Karl popper denied that science is merely a collection of laws, theories, methods etc. according to him Hypothesis resting is primary function of science. Science is a series of conjectures and refutations. Everything in science is modifiable and nothing is absolute. Truth in science is not fully attainable. He bridged the two extremes of logical positivism and historical realism. According to him induction is not valid scientific methods. He stresses the role of observation and at the same time doesn’t make a sharp distinction between theory and observation. All observations are theory laden.
Popper
was of the opinion that the criterion of demarcation between science and non-
science is Falsification. Thus a statement is scientific if it can be
falsified. Thus the question of God is not a scientific one. If a theory is
truly science, it can stand opposition. The more theory resists the attempts of
Falsification the more is it strengthened and well established as science.
As
Popper notes it, “every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it,
or to refute it.” Popper’s falsification clearly denies any induction as
part of scientific method. This is not an entirely jointed theory, yet it makes
sense. Popper, then, repudiates induction, and rejects the view that it is the
characteristic method of scientific investigation and inference and
substitutes falsifiability in its place. He believes that
theories are always falsified at a later date. Moreover, he argues that
“theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened
within the fields to which they referred.”Popper thinks that in every step of
the way, these theories find verifications and this in fact, is their weakness.
“A
theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.
Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory but a vice.” Popper calls these
theories “non-scientific” because they are not disproved or proven erroneous.On
the other hand, scientists might argue that the best scientific theories are
the ones that have multifarious verifications and confirmations.
He
added that experience can never verify a theory as true, only falsify it.
Generalizations are first conjectured, and then held up to the scrutiny of
experience for refutation.
"He
asserted that if a statement is to be scientific rather than metaphysical it
must be falsifiable .... He then based his philosophy of science on the
hypothetico-deductive method, claiming that enumerative INDUCTION is invalid,
and indeed does not in fact occur, while verification and CONFIRMATION (as
opposed to his own ‘corroboration’) are impossible. As his philosophy of
science said we should aim to eliminate the false rather than establish the
true."
In
short whatever is falsified is scientific and whatever is not falsified in
unscientific. Science is in nature cannot be absolutely proved but
approximately proof. Besides that whatever is not falsified is not necessarily
be scientific and whatever is not falsified, is not necessarily be
unscientific.
What does he aim to solve with this?
Popper
was trying to solve the problems of Logical positivism. The logical positivists
claimed that science is a set of laws, concepts, theories, etc. Scientific
knowledge is governed by strict rules of rationality. Scientific knowledge is
totally objective. None scientific factors like prejudices, upbringing, status
of scientist have nothing to do with science. Science is valid for all place
and persons and all times.
The
logical positivism claims that the verification theory of meaning says that
statement is meaningful if only it is empirically verifiable. They make a sharp
distinction between observational and theoretical terms. Theoretical terms are
messy, vague and controversial whereas observational terms are trouble free.
According to them science grows cumulatively. Once a scientific law is
establish it doesn’t change.
Each
of the above claiming of science is rejected bluntly by Popper. For Popper
science primary concern is Hypothesis. Falsification is a belief that for
any hypothesis to have credibility. It must be inherently disprovable
before. It can become accepted as a scientific hypothesis or theory. Karl
Popper notes “science is more concerned with falsification of hypothesis than
with the verification.” Falsification is explicitly stated by Sir
Karl Popper as a way of distinguishing science from pseudoscience.
Popper's argument for a convention as a criterion of demarcation largely
stemmed from his rejection of the inductivist thought and the positivist
tradition.
Popper
himself fell in to the same pit instead of claiming the absolute truth or
supremacy of science and neglecting the other disciplines. McHenry notes,
“Positivist usage of "meaningful statements" or similar attempts to
show that the problem of demarcation or induction were merely pseudo-problems
were largely refuted by Popper in his search for a new criterion of
demarcation.” Popper had also been made uncomfortable by Marxism and
Freudianism. How their advocates always seemed to have an answer for
everything, even clear falsifications. Thus, he decided that a proper
scientific theory ought to be "falsifiable", meaning that it ought to
be possible for some observation to be contrary to it.
Does he succeed? If so how? If not, why not?
No,
Popper did not succeed. The failure of the verification principle led to a new
challenge. In order for a statement to be meaningful, the Falsification
Principle demands that the proposer must account fir what might be the case in
its falsification.Karl Popper notes that “science is more concerned with
falsification of hypothesis than with the verification.”
Chalmers shows
the problems of falsification of science. These problems stem from the
logical situation. When observation and experiment provide evidence that
conflict with the predictions of some law or theory, it may be the evidence
which is at fault rather than the law or theory."Falsification is not
itself falsifiable. The notion of degree of falsifiability is problematic.
Popper cannot account for our expectations about the future. Scientists
sometimes ignore falsification.
Influenced
by Karl Popper, Antony Flew applied the Falsification Principle to religious
language and concluded that religious statements are nothing more than
non-sensical utterances of little significance.Religions has important role to
play, even the hypothesis or deduction is very much connected to religion. In
short I would say Popper fell into a pit which he himself dug it.
Falsification
of Popper, in its basic form, is the belief that for any hypothesis to have
credibility. It must be inherently disprovable before it can become accepted as
a scientific hypothesis or theory. For example, if a scientist asks, “Does God
exist?” then this can never be science because it is a theory that cannot be
disproved. The idea is that no theory is completely correct, but if not
falsified, it can be accepted as truth. For example, Newton’s Theory of Gravity
was accepted as truth for centuries, because objects do not randomly float away
from the earth. It appeared to fit the figures obtained
by experimentation and research, but was always subject to
testing.
However,
later research showed that, at quantum levels, Newton’s laws break down and so
the theory is no longer accepted as truth. This is not to say that his ideas
are now useless, as the principles are still used by NASA to plot the courses
of satellites and space probes. Popper saw falsifiability as a black and white
definition, that if a theory is falsifiable, it is scientific, and if not,
then it is unscientific. Whilst most ‘pure’ sciences do adhere to this strict
definition, pseudo-sciences may fall somewhere between the two
extremes.
One
observation does not falsify a theory. The experiment may have been badly
designed, data could be incorrect.Quine states “a theory is not a single
statement; it is a complex network. You might falsify one statement e.g. all
swans are white in the network, but this should not been you should reject the
whole complex theory.”
Conclusion
Popper's
'scientific method' requires an infinite number of hypotheses, yet is not
robust, fails with existential statements, fails with probabilistic statements
and fails in practice anyway due to the necessity of auxiliary assumptions. How
has Popper's falsification performed in practice? Newton's gravitational
theory, Bohr's theory of the atom, kinetic theory, the Copernican Revolution
and the theory of evolution were all falsified, despite being excellent
examples of science. Popper's falsification fails in both theory and practice.
References
1. Curd,
Martin and Cover, J. A., 1998,Philosophy of Science- the Central Issues,
New York; W.W Norton and Company, p. 2-9.
2. Ladyman,
J., 2002, Understanding
Philosophy of Science, London: Routledge and KegaPual, p. 59-89
3. McHenry,
Leemon. 2009, Popper and
Maxwell on Scientific Progress,
5. Popper,
K. 1963, Conjecture and Refutation, Roudege,
6. O’her,
Anthony, 1980, Popper Karl, London: Routledge, p.124-131.
7. Class
Notes and Collection of Articles- Philosophy of Science.
8. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html
9. http://www.xenodochy.org/article/popper.html
10. http://theorymaze.blogspot.com/2011/02/karl-popper-falsification.html
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