Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
How can it be that scientific knowledge changes over time? (CCH3B) -…
How can it be that scientific knowledge changes over time? (CCH3B)
Popper/Falsification
Summarizing/Recapping
Scientists work by trying to dismiss hypotheses (hence, "falsification").
In theory, one counterexample is enough to disprove a scientific idea
In practice, it's not this simple -- an error could be mathematical or could indicate some other type of mistake in the research
Often, it's better to dismiss an observation that doesn't fit a hypothesis, because it's likely that the experiment contains an error. However, this won't always be the case, and sometimes there's an error that reveals a real problem with our theory.
These hypotheses will come from people's preexisting theories or ideas or experiences; there's a role for inductive reasoning. But in order to have any confidence in at all, according to Popper, we have to test it and try to disprove it. It has to survive multiple attempts to disprove it.
Popper had a problem with theories that were too broad and were incapable of being disproved because you can
always
explain any observation, including two conflicting results, with the same hypothesis.
Popper liked "risky" predictions -- he liked predictions that could fail! If there was no way for a prediction to fail, then it had very little explanatory power.
Our evaluations of this idea
Trying to disprove your idea makes sense: it avoids us needing to make logical leaps in order to confirm an idea
This is risky/dangerous -- one error implies that there might an error in the theory/idea (although there are exceptions to this)
Popper has a problem: what do we do when there is more than one competing hypothesis, and they all appear to be equally good (or, they are equally incapable of disconfirmation)?
Implications for the question
Rather than trying to prove a hypothesis, scientists try to find situations where their ideas do or don't apply
You cannot prove, and cannot have certainty, that an idea is true, because of the problem of induction.
When there is a whole set of beliefs that are held to be true, we are faced with a challenge: do we dismiss the theory because the results don't fit, or do we dismiss the results because they don't fit the hypothesis?
Good example of this in vdL Popper/Falsification, p, 362
If there is a set of ideas that are already believed to be true, it can be difficult to decide when to "let it go" in the face of the conflicting evidence. Popper thinks that, in theory, a single disconfirming observation should lead us to dismiss an idea, but this isn't really how things work in practice.
Auxiliary hypotheses: additional hypotheses that can explain new evidence that don't fit into the already-existing theory. This can work, but it also creates problems!! Again, shouldn't a disconfirming observation lead us to dismiss our theory?
Darwin/Kelvin: Kelvin's date for the age of the earth made it hard to accept evolution, because the earth wasn't old enough. It might be the case that certain theories are better established than others (in this case, would it be evolution?) and therefore we are more willing to preference them. Can Popper explain this?
Sometimes, competing theories coexist -- so relativity can coexist with Newtonian mechanics, rather than being dismissed. Perhaps with modifications.
Kuhn/Scientific Revolutions
Quick summary/recap
In the process of performing science (what Kuhn calls "normal science"), we can't expect scientists to endlessly question/attempt to disprove their assumptions
Many scientists work within a paradigm, and do not question that paradigm. Instead, they try to solve problems that emerge within that paradigm. This is the practice of "normal science."
It is when there is a crisis within the paradigm that scientists begin to question those assumptions, and make progress in rapid "jumps" to a new paradigm.
Paradigm: a set of ideas that determines the way that scientists see and understand the world, and therefore guides research. During the period of normal science, they are assumed to be true.
Anomalies (things that can't be explained within the paradigm) accumulate, and when these errors accumulate they may cause a crisis.
While paradigms do shift, and old frames are discarded, that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the knowledge developed within the older paradigm "disappears" or is discarded.
In a period of scientific revolution, there is explicit reflection on the paradigm, and a process of decision between paradigms.
Choosing between paradigms isn't simply "relativism" ("it depends on your perspective"), but rather than it depends on the judgment of the scientist.
Implications for the question
Paradigms change over time, through
_
Accumulation of experimental results that don't match expectations made by the paradigm
Scientific knowledge changes in response to changes in judgment.
Every time there is a change in a paradigm, there is an explosion of progress (answering previously unanswered question).
Revolutions happen over the long term, over a long period of time. They also imply a big change of the mindset, a total revolution in thinking.
Planck: "A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it," Planck once wrote. (
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190829150642.htm
)
"Proof" in science
Doesn't exist!