Hypothetico-Deductive Perspectives

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The following essay aims to discuss the issues that someone with a hypothetico-deductive perspective may have with the given extract by exploring and contrasting both the hypothetico-deductive and inductive perspectives. According to the extract from Chalmers’ work above, scientific theories are ‘derived from the facts of experience’ (A. Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, 1976, p. 1) which is reference to the classical model of the scientific method; one based on inductivism. Popper, however, rejected this method of traditional empiricism and made strong argument(s) against scientific theories and their sole dependence on induction. His own account of the scientific method is commonly known as the ‘hypothetico-deductive method’ (SCIE1000 …show more content…

I also aim to discuss my own personal viewpoint with respect to Chalmers’ work above.
Firstly, I will introduce Chalmers’ claims regarding the scientific method and further analyse their implications. Chalmers’ primary argument refers to the fact that such scientific theories are ‘acquired by observation and experiment’ (SCIE1000 Notes, 2018). This suggests that they are based on the principle or inductivism - when generalisations for a particular phenomenon are extracted from evidence obtained after performing a series of observations and experiments. An example of this is as follows; if every observed koala appears to be grey in colour, one could induce the statement that ‘all koalas are grey in colour’. It is this theory of induction that has received wide criticism solely because any infinite amount of positive evidence in support of the theory does not account for the potential for one piece of negative evidence which would disprove the theory (ie. a brown koala in the example …show more content…

Chalmers’ ideology is more determined to prove the theory correct, and Popper’s own ideology rejects all other outcomes and instead solely focuses on achieving the one outcome in support of the hypothesis. The obvious bias in the origin of the hypothesis will more than likely produce a misleading data set, which is undeniably less than desirable. In my eyes, the most glaring flaw in the claims of Chalmers is that he makes the fatal mistake of jumping to conclusions and, as a result, prematurely declares hypotheses as truths. This is known as the fallacy of hasty generalisation and is a major dent in the credibility of any claim made. In order to make such an assumption as this, one would have to adopt the conjecture of the uniformity of nature – a theory introduced by Hume (W. Salmon, 1953). This conjecture suggests that by observing a sequence of events that has occurred in the past, and by assuming that the laws of physics will remain unchanged over the given time period; it is reasonable to expect that future events will occur in a similar fashion and thereby produce the same outcome. Contrarily, Popper’s own perspective of the scientific method has a potentially negative implication as his

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