Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks: but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house. (Henri Poincar) discuss in relation to science and atleast one other area of knowled

International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge

Andrew Benton

“Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks: but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house.” (Henri Poincaré) – discuss in relation to science and atleast one other area of knowledge.

A house cannot be a house with only bricks; it needs cement to hold the bricks together, a foundation to start building upon, an imagination to design the interior and exterior and other key materials like glass for windows and tiles for the roof. Without these other essential materials the house would merely be a pile of bricks. Henri Poincare uses the metaphor of a house to describe science. But what we need to consider is the definition of a fact and also by what process these facts are reached. How sturdy is a house made of bricks? What happens if an earthquake destroys the house? Will this result in a pile of bricks because of the house not being strong enough and if so, do these bricks still represent facts as Poincare stated or do they represent the facts of one falsified theory? Is science the most reliable area of knowledge and does the method it uses to obtain its facts the most reliable?

Knowledge is derived differently by different people. The Christian Church believes that conclusions and reasoning of observations can only be found by discussions and by the use of logic. Scientists use the ‘scientific method’ to find facts about what they observe and what they think happens. Scientists will observe something happening, a ball falling down to the ground for example, and will collect data of what they see. The imagination of the scientist is used to come up with a hypothesis of what they think the reason for the ball falling is. They will collect a lot of data and try to reach a conclusion of why it happens. If the hypothesis they predicted is wrong (proved by the results) then they will have to come up with another prediction of what is happening. However if the prediction is correct then the scientists will publish their results. Other scientists may want to test the theory and the results gained by the original scientists to see if they measured subjectively to reach the conclusion (cheating). If the results obtained by the other tests match the theory or the prediction that the original scientists made, then the prediction becomes a fact. This fact can always be falsified, i.e. we never know if the next result that we collect will follow the theory or if it is totally different and disproves the theory.

Henri Poincare suggests that science is built like a house, with the facts that make up science compared to the bricks making up the house. By saying that with only bricks you cannot make a house he implies that you need other necessary materials like cement, glass, metal and a place to start building. As well as this he suggests that in science you also need other materials, some of which are the scientific method, the imagination of the scientist to come up with ideas of why things happen. If the facts in science are compared to the bricks in ...

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An accumulation of facts is said to be like a pile of bricks. A pile of bricks is useful to have when building a house, but you need other materials. A lot of facts can also be useful to science if they are used appropriately. A house shows that all of the bricks and all the other factors work together to make the objective. Science is a way of knowing how things work. It is not however 100% certain of what it explains. How can we be sure that one day instead of an object falling to the ground it falls upwards to the sky. In this case the whole theory of gravitational laws would be wrong, all the theories and facts based upon its original use. We can compare this to how strong the house is, if the house is very strong, then all the bricks and cement and windows together make it like this. In the same way a strong science with a large degree of certainty has facts, theories and evidences all working together and nothing contradicts itself. If one different result were to falsify the theories and all other theories derived, then it would be as if one brick falls out, and so all the others fall down with it. However with a house this is unlikely to occur from just one brick falling out. But if the foundation of the house fails, then the whole house will fall. This is similar to what would happen in science if a fact was proved wrong. But once all these bricks had fallen to the ground they would be a pile of bricks, which as suggested by Henri Poincare is as much house as an accumulation of facts is science. So in this context is the pile of bricks like an accumulation of facts? Well, as the facts are those of a falsified theory, then they are not facts; they are merely failed attempts of deriving answers from the original fallen theory.

The sturdily built houses are those that find it hard to have the theories falsified. Sturdily built houses would therefore be like the natural sciences as the theories, if not proved wrong, can support the rest of the house well. Social sciences, like psychology for example may not have as reliable theories to test. Social sciences are not as accurate as natural sciences because unlike natural sciences, they do not have consistent results. They test humans and try to figure out theories for how humans work, however we are so complex that there are so many different combinations of results that could be obtained, an the results that are obtained have a large degree of error, there are many variables that are hard to control such as people with different amounts of money might spend it differently but some people might not spend much at all and so on. The social sciences measure their results usually by trend because of the faculties in many results. Despite the sources of knowledge therefore being less reliable as a matter of obtaining results and formulating them, the social sciences are in some circumstances of more use in the real world that those from the natural sciences. For example, how can the facts found by science determine what the impacts of a natural disaster are, and how can they determine whether something is ethical or not. For this the social sciences come in more useful than the natural ones. We may have all the facts of a situation, know how everything works, but with these not be able to judge if the actions are ethical or not.

In conclusion we have seen that, like a house, science is built up of more than just one raw material that does help to achieve its final goal. In science if one theory is falsified, all other theories derived from it are also falsified, just like a house falling apart. The bricks left at the end of the house falling apart could be falsified facts yet Poincare describes it as an accumulation of facts and thus implies that these facts derived from false theories are still facts. I think that the natural sciences are the most accurate sources of knowledge as their means of collecting data by the scientific method are more fair and reliable than those of the social sciences, where if the majority of results follow a pattern (trend) then the results are seen as reliable if repeated again. Despite the inaccuracy of the social sciences they are more likely to determine more ethically correct uses from facts gained by natural sciences.

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