define ontology as our understanding of what exists. Birds, rabbits, and babies constitute our ontology. Equally, atoms, protons, space, and stars may be part of our ontology. Islamic ontology would include the ghayb (unseen), such as jinn, angels, and the ruh (soul).

Progress can be defined as acquiring truer descriptions of external, mind-independent reality. A corollary of this is that ontologies implicit to more current theories are more correct than those in the theories of the past.

However, the history of science is a graveyard of dead ontologies. Science continues to commit severe mistakes in this regard. Science invents new ontological entities, only for them to be disproven and abandoned. This cycling through a long series of ever growing abandoned ontological entities can be illustrated from the following examples.

The substance “luminiferous ether” was thought to fill all of space and the medium through which light travelled. It came to be abandoned when it was realised that space was a vacuum; light, as an electromagnetic wave, could traverse the vacuum of space without need for any medium.

The caloric theory proposed that heat was a fluid-like substance called “caloric” that could flow from hot objects to cold objects and explained a range of thermal phenomena.

Similarly, the phlogiston theory proposed that there was a substance called “phlogiston” contained within all combustible materials. When something burned, it was believed that the material was releasing phlogiston into the surroundings, causing the air to go from dephlogisticated to phlogisticated. Though ultimately proven wrong, “phlogiston” as a false ontological entity led to the discoveries of the elements nitrogen and oxygen.

These are just a few from the ocean of examples that could be brought forth. We could delve into the Aristotelian concept of the four classical elements: fire, water, air, and earth as the building blocks of all matter. What about the Greco-Roman idea of the four humours: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose excess or deficiency were understood to be the cause of all illness? At one point, the most popular biological theory during the enlightenment era was preformationism, which held that all organisms grew from an already formed miniature version of themselves as opposed to small parts coming together to build a larger organism:

Since the ontologies of past theories are reserved, without exception, to the graveyard of scientific history, how can we ever be confident that the same will not happen to our current theories and ontologies? Ultimately, science has a track record of one hundred percent failure. We cannot know, therefore, that we are generating increasingly truer descriptions of reality.

Thus, pessimistic meta-induction drives a further wedge between the idea of predictive power and truth. False ontological entities can still generate immense predictive power. False beliefs can generate immense predictive power. There are an infinite combination of ways to be incorrect, so, given this body of ontological mistakes, how can we know that scientific theories are providing less false descriptions of the world?

Conclusion

In a forthcoming article, we will—in sha’ Allah—continue our discussion by looking at counters to the pessimistic meta induction argument. We will explore how the Kuhnian idea of methodological incommensurability complicates our discussion about whether science progresses towards truth. Finally, we will provide concluding remarks on the main takeaways for Muslims from this academic discussion.

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