[LUM#1] Knowledge under construction
How is knowledge created? The epistemology of science sheds light on the issues at the heart of the invention and dissemination of knowledge.
Muriel Guedj is certain: when it comes to research, nothing is certain. " What traces the daily progress of science? It's doubt, rather than certainty. This historian of science explains that doubt, trial and error, hypothesis, trial and error, dead ends - far from being mere accidents along the way - are the very stages in the construction of scientific discourse, the dynamic principles of its genesis. " It's the exact opposite of what we teach at school, " she laughs.
Review error status
" The discovery of error is one of the crucial moments, one of the most creative moments of all, in any work of discovery (...) " explained Alexandre Grothendieck, a recently deceased genius who refuses to accept what is taught in schools. And the great mathematician added: " Fear of error and fear of truth are one and the same thing ".
Revisiting the status of error: this is one of the requirements of epistemology, that science of sciences which is also a daughter of philosophy. Rich error. Fertile error! Occasionally opening up unexpected perspectives. There are countless essential discoveries that were the fruit of reasoning based on inaccurate hypotheses - such as the discovery of penicillin, or vaccines - and countless fruitful theoretical advances that were later proven wrong...
Does scientific progress go from truth to truth? Nothing could be less certain. If, as Henri Poincaré pointed out, science cannot advance without venturing down the uncertain path of hypothesis, then it is at the risk of error that it really progresses. Let's face it: it's not the long, tranquil river criss-crossed by daring explorers that people like to portray it as. Rather, it's a work in progress, marked by unforeseen events and accidents.
Giving science back its human dimension
Epistemology invites us to take a more human and distanced look at a somewhat idealized scientific approach. We need to get away from scientism," sums up Muriel Guedj. The collective imagination presents a vision of science that is as simplistic as it is incongruous with reality: a smooth object with all the appearances of absolute truth.
The first notion to be desacralized is that of scientific truth: " What we call truth is often a step, obtained at the end of a sometimes chaotic journey. But scientific truths remain necessary! And when they are modified, it's not because they are relative, but because they are incomplete ". Far from being a given object, science is a collective construction in which conjectures, propositions and demonstrations respond to each other over time.
Doesn't knowledge just spring from the head of Zeus? That's reassuring: it means we can make it our own, this mysterious process of creation by which discoverers invent new lands... Epistemology thus invites us to a salutary questioning: " exploring the processes by which knowledge is constructed means giving science back its human face. At the same time, it ' s a way of uninhibiting students and young researchers, enabling them to take full advantage of this field of expression and make its methods their own.
Social issues
While epistemology is concerned with the ways in which knowledge is produced, it also looks at the historical and social context of scientific activity. " A researcher's work is by no means an autonomous or even individual activity. It is part of a socio-cultural context, and bears the imprint of numerous societal and political issues ". A case in point? There are countless examples. Here's one, perhaps more spectacular than others: Darwin's theory of evolution, a tumultuous terrain of ideological confrontation and religious controversy.
Scientific discourse thus forges links with society that are far more subtle and complex than they appear. The role of the epistemologist is to reveal the layers and rough edges that make it up. His method: question knowledge, identify it, contextualize it. " Situating a discovery in its context, culture and history - even if it's a differential equation! - is to draw the contours of the object that is knowledge: the only way to really grasp it," explains Muriel Guedj.
All epistemologists
A job that benefits all citizens. What's at stake? To enable everyone to better decipher the major social debates. They are legion, whether related to the environment, climate, new energies, natural resources, biotechnologies, food...
A challenge that has become particularly vital in the age of the Internet. While the web provides access to enormous masses of data, it is this very profusion that paradoxically complicates access to knowledge, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.
What's changing is our whole relationship with knowledge," sums up the epistemologist. Today's students no longer come to class to access knowledge, but to question it, contextualize it, criticize it and distance themselves from it. By overturning access to knowledge, as well as teaching methods, the digital revolution has the unexpected result of turning us all into epistemologists.
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