Science: Conjectures & Refutations By Karl Popper

forthcoming in Philosophy of Science, ed. Eran Asoulin., 2021

Introduction to Karl Popper's philosophy of science.

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.

The very title of my paper may cause many eyebrows to be raised. For anyone who is familiar with Popper's philosophy of science knows well that he distinguished clearly between two types of historical processes, namely, the process of conceiving a new scientific theory or idea and the methods of examining it logically, and asserted that the task of the philosophers is not to ponder on these actual thinking processes whereby a new scientific theory comes into being. The logical analysis of scientific knowledge, instead, is restricted to an examination of contents of linguistically formulated scientific theories and of the post-generational evaluative procedures of scientists. One might naturally ask what then the point behind an inquiry like this is since Popper himself was mainly concerned with post-generational justification and bequeathed the detailed study of theory creation to the psychologists and the historians. There are two principal reasons which motivated this examination. Firstly, what is generally found as the Popperian notion of creativity and scientific discovery in the literature of philosophy of science is reasonably different from what closer readings of his earlier and later works reveal. Secondly, an analysis like this can illuminate problems of theory change and scientific progress, which undoubtedly are important to philosophy of science in general and Popper in particular. This implies a crucial point, namely, that progress of scientific knowledge, contrary to what philosophers of science generally used to believe, is not the subject matter of a single discipline. In this paper I attempt to make apparent the shortcomings that the disciplinary splitting of the topic of advancement of knowledge (in science) entails.

2013

Abstract: The very title of my paper may cause many eyebrows to be raised. For anyone who is familiar with Popper’s philosophy of science knows well that he distinguished clearly between two types of historical processes, namely, the process of conceiving a new scientific theory or idea and the methods of examining it logically, and asserted that the task of the philosophers is not to ponder on these actual thinking processes whereby a new scientific theory comes into being. The logical analysis of scientific knowledge, instead, is restricted to an examination of contents of linguistically formulated scientific theories and of the post-generational evaluative procedures of scientists. One might naturally ask what then the point behind an inquiry like this is since Popper himself was mainly concerned with post-generational justification and bequeathed the detailed study of theory creation to the psychologists and the historians. There are two principal reasons which motivated this ex...

This commentary completes the hypothesis-theory analogy by describing the nature of scientific theories. If “hypothesis-laboratory experiments-conclusion” is to hypothesis, then “grand hypothesis-thought/surrogate experiments -theory” is to scientific theories

Lettera Matematica International Edition, 2014

A scientific theory must be falsifiable, and scientific knowledge is always tentative, or conjectural. These are the main ideas of Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery. Since 1960 his writings contain some essential developments of these views and make some steps towards epistemological optimism. Although we cannot justify any claim that a scientific theory is true, the aim of science is the search of truth and we have no reason to be sceptical about the notion of getting nearer to the truth. Our knowledge can grow, and science can progress. Nevertheless, Popper’s theory of approximation to the truth is problematic and is still the subject of studies and discussions.

Myth: a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events. Google Dictionary. I realize that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all-or very nearly all-scientific theories originate from myths. . .. Conjectures and Refutations, p. 38. A critical [scientific] attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically. Thus, science must start with myths, and with the criticism of myths. . .. Conjectures and Refutations p. 50. In a number of previous essays, argumentation drifted into how ancient mythological perceptions morphed into the modern scientific endeavor that's fashioned the outer adornment of our amazing modern world. In that argumentation, the ideas of Karl Popper (some of them noted above) became part and parcel of the dialogue. One statement in particular seems like the axis of an important revelation about the nature of modern scientific thought: My thesis is that what we call "science" is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition-that of critically discussing the myth.. . In critical discussions which now arose there also arose, for the first time, something like systematic observation.. . Thus it is the myth or the theory which leads to, and guides, our systematic observations-observations undertaken with the intention of probing into the truth of the theory or myth. From this point of view the growth of the theories of science should not be considered as the result of the collection, or accumulation, of observations; on the contrary, the observations and their accumulation should be considered as the result of the growth of the scientific theories. Conjectures and Refutations, p. 127. (emphasis mine).

Metascience, 2013

Hoyningen-Huene is rightly famous for his book on Thomas Kuhn's philosophy, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science. Indeed, to many North American philosophers of science, Hoyningen-Huene is known exclusively as a Kuhn scholar, explicating Kuhn's views and writing on Kuhnian themes, like incommensurability. Hoyningen-Huene's new book, Systematicity, is a departure from Kuhn scholarship, constituting a contribution to general philosophy of science. But this is not an altogether new project. In fact, Hoyningen-Huene reports that he has been working on this project off and on for decades. Systematicity deals with the issue of understanding what distinguishes scientific knowledge from everyday knowledge. This may sound like some version of the demarcation problem, a popular topic in philosophy of science from the 1930s to the 1970s, but the issue that concerns Hoyningen-Huene is different. The demarcation problem was concerned, principally, with distinguishing science from pseudoscience, the alleged bodies of belief that purport to be scientific but in fact are not. Karl Popper regarded the demarcation problem as a pressing issue when he wrote Logic of Scientific Discovery in the 1930s, regarding it as comparable in significance to the problem of induction. Just as the Vienna Circle logical positivists sought to undermine metaphysics with their verification principle, Popper sought to undermine Freudian and Adlerian psychology, and Marxist history by appeal to his demarcation criteria. But instead of accusing the proponents of these theories of indulging in metaphysical flights of fancy, and aspiring to have knowledge about things that exceed our capacity to know, Popper accused them of developing theories that were unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific. Pseudoscientific theories could be reconciled with any possible facts, and thus explained nothing.