by One might look at the titular question and think, “very easily so.” After all, change is just the progression of something becoming different than it was before. But the questioning is not in the defining of the concept of change itself but of science, a field that is constantly advancing and changing every minute. That makes it difficult to put a specific label on technology, theories, or any field and subset of science that morphs its definitions and parameters with each new paramount discovery.
Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, struggled with the demarcation problem, or how to define how and why certain scientific theories could be called scientific versus pseudoscientific. His readings from “Science: Conjectures and Refutations,” mused on how despite scientific discoveries relying on empirical observations for data, certain fields like astrology often use such information to make very “unscientific” theories such as horoscopes. The difficulty came in his attempt to explain what made certain theories less worthy in his eyes, such as his example on psychology: Adler was able to use his theory on the inferiority complex to explain nearly everything, including a case on a child Popper felt conflicted with Adler’s theory that he never even met. This ability to rationalize every new case that came upon a theory was a sure sign of that theory being “bad” in Popper’s eyes. As he writes on page 11, “One can sum up all of this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” If Popper is correct, then scientific theories have to be “risky,” and constantly tested, and I agree that it seems strange when a theory is able to explain everything to prove itself correct. Just because a theory fails to explain every specific case or strange outliers, does not mean it is now bunk and false, thinking that leads to Popper’s observations of scientists constantly seeking out and finding verifications.
To me Popper’s classification seems too rigid considering how quickly new and groundbreaking discoveries are made. Rather than looking at the new modifications to a theory as a cheap method to keep it’s veracity, why not look at them as necessary amendments resulting from inarguable new observations/experimental results? Kuhn, another philosopher of the 20th century, would probably not agree as he was the one who created the idea of a “paradigm shift,” or when scientific ideas begin to join and coincide to form a change from the previously accepted idea. To me the shift does not necessarily have to mean out with the old, in with the new. While the demarcation problem clearly seems to dictate a need for strict structure on separating science from non science, trying to put a nonchanging label on science and technology itself seems to me to be a pointless task.
The reading from Nye takes a closer approach to my thoughts in my opinion. His take on how tools/technology are born of need and tell a story reflect the constant changing of scientific belief and literature. Something needs to be done like a problem needing solving, so a tool is made according to Nye. So in that thread, a theory has an outlier or an experimental result that conflicts with the theory (the problem), that means a new approach or outlook (the tool) is needed. Science changes based on the people’s needs and wants, and those are based off social behavior and emotion, things that Popper would likely deem non-scientific standards. So it’s pointless to try to characterize science vs non science when they constantly mesh to form newer discoveries. Maybe that is the best way to define science is in the end, a constantly changing story that is unaware of where it can finally end with unchanging standards.