In the introduction, Cleland explained the dominance of experimental methods throughout society's view of science. When reading this, I definitely understood and realized what she was talking …show more content…
about because the earliest thing I remember learning about science was the scientific method to problem solving. In basically every one of my science classes throughout elementary and middle school the hypothesis, prediction, experiment, and conclusion were all I really thought of when it came to science projects and problems. Now, from college, I obviously know that a ton of other necessary steps come within those mentioned like repeating the tests, possibly falsifying hypothesis if evidence goes against them, and searching for further evidence to solidify your conclusions. I think that schools put so much emphasis on this scientific method because it is a great way to solve not only scientific problems but also everyday problems. However, I do believe that this overemphasis might be part of the reason some people don’t credit conclusions formulated through a different process. Cleland continues to explain that this opinion greatly affects many scientists beliefs towards historical science because many times in historical science they can’t falsify their hypothesis or their confirmatory arguments resemble imagined stories. She even puts a quote from Henry Gee in that I found important, and it was “they (historical studies) can never be tested by experiment and so they are unscientific...No science can ever be historical.” After setting the scene of this negative, unscientific opinion of historical science held by much of the science world, Cleland provided details and examples in the body to explain the differences between historical and experimental science and why one is not superior to the other.
Cleland discusses that how under the scientific method, hypotheses are evaluated in two different ways; scientific inductivism or falsification. In scientific inductivism, an hypothesis is accepted once enough confirming evidence is provided from confirmed predictions of event under certain conditions. However, the problem with this is that no amount of evidence how massive can conclusively establish a universal generalization. Therefore, many scientists turn to falsification in which a generalization/prediction is considered false if it has at least one counterexample. Cleland makes a good summary by stating that “According to falsification, it is unscientific to try to confirm a hypothesis,” and this is because a scientists would have to literally go through every possibility to see that their hypothesis hold in every single possible situation, which is basically impossible. Additionally, she provides an explanation as to why falsification is greatly flawed. This is the fact that actual experimental situations require a number of auxiliary assumptions about conditions, equipment, and other widely accepted theories. Therefore, by assuming everything is working well, a research allows for rejection of possible predictions due to contradicting evidence that could have actually just been caused by a malfunctioning equipment or experimenter error. This doesn’t even take into account the massive assumption made when assuming researchers are controlling all of the possible conditions because in real world setting, the amount of conditions is so immense that there is hardly any way to control all but one to really prove causation of an event from a specific condition. Cleland comes to the conclusion that rejecting a hypothesis in the face of a failed prediction is sometimes actually the wrong thing to do, so therefore, it would be unfair and incorrect to use falsification to justify the superiority of one science over another. This greatly support sher overall point that just because historical science uses different processes and mechanisms, doesn’t make is bad science because experimental science is flawed in it’s own ways too.
Cleland then goes on to further discuss the differences between experimental and historical science.
She looks at a number of different aspects of the two, one of which is lab worked performed by the both. I guess I didn’t really ever think much about historical scientists doing lab work, but Cleland really demonstrated how it works and gave great examples such as carbon dating and the Urey Miller experiment. She explained that the main laboratory focus for historical scientists is analyzing and sharpening traces so that they can be identified and properly interpreted because to analyze events by experiment would require a far too long of time frame and test conditions that are way to complicated to be replicated.This is opposed to the main laboratory practice of experimental scientists which is to investigate auxiliary assumptions under specified conditions, which can semi-easily be created and replicated. A second, very important difference between experimental and historical science is the way they think about testing their various hypotheses. Good historical science researchers begin by formulating multiple competing hypothesis to explain a phenomenon or an event based on known data and observation. Then, they search deeper and deeper until they find a smoking gun, which is a piece of evidence that obviously sets one hypothesis above all the others. One example Cleland uses to demonstrate this point in the search for what killed the dinosaurs. The researchers on this topic had a number of different hypothesis, but they were unable to settle on a specific one until they discovered shocked quartz in the K-T boundary. This evidence could one be explained by on hypothesis, and that was that it was the impact of a meteor on the Earth that probably rendered the dinosaurs to extinction. Cleland greatly stresses the fact that a “smoking gun” may take decades or even centuries to discover because in many cases we would not have discovered them without the help of
furthering technology. Lastly, the author summaries the difference between the two sciences. Experimental science focuses on a single hypothesis and the main research consists of bringing about the specific test conditions and controlling other factors that might have an effect. On the other hand, Historical scientists formulate a number of different hypothesis and focus their research on searching for a smoking gun trace that will set one hypothesis above all the rest. It is important to note that Cleland explained and demonstrated these methodologies to show that they are both reliable and scientific, not to support one form of science over the other.
Lastly, Cleland included a section on what is referred to as the asymmetry of overdetermination. The basic idea behind this concept is that present events allow us to overdetermined their causes and underdetermine their effects. I thought that she used a very good analogy when she was describing it as how difficult it is to commit the perfect crime because of all the traces you leave behind. This made it very clear to me that due to the many different factors we can look at, it is very possible to determine the past.This concept provides the rationale for searching for a smoking gun. One very important summary sentence that Cleland writes it that “Just as the causal overdetermination of the past events by localized present events explain the practice of historical science, so the causal underdetermination of future events by localized present events explains the practice of experimental science.” She further goes on to explain that experimental scientists are basically trying their best to work past the causal underdetermination of results by deriving as specific as possible test conditions from target hypotheses.
Overall, the main goal of this paper was to prove that there are no ground for scientist to claim that one form of science is better than the other. Cleland provided evidence for this in describing how both types of science are performed and tested in very scientific and reliable ways, but they just must be gone about differently due to the great asymmetry of overdetermination. I think that she proves her point very well with great evidence and support.
I would say that this article is a very clear cut and well written article. The author did a very good job of outlining what she was going to talk about in her introduction and further explaining her point in the body with supportive evidence from examples. The majority of supporting information she supplied was from previously done experiments or observations that were reliable and extremely supportive to her discussion. I felt that one of her strengths in the writing was the many different examples and analogies she included, and two that really stuck out to me were the Urey Miller experiment as an example of how historical science can be tested in the lab and the analogy of the overdetermination of the past to how difficult it is to get away with committing a crime. I thought these really made her statements easier to understand and more reliable because they were backed up with some data. The title of this article is fairly appropriate and clear because experimental science, historical science and the scientific method are the three main things she discussed throughout the article. Additionally, she transitioned from point to point very well by stating how whatever topic she had just discussed tied in with her argument that both experimental and historical science are relevant, and she had a superb conclusion that really cut to the point at explaining what she hoped the readers got from the article.
I think her major strength in her writing was keeping everything fairly simple and to the point. Throughout the article she didn’t repeat herself very often, and basically every sentence had some sort of point or important detail in it. I found this semi-challenging to read mainly because it meant that I couldn’t space off for a second while reading otherwise I would miss something important. However, I greatly appreciate the way she kept it brief and didn't drag out her argument for ten pages, making it easier for me to remain focused knowing I only had to survive the four pages.
Overall, I thought the article was very well written, and it included a good amount of support for her conclusions in the form of experiments and history. She kept it very to the point, which I appreciated very much, and I think she was able to form a very solid argument about how experimental and historical science are both on an equal playing field when it comes to supporting claims. However, I did not find the article particularly surprising because, like I said before, I kind of already had an understanding that both these sciences were not superior to one another.