Falsifications and Scientific Progress: Popper as Sceptical Optimist (original) (raw)
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Karl Popper’s Falsificationist Account of Science
In his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper deals with the often called "demarcation problem", which consists in the question: what criterion (or criteria) differentiates scientific and unscientific knowledge? Popper answers by providing a logical criterion for demarcating proper scientific knowledge from pseudo-science: falsificationism.
Karl Popper’s Falsificationism is untenable
Falsificationism presents a normative theory of scientific methodology; Scientists put forward hypotheses or systems of theories and test them through experience via experimentation (Popper, 2002: 3). Falsifiability for Popper is the criterion for scientific statements to be classed as empirical, while falsification denotes the requirements necessary for a theory to be classed as falsified i.e. if we accept a statement that contradicts the statements of the theory (Popper, 2002: 66). Falsificationism thus identifies normative science and what the limits are to research, and the demarcating line between science and non-science (Ladyman, 2001: 62) (Popper, 2001a: 295). This essay will proceed as follows; (1) firstly, Popper’s Falsificationism’s strengths as a theory of scientific method will be explained and evaluated in comparison to (2) the impact of Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts, (3) Lakatos’ falsificationism (scientific research programmes), and (4) Feyerabends rejection of scientific method. Overall, (1) Popper’s theory falls victim to (2) Kuhn’s account, but the debate thus becomes between (3) Lakatos and the rejection of method via (4) Feyerabend, concluding with an interpretation of falsificationism as succumbing to Feyerabendian considerations
A Critique of Popper's Views on Scientific Method
1972
This paper considers objections to Popper's views on scientific method. It is argued that criticism of Popper's views, developed by Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, are not too damaging, although they do require that Popper's views be modified some¬what. It is argued that a much more serious criticism is that Popper has failed to provide us with any reason for holding that the methodological rules he advocates give us a better hope of realizing the aims of science than any other set of rules. Con¬sequently, Popper cannot adequately explain why we should value scientific theories more than other sorts of theories ; which in turn means that Popper fails to solve adequately his fundamental problem, namely the problem of demarcation. It is sug¬gested that in order to get around this difficulty we need to take the search for explana¬tions as a fundamental aim of science.
Journal for General Philosophy of Science - Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, 1988
Basiss~itze spielen eine zentrale Rolle in Poppers "Logik der Forschung', denn sie erlauben die Unterscheidung zwischen empirischen und nichtempirischen Theorien: Eine Theorie ist empirisch genau dann, wenn sie aus falsifizierbaren Aussages~itzen besteht, und Aussages~itze (beliebiger Art) sind falsifizierbar genau dann, wenn sie mindestens einem Basissatz widersprechen. Popper setzt offensichtlich voraus, daig die Basiss~itze selbst empirisch und somit falsifizierbar sind. Jedenfalls behauptet er mehrmals ihre Falsifizierbarkeit. Wir beweisen in unserem Aufsatz, dag die Basiss/itze nicht falsifizierbar sind, und wir beweisen dies nicht nur fiir Poppersche Basiss~itze im engeren Sinn, sondern auch fiir Poppersche Basiss~itze im weiteren Sinn und schlieglich fiir Poppersche Basiss~itze im weitesten, mit den Vorstellungen Poppers gerade noch vertr~iglichen Sinn. Dies fiihrt zu dem paradoxen Ergebnis, dalg nach Poppers eigenen methodologischen Postulaten die Basis der empirischen Wissenschaften nicht selbst empirisch ist. Dariiber hinaus entwickeln wir ein ~ihnliches Paradoxon beziiglich Poppers Falsifizierbarkeitsschema f/ir Theorien. Zum Abschlutg unseres Aufsatzes betrachten wir einige Mtglichkeiten, die von uns entdeckten Paradoxa zu fiberwinden.
Karl Popper's Falsification Principle
======================================================================= I hope that this page will get you interested in studying this great man and his theories of science and politics. I have collect number of quotes (*) from various sites with the links to those sites. Please visit them and read the quotes in their context. T will also be made aware of many other aspects of Popper's work. All emphasis in the quotes below is my own. (*) All copyrights belong to their respective owners. ======================================================================= Sir Karl Popper (1902-94) Austrian (later British) scientific, social and political philosopher-particularly important for his understanding of science as progressing by the falsification of hypotheses. ======================================================================= Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) The most important philosopher of science since Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Sir Karl Popper finally solved the puzzle of scientifi which in practice had never seemed to conform to the principles or logic described by Bacon. Instead of scientific knowledge bein and verified by way of inductive generalizations, leaping from data into blank minds, in terms that go back to Aristotle, Popper rea science advances instead by deductive falsification through a process of "conjectures and refutations." (The end of this section refers directly to astrology-PL) With Einstein's theory the situation was strikingly different. Take one typical instance-Einstein's prediction, just then confirmed b of Eddington's expedition. Einstein's gravitational theory had led to the result that light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose appar was close to the sun would reach the earth from such a direction that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a thing cannot normally be observed since such stars are rendered invisible in daytime by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during a
A Tale of Three Theories: Feyerabend and Popper on Progress and the Aim of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: (i) the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery (1935/1959); (ii) the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations (1963); (iii) the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay "Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam" (1965) and defended as late as the last edition of Against method (1993). It is argued that, contrary to what Feyerabend scholars have predominantly assumed, Feyerabend's changing attitude towards falsificationismdwhich he often advocated at the beginning of his career, and vociferously attacked in the 1970s and 1980sdmust be explained by taking into account not only Feyerabend's very peculiar view of the aim of science, but also Popper's changing account of progress.
Karl Popper and the inception and application of Falsifiability. A critical review.
1902-1994) was one of the most respected and revered professionals in the field of philosophy of the sciences and its methodologies. He was a social and political philosopher who had a wide reach in various aspects of the physical sciences as well as the social sciences. His political and social views were of great stature among the intellectuals and his disregard for the grand theories of individuals like Freud and Marx are respected and followed to this very day. Among his myriad of exquisite literature he published throughout his life his work on the paradigm of falsifiability was and still is a topic of great discussion.
When I received the list of participants in this course and realized that I had been asked to speak to philosophical colleagues I thought, after some hesitation and consolation, that you would probably prefer me to speak about those problems which interests me most, and about those developments with which I am most intimately acquainted. I therefore decided to do what I have never done before: to give you a report on my own work in the philosophy of science, since the autumn 1919 when I first begin to grapple with the problem, "When should a theory be ranked as scientific?" or "Is there a criterion for the scientific character or status of a theory?" The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, "When is a theory true?" nor "When is a theory acceptable?" my problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science; knowing very well that science often errs, and that pseudoscience may happen to stumble on the truth. I knew, of course, the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that science is distinguished from pseudoscience—or from "metaphysics"—by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from observation or experiment. But this did not satisfy me. On the contrary, I often formulated my problem as one of distinguishing between a genuinely empirical method and a non-empirical or even pseudo-empirical method — that is to say, a method which, although it appeals to observation and experiment, nevertheless does not come up to scientific standards. The latter method may be exemplified by astrology, with its stupendous mass of empirical evidence based on observation — on horoscopes and on biographies. But as it was not the example of astrology which lead me to my problem, I should perhaps briefly describe the atmosphere in which my problem arose and the examples by which it was stimulated. After the collapse of the Austrian empire there had been a revolution in Austria: the air was full of revolutionary slogans and ideas, and new and often wild theories. Among the theories which interested me Einstein's theory of relativity was no doubt by far the most important. The three others were Marx's theory of history, Freud's psychoanalysis , and Alfred Adler's so-called "individual psychology." There was a lot of popular nonsense talked about these theories, and especially about relativity (as still happens even today), but I was fortunate in those who introduced me to the study of this theory. We all—the small circle of students to which I belong—were thrilled with the result of Eddington's eclipse observations which in 1919 brought the first important confirmation of Einstein's theory of gravitation. It was a great experience for us, and one which had a lasting influence on my intellectual development. The three other theories I have mentioned were also widely discussed among students at the time. I myself happened to come into personal contact with Alfred Adler, and even to cooperate with him in his social work among the children and young people in the working-class districts of Vienna where he had established social guidance clinics. It was the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories—the Marxist theory of history, psychoanalysis , and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psychoanalysis , and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?" To make this contrast clear I should explain that few of us at the time would have said that we believed in the truth of Einstein's theory of gravitation. This shows that it was not my doubting the truth of those three other theories which bothered me, but something else. Yet neither was it that I nearly felt mathematical physics to be more exact than sociological or psychological type of theory. Thus what worried me was neither the problem of truth, at that stage at least, nor the problem of exactness or measurability. It was rather that I felt that these other three theories, though posing as science, had in fact more in common with primitive myths than with science; that they resembled astrology rather than