What are the assumptions adopted by the scientific community?

Question

What are the core assumptions of the modern scientific community with which they use to view the world and formulate theories etc?

By assumptions I mean premises taken as fact (about the universe/reality) but which cannot be proven definitively.

I am not asking regarding theories whose validity is observable and repeatable in a laboratory such as gravity, but rather on theories not directly observable such as the origin of life, darwinian evolution, the age of the universe, or the multiverse.

(In discussing theories with God believing people, I see they have very different ways of explaining things like the evidence for common ancestry (evolution) or the age of the universe. What assumptions therefore are adopted by scientists which lead them to their conclusions?)

Answer 1

There are varying assumptions, as not everyone agrees on what science is. However, there do seem to be some common patterns.

Indeed, the first common assumption is that "there are patterns in reality." We don't often think of this as an assumption, but science is basically useless unless there's some pattern to test. To this end, there is a focus on that which is repeatable and reproducible.

This assumption takes on two different forms, depending on where one is going with the science. The lesser form would be "patterns in reality which are repeatable and reproducible have value/worth." This is required for science to be a worthwhile activity. The stronger form would be "That which is not repeatable or reproducible does not have value/worth." This would be used as an argument by those who believe science is the only path to value. The idea that "there are no miracles" is fundamentally captured in this wording. If there were indeed miracles, and they had value/worth, then one could state that science misses something important.

A second axiom, which is somewhat related is "that which matters can be measured." Science operates on data. If that which matters cannot be reduced to data, science has a very hard time operating on it. This axiom also splits into two forms, depending on how severe of a wording is desired: "This which can be measured have value" is the lesser wording, and "That which cannot be measured has no value" is the stronger.

The third fundamental axiom that I'd name is "The value of a theory which has not been proven false asymptotically approaches the value of a true theory." Fundamentally, science relies on falsification of incorrect theories to propel itself forward. Theories which have not been falsified are given credibility, which approaches the credibility we give to truth. In it's simplest sense, this is Popperian falsification, but if you look into how that credibility is provided to these non-falsified theories, we see the patterns that philosophers such as Kuhn saw.

Answer 2

Most of science is a matter of testing the nature of external things to establish their properties and test causal relationships. That kind of work presupposes confidence in some stability of the nature of things and the causality of action, and it presupposes the validity of sense data and its ability to establish objective knowledge. Hence, philosophically speaking, I would say that the groundwork for science is the philosophical conclusion (not really an assumption so much as acceptance of certain philosophical arguments) that existence exists (i.e., the world external to the mind is real), that things in existence have a nature and follow causality, that the senses are valid and are able to objectively establish the nature of things (through various processes like the scientific process), and that objective knowledge is possible.

Now, all of that involves a lot of philosophical conclusions. Many working scientists take those things for granted and do not explore these philosophical issues, but those who are interested study the philosophy of science and study metaphysics and epistemology more broadly in order to form conclusions on these kinds of issues. No doubt there are scientists that disagree with the above positions, and interpret their scientific knowledge differently (e.g., as subjective knowledge, or as knowledge of mere "phenomena", etc.), but I suspect that the majority of scientists hold an implicitly objectivist realist philosophical stance.

Answer 3

I would still suggest, (even if you keep pointlessly deleting this):

1) No (or very rare) Miracles: Experiences present an underlying consistency that allows for similar actions to regularly result in similar results. (Thus, things 'stay known' long enough for progress to be made. We are not permanently stuck in the stage of 'pre-science' on any topic.)

We do not need an absolute moratorium on miracles, just a high degree of overall consistency. (So, claiming this is an anti-religious sentiment is abusive, whether you are religious or anti-religious. So is demanding that it must be stronger than it objectively needs to be in order to work, just to force it into a disagreement with religion.)

2) Distrust the ad hoc: Simplicity is a valuable quality for causal explanations to have, and there is a shared, if vague, human intuition for what is and what is not simple. (Thus there is a limited range of causal principles to consider at any juncture in normal science or in any one of Kuhn's revolutionary periods -- the ones that look forward and seem simple enough to pursue. So no anomaly can produce an infinite quantity of research, and a given revolutionary period can never be too long before it converges on a new paradigm.)

3) We can talk about truth: Logic and math, particularly probability theory now that we have invented statistics, work and are reasonably the same for everyone at some basic level. (Thus Popper's principle of falsifiability indicates explanations in normal science either will converge or will be overtaken by ones with better odds.)

Answer 4

There are two answer to your question.

1. Almost all scientific theories are taken 'for granted' we don't have to re-test them every time we come to a conclusion that relies upon them being true. I.e. if I want to test whether Ball A is bouncier than Ball B, I assume that the laws of motion apply equally to both balls, and that acceleration due to gravity is the same for both, etc..

Although we take these things to granted, we do allow for them to be disproved or to proved to be lacking; if new evidence arises that does so; but we may not seek that evidence out. Many of these theories are proven 'beyond reasonable doubt' but may never be proved to be 'absolutely true'

2. We also have 'Axioms' in science, like we do in mathematics. Some of these 'Basic Assumptions' are things like "There are natural causes for things that happen in the world around us", "Evidence from the natural world can be used to learn about those causes.", and "There is consistency in the causes that operate in the natural world."

Answer 5

This question is too broad, and it is hard to see what is gained from such lists. People generally choose a cautious set, which usually exclude some brancges or areas of modern scientific practice.

The first really good definition of scientific method was thr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method identifying a process of i ductive reasoning.

As groups outside of the scientific community sought to take on trappings of appearing scientific, like Marxists claims for Historical Materialism, Popper sought a clearer boundary from the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem through idealising what he thought the scientific method should be, and how the scientific community should behave. His work helped make it clear that the process of hypothesis generation is not itself empirical, and saw identifying hypothesees that are falsifiable by experiments as the hallmark of science. Lots of people disagree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms

Kuhn looked at actual scientific developments in practice, putting much greater emphasis on science as a human culture, defined by it's members in regard to who accepted to be a member, and who and what ideas are not.

I would look to Wittgenstein, and the way in which we all think we know what a game is, but greatly struggle to generate sharp boundaries between a definition of game and not-game. Scientific method will take up or reject whatever assumptions the community needs to, as people make convincing arguments through reason and evidence.

It is not a holy book, there are no core axioms, it is a practice. Everything follows from the goals: using evidence and reasoned argument, as a community of people getting their hands dirty, to try and understand the world. Like any scientific truth, scientific method is tentative, constantly subject to and open to revision.

Answer 6

Actual Assumptions About How The Universe Works

1. There is no Cartesian Demon. Our senses may be error-prone, but in general, they reflect the real world.

This is probably the only true assumption on the list. If there is an actual malicious entity deliberately rewriting our sensory data with the intent of deceiving us, science just doesn't work. Not much we can do about that, so we just write it off as unlikely and hope we're right.

2. The world behaves according to some set of consistent rules that can at least be approximated.

This basically follows from the first assumption. We have rules that approximate the way the world works, so unless there's a Cartesian Demon screwing with us, we don't really need to assume this anymore.

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Important Rules of Thumb

These aren't really essential assumptions, but they help make certain types of common mistakes much less likely, and as such are near-universal.

1. An experiment that nobody else can reproduce isn't an experiment; it's an anecdote.

People make mistakes and people lie. If the experiment can't be reproduced, we have no way to verify that one of those didn't happen.

2. It isn't enough for a theory to perfectly fit the existing data; it needs to make a prediction about something that wasn't used to create it.

It's possible to take any set of data, even completely random data, and construct a model that fits it perfectly so long as the model is complicated enough. (q.v. Overfitting). Such a model is useless since it will make incorrect predictions about any data outside the set it was constructed on. But conversely, if a model can make correct predictions about data it wasn't privy to, that's a good indicator that it will be able to do so again.

3. Sometimes weird things happen by chance

It might seem really weird to flip 4 coins and have them all come up heads, but on average, that'll happen once every 16 times you try it. As such, it's important to consider whether some weird result is statistically significant: how unlikely is it that this result would have happened by chance.

4. We will make mistakes

We're human. It's inevitable that we'll screw up. Our natural tendency when we come up with a cool idea is to try to convince people that we're right. But confirmation bias is a thing, and it's way too easy to overlook flaws if we do it that way. And if errors make it into the literature and other people try to build on them, that'll just waste everyone's time.

So first we try to see if we might be right, and then as soon as it looks like we are, it's necessary to assume we've screwed up in some horrible yet non-obvious way and do everything we can to find it ourselves. If we can't find it, then we submit it for peer-review, so other experts can look over it and find the errors that we were too stupid to notice ourselves. (And there will be some, even if they aren't show-stoppers). And if it makes it through peer review, then we assume (or at least hope) that any remaining mistakes aren't too bad, and publish.

Some mistakes will still make it through, which brings us back to the "reproducible experiment" rule. If a bogus result makes it into the literature, eventually someone will spot it, recognize the flaw in the experiment, and do a new experiment to confirm or disprove the result. And so the process continues.

Answer 7

Well, here are a few assumptions that influence, but seldom appear, in just about every science textbook and article:

• Meteorites are a good representation of pristine solar system matter for the purpose of radiometric dating. This is critical for all of geologic aging over 50,000 years, which must never contradict the age of the earth that was determined by meteorite studies. (Patterson 1956)

• The discovery of dark matter does not invalidate the Big Bang theory. This is critical for all cosmological aging over 5 billion years.

• Adaptation is self-evident.

• While scientific method can only validate repeatable phenomena, science explains origins and provides pre-historic aging nonetheless.

• Scientists do not publish unscientific information, because of peer-review. Non-scientific publications, like "Scientific American" and "National Geographic" don't count.