History and philosophy of

science
 What is philosophy?
 The body of principles that generates knowledge about
phenomenon in the universe.
 The study of principles underlying conducts, though and
knowledge (Azenabor 2001)
 It can also be seen as an academic discipline and as intellectual
enterprises.
 Concern with an issues about life and living in the world around us
(Lamont 1965)
 It is an investigation process in to the social reality of a man and his
environment.
 Relevance of Philosophy in the history of Science
 The science is derived from the latin word, ‘Scientia ‘ which means
knowledge.

 Science is the body of knowledge usually derived from empirical

evidence.

 Science is defined as the knowledge of the world of nature.

 Knowledge refers to an acquaintance with the facts particularly the

bodies of facts that are organized into principles of human
behavior.
 Kinds of human knowledge
1. Folks knowledge
2. Literary knowledge
3. Scientific knowledge

 The knowledge gained from day to day activity is known as folks

knowledge.
 May or may not necessary be based on testing,
 It may also be based on your personal experience of respected people.

 The literary knowledge does not undergo any testing or checking

either.
 Its existence is based on symbolic reality.
• It is created in an abstracting process in which essential realities are
sieved from the human experience and used to explain the potential
of human capabilities.
The Scientific Knowledge
 Combine the characteristics of folks and literary knowledge.
 The major activities of empirical sciences involves the
description, testing, and the end product is the expansion of
knowledge.
 Many people believes that knowledge come from science.
This assumption may not be true because much knowledge is
derived from every day experience and from application of
scientific methods.
 But carefully well designed research that brought about a
systematic knowledge is called scientific procedure.
 Science is therefore a method of making a systematic enquiry
 Aims of science
• Enabling man to explain how the world, events, and objects around
him originate, developed and function.

• Predict how it will behave in future and thus enabling Man to control
the behavior of the things around him by developing instruments use
for that.

• Equip us with theoretical knowledge about the world. Such

knowledge is usually summarized using concept, laws, and theories.

• Science also equipped us with practical knowledge in terms of various

ways, mechanisms and instruments which enables us to control
object and phenomena.

• Science therefore provides the source of power.

Scientific approach to knowledge development is democratic.

 This means that everyone has the right to answer when confronted
with question.

 Scientists are mandated to share their findings (knowledge) clearly by

stating the implications of their finding.

 Similarly, it is a must that scientist should describe their methods

clearly so that it can be followed step by step for anyone to arrived at
conclusion on the issues under investigation.

 This means that the science simply means a body of knowledge

arranged in definite order. Particularly knowledge discovered through
observation and testing of facts.
Branches of sciences
Science can be group into (1) Formal sciences and (2) empirical sciences
Science is said to be formal if its contents , argument and procedure obey
certain rules and the results and conclusion of such sciences are valid and
authentic only if it conform to those rules. It includes Mathematics (geometry,
algebra, trigonometry and arithmetic), logic, theoretical, physics, and statistics.
 FS Have a formal and deductive character
 e.g. Rules of addition, subtraction and division where the rule of BODMAS is
followed.

Empirical sciences ; these study object and phenomena which can be observed
through any senses and which can be tested with instruments such as telescope,
microscope, ruler, tape, and scales.
It includes biology, zoology, biochemistry, microbiology, geology, physics,
chemistry, basic sciences etc.
It observe and experiment to find out how things originate, grow or developed
and relate to one another
Scientific disciplines
• Natural Sciences
 Physical sciences (physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, astronomy)
 Biological sciences ( human beings , animal, insects and plants)
 Medical sciences ( general medicine, anatomy, surgery, physiology and veterinary
medicine) it deals with the objects and problems that affects humans and
animal health
 Pharmaceutical Sciences ; Pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical chemistry,
pharmacognosy, and pharmacology, the area is concerned with drugs and drugs
contents of plants and other contents.
Social sciences
 Economics
 Social psychology
 Geography
 Sociology and anthropology
 Social philosophy etc.
 It is generally dealing with society and social institutions
Non Scientific disciplines
• The non scientific disciplines are:
• Religion ( speculative, based on faith or dogma)
• Art
• Metaphysics (branch of philosophy)
• Mysticisms
• Common sense
• Imagination etc.
Assumption in scientific methods
These assumption are commonly regarded as ‘ article of faith’ are as follows:
• That there exist a definite order of recurrences.
• Knowledge is superior to ignorance.
• That communication tie, based on upon sense impressions, exists between the
‘ scientific and externality ’ ( empirical assumption).

• That there is course and effect relationship within the physical and social
orders

• There are certain observer assumptions;

a. That the observer is driven to attain knowledge by the desire to ameliorate
human conditions.
b. That the observer has the capacity to conceptually relate observations and
imputes meaning to events.
c. The society will sustain the observer in his or pursuit of knowledge.
Philosophers in the history of science

Name of philosopher Discipline Nature of discovery/Date

Barnes R.D Biology Invertebrate Zoology in 1963

Klaproth R.D Physics Uranium in 1784

Mc. Cormic B.J Chemistry Inorganic chemistry in 1965

Karl- Marx Sociology Theory of evolution in17889

Jean Piaget Psychology Human cognitive development phase in

1928

Mary Parker Administration Administrative theory

Vande Gra’aff Engineering Engine generator in 1789

The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia in around 3500 to 3000 BCE.

Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine

entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity,
whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of
events in the physical world based on natural causes.

Modern science is typically divided into three major branches that

consist of the natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics),
which study nature in the broadest sense; the social sciences (e.g.,
economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and
societies; and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and
theoretical computer science), which study abstract concepts.
• The structure of science as an activity can be represented as a set of
three basic elements:

1. The goal – obtaining new scientific knowledge;

2. The subject – the available empirical and theoretical information

to help solve scientific problems;

3. The resources – methods of analysis and communication available

to the researcher that help achieve acceptable to the scientific
community solution to a problem.
Philosophy as the Mother of Science
• Philosophy was the original inquiry into the nature of the world. (Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, etc.) It combined what we'd now call 'science' with other
aspects of reality, and asked all those questions. (So philosophers asked about
the origin of the universe, what it was made of, what it was all for, what was
ethical, etc., all in one package.)

As that knowledge grew and people started specializing, and as philosophers

started to realize better the role of controlled observation in gaining certain
types of knowledge, and as they learned more about the world to start to
impose stable categories on phenomena, the sciences split off from
philosophy. So, for example, Aristotle is called the father of biology: he
catalogued a great many species, speculated (in a very sexist manner) on
biology and reproduction. He also philosophized about what made humans
different from other animals. But, it was only some time after him that biology
turned into a science with a shared set of standards, research problems, etc. -
one could say that before Darwin, biology wasn't distinct from a whole host of
other inquiries into life-related subjects.
• The word "scientists" is a recent invention, formally distinguishing
experimental investigators of nature from other modes of inquiry.
(Newton called himself a "natural philosopher" because 'scientist'
wasn't created yet. And, he probably would have objected even
so: he did an awful lot of philosophy (epistemology, especially) in
his Principia Mathematica.)

• The modern philosophy of science as a study of the general laws

of scientific knowledge in its historical development and the
changing social and cultural context
• According to the domestic researcher T. Leshkevich, in creating the image
of the philosophy of science one should distinguish between the two meanings
of this term: 1) as a direction of the Western and the Russian philosophy
presented by a variety of concepts that offer one or another model of the
development of the science which originated in the second half of the XIX-th
century; 2) as a discipline that emerged during the second half of the XX-th
century in response to the need to understand the socio-cultural function of
science in the scientific and technological revolution (STR). Its subjects are the
general patterns and trends of the scientific cognition as a special activity for the
production of the scientific knowledge taken in its historical development and
considered in the changing social and cultural context
• The formation and development of the philosophy of science as a
discipline was influenced by: 1) the general socio-cultural background of a
particular historical epoch; 2) gnosiological, epistemological, and
methodological studies; 3) theoretical approaches, models and concepts
developed in the framework of the philosophy of science as a branch of the
modern philosophy.
The range of the main problems of the philosophy of science is quite
wide: the scientific criteria and the differences between the scientific knowledge
and the unscientific one; logic of the scientific research; structure of the
scientific knowledge; mechanisms for generating new knowledge; scientific
rationality; patterns of the history of science; interaction of science and culture;
science base; value of science; ethos of science, etc. All of them are derived
from the central problem of the philosophy of science – the problem of growth
(development) of the scientific knowledge.
INTODUCTION TO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
• The term RESEARCH refers to the purposeful and planned activities
aimed at investigating and subsequently discovering facts,
relationships or problems which characterized a given phenomenon.

To research is to

 search again

 take another more careful look

 find out more.

A research is more than a brief look at a problem or phenomenon

because it is a process involving a set of ordered activities meant to
facilitate amore reliable discovery.
• There is a distinction between research method and research
methodology.

• A method is a way of doing something. For instance there are methods

of teaching and methods of international settlement used in
international trade.

• Research method simply refers to way of carrying out all research

activities that form the research process.

• A methodology refers to the set of methods used in working on

something

• For instance, one need to adopt a methodology for identifying a

disease by using a given criterion.
• The research methodology is therefore a philosophy adopted by a
researcher with which he/she undertakes the activities which
constitutes the research process.

• The assumptions made by a researcher and the criterion used in

interpreting data and reaching a conclusion are part of research
methodology.

• However, a procedure for research is generally known as “scientific”

method or procedure.
Major categories of research
1. Pure research
2. Applied research

Most of the researches undertaken by students and the lecturers in

the school which are mostly reported in journals or text books are pure
researches. It is also called basic research.

It involves developing and testing theories and hypothesis that are
intellectually interesting to the investigator and might thus have some
social application in the future.

An applied research is the research that deals with large scale studies
covering a wide area of interest such as education, drug addiction and
women empowerment
Research Methods
This involves the overall scheme of scientific activities in which scientists
engaged in order to produce authentic/defendable knowledge. These
activities are though difficult to define precisely, involve the following
steps.
a. Formulation of a hypothesis
b. Research design
c. Careful observation and collection of data from the experiment
d. Interpretation of the experimental design.
The hypothesis is the tentative explanation or solution or solution to a
problem expresses in the form of a relation between independent and
dependents variables. It can only be verified after it has been tested
empirically.
Research design
The research design (process) can be broken down into the following
steps:
Problem formulation
Field work
 data collection
 Sample collection
 Questionnaire
Experimentation
Data analysis and implementation
Research report.
Scientific Method of Acquiring Knowledge
 Most of the steps are common procedures carried out by people on
a daily basis. Taken together, they amount to one of the Powerful
tools man has devised to know and to control nature.

The steps of scientific research include the following:

1. Observation
2. Problem definition
3. Hypothesis formulation:
4. Experimentation
5. Theory formulation
1. Observation:
 It is the first step of the scientific method. Thus anything that cannot
be observed cannot be investigated by science. For example, a
young student observes that maize grains, which were placed in a
wet container inside a dark cupboard, germinated, but that the
leaves were pale yellow instead of the normal green colour of leaves
(Olorode and Kloh: 2000).
 Scientific observation can be both direct and indirect.
 Direct observations are made with the aid of the senses just as our
hypothetical student observed the maize grains with his eyes.
Indirect observations are performed with the aid of instrument.
Atomic nuclei and magnetism, for example, cannot be perceived
directly through our sense organs, but their effects can be observed
with instruments.

Observations can also be classified into:

(a) Spontaneous or passive observations which are unexpected

(b) Induced or active observations, which are deliberately looked out

for.

After an observation has been made, the second step of the scientific
method is to define the problem.
2. Problem definition:
In this step, questions are asked about the observation. If our
hypothetical student in (1) above shows further curiosity, he will
decide to find out why those seedlings had pale yellow leaves instead
of green. This is the definition of the problem.

He asks himself, ‘Why are the leaves pale yellow instead of green?’ This
is the kind of causal question that the scientific method deals with.
Science is fundamentally about finding answers to questions.
3. Hypothesis formulation:
 This involves the seemingly quite unscientific procedure of guessing? One
guesses what the answer to the question might be. Scientists call this assumed
answer hypothesis.

 A given question, as you might be aware, may have thousands of possible

answers but only one right answer. Thus, there are excellent chances that a
random guess will be wrong. The scientist will only know if his guess was correct
after he must have completed the fourth step of the scientific method, which is
experimentation (‘The nature of science’).

 The main function of a hypothesis is to predict new experiments or new

observations. Thus our hypothetical student in (2) above will try to state all the
possible explanations of his observation, or all the possible solutions to the
One possible explanation he might give is that the pale yellow
colour referred to is the characteristic of the particular variety of
maize that was germinating in the dark cupboard.

Another explanation he might give is that the pale yellow

coloration resulted from the exclusion of light. Since it is the
function of every experiment to test the validity of a scientific
guess, the fourth step of the scientific method is
experimentation.
4. Experimentation
You might be aware by now that answers without evidence are really
unsupported opinions. Experimentation can provide the necessary
evidence and anyone who experiments after guessing at answers
becomes truly ‘scientific’ in his approach.
Experimentation is by far the hardest part of the scientific method.
There are no rules to follow; each experiment is a case unto itself.
Technically, knowledge and experience usually help. Making a correct
decision on the means by which a hypothesis might best be tested
shows the difference between a genius and an amateur (‘The nature
of science’).
Can you think of how the young student in our hypothetical example
would gather evidence in order to disprove or confirm his
hypotheses? Let us examine the two hypotheses regarding the young
man’s observation of pale yellowing leaves of maize seedlings.
The first hypothesis to explain the observation was that the yellowing
was due to the variety of maize germinating. A simple way to test that
hypothesis is to collect various varieties of maize, put them in the dark
cupboard and observe the results. All the varieties will be found to
have produced the same pale yellow leaves.

The other hypothesis, which states that the exclusion of light

produced the pale yellow leaves effect, can also be easily tested. This
is done by germinating a batch of seeds in the dark and another batch
in a well-lit condition.
The well-lit condition serves as the control. It provides a standard of
reference for assessing the results of the experimental series. It would
be found that the seedlings in the dark would be pale yellow while
those in a well-lit condition would have the normal green colour.

What do you think gives the green colour in plants?

5. Conclusion:
We shall again illustrate this step with our hypothetical example above. The
test of the first hypothesis leads us to reject that hypothesis while our test of
the second hypothesis leads us to accept the second (alternative) hypothesis.
Thus our respective conclusions are:

(a) Yellowing of the leaves was not due to the variety of maize
germinating.

(b) Exclusion of light caused the yellowing of the leaves.

• Scientific conclusions can be redefined, modified and clarified when the

situation arises. Some other conclusions may even be overthrown and
discarded.
For instance, the young man who observed the pale yellow leaves of
maize seedlings may want to find out if the same result will be
obtained with seedlings of other plants.

He may also observe that in a large maize farm, some rare seedlings
which lack green pigments completely may exist. This will lead him to
modify his original conclusion. He may add that ‘other factors besides
lack of light may cause yellowing of leaves.
6. Theory formulation:
It differs from a scientific hypothesis in its breadth of application.
A theory is usually proposed when a hypothesis has been supported
by really convincing evidence.
 A scientific theory is an explanation about the cause or causes of a
broad range of related phenomena.
A theory explains how things are related or their common properties.
Thus, theories start as hypotheses or tentative formulations meant to
explain the phenomenon under investigation.
When hypothesis is confirmed through experimentation, it becomes a
theory. Some these scientific theories include the theory of evolution
by natural selection, the theory of universal gravitation etc.
 Gravitation is the force which pulls every object in the universe
towards every other object in the universe.
It is the force that makes a body fall through space toward the earth.
The first scientific explanation (theory) of the behavior of falling
objects was given by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727).