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Popper on science: conjectures and refutations
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Popper claims basic statements are not justified by experience, but accepted by choice or convention. This claim is argued through a rejection of ‘psychologism’ and inductivism. According to Popper, scientific theory can be seen the fog above a swamp full of basic statements; the acceptance of a theory comes from an evaluation of basic statements and the conscious decision to accept or reject the theory. Popper comes to this conclusion after considering the problem of psychologism, distinguishing science from non-science, examining the falsification of theories and their testability, and then comparing perceptual experience and basic statements to illustrate how we come to form and accept scientific theory as empirical. Poppers arguments are …show more content…
Popper states that the decision to accept a basic statement is connected to experiences in that they can motivate a decision, but a basic statement cannot be justified by experiences. The problem seems to be that he sees theories as statements about the world, similar to basic statements, therefore theory can be motivated by experience but not justified by it; or, the motivation to accept a theory can be experience, but we cannot justify theory with that motivation. It may help to consider how Popper feels about theory. He believes that “theories are nets cast to catch what we call ‘the world’: to rationalize, to explain, and to master it … [and that] we endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer” (“Logic of Scientific Discovery,” 59). It is difficult to find where justification fits into this; Popper is not clear on where the justification can come from, and even seems to imply that scientific theories cannot truly be justified. In “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge,” Popper goes as far as to say “what we should do … is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach” …show more content…
Testing a theory typically means attempting to disprove the theory, and Popper would argue this is the only way to establish it as empirical or scientific. The history of science shows that theories are constantly being disproved and re-written, as we look back at theories such as the earth being the center of the universe, which was accepted as scientific knowledge at the time. The same process can be seen for nearly every piece of scientific knowledge. Popper would say this is an example of the unstable bedrock of science, with current theory simply being the highest point, but still made of this metaphorical swamp of human
Any hypothesis, Gould says, begins with the collection of facts. In this early stage of a theory development bad science leads nowhere, since it contains either little or contradicting evidence. On the other hand, Gould suggests, testable proposals are accepted temporarily, furthermore, new collected facts confirm a hypothesis. That is how good science works. It is self-correcting and self-developing with the flow of time: new information improves a good theory and makes it more precise. Finally, good hypotheses create logical relations to other subjects and contribute to their expansion.
Popper asserts that "it is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory--if we look for confirmations." Kuhn illustrates (page 6), in his discussion of cosmologies, that man needs a structure for his universe. Man needs to explain the physical relation between his personal habitat and nature in order to feel at home. Explaining this relation gives meaning to his actions.
In “The Canon” written by Natalie Angier, a variety of interesting stories are used to prove that science isn’t something that can be learned but, instead, is a mindset. Angier confirms this statement by using examples from everyday life to show how people behave scientifically, whether they know it or not (491). She also points out that by simplifying concepts, such as the solar system, to help children understand science, it skews their view of science more than aiding in their knowledge (497). This goes to show that by making simple hypothesis’ and conclusions on
...ave to accept unless unification is further revised. Because as it stands, Popper’s idea of a new theory replacing the old is that it “corrects the old theory, so that it actually contradicts the old theory.” (Popper, p.16) This contradiction is what causes the winner-take-all problem because the lower explanation has been trumped by the general explanation which eliminates the lower theories ability to be explanatory.
Messenger, E., Gooch, J., & Seyler, D. U. (2011). Arguing About Science. Argument! (pp. 396-398). New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill Co..
He wanted to distinguish between scientific theories in terms of “science” and “pseudoscience,” also known as the “problem of demarcation.” He states that Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology were pseudosciences–posing as real science (Popper, 2). In this case, Freud’s psychoanalysis focuses on human behavior dictated by inborn, subconscious desires that cannot be falsifies, so Freud’s psychoanalysis is pseudoscience. In addition, he states his dissatisfaction with these pseudo-science theories because of how doubtful their claims are to the scientific status, and how they have “more in common with the primitive myths than science” (Popper, 2). However, he argues “Einstein’s theory of gravitation” is science because it was proven that gravity did exist, and this theory clearly satisfied the criterion of falsifiability (Popper, 2). Popper has clearly stated the problems of demarcation, and he wants to use falsification as demarcation between scientific and nonscientific
Scientists have greatly taken todays advantage to make what once was research, factual evidence. To be a scientist takes great creativity and intelligence, and today’s scientists even past scientists had to rely on their hypothesis as a form to make a new discovery. John M Barry, the author of The Great Influenza explains how scientific reasoning. Barry compares scientific reasoning as very important, that a scientists works “…May break apart upon the sharp edge of a single laboratory finding.” This idea of his, compares what a scientists work may be with what it actually is.
Since the mid-20th century, a central debate in the philosophy of science is the role of epistemic values when evaluating its bearing in scientific reasoning and method. In 1953, Richard Rudner published an influential article whose principal argument and title were “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments” (Rudner 1-6). Rudner proposed that non-epistemic values are characteristically required when making inductive assertions on the rationalization of scientific hypotheses. This paper aims to explore Rudner’s arguments and Isaac Levi’s critique on his claims. Through objections to Levi’s dispute for value free ideal and highlighting the importance of non-epistemic values within the tenets and model development and in science and engineering,
In addition to logical consistency, testability is an important piece when evaluating a theory. According to Akers & Sellers (2013), “a theory must be testable by objective, repeatable evidence” (p.5); thus, if the theory is not testable then it has no scientific value. There are several reasons why a theory might not be testable; such as its concepts may not be observable or reportable events and tautology. Tautology refers to a statement or hypothesis that is tr...
The Chalmers's view against the Popperian hypothetico-deductive. Popper mentioned that people shouldn't concentrate our hopes on an unacceptable principle of induction.Also, he claimed that without relying on induction we still can work out how science works and why it is rational.1 Hence, I would like to said Popper would disagree with Chalmer's opinion. Also, I think Popperian might say Chalmers is wrong because his falsifiable in Popperian sense. Chalmers might be falsified if scientific knowledge is observed not reliable due to some experiment and observation might contain mistakes and we do not find them now. Furthermore, the Popperian might argue that science can not be prove but can justify the better theories or laws.1 We can justify which scientific laws or theories are better ones as there is falsified is found, or not scientific. When they are found falsified or not scientific, we can seek for novel bold hypot...
The problem that plagues Sir Popper is the clear definition of science and pseudoscience. Though the empirical method is common to both, the level of inferential data varies greatly. One can amass large amounts of data by observing human behavior, but data alone is not the stuff of scientific theory. Theories must be assembled fusing factual data, and inducive reasoning. The point of induction seems to be where science and pseudoscience must part ways. A scientific theory will, after applying raw data, leave little room for inference. On the other hand, a pseudoscience allows the experiment to progress in any number of directions. Popper becomes quite aware of this dilemna of the social scientist when he applies both Freud and Adlers conflicting psychological theories to the same test case, and they perform equally well. This brings him to the question of whether social theories explain human behavior or simply adapt to it. Physical sciences, as the name implies, depend on physical eveidence to defend their theories.
Many critics believe that using a psychological criticism approach to understand an author’s literary work leaves common sense behind. For them, such analysis disregards the environment in which an author created their work, as well as disregarding that men and women read differently. One of the main critics of such approach, Karl Popper, states that the creators of psychoanalysis such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Marx “couched their theories in terms which made them amenable only to confirmation.“ What that means is that for Popper, considered one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th century, psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its statements cannot be testable, thus not falsifiable. When a theory cannot be falsifiable, it ends up representing only one side of the spectrum, because if one states, for example, that Emily Dickinson’s poetry is filled with remarks of her childhood and confined adulthood, there would be no counter argument to refute such statement.
In terms of a traditional science, one key point is empiricism: a reliance on observations of behaviours instead of our logical reasoning, to further aid explanations of why humans act in certain ways (Valentine, 1992:5). In this way Psychology could be considered a science as psychologists are constantly monitoring behaviours some may perceive as common sense, for example Milgram’s study into obedience (1974). However, for an outcome of any observation to be correct, we must have faith in how it was measured. Two further questions arise from this in relation to Psychology as a scientific measure: whether Psychology doe’s mis-measure, and secondly whether, as some propose, Psychology is ordinari...
Gestalt psychology was founded by German thinkers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka. They mainly focused on how people interpret the world around them. The Gestalt perspective formed partially as a response to the structuralism of Wilhelm Wundt, who focused on breaking down mental events and experiences to the smallest elements. Structuralists had failed in explaining the concept of ‘apparent motion’ and ‘illusory contours’.
Popper’s notion of pseudo-science stems from certain applications of the scientific method. Some specific cases of applications are deemed as pseudo-science because the hypothesis are unfalsifiable (Popper, 1962). A genuine scientific theory is where the theory details the yardstick to measure when the theory hold true or when it is faulty, making it falsifiable. Falsifiability refers to whether it is possible to present a situation or state of affairs during which the hypothesis is concluded to be false, without any equivocation.