What does it mean that science is cumulative?"

"Science is cumulative" Is a progressive and linear philosophical approach to knowledge that has been thrown by science through its research throughout history.

The concept basically refers to the search for solutions to the problems of society and to their need to solve the questions of human existence.

For this, scientists have left a series of platforms for knowledge that have been complemented linearly by successive generations of researchers.

Historians specializing in science have demonstrated that scientific knowledge is a process of cultural acquisition where it builds on previous advances. Citing the Isaac Newton , Each new generation will be able to see beyond standing only on the shoulders of the scientific giant predecessors.

Many philosophers and theorists assert that the more discoveries are made and the more they are learned from them, the better will be progressively achieved in understanding the universe where one lives.

Cumulative science aims to progress

This concept began to take shape during the illustration , Where free thought was introduced in all fields of society to give all previous beliefs answers based on scientific reasoning.

Empirists and rationalists, like Descartes, asserted that the use of appropriate methods for the pursuit of knowledge would guarantee the discovery and justification of the new truths.

Other more positivists joined this concept by asserting that science by accumulating truths empirically certified promoted the progress of society.

Shortly afterwards, other tendencies like Marxism and pragmatism also somehow supported this motion of the quest for human knowledge as a process of quasi-organic growth of culture.

Currently this concept is accepted as one of the models to explain the nature of science and its purpose. The following examples clearly illustrate this model:

Thanks to numerical notation and basic arithmetic invented by the Babylonians around 2000 BC, Greeks and Arabs were able to develop geometry and algebra respectively.

This knowledge enabled Newton and other Europeans to invent calculus and mechanics in the seventeenth century; Then there is mathematics as it is taught and used today.

Without Mendel On genetics and its laws would not have been continued and discovered that the genes were part of a chromosome. From that point it was possible to determine that the gene is a molecule in the DNA. And this in turn helped to give strength to the theory of natural selection supported by studies on genetic changes in the evolution of species.

In addition, it was known that there were magnetic charges and static electricity by observing atmospheric phenomena such as lightning.

Thanks to experiments to try to collect this energy was created the Leyden trainer in 1745 that managed to store static electricity.

Next, Benjamin Franklin defined the existence of positive and negative charges, then it was experimented with resistances. As a result, the battery was invented, the effect of electric currents was discovered and experimented with electrical circuits.

On the other hand, the laws of the OHM and the amperio and the units were formulated like July. Without these progressive discoveries it would not have been possible to develop Tesla coils, Edison's bulb, telegraph, radio, diodes and triodes for electronic circuits, television, computers, mobile phones.

From obscurantism to illustration

During the Middle Ages, knowledge about life, existence and the universe was very limited. There were no communities of scientists in the last 400 years.

The church dominated and controlled the direction in which human thought must always find the answers to the problems and questions of daily life. Any approach moderately different from this was immediately disqualified, rejected, and condemned by the church.

Consequently scientific progress stagnated for about 1000 years in what was called the dark ages. The search for knowledge was truncated by ignorance, ignorance or simply fear of being designated a heretic by the authorities. Nothing could challenge or contradict the"word of God"in the Bible.

The closest to scientific knowledge that was known were the texts of the time of the great Greek philosophers as Aristotle , Which the church half accepted. Based on these theories was the extension of what was known about the universe, nature and the human being.

At the time of the sea explorations began to challenge the first beliefs of the world but based on experience and observation, in other words empirical knowledge. What gave room and weight to the concept of reason or reasoning.

In this way came the scientific revolutions between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries that began to divert attention away from the church, as the centralized entity of absolute knowledge, towards scientific observation and scientific reasoning, as it is done today.

Thus, in this age of"enlightenment"for the human being came new discoveries and theories that completely defied the perception of the universe and of nature as it was known.

Among them, Heliocentric theory By Copernicus. The movement of the planets by Kepler. The Galileo telescope, the law of gravity by Newton and the blood circulation by Harvey. This epoch is known as the scientific revolution.

Thanks to this the approach to the search for knowledge, the answers to the questions of life and the solution of the problems of daily life changed drastically. As a result the communities of scientists and the famous scientific method were born.

References

1. Niiniluoto, Ilkka (2012). Scientific Progress. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Revisited 2015). Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Plato.stanford.edu.
2. Abstract Nonsense (2006). Science is Cumulative. Abstractnonsense.wordpress.com, David Zeigler (2012). Evolution and the Cumulative Nature of Science. Evolution: Education and Outreach, Volume 5, Issue 4 (p 585-588). Springerlink. Link.springer.com.
3. Dain Hayton. Science as Cumulative Cultural Evolution. Historian of Science. Dhayton.haverford.edu.
4. Wrestling with Philosophy (2012). Is Scientific Progress Cumulative or Revolutionary - Notes and thoughts on Thomas Kuhn's"The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolution".missiontotransition.blogspot.com.
5. Michael Shermer (2011). Science is progressive. Science, skepticism and humor. Naukas.com.
6. Bird, Alexander (2004) Thomas Kuhn. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Revisites2013). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Dish.stanford.edu.