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College 1 – Classics (1) from positivism to Popper’s falsificationism 15-4-2021
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Laatste college is een discussiesessie (samen met Jacob Jolij)
Maar: discussie en vragen ook aangemoedigd in de overige colleges
Toetsing
Essaytentamen
Groepsopdracht
Meer informatie volgt snel
Nog niet duidelijk hoe het eruit zal zien.
Meer informatie
Zie syllabus
Bij vragen kun je mailen via Nestor, of naar r.hoekstra@rug.nl
Lectures
1. April 15: CLASSICS (1) FROM POSITIVISM TO POPPER’S FALSIFICATIONISM (Mülberger)
Readings: Chalmers, A. F. : What Is This Thing Called Science? Chapter 5
2. April 22: CLASSICS (2) KUHN’S PARADIGMS AND THE SOCIOLOGISTS (Mülberger)
Readings: Chalmers, A. F. : What Is This Thing Called Science? Chapter 8
3. April 26: DEMARCATION (R. Hoekstra)
4. May 3: PARADIGMS DEEPER (Conant-Kuhn-crisis-Piaget) (J. Burman)
5. May 17: PIAGET-VYGOTSKY (J. Burman)
6. May 27: EXPERIMENTATION AND REPLICATION IN EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE (R. Hoekstra)
7. May 31: FINAL DISCUSSION: ETHICS, PROBABILISTIC INFERENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF
TRANSPARENCY (R. Hoekstra & J. Jolij)
Er zijn verschillende theorieën over wetenschap. Met haar gaan we het hebben over de 4 belangrijke
namen/onderwerpen.
Inhoud college
How can we arrive at some trustworthy knowledge about the world? This question was already
important to scholars like Descartes and Hume in the 17th and 18th century. Some scientists and
philosophers tried to find a new answer to this old question, building on a current which arose in the
19th century called positivism. The Vienna Circle tried to outline the basic characteristics of science in
a way that still influences our understanding of the scope and limits of science nowadays. Soon Karl
Popper criticized the Vienna Circle and proposed his fallibilism/falsificationism as a better way to gain
knowledge. Popper’s idea that theories must make testable predictions that can be falsified by
observation seemed to offer a solution to the problem of how to distinguish between scientific (and
trustworthy) from non-scientific undertakings.
Classics (1) from positivism to popper’s falsificationism
1. What is science? (Common view)
2. The positivist perspective: Positivism and Neopositivism
3. Popper´s falsificationism
Het eerste punt is een soort introductie. De rest zijn dus 4 theorieën.
,1. What is science?
1. How do we acquire reliable knowledge about the world?
2. What is better: observation or experiment?
3. Which disciplines are a science:
• Pedagogy/Education?
• Psychology?
• Philosophy?
• History?
4. Do you know the difference between the inductive and deductive method?
5. “Scientific facts are valuable independently of the purpose for which they were gathered”.
Would you agree?
Normally you also have a subject called science in high school. To get a better knowledge of what
science is, ask yourself the five questions above. Reacties wisselen. De meesten denken dat
experiment beter is, sommigen denken dat observaties beter zijn. Dit past ook bij het algemene view
van de maatschappij. Why could this be better as a method? We will talk about this later.
Question 2: which discipline is a science? Iedereen denkt dat alle vier de disciplines wetenschap zijn.
Even though in history it is not possible to do experiments. If we would put that the experiment is a
condition to be a science, then history has some difficulties. Ze heeft deze vragen ook aan
psychologie studenten gesteld. Zij dachten dat filosofie en geschiedenis er niet bij hoorden.
Vraag 5: iedereen zei “ja”.
1. What is science? How do we acquire knowledge about the world?
“THE COMMON VIEW”
• objective, empirical facts
• determinism and limited relations
• naturalism
• experimentalism
• reproduction
• measurement and accurateness
In general, we think science should be based on objective and empirical facts. We would all agree if a
science has no relation to the world and to observable experiences, this would be difficult to
maintain. This is also a problem for history, is it a science? People in society usually think about
chemistry etc.
Ze denkt dat we allemaal deterministen zijn. Determinism in this context means that you/in general
society thinks that certain events are connected to certain other events. So there are causes and
effects. For example, if I look outside my window and a see someone on the bike and he is falling
down, I think that there is something that has been something that has determined this event. Of
course some things are random and just happen. In general we assume that in the world things are
determined. Naturalism means that we think that these causes are natural. We need to refer to
some physical/natural cause. A car hit the biker for example or he got dizzy. In general in our society,
the common view is of this kind, determinism, naturalism, based on empirical objective facts. If
possible we should do experiments and reproduction. A certain experiment should be able to be
repeated. If we obtain the same result, then this is confirmed, verified and more reliable.
Measurement is useful to obtain accurate results.
• scientific method
• hypothesis
• communication: public and universal
• descriptive or explanatory?
, • of practical use?
Alles van de vorige dia samen heet ook wel de scientific method. Hebben we hier ook een hypothese
voor nodig? Of kunnen we ook wetenschappelijk onderzoek doen zonder hypothese? Verschillende
reacties, zowel ja als nee. Vanuit dit perspectief is het goed om een hypothese te hebben, maar je
kan ook een exploratief/pilot studie doen.
If some discovery is made in a laboratory and the scientist keeps this to himself, this wouldn’t be part
of the science. Science is something universal, things should be published. Is scientific research only
descriptive or also explanatory? We observe things and try to give explanations. Some theories that
think/pose only to describe and do not necessarily explain. Does science have to be practical? This is
open to debate. There are different opinions. We are aware of open questions, but we don’t have to
solve them.
CLASSICS (1) FROM POSITIVISM TO POPPER’S FALSIFICATIONISM
1. What is science? (Common view)
2. The positivist perspective: Positivism and Neopositivism
3. Popper´s falsificationism
Hiervoor een zeer beperkte view van wetenschap. Ze merkt dat wij allemaal denken/weten dat er
meer is en dat we kritisch zijn. Ze gaat nu door naar de volgende punten. Dit perspectief (nr.2)
matcht heel goed met wat ze hiervoor als common view beschreef. Neopositivism is een vorm van
het positivisme.
2. THE POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE
Positivism:
Auguste Comte: “Course of positive philosophy” (6 vols, 1830-1842). This was the founder of the
positivism.
2. THE POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE
Auguste Comte, 1798-1857
Course of positive philosophy
• Order: from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the general
• systematic knowledge (a science is build on another science)
• exactness
• observation of phenomena
• Stages of human history: theological, metaphysical and positive
There is only 1 way to acquire reliable knowledge about the world. We can only require it with a
strict order. Pedagogy and history were not considered as science by Comte. But sociology comes the
closest and was a very broad discipline. In itself it deals with education and psychological subjects.
, Comte was very optimistic. He thought that in the long past human beings were in a theological stage
where they always thought about god. Then there came the metaphysical stage, where we had great
philosophers. But they were still speculating too much. And with Comte they started a new era,
called the positivism, the era of science. Science became such an important thing in our society
today, that we can actually see that this is ruling us. We can notice it in our lives more than ever, also
due to the pandemic. Already at that time it was not just a theory on how people are going to work
when doing science. But also how to organise society. One of the societies that was created at that
time was Brazil. They took the slogan of comte to ask for order and progress (ordem e progresso).
They took this for their flag and to define the modern nation. Comte’s influence on positive science
was taken as guideline for modern society that wanted to build their society on more reliable ground
of scientific knowledge.
2. THE POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE
Positivism:
Auguste Comte: “Course of positive philosophy”, 1830-1842 (6 vol.)
Neo-Positivism:
Manifesto of the Vienna Circle: “The Scientific World-Conception”, 1929
The Vienna Circle= a group of philosophers and scientists working in the natural and social sciences,
logic and mathematics who met in the 1920s at the University of Vienna.
At beginning of 20th century lots of scientists were interested in how to proceed when we want to do
scientific research. Difficult to group them and give a clear definition, because they all have their own
version. Zij zal ons dus een samenvatting geven van de groepen en eigenschappen. Ze zal refereren
naar de Vienna Circle. It is a group of philosophers who published a manifesto in 1929 called the
scientific world conception.
2. THE POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE: NEOPOSITIVISM
The manifesto appeared anonymously, but was authored by Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and Hans
Hahn.
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970)
Hans Hahn (1879-1934)
Otto Neurath (1882-1045)
Moritz Schlick (1882-1036)
Je hoeft deze namen niet te kennen, het is meer ter illustratie.
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