Methodological Function of Hypotheses in Science: Old Ideas in New Cloth
- 1Institute of Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland; 2National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20894 USA
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
The August 1999 issue of Genome Researchpresented a very interesting editorial, “Hypothesis-Limited Research,” on the status and discovery function of scientific hypotheses in disciplines generating large amounts of data (Goodman 1999). Dr. Goodman points to two types of limitations generated by hypotheses—one theoretical and one pragmatic. She argues that generating at least some type of data, for example, large-scale sequencing, does not require hypotheses. From a practical point of view, a hypothesis often complicates the scientific discovery flow, generating a hypothesis is time consuming and biases data interpretation. Consequently, Goodman urges giving up on proposing theory first and collecting data afterward. She supports her suggestion with historical examples, presenting great scientific discoveries that were not based on a hypothesis, although contrary interpretation has been presented by others (Łastowski 1996). Let us have a look at how heretical Goodman's proposal is, if at all.
A Critique of Goodman's Standpoint
From Goodman's argumentation the conclusion can be drawn that molecular biology is the first experimental scientific discipline in which accumulation of data is so dynamic and fast that researchers cannot follow it by formulating an adequate number of hypotheses. This statement does not decrease the value of hypotheses in science but, as we will show here, it increases it.
From a methodological point of view, Goodman argues against a hypothetical program of research (Popper 1959). This program suggests the following procedure of scientific discovery: L. Goodman replaces this procedure with another one. It seems that (according to her) the scientific discovery in molecular biology should follow the scheme:The main argument for the scheme [G] is the fact that the pace of data accumulation is much greater than the generation of the hypothesis. Another important fact is that data are collected with minimal …
