Reflections on A Brief History of the Hypothesis

Looking at the assignment at a glance, A Brief History of the Hypothesis looked a bit tedious.  But after reading through the article and going through class discussion afterward, I learned a great deal about the hypothesis, how it has evolved through the years, and why some scientists wish to keep it and some wish to remove it from our scientific method.  With a brief overview of the paper, a recap of discussions that were most interesting and thoughtful to me, and the value of the hypothesis in the biological field, I conclude with my own opinion on the fate of the hypothesis.

In A Brief History of the Hypothesis David Glass and Ned Hall wrestle with the question of whether the scientific community should continue to use the hypothesis in our experimental designs when large amounts of data may be enough to make the hypothesis obsolete.  These two ideas are rephrased as the top-down premise/deduction (hypothesis) and the bottom-up data/induction (model).  The authors explain their views on the subject by going through time as to how the idea of the hypothesis came about and has evolved over the years.  They explain how during the 1500 century in the times of Galileo, a hypothesis was necessary to advance scientific thinking from religious dogma rooted in unproven truths.  Galileo wished to base our truths on results and data of experiments.  Thinkers such as Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and David Hume took this idea one step further and wished to abolish the hypothesis completely.  They believed that data alone should determine what we believe is true, and not preconceived ideas on what will happen.  Hume even went as far as to say that we should not use past experiences at all to predict future outcomes.  Others such as Poincare believed that a hypothesis was necessary to make valuable conclusions for others to base their work.  They believed that if a certain phenomenon is observed over and over, it puts the power in the observer’s hands to ask the doubters why it should not work in future occurrences.  The authors conclude with the dangers of biased results due to the use of hypothesis and the necessity of them in fields such as medicine.  They conclude with their opinion that the hypothesis should be abandoned, replaced with a question whose results should be used for further questions instead of, ‘a quest for bold hypotheses to try to refute’.



Poor example of Inductive Reasoning



            Our in class discussion about A Brief History of the Hypothesis brought up some very valid points.  One that invoked the most thought in my mind was what Cara said, in how all her life in the sciences it was drilled into her head that she needed a hypothesis on what she thought was going to happen in her experiments.  I too was raised with the scientific method resonating in my head about the importance for a hypothesis.  Reading this article greatly broadened my way of thinking.  What use is there for a hypothesis?  Can a person not just go into an experiment with an open question of, ‘when I do this, what will be the outcome’?  With the use of a preconceived idea on what one thinks will happen, there is a chance of biased or slanted results.  The example given in class by Dr. Cooper was counting bacteria.  If a doctor worked his/her entire life on a new drug that kills all pathogens, he/she could unethically or unintentionally bias their results, either by skewing the number of bacteria or by subconsciously counting fewer bacteria than there actually are.  I also believe that a hypothesis is especially fruitless in the biology field.  As discussed in class, physicists and others who study concrete laws have a pretty good idea of what will happen based on physical laws set in place by past scientists.  We all know that if something falls, it will fall straight down due to gravity every time.  However, in biology there are so many differences and complexities that something that may work for one instance may not work for another.  A personal example is fishing.  I can draw from past experiences that a spot is good fishing area.  However, I can be quite disappointed if I hypothesize that I will catch fish if I fish this one spot every time.  From bacteria that resist antibiotics to whales that show sometimes wild behavior, biology’s vast complexity can sometimes show a hypothesis as a dangerous tool if used too faithfully.

However, I do believe we as the scientific community still need to use the tool of inductive reasoning.  By using inductive reasoning, we can use prior knowledge of other scientists to further their work.  By not using inductive reasoning, we as a society would slow our advances in the sciences.  By not using inductive reasoning, we could only go off questions of our own rather than inducing that others work may be correct.  As stated in the article, there is a need for inductive reasoning in health fields, in which we need to rely on a small sample to determine what will happen to the whole population.  I personally believe that we should eliminate the hypothesis from the scientific method, while retaining our ability to use inductive reasoning.  I believe with conclusions drawn from other works in the field while using an unbiased and open question, one can avoid biases and help to promote human knowledge.

                                                               Works Cited

Glass, D, & Hall, Ned. (2008, August 8). A brief history of the hypothesis. Cell 134, 378-381.

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