Karl_Popper__Getting_to_the_Truth

Karl Popper: Getting to the Truth Karl Popper’s ideas of how scientific theories are properly confirmed revolutionized science and the way philosophers view scientific methods. Popper’s paper, Conjectures and Refutations, is an exploration of truth by outlining a guide to proper scientific methods, drawing from the works of great thinkers like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. He creates a clear distinction between science and pseudo-science by outlining the criteria of what should be taking into consideration to determine how a scientific theory is properly confirmed. Analyzing what should and what not should be considered support for a scientific hypothesis, Popper clearly outlines seven considerations unto how a scientific theory is properly confirmed. First, he says that it is easy to obtain verifications or confirmations of a given theory by looking for them. If you believe something is truth, you will use your own observations to verify it. This is one of the most poignant observations that Poppers makes, in my opinion: the idea that once we believe we see truth, there are manifestations of that truth everywhere, and “the world is full of verifications of [that] theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. (Bailey 216) Popper is basically saying that with theories like Marxism and Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, that once you think something is true, or is a certain way, then you are sure that it must be that way all of the time. This is true of the way most people think... And even that statement proves his idea. This reminds me of scepticism because it’s basically the opposite. People that are sceptics suspend judgment on new information until that information is well supported by argument or evidence. Popper is saying that in theories like Freud’s, the basis is so easy to apply and so easily accepted that there is an “incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which ‘verified’ the theories in question...” (Bailey 216) Second, he says that for real science, that these ‘confirmations’ only really count if they are ‘risky ones’, meaning that we should be able expect an even t which may have refuted the theory. Third is that good scientific theories prohibit certain things to happen, and the more that they prohibit, the better they are. It is not as much about an induction that something will happen because it has happened before, but rather limiting the theory to be able to be disproved. For example, we know that the days will grow shorter as the world moves around the sun. A theory that "the days are getting shorter" relies on the process of induction. Properly done, deduction (moving from the general to the particular) is always correct in philosophy when it follows a logical operator such as: P then Q; P; therefore Q. Although this theory is not wrong, Popper’s stance is that we should be able to disprove this theory, which we can, if the days do not get shorter. Fourth, he says that a theory which is not refutable is not scientific. There has to be some way (in principle) that the theory must be able to be disproved. Take for example astrology- a pseudo science which does use scientific observation and data, but is very unscientific in the sense that astrologers make their predictions in a way that cannot really be disproved. By “making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague [astrologers] [are] able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophecies been more precise.”( Bailey 217) Fifth, and possibly most important in Poppers view, is that the best way to test a theory is to try to refute it. “Testability is falsifiability” (Bailey 217) He believes that for a test of a theory to be genuine, you must try and test it to show or prove it to be false. The more susceptible that a theory is to be disproved, the better it is. Popper states that Einstein’s theory of gravitation “clearly satisfied the criterion of falsifiability” because it was testable, was tested, was right, and if one day we had the instruments to disprove it, then we could. Sixth, he says that when there is supporting evidence of a theory, it should only be counted when it is a result of a genuine test of a theory. This ties in to his first statement- that it is easy to find confirmations of a theory everywhere. Popper doesn’t believe that random confirmations should be taken as evidence, only confirmations that come from a test that is trying to disprove theory. For example, the statement “all crows are black” is a sound theory until it is found that white crows exist, and then the new theory becomes ‘all crows are black or white” and so on. This theory is sound because it’s testable. You should not count seeing a black crow as evidence that all are black, however, unless this is a test in which you are trying to disprove this theory. This is a key way to distinguish between sound science and pseudo-science, and is an easy way to tell how dedicated a scientist is to the scientific method, and even truth itself. A proper scientist will allow his theories to be disproven- in fact, Popper encourages it- whereas a pseudo- scientist will change or reinterpret the theory because of disconfirming evidence. Seventh, and lastly, Popper says that if a genuinely tested theory is falsified, then it may still be held to explain something within a context, but does destroy its scientific status. Newton's laws of motion were accepted for centuries; but since Einstein's Theory of relativity it has been known that time and mass are not constant. Nevertheless, it is realistic to use Newton's theories when engineering buildings because the errors are insignificant. While Poppers views on what should and what not should be considered support for a scientific hypothesis are quite strict, he is sure to mention more than once that just because a theory like Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis is not falsifiable, that it doesn’t mean that it is not valuable. Just because they didn’t hold to his criteria of refutability and testability, “this does not mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing things correctly: [he] personally do[es] not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance.” (Bailey 218) He also believes that some proper science may of course be proved wrong, in fact, according to his theories, it should! Popper’s work transformed the search for knowledge in the way that he made a model of scientific reasoning that will guarantee a good theory every time. A good theory will be testable, refutable, and tested over and over. It encourages scientists to be scientific- to constantly challenge their theories in a search for truth and knowledge. Sources: Popper, Karl. “Conjectures and Refutations “First Philosophy: Fundamental Problems and Readings in Philosophy. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Bailey, Andrew. (Ed.).2004