Physics, yesterdays certainties, present and forever uncertainties

Science has undergone profound critique and epistemological analysis[1] from the early twentieth century.

Its most relevant and recognized philosopher is Karl Popper; his conception, the critical rationalism, is concerned primarily with issues related with the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.

Still in Austria, in 1934, he published his first book, “Logic der Forschung”, which constituted a critique of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, defending the idea that all knowledge is fallible and correctable, virtually provisional.

The scientific methodology has its origin in the thought of Descartes, which was later developed empirically by the English physicist Isaac Newton. Descartes proposed to arrive at the truth through systematic doubt and decomposition of the problem into small pieces[2], characteristics that will define the basis of scientific research. Understanding the simplest systems, gradually incorporating more and more variables, searching the description of the whole.

The Vienna Circle added to these principles the need for verification and the inductive method.

Karl Popper has shown that neither verification nor alone induction served the purpose in question - to understand the reality as it is and not as one would like it was - because the scientist must work with the distortion, that is, should do a hypothesis and test it looking not only evidence that it’s right, but rather evidence that it is wrong. If the hypothesis does not stand the test, it is said that it was distorted. If not, it is said that was corroborated. Popper also said that science is a temporary knowledge that works through successive falsifications. One never proves a scientific theory.

Thomas Kuhn realized that paradigms are essential elements of the scientific method, and the paradigm shift times are called scientific revolutions.

The scientific method is constructed so that science and its theories evolve over time.

And what is time?

Well, this is a topic, physical and philosophical that will be part of new chapters...

[1] It Worth also read this excellent Stanford’s paper The Analysis of Knowledge - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

[2] Today commonly used in layman verbiage as "Jack Method".