Axiomaticism in science development.

Abstract

This study represents a theoretical synthesis of the history of exact science. The persistent epistemological regularities identified in the study includes: (1) The Principle of Axiomaticism, or the Heraclitean-Confucian Principle. Every branch of physics and mathematics culminated in an axiomatized format. In fact, axiomatization and scientific underst and ing are equivalent. The historical roots of axiomaticism are traced; its congeniality with Aristotle's "teleological economy" is pointed out; so is its identity with Ernst Mach's "economy of mental effort." (2) The Principle of the Expansive Pools of Measurables. Knowledge in physics has been accumulated by way of empirical and intellectual manipulations of a number of physical measurables. The progress of physics corresponds to the "expansions" of "a pool of measurables," in one, or two, or all three possible manners. (3) The Principle of "Saving the Appearances." This ancient idea is now formulated as a principle in contrast to another ancient idea of "thinking up the true causes." In generalizing Pierre Duhem's work, this study shows that competition between these two attitudes has been persistent. (4) The Prinicple of Quasi-Deterministic Accumulation of Physical Science. Physical sciences are characterized by rigid internal logic. Did the historical building-up of physical sciences follow accidental courses? The answer is no, although neither was it historically deterministic. Since the accumulations of related positive results of sciences are sequential and orderly, they are described as quasi-deterministic. The study has been conducted with the observation that the whole history of physics serves well to illustrate all these historical regularities. The success of this viewpoint is evinced in a profound presentation of the Copernican Revolution, the Newtonian Synthesis, and the Chemical Revolution. As an epistemological exposition of the history of science, this study uses its own definition of science. In the beginning chapter, a thorough and exact definition of science is proposed, on the one h and , as an antidote to the movement that declares that "science is not all that scientific" and , on the other h and , as a successor to a number of definitions formulated by authors since antiquity. The study, however, concedes incompleteness in collecting and analyzing past definition of science.