La fonction épistémologique du hasard et du tâtonnement en science

Abstract

Popular imagery and those who are still classical science lunatics think that, hazard and groping are epistemological obstacles, they should then be expelled from the scientifical universe. In fact, classical science had excluded fortuity and groping. Arguing that, science is exact, precise, repetitive and predictive. For the Classical Scientifics, God wouldn’t know how to play dices; everything that happens has a course, fortuity does not exist, and the scientific does not grope, he sees things clearly thanks to methods and technics well defined and appropriate. This image of science reigned for centuries and shaped the collective conscience. It was thought unsurpassable and unique; the reign non-dices player God was taught eternal. But nothing is eternal in science. Science is constantly changing, and it is always upgradable. This is how with the discovery of the quantum physics by Max Plank in 1900, a real revolution occurred. This revolution came along with “scandalous innovations” as Robert Blanche qualified them, as they were completely out of line and in contradiction with precepts and principles which till then governed the man’s life and the world for decades. It is therefore proven that, with the rise of the quantum physics, that a new scientific tradition and a new way of seeing and understanding the world were possible; the Newtonian clock could be replaced. Science is no longer determinist it is henceforth indeterminist. This indetermination comes the wave-particle duality which characterises quantum particle. In short the conceptual basis of classical science: the determinism, objectivity, uniformity of the laws of nature and locality will be replaced by indeterminism, low objectivity, non-uniformity of the nature’s laws and the non- locality. Entering this new science required or requires fundamental changes, of new concepts. So the reel is no longer a stable and discontinuous reality. In other words, indeterminism had an impact on the ontological perception of reality. So quantum physics has brought to the day light the importance of luck and groping; with it, we understand that scientifical progress relies on hazard and groping as they excite critics and permit to fight against scientifical dogmatism and they catalyse research giving credibility to Popperian falsifiability. The difficulty of mastering it with strong objectivity is a call, a transdisciplinary openness. God does play dices and in this reign of the dices player God, the hazard and groping can no longer be considered as epistemological obstacles, but elements with which science cannot temper.