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Philosophy of Science & Methodology Summary Ch 7 - 13 and article by de Vries
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Summary of chapter 7 through 13 of the book Exploring Humans for partial exam 2 of Philosophy of Science & Methodology
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Partial exam 2:Philosophy of Science and Methodology
Chapters 7 - 13
Chapter 7: Critical Rationalism: Science on Piles Above a Swamp
With Popper the pendulum swung back from empiricism to rationalism: Critical
rationalism
1. Popper and the Wiener Kreis
o Firstly interested in their scientific and rational attitude
o Never actually accepted from Schlick because he attack Wittgenstein, calling him a
‘dogmatist’
o Popper’s work published by the Kreis was a Trojan Horse -> they did not realize that
popper is not one of them
o Popper agreed with the logical positivists on the importance of logic and mathematics
for science and he appreciated the empirical testing. But what poitivists missed was
that there is a rational aspect to knowledge
o Theories should come before, not after an observation
2. Popper’s clash with Marxism – crucial year 1919
o Marxism demands class struggle to be intensified in order the coming of socialism to
be speeded up. Even though revolution has to take victims, capitalism is taking more
victims that the whole socialists revolution
o Popper broke with Marxism after a demonstration of socialists and communists ended
in violence and 12 unarmed demonstrators were killed by the police
o ‘A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page evidence for his
interpretation of history’
o Marxists theories are DOGMATIC but people have to adopt critical thinking
o All humans are fallible creatures and make mistakes
3. Popper and Alfred Adler (worked on the Inferiority complex)
o Popper learned that if a theory is able to explain all the relevant data, it is supported by
an ‘incessant stream of confirmations’ that is a vice, not a virtue
o Popper pointed out a part of the researched of Adler that could not be explained by his
own theories but at the end Adler found a way; Popper compares that to astrology,
able to explain everything
o Popper was impressed by the risk Newton took when he proposed a theory and
prediction and by the refutation of Newton’s theory (p.204)
4. Verification – Confirmation – Falsification
o How to draw a boundary between science and pseudo-science
o Verification cannot determine what is science and pseudo-science because many
theories have turned out to be true but they are still scientific (even tough Newtonian
physics contained some errors it still has scientific character). ALSO fundamental
laws cannot be verified, because it is impossible to check every instance that falls
under that law
o Fundamental problem of induction (Hume) = not all swans are white
,o For scientific laws too, it cannot be logically reduced to elementary statements of
experience
o Schlick’s response: universal laws are neither true or false; they are mere
instruments that can be used to infer statements about particular events;
generating predictions
o CARNAP’s CONFIRMATION = a theory must be in agreement with
empirically established facts. Hence, science is gradually increasing
confirmation: “Every white swan I observe is a confirmation of my theory that
swans are white; with every white swan my degree of conformation increases”
o Popper’s criterion of demarcation does not demand that a theory should be falsified
but the possibility of falsification is important
5. Falsificationism
o For Popper, statements such as ‘Tomorrow it will rain or not’ that are not falsifiable
and right in any case, are not informative -> pseudo-science
o Marxists explained the Russian Revolution as ‘means of production change first, then
social conditions for production, then political power. BUT what happened is that
firstly the political power changed and then the ideology
o So, what Marxists did was to change their theory instead of accepting it is not correct,
so that Russian Revolution no longer refuted theory (p.210)
o Popper called that a ‘conventionalist twist’
o Popper also criticized the Oedipus myth theory of Freud (that every boy
secretly or not wants to murder his father and sleep with his mother; whoever
says no is simply in denial -> both cases confirm the theory (p.212)
6. Only theories that are falsifiable are informative
o Popper does not say that the other statements are meaningless but just pseudo-science
o In fact, Popper also states that some theories started as myths – like the Neo-Darwinist
theory of evolution
o Humans are fallible creatures, thus we always have to doubt the ones from
high authority
7. Knowledge grows through conjectures and refutations, trial and error
Via negativa -> the negative path to truth, according to Popper = the path through trial
and error; by making mistakes and learning from them
Popper says that deductive reasoning is logically valid
However, there will be a problem of deduction too: How could the truth be established
by the first premise (the general statement
o Answer: it cannot -> a theory can never be proven, it can only be shown to be
erroneous
8. Critical Rationalism
o Popper taught that there is an induction problem, but unlike Hume, he was not an
empiricist but a rationalist
, o Popper agreed to Kant that our sensory capacities cooperate with our reasoning
capacities to form a picture of the world
o We do not know the world as it is
o an sich, but only through theories (p. 216)
o At birth we aren’t born with minds as Tabula Rasa, but he also taught that the inborn
ideas are absurd. Instead, we are born with all kinds of innate expectations that
precede observations
o Theories and expectations are built into our very sense organs
o We are born with rational structures (primitive theories), without which we are blind
o The innate theories at birth are not a priory (as Kant says) -> they are not certain and
often fail to be fulfilled
9. The Rationality Principle in the Social Sciences
o During WW2 Popper wrote two of his most important works: “The Poverty of
Historicism” (1944/1945), The open society and its enemies (1945)
Two Intellectual Traditions:
o Western: originating from the birth of democracy in ancient Athens; open-
mindedness; openness to criticism
o Closed societies: no dissident beliefs; such societies have embraces a
totalitarianism grounded in historicism
Historicism: societies develop with inexorable laws; history develops
into fixed patterns, rhythms, laws
According to historicists: both types of scientists (natural and social )
aim for prediction
Historicism provides grounds for what Popper calls “Utopian
engineering” – the endeavour to redesign the whole society in
accordance to a grand blueprint. The point of departure is that truth is
actually obtainable or it has already been obtained
o Social sciences are more like Trends not Laws
o Sociological or economical predictions will only hold if the conditions are
right (p. 222)
Popper method of ‘piecemeal engineering’ – the method of making small
adjustments and readjustments that can continually be improved upon,
changing one aspect at a time on a local scale
o Popper claims that there is no specific method for the social sciences such as
the ‘verstehen’ method; deductive testing and crucial thinking should be
employed
o In social sciences models are constructed by using situational description and
analysis
o Poppers’ Rationality method
o The principle that social scientists should assume the trivial law that sane
person as a rule act more or less rationally
o After popper says this principle is simply an empty principle I don’t
understand why (p. 226-227)
o Criticizing Popper
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