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How can it be that scientific knowledge changes over time? (CCH3A) -…
How can it be that scientific knowledge changes over time? (CCH3A)
Popper/Falsification
Helps to explain why scientists test one idea at a time
Summary/Recap
Avoids problems linked to confirmation -- Popper makes confirmation unimportant, by focusing instead on disconfirmations
Any theory that resists our best efforts to falsify it should be provisionally accepted as true
Doesn't this mean that we can only have provisionally accepted truths? Doesn't this mean that we can't get an absolute truth?
Even if something isn't known with 100% certainty, it might still be true and valuable and credible -- for example, if it is pragmatic and applicable.
Also, "closeness to truth" is worth considering. Aren't there degrees of truth, or degrees of confidence?
Does knowing more about the world give us more doubt?
More knowledge makes things more complicated, it doesn't simplify things. There are more opportunities for doubt.
And -- how we can measure our closeness to something if we don't know what/where it is??
Maybe we're thinking about this backward -- it's not "closer to truth," but farther from ignorance. (Very Popperian!)
We are VERY uncomfortable with the idea that science can only give us provisional truths! Isn't there any way to establish a firmer foundation?
At the end of the Popper reading, the book says that we can neither conclusively prove nor conclusively verify a scientific idea!
Finding an exception for a theory does not mean that the theory is absolutely wrong; nor is it possible to confirm that something is true with certainty.
So then what's the point???? And how do you get to have knowledge if it can't be conclusively shown to be true?
Yeah but maybe our problem is that we're expecting certainty or conclusiveness! Maybe because we can get it from mathematics. Do we need it?
This leaves open the possibility that some experimental/observational result will come along disprove/disconfirm an idea
Although there are some limits to this -- individual anomalies will not necessary result in discarding an idea
Auxiliary hypotheses: new hypotheses that make it possible to explain phenomena that don't fit into the original pattern. This can be a way to avoid falsification.
These hypotheses
can
fail to explain things, in the end. It depends on the case.
Sometimes, a theory or explanatory idea will work in certain conditions and not in others.
Does this describe how ambitious scientists actually work?
Shoudn't we expect that scientists will spend all their time trying to tear each other down??
Some issues
Can it deal with the fact that there will be experimental results that don't fit the expected pattern/theory?
What if you have two ideas that are not compatible, but neither one can be disproven?
Examples we liked
The example of "all metals expand when heated" as an example of the limits of induction. (360) "We cannot be sure that the law is true, no matter how many confirming observations we've made"
Kuhn/Scientific revolutions
Science isn't linear. Instead, there are a series of scientific revolutions...
Normal science: scientists are not questioning their paradigm, and several different problems are solvable within the paradigm.
Popper thinks that "normal science" is "bad science" -- if normal science exists, it is scientists not following their training.
Sometimes, scientists will try to "rescue" a paradigm through the invention of auxiliary hypotheses that can accommodate scientific findings that don't otherwise fit the paradigm
Revolutionary jumps -- scientists question/lose faith in the paradigm, as a result of a series of unsolvable problems. "Takes place when scientists become dissatisfied with the prevailing paradigm."
This might happen in different ways: through the slow accumulation of observations that don't fit into a theory, or through a major anomaly that doesn't fit. We could also see these as two sides of the same coin, that only through smaller advances we can arrive at the bigger ones.
It's also possible for a new paradigm to only partially replace an existing paradigm.
Periods of indecision/conflict between paradigms
When older generations of scientists retire/die, an older paradigm may die away too. Sometimes it takes a generational change for science to change.
There
is
a period of testing and verification for a new paradigm -- they have to have subject to testing.
Sometimes, there may not be an entirely rational set of criteria for deciding between two paradigms. In the same way that we can never conclusively prove a theory, we may be unable to conclusively decide on a paradigm.
The reading suggests that the time it takes for a new paradigm to be accepted has declined over time.
It's easier to spread information, and to provide evidence of its truth, than it was in the past.
It might also be more attractive, as a scientist, to participate in the development of a new field, under a new paradigm, than to simply validate an existing paradigm.
Example of paradigms shifts:
From Newtonian physics to relativity
From (whatever preceded evolution) to evolution (selection of the fittest, genetic inheritance)
From geocentrism to heliocentrism
These examples are good because they show how paradigms are usually "incommensurable" -- they are mutually exclusive.
There are exceptions to this, though. In some cases (many cases), things from the previous paradigm are incorporated into the new one.
This idea negates falsification, at least to an extent, because he shows that scientists don't actually falsify ideas constantly -- instead, they work within a set of ideas called a paradigm that mostly goes unquestioned in normal periods.