{"id":25403,"date":"2021-01-24T09:47:33","date_gmt":"2021-01-24T13:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=25403"},"modified":"2021-02-02T22:32:41","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T02:32:41","slug":"scientific-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific Progress: Revolutionary Changes in Science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is scientific progress? Why is there a lack of consensus on what constitutes progress in science?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The definition of scientific progress is not a simple one. According to Thomas Kuhn, what is deemed progress in normal science<\/a> is different from progress in revolutionary science<\/a>. To fully resolve this contradiction, we must give up the idea that science is linear and has a clear endpoint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to learn more about scientific progress: the nature of it, why it\u2019s expected, and how it happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

What Is Scientific Progress?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are several conceptions as to what constitutes scientific progress. The original conception is that scientific progress occurs when science gets closer to the truth or increases in the degree of verisimilitude or truth-likeness. However, this conception was condemned by Thomas Kuhn and othes in 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Kuhn, \u201cscientific progress\u201d is often a label put on events by their observers. <\/strong>The reason normal science seems to progress is clear: Scientists working within a paradigm have a clear set of problems to solve, and the means by which to solve them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Normal science benefits from being fairly well insulated from the laypeople. Scientists generally only show their work to other scientists, meaning they can take certain beliefs and rules for granted. Furthermore, the scientists can choose problems they are reasonably confident they\u2019ll be able to solve, without worrying about what needs <\/em>to be solved, as an engineer or doctor might have to. All of this makes progress both faster and clearer than in other professions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientific Progress<\/strong> as a Revolution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, revolutionary science\u2014in the sense of a paradigm shift\u2014is also seen as scientific progress, even though it doesn\u2019t use accepted methods to solve accepted problems. In large part, this may be because revolutions must end in victory for one side or the other, and it\u2019s unlikely that the winning side will see its victory as anything but progress. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That school\u2019s paradigm is then written into textbooks and other educational materials, and it becomes what the next generation of scientists believes as well. Therefore, a revolution being seen as scientific progress after the fact is practically a given. <\/strong>(Shortform note: As they say, history is written by the victors.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This makes science sound like some kind of dystopian system wherein all that matters is who\u2019s able to win the struggle. However, while achieving victory through force and rewriting history would make for a revolution, it would not make for a scientific <\/em>revolution. The key difference here is that the outcome of the revolution is chosen by the members of the scientific community it affects\u2014through professional study, consideration, and argument, not through brute force.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those scientific communities share a couple of key features, which make them uniquely suited to make such decisions. First of all, scientists study natural phenomena\u2014concrete problems. Paradigms only go into crisis when nature itself seems to disagree with them. Second, scientists\u2019 work must satisfy the scientific community\u2014but not <\/em>outsiders. Scientists\u2019 work is not (usually) muddied by having to compromise with or appeal to non-scientists, so there is no outside pressure steering the results toward one paradigm or another. That helps to ensure that the outcome of a revolution is progress, rather than just what sounded good to the unscientific majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science as Evolution<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

However, to fully resolve the apparent contradiction between revolutions and \u201cscientific progress,\u201d we may need to give up the idea that science has a clear endpoint. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember that science shares a lot of characteristics with evolution. Like creatures evolving to fit their environments, science is constantly changing to best fit what we currently know about the world. As in evolution, paradigms fight for limited resources (scientists\u2019 acceptance) until one prevails. The cycle of revolutions and normal science throughout history has resulted in excellently adapted fields of modern science, and further development in those fields comes through narrow specializations, like animals evolving to fit into an ecological niche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the greatest challenges Darwin faced in getting his ideas accepted was not in convincing people that evolution happened, but that it was not working toward some distant goal\u2014that is, evolution isn\u2019t \u201cprogress\u201d as we think of it. Science itself may need to undergo a similar shift, with scientists accepting that there isn\u2019t a single, universal truth that some paradigm will eventually explain perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, this raises a couple of important questions: Does science need <\/em>a goal? Is it even helpful to imagine that there\u2019s some absolute, universally true understanding of nature? Or is it better to let scientists do their work, and let science evolve and adapt as it must?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, though it seems contradictory, <\/strong>scientific progress often happens through overthrowing of past achievements. These revolutions are not only inevitable, but necessary. They happen over and over again throughout history, and they generally follow the same pattern. Finally, there is no paradox between revolution and progress as long as you give up the idea that science has some final, fixed goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do Other Fields Experience \u201cProgress\u201d?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Some may wonder why unscientific fields such as art and philosophy don\u2019t seem to progress like people assume science does. <\/strong>However, this question may be fundamentally flawed, and the progress of other fields may be closer to science than people believe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an interesting example, painting was seen as a progress-based field for centuries. This view was based on the assumption that the goal of painting is to depict the subject as accurately as possible. Breakthroughs in painting technique allowed artists to get closer and closer to realism. However, when some painters began to shun realism and explore other styles, the current divide between art and science began to form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, creative work such as art progresses in other ways. When an artist successfully creates a new piece, it is added to the collection of all available work just as a new piece of scientific data would be. Furthermore, while \u201cart\u201d as a whole may not be seen to progress, individual schools within it certainly do. Philosophy and other non-scientific fields follow the same pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways the question is purely semantic: Does something progress because it\u2019s a science, or is it science because it progresses? There is no firm answer to this, and it\u2019s not even clear how important a question it really is.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, it seems likely that the question stems from some insecurity about one\u2019s own field, and why it doesn\u2019t seem to progress in the same way that the established sciences do. For example, economists don\u2019t seem to spend much time debating whether economics is a science. That\u2019s probably not because they all agree on what science is, but because they agree on what economics is, and are confident in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is scientific progress? Why is there a lack of consensus on what constitutes progress in science? The definition of scientific progress is not a simple one. According to Thomas Kuhn, what is deemed progress in normal science is different from progress in revolutionary science. To fully resolve this contradiction, we must give up the idea that science is linear and has a clear endpoint.  Keep reading to learn more about scientific progress: the nature of it, why it\u2019s expected, and how it happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,24],"tags":[198],"class_list":["post-25403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-society","tag-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nScientific Progress: Revolutionary Changes in Science - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In normal science, scientific progress is the solution to a problem, Interestingly, revolutionary science is also seen as progress.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scientific Progress: Revolutionary Changes in Science\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In normal science, scientific progress is the solution to a problem, Interestingly, revolutionary science is also seen as progress.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-01-24T13:47:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-03T02:32:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-immortal-cells.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"638\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"396\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Darya Sinusoid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0421cce75bc249b11e2517b3a91f9c46\"},\"headline\":\"Scientific Progress: Revolutionary Changes in Science\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-01-24T13:47:33+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-02-03T02:32:41+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/\"},\"wordCount\":1151,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-immortal-cells.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Science\",\"Society\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/scientific-progress\/\",\"name\":\"Scientific Progress: Revolutionary Changes in Science - 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