Cosmology and the Scientific Method: Understanding the Universe
The Necessity of Explaining the World
Human beings have always wanted to understand their environment to satisfy their curiosity and answer the need for meaning. At first, they were concerned with what was closest to their experience. Then, distancing themselves from immediate reality, they wondered about the universe and the order of things. From these questions, humans built cosmogonies. They sought new tools to enhance and improve the accuracy of their observations, and dismissed lax opinions. Existence was questioned by some principle or law to explain the regularity of events. Thus was born the science of the universe, or cosmology.
Cosmology
Cosmology is the part of philosophy that studies the physical world. Its findings provide a general picture of the world. One of the first issues raised was the relationship between reason and the senses, between theory and observation. The scientific method itself emerged as an assembly of the two and led to the substitution of cosmogony by what we now call science.
The Different Types of Sciences
Sciences are usually classified according to their object of study and the method used.
- The Formal Sciences: Logic and mathematics mainly refer to objects not observable by the senses and do not, therefore, provide information about the world. They are universal and necessary. They find their consistency in the coherence of their own reasoning.
- The Empirical Sciences: These start from the observation of facts and, therefore, provide information about the world. By the same token, they are not universal or necessary; they are generalizations from experience.
- The Social Sciences: The objective of study is human events, characterized by intentionality. In almost all of these sciences, one is both the observer and the observed object. Therefore, they are sciences with a lower generalization capability and relative prediction, neutrality, and objectivity.
Elements of the Hypothetical-Deductive Method
- Scientific research typically starts with the observation of facts. This involves finding the most relevant aspects of a phenomenon.
- From the observations made, a hypothesis is formed that will guide the research. The hypothesis arises from previous theories but can also be produced directly by reason. They are sometimes suggested by the imagination or are coincidental.
- Through logic and mathematics, testable consequences are derived from that hypothesis. It is a logical argument to establish the framework that prepares for testing.
- The testing usually takes place through an experiment that tests a number of controllable variables. When conditions cannot be preset, it is drawn from simple observation. If the result is favorable, the hypothesis is considered partially tested. If it is unfavorable, it will be rejected. It is crucial to criticize the matching. Both refutation and confirmation may be due to circumstances outside the hypothesis. A hypothesis can never be confirmed absolutely, as it is impossible to cover all possible cases. The accumulation of favorable results allows for an inductive hypothesis to be considered sufficiently valid.
- The confirmed hypothesis with sufficient inductive support rises to the level of law. Laws are statements that have a universal form. They express uniform connections of phenomena, but not necessary ones. Laws apply provisionally until refuted by a new experiment or observation. From the laws, science makes predictions.
- Laws are articulated in a theory.