SciBar: 'What is this thing called science? A philosophy of science intro'

SciBar is a public-friendly lecture series hosted by Science London. SciBar introduces scientific talks from a range of experts in an informal setting. SciBar is great for audiences from all backgrounds (including non-scientists!) with an interest in science.

Please come along to our first event of 2018!: 

What is this thing called science? A brief introduction to the philosophy of science.

Speaker: Simon Flynn

For many years, scientific theories were thought to be something derived purely from facts – crudely put, it was believed that the more facts you had, or examined, the better your theory was likely to be. However, as someone aptly put it, ‘the trouble with facts is that there are so many of them’ – how are you to decide which of them are relevant?

There’s an even bigger problem with a fact-leading-to-theory view of science – no matter how hard you try, it’s pretty much impossible for observation, typically the source of a scientist’s facts, not to be in some way theory-laden. Norwood Russell Hanson summed this up wonderfully when he said, ‘there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball’. Sherlock Holmes understood the danger that one might ‘begin to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts’. So, perhaps surprisingly, observed evidence isn’t necessarily sufficient for supporting the truth of a theory. Which begs the question, what is?

Simon Flynn worked in publishing for nearly fifteen years and is now a science teacher. He is also the author of The Science Magpie published by Icon Books.