Gee I thought scientists dealt with theories, data, and facts.
Please note that your thought is not from mathematics, logic, physics, chemistry, biology, archaeology, or the like.
It is a philosophical view that may be questioned or qualified on philosophical grounds.
Beliefs, feelings, or voices from beyond were notions that they didn't let enter the equation.
These three things are not from the same kettle of fish. Let me define some terms:
- Belief: assent to a proposition that has not been formally established.
- Inference: conditional assent to a proposition as a logical consequence of the truth of premises. "If A is true, then B is true."
- Feelings: may mean intuitions, hunches, surmises, inklings, irritation at discrepancies, and the like; may mean motivation to pursue a question until it is resolved; may be the sense of satisfaction anticipated in advance or experienced after the fact of making a discovery that solves a problem or answers a question; may reflect adherence to ideals such as truth, justice, beauty, simplicity, objectivity, and the like.
- Voices from beyond: the realm of the supernatural (if there is a supernatural dimension to reality) or the realm of self-delusion.
Star Trek and Carl Sagan's popular writings about science, among other forms of science fiction, have suggested that the scientist is a thinking machine, as cold, emotionless, and rigorously logical as our computers. Our computers need no emotions because they have no choice in the matter. They are completely deterministic. We turn them on, feed them data, and interpret the results. If the computer does not do what we command, it is a bad computer. We fix the software, if that is where the problem is, or replace the hardware, until the machine performs predictably.
I have been reading the works of Michael Polanyi for 40 years now. I used his philosophy of science in all of my college studies (BA in English, MA in Philosophy, MDiv in theology, and PhD in systematic theology). Polanyi was a medical doctor who became a PhD in physical chemistry, doing groundbreaking work in adsorption of gases, molecular bonds, and chemical reactions. Later in life, he did interesting work in economics, sociology, philosophy, theology, and aesthetics. Based on his experience as a laboratory scientist, he denied the objectivist philosophy of science partially expressed in your assertion.
"I have said that intellectual passions have an affirmative content; in science they affirm the scientific interest and value of certain facts, as against any lack of such interest and value in others. This
selective function--in the absence of which science could not be defined at all--is closely linked to another function of the same passions in which their cognitive content is supplemented by a conative component. This is their heuristic function. The
heuristic impulse links our appreciation of scientific value to a vision of reality, which serves as a guide to inquiry. Heuristic passion is also the mainspring of originality--the force which impels us to abandon an accepted framework of interpretation and commit ourselves, by the crossing of a logical gap, to the use of a new framework. Finally, heuristic passion will often turn (and have to turn) into
persuasive passion, the mainspring of all fundamental controversy" (
Personal Knowledge, 159).
Scientists are human. Their accomplishments are human, as well as their failures. Scientists
ought to tell the truth--that is a fundamental ideal of science to which they
should be passionately committed--but some scientists lie, cheat, and steal. Like the rest of us human beings, there are times when the good they ought to do they do not do and the evil they ought to avoid they do not avoid.
It is not possible for any human being to think without relying on some beliefs. This is a philosophical claim, but it has some backing from the field of logic and mathematics. We cannot prove the basic premises of logic on which all rational discourse depends: the principle of identity, the principle of non-contradiction, and the principle of Excluded Middle. These first principles of logic cannot be proven to be true the way that other things can be
if these principles are taken on faith. To engage in the physical sciences, one must also take for granted, without proof, that our powers of sense knowledge, abstraction, and memory are generally reliable. If they are not, then we cannot observe the physical world, form theories about it, test them with experiments that depend on the operation of our intellectual powers, and conclude that there are certain truths that all reasonable human beings
ought to accept.
I've highlighted "ought" and "should" several times. The concept of truth sets an ethical standard. We
should seek the truth and reject error; we
should believe others when they tell the truth; we
should be willing to change our minds when our reasoning has been shown to be in error. We cannot adhere to this ideal of truth, nor require it of others, without a passionate intellectual commitment (conviction, belief) that what is true is good and what is false is not good.
Scientists can operate with these convictions without even realizing that they hold them because the structure of the mind is not at the focus of most fields in science. Physicists, chemists, and the vast majority of biologists are focused on things outside of the mind, not on the mind that they are using to focus on things. They think about things, not about thinking.
... what is taking place [is a] study of possible clues to eliminate facts from fiction.
Not so much to "eliminate facts" but to separate them--or, better, perhaps, to distinguish between what is known, what is not known.
Eliminating theories by collecting data, and reviewing the results.
Agreed, pretty much. Notice that feelings--"intellectual passions"--are necessary for theory-formation and theory-selection. "About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!"
(Charles Darwin).
Now----I haven't been in school for a while, but unless there has been a huge change, I still think that you analyze the facts of the discovery without personal beliefs, voices from beyond, etc, and see if it matches the theory.
No. There can be no analysis, no collection of facts, no sense of making a discovery, and no evaluation of what "matches" a theory without the intervention of "personal beliefs." This is precisely the philosophy of science that Polanyi intended to deny in writing his book
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. It is a cardinal rule of all thought that we
ought to be objective, but we can adhere to that rule only by a subjective willingness to adhere to that ideal. "I start by rejecting the ideal of scientific detachment. In the exact sciences, this false ideal is perhaps harmless, for it is in fact disregarded there by scientists. But we shall see that it exercises a destructive influence in biology, psychology, and sociology, and falsifies our whole outlook far beyond the domain of science. I want to establish an alternative ideal of knowledge, quite generally. Hence the wide scope of this book and hence also the coining of the new term I have used for my title: Personal Knowledge. The two words may seem to contradict each other: for true knowledge is deemed impersonal, universally established, objective. But the seeming contradiction is resolved by modifying the conception of knowing" (
PK, vii).
I don't object to people expressing their philosophy of science. I object to them speaking
as if their philosophy of science is a finding of science rather than a freely-chosen philosophical orientation toward reality. I endorse the ideal of objectivity, but, with Polanyi, I reject the philosophy of objectivism.