Phenomenon and Regularity

Chapter 1: The Methodology of Science

Seated before my desk, with a pen in hand, I am recalling the achievements men have made in science. Science is a learning that gives systematic explanations to phenomena, which is very interesting. The saying that human is the paragon of animals is absolutely right; our brains are so well developed that all other animals are left far far behind. Expressions of emotion make arts, while analyses under reason become science. Human's emotion can mix up easily with reason. Therefore, judgment by science may get led by emotion, and then loose its conciseness; only on rare occasions can the result be remarkable and make us speechless. Yes, science can carry the beauty of arts. (Translator: no solid arguments for the "yes" so can be just ignored.)

Seeking beauty is human nature, so science can be artistic and have its beauty. But the kernel of science is definitely not arts, instead, it's focused on explaining phenomena. On the other hand, human is human and cannot be totally cold-hearted. When someone's science paper is said a work of art, it's just flattering, because no beauty can substitute explanation, which is the core purpose of science. Scientists are human, so we wouldn't expect them to have no emotion, but in science it can never be misused. The principle is simple: in scientific works objective analyses and subjective emotion can be combined and used together, but they must be set distinguishable; only in this way, words of emotion can be added to scientific writings and function as adornment to reduce their dullness.

In economics, to clearly separate subjective emotion and objective analysis is relatively difficult. It's no impossible, but compared to other natural sciences like physics and chemistry it's much harder. Economics is a science of explaining human behaviors. Nevertheless, economists are also human and cannot avoid mixing their values with their economics, sometimes they may even take their subjective likes and dislikes as the conclusions of science. So excellent economists share an ability of "forgetting themselves" when doing analyses. Those that are not talented in doing this must take more training.

Chapter 1, Section 1: Phenomenon and Regularity

My desk is beside window. Now it's late autumn. Outside the screen window, bamboos are shaking with the wind. Hong Kong is so crowded that it's hard to find a window outside which you can see a thick wood of bamboos. Poet Du Fu once said "In the boundless wood leaves are being shed shower by shower", people living in Hong Kong believe in it even they can never see such a sight, why? It's late autumn, but the bamboos here are still very lovely, then why? The temperature drop comes early this year, and the weather in early November is already very cold. Two months ago I saw some butterflies outside the window, now they are at nowhere. But I know they'd be back again next June. How can I be this sure?

The widow faces to the east. I write in the evening every day, so it has been years I don't watch the sunrise at my desk. Without seeing it, I dare to bet with anyone that in the morning I can see a sun rise outside the window. At the seaside, I know the sea water is salty, and the high and low of the tides is connected with the moon's wax and wane. When young I was a fishing master. At sight of the sea I recollect the happy days I fished. A fisher owes the fish, but he knows the character of them very well. When the moon is full and clouds cover the sky, it's the best time to fish yellowfin seabreams. This is the regularity.

Regularities of the nature are agreed on by any intellectual. So it is with human behaviors. Looking out the window, the community Zhifu developed by Hong Kong Land, a commercial property developer, and the low-rent village Huafu built by the government take either side. Anybody would agree without investigation that the latter is more crowded. Another community near my home called Biyao Bay is even less crowded than Zhifu. The higher-end the community is, the lower its population density would be. This is a regularity. On a closer hillside, there are a few wood houses. They are very simple, and of course unauthorized. Unauthorized buildings don't have land rights, thus are much cheaper than the ones that have. This is another regularity.

So no matter a phenomenon is about the nature or our human's behavior, there must be a regularity for it. In fact, we cannot find a phenomenon without any regularity, though some of them may require great efforts to discover. Every phenomenon has a regularity behind it, and it's so since time starts. We know some way must be followed, but we don't always know why it does so. After knowing there is a way there, we'd be driven by our curiosity to find out the why. We need an explanation, and here comes science.

The formation of science is based on five beliefs, which anyone interested in science must agree on. First, the existence of any phenomenon or behavior is by subjective judgment, and divergence on that is not allowed. That I say the sun is rising is my own judgment; if you don't agree and say it's coming down, then we can no more scientifically discuss the phenomenon. When I see it a flower, that you see must also be a flower; I say it's raining, you must also admit. This belief is the first condition of any scientific generalization. Of course, there are people don't agree on anything. They are just insulated from science.

The weird thing is, everyone's subjective judgments are incredibly easy to reach consensus. Though people may have different subjective views of a phenomenon, the existence of it is never hard to be all admitted. For instance, a man with color blindness agrees that there exist some color that he doesn't see; a deaf cannot hear but he'd never deny the existence of sounds.

That subjective judgments are backed by objective reality and can reach a consensus is a foundation of science. Any subjective thing that cannot form a common belief in the public is out of science. For example, in China supernatural power was often mentioned in the past, and believers can describe it very vividly, but people who deny it are also countless. I once saw in Beijing the most famous supernatural power performance, and it was so faked that I never believe its existence anymore. That supernatural power is out of science, is neither because I don't believe, nor many other people don't either, it's because nobody has ever convinced the unbelievers with rigid investigations. This is like some ones believe in God, the others don't, and nobody has ever succeeded in proving the existence of Him. I am not saying Christian or any other religion is meaningless, but they are just not science.

The second belief for science was mentioned previously: all the phenomena recognized by the public must have their regularities. For some phenomena, though, their regularities may require great efforts to recover or verify. Experience tells us, the regularity of a phenomenon never changes, so when a new phenomenon is observed, researchers will believe in the existence of its regularity no matter how hard it would be to find it out, and search for it with persistent efforts.

Why is the regularity of a phenomenon so important? The answer is: if a phenomenon has no regularity and happens totally random, we'd not be able to find its relationship with any other observations, the phenomenon is therefore not systematically explainable. A phenomenon with no hints before it happens and no evidences after it occurs, is pretty much like the ascent of Jesus, which cannot be talked with logic. Science is science only because no phenomenon in this world has not a regularity for it.

Then we have the third belief for science: anyone engaged in scientific research must believe that there is a reason for anything happened. Prediction (no foretelling) is the same thing with explanation. If we can predict that under certain conditions, due to certain reasons, a phenomenon will happen, then it's counted as explained. For example, fly's speed is much lower than that of a plane, but due to the gravitation discovered by Newton, a fly can fly forward in a plane. The theory used to explain a fly can move forward in a plane is the same one as used to explain outside the hatch the fly moves slower. (Translator: strictly speaking, the phenomena here are explained by the relativity of motions.) If there is no regularity for the speeds of fly and plane, or their speeds are not comparable under different settings, we wouldn't be able to explain the phenomena in or outside a hatch, not to mention the existence of science.

To summarize, subjective phenomena must be unanimously accepted by the public, there exist regularities behind, and each happening of them have a reason. These are the prerequisites of science.