On The Test Of Scientific Knowledge

The present age is referred loudly as the age of "knowledge explosion". With the rapid development of every field of society, science and scientific activities are found to be ever changing, a new tendency apparently come to the eyes:science becomes highly socialized, society becomes highly scientific, and science and society become increasingly incorporated into each other. The utmost importance of knowledge is suggested for the reason that it is the prerequisite for solving complicated problem and provides the means for further development.Modern scientific knowledge is, on the one hand, derived from the social practice which aims to understand and reconstruct the natural world and to promote human development in a harmonious relation with nature, and on the other hand, it is a system of strict logical structure. It involves valid inference and rational evaluation and thereby the logicality and truth of our propositions of cognitive significance are defended. Scientific practice is not only the source of our scientific knowledge, but also plays a number of roles in our search for knowledge. In the course of practice subject and object are found to be in interaction, matter and thought be interchangeable and human beings be active agents. Practice is capable of being repeated, which renders scientific knowledge testable.Generally, there are two senses in which a piece of scientific knowledge is said to be testable. A peice of scientific knowledge is logically testable if it is testable in view of firmly established theories and laws, that is, the technological devices and means required for testing are logically available but practically out of our reach. It is practically testable if empirical facts to be explained can be derive from it and techniques required for experimental operation are in our hand. Testability is a prerequisite in order for a system of knowledge to be scientific and true, and such a system has to be testable in logic and in practice at first and then a certain practical work may be done to decide its truth or falsity. Comparing with practical testing, which is the final decision of validity, logical testing is but a preparation for the former and is in some sense a part of it. Scientific knowledge, acquired in the course of human being engaging practical activities, is a system of cognition which represents our generalized ideas of objective laws, and these ideas have been tested logically and practically and validated into s set of assertions. In the process of testing scientific knowledge, practice plays the decisive role but logical constraints are indispensable.While it is said that scientific knowledge is tested by means of logical consideration and more importantly in the process of practical application, the above two ways of testing are inseparable and complementary, they together consist the systematic testing of scientific knowledge. In particular, logical testing is the theoretical judgment of the truth or truth-likeness of scientific knowledge, and practical testing is the decision of its truth by means of technological application. Logical considerations of the structure of theory and its relations to empirical facts direct and regulate practical test, and practical applications accomplish the test of scientific knowledge. Logic and practice together provide a methodology for the test of scientific knowledge, promote the reliability and efficiency of testing and so as to effect the truth of scientific knowledge. Testing is a key step of the ascent from hypothesis up to scientific knowledge, and a hypothesis turns to be a part of scientific knowledge only if it has passed logical and practical testing. The testing of scientific knowledge is essentially a process wherein scientific knowledge is decided to be knowledge. Knowledge testing involves scientific community, ideas, hypothesis and other forms of thought are received as knowledge only if they are tested, appraised and chosen by scientific community. Along with the further development and deepening of science and technology, the methodology of science will certainly go increasingly wide and profound.Chapter1is an introduction to the motivation and background of the dissertation topic. People in present society tend to neglect the importance of the problem of testing scientific knowledge, some people suppose mindlessly that all knowledge is scientific, that everything that is scientific is knowledge, and that each part of scientific knowledge is absolutely true. But the fact is that scientific knowledge is always in the process of testing, namely, being checked with respect to its internal logical relations and being examined in practical applications in order to be accepted by scientific community and further by other people. Thus I choose the testing of scientific knowledge as the subject of my dissertation. And then two pairs of basic concepts (science and scientific knowledge, practice and scientific practice) are specified. This chapter includes also a historical survey of the researches on scientific knowledge and a brief statement of guiding lines and innovative ideas of the thesis.Chapter2focalizes on the unit of scientific knowledge and its composition. Logical positivists insist that the unit of scientific knowledge is statement, scientific knowledge is the set of statements, every scientific statement are either observational statement or can be reduced to a set of observational statements, and therefore scientific theoretical knowledge consists of general statement of universal validity. Lakatos claims that the unit of scientific knowledge is research programme with interrelated "hard core","protective belt" and "heuristics" as its constituents, thus the testing of scientific knowledge is the assessment of progressiveness or degeneration of a programme. Among alternative proposals are Quine’s force field metaphor, Kuhn’s paradigm, the latter leads to scientific knowledge being socially accounted for in terms of "irrationality" and "power" In chapter3"The testing of scientific knowledge-from logic to history", the main problem is how logical reconstruction and history of science informed the testing of scientific knowledge. It is claimed that the logic of scientific thought is to be coherent with the historical development of thinking in general and with the historical development of science in particular. The methodology of scientific knowledge testing undergoes a process from concentration on logic to emphasis on the facts of how scientific theories have been accepted or rejected in the history of science. Here logical positivists’confirmation, Popper’s falsification, Kuhn’s puzzle-solving and paradigm shift, and Bunge’s evolution of knowledge are surveyed.Chapter4concerns practical testing of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is taken to be a process, a process of practical development. While separated from physical labour, scientific knowledge remains getting developed and tested in the course of practice. Firstly, in the course of knowing the world, scientific knowledge have advanced from holistic understanding of nature to specialized scrutiny into the universe, and in turn from specialization to systematic synthesis of separate knowledge. When a piece of scientific knowledge is taken into account, we see that scientific inquiry have undergone a process from observation of appearance to empirical generalization and then to insight into the hidden laws of nature. Secondly, scientific knowledge is embedded in the system of social practice, and scientific knowledge is interwoven into the fabric of production, social organization, and cultural history. Scientists belong to the extensive community of the agents of social practice, the consensus of the extensive community determines the acceptance of knowledge..Finally, practice is claimed to be the utmost testing of scientific knowledge, it is practice which provide feasible criteria of scientific truth. From a practical point of view, scientific knowledge is both universal and local, both changeable and continuous.