Team:SDU-Denmark/Reproducibility
Scientific reproduction
Philosophy of Science: Horror Vacui and reproduction
Science bases itself on our everyday observations. It began when people started wondering about the significance of their observations. Aristotle was wondering why the stone fell down when he dropped it from midair. He therefore developed a hypothesis about the essences in all things, which explained that the stone was moving towards its natural place - that the stone had a teleos (Ancient Greek: purpose, aim). Nowadays we laugh at that type of explanations but the essence of the science still stands: explaining our observations.
Theories and hypotheses have virtues, which a good scientist should comply with: e.g. to follow the rules of good reasoning, being coherent and explaining a phenomenon. To accept a hypothesis or theory one needs to show that it satisfies all demands - and then it needs to be tested by an objective scientist. This is called the demand of reproduction, which can be exemplified by the old story about Horror Vacui, a theory that could not be reproduced.
Horror vacui is a principle used in pre-newtonian physics, which means “fear of the empty space”. It dates back to Aristotle, who believed that vacuum could not exist in nature - it seemed like a logical impossibility. Even Galileo Galilei thought that the nature feared the empty space. It changed with his student Evangelista Torricelli, who discovered the pressure of the atmospheric air. He found that the explanation is not that nature fears empty space but that the atmospheric pressure can hold a column of water - and that it can create a vacuum.
A hypothesis or theory must always have implications that can be empirically tested to be of any use. The problem with horror vacui was that it could not be tested. There was nothing to observe and therefore, it seemed, nothing to test.
