TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE…………………………………………………………...…i
CERTIFICATION………………………………………………………..ii
DEDICATION………………………………………………...………….iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT………………………………………...……..iv
TABLE OF CONTENT…………………………………………………..v
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 TOWARDS ESTABLISHING THE
BACKGROUND TO THE POPPERIAN
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE…………………….…1
1.1 Facts as the terminus a quo of
Science (the problem of induction)…...1
1.2 The Vienna Circle’s attack on
Metaphysics…………...6
1.3 Popper sets off
the Agenda for the Theory-Dependence of Science….11
CHAPTER
TWO
2.0 THE QUINTESSENTIALS OF SIR
KARL’S STRATEGY…..13
2.1 Hypotheticism: the Nature of all
Scientific Theories Articulated...13
2.2 The Requirements for the Growth of
Science………….15
2.2.1 Formal Requirement………………………………………………15
2.2.1.1
Falsifiability/Testability…………………………………………..16
2.2.1.2 Simplicity and
Precision………………..……….17
2.2.2 Material Requirement………………………………………..…….18
2.2.2.1 Corroboration of
Theories…………………………………20
2.2.2.2 Falsification of
Theories……………………………….………….22
2.3 Verisimilitude: The aim of
Science…………...…..23
CHAPTER
3.0 OTHER PREREQUISITES FOR
SCIENTIFIC GROWTH..26
3.1 A measure of Dogmatism
Required…………………...26
3.2 Popper and Ad hoc Auxiliary
Hypotheses……………….27
3.3 Background Knowledge
(Scientific Tradition) and Scientific Growth..31
3.4 Observation (experiment) in the
Falsificationist’s Scheme………..33
3.5 Problems: The Raw Material and
the Product of Scientific Discovery..35
CHAPTER FOUR
40 A CRITIQUE OF SIR KARL’S STRATEGY………………….……39
4.1 Falsification of Bold
Conjectures and Scientific Growth……..…..39
4.2 Falsification: A Logical Impossibility
in the Popperian Scheme……....42
4.3 A Historical Test of the
Scheme………………..46
4.4 Popper Sows a Seed of
Destruction in his System…..54
CHAPTER FIVE
5.0
Evaluation………………………………………………..………….58
6.0
Conclusion……………………………………………..……………63
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………….64
PROPOSAL
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Perhaps,
one of the finest and most fascinating phenomena that have ever greeted the
human history was the overture of the modern scientific culture and its
unmitigated growth and development. The ascendance of this strand of cultural
emancipation and spectacular civilization did not just take place ‘at the drop
of a hat or two from the leaning tower of Pisa.’ It was rather subversive and
gradual, yet impressive. It had had its shadow cast during the ancient period
exemplified more or less in the Democritian atomism and most especially in the
Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic system. Its resonance was again heard in the
thirteenth century, typified by the various posits of Robert Grosseteste and
the ‘Doctor Mirabilis’- Roger Bacon. With Copernicus’ hypothesis and
postulations as is found in his De Revolutionibus Orbium-his
conservatism and his extravagances not withstanding- a jolt was given to the
hitherto extant scientific paradigms. A new scientific framework became
anticipated. This new science as it were, became inevitable when it was given a
profound impetus as Galileo turned his telescope up to the skies, which
culminated in the ‘Scientific Revolution’ popularly associated with the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the
stage became set for the new science to flourish and blossom. It was during
this period that the world witnessed the emergence of towering intellects in
the scientific world, viz: Galileo Galilei, the Danish astronomer-Tycho Brahe,
Johaness Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, whose scientific trajectories consummated
the scientific enunciations of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo; Robert Boyle,
William Harvey, Albert Einstein, the Jewish brain whose actions led to the
production of the first atomic bomb which was then couched in the garb of THE
MANHATHAN PROJECT, among
others. These and more laid great foundations in physics- mechanics,
hydrostatics, astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, to mention but a
few.
Ever since then science has registered such a
reverberating and resounding success that it has enjoyed among all ranks and
files outstanding accolade and so has almost always raised its head high,
reigning supreme more or less in its general principles and methodology. In
fact the rise of the classical science of the renaissance and post renaissance
era and the progress recorded therein have been so pronounced and profound that
no less a number of people and departments of life have been influenced by it
and its method. It has exercised a handsome effect on life and thoughts of
various peoples and nations, “opening up to them new vistas of knowledge and
directing them to new interests.”
In particular, it has influenced philosophers and the mode of their philosophic
analysis. For instance, the major part of Cartesian philosophical edifice was
erected on a mathematical model as well as mechanics; mechanics occupied a
position of prominence in the Hobbesian reflections;
Historical science relatively held sway in the Hegelian philosophical expose;
while Bergson drank something of Biology and the evolutionary hypothesis.
More still, Kant’s criticism of metaphysics had the scientific progressive
discovery and adventure as its referential point. His defense and justification
of the synthetic a priori form of judgement seems also to be informed by this.
Science became thus, the form and prototype of all
genuine disciplines. Edmund Husserl even tried to make philosophy a science! It
is not a far reaching assertion to say that almost all the philosophical posits
without prejudice to other influential elements, at the twilight of the
renaissance period, through the modern and even extending up to the
contemporary period have been scientifically motivated and oriented. Special
note must be taken of the Logical positivists. These were so held spell bound
by the paraphernalia of successes evident in the scientific arena that they
could not recognize as the latter Wittgenstein did, that life and language are
too supple and variable to make them fit into the strait-jacket of a single
method.
They rather worked for the unity of science, and making a mountain out of a
molehill, they transposed the Baconian method into a theory or criterion of
meaning in their dogma of verification principle. With this they launched an
unwholesome broadside on metaphysics, which metamorphosed into a wholesale
rejection of the later, refusing metaphysical propositions any cognitive
meaning or literal significance.
With this
the climate was set for the genius of Sir Karl Raimund Popper, who rejected the
above position of the Logical positivists, popularly known as the Vienna
Circle, to make a thorough intellectual leap into the scientific terrain.
Having distinguished between (natural) science and non-science in his
demarcation principle, a principle bereft of any tone or assignation of
criterion of meaningfulness, Popper articulated a systematic study of the
nature of science, with regards to its methods, its concepts and its
presuppositions. In all his submissions, he had the growth of science in view.
He affirms
this when he asserts:
…my problem is the growth of knowledge. In which sense
can we speak of the growth or the progress of knowledge, and how can we achieve
it?
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, who became famous as a result of
his theory of scientific method and his anti-sympathetic view of determinism,
was a British philosopher of science born in Vienna- Austria in the year 1902.
He received a doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) from the University of Vienna in
1928. Popper’s major contribution to philosophy of science was his
characterization of the scientific method. The principal aim of his Logik
der Forschung
(1934; transl. 1959 into English) was to debunk the deficiencies of the
prevailing view that science is fundamentally inductive in nature. Proposing a
criterion of falsifiability for scientific validity, Popper highlighted the
hypothetico-deductive character of science. Popper left Vienna during the Nazi
persecution of the Jews for New Zealand where he taught at the University of Canterbury
and later for London where he became a professor in Logic and Scientific Method
at the London School of Economics. He died on September 17, 1994.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The unassuaged desire and quest for the progressive
growth of science enkindled in that 21stC great philosopher of science, Sir
Karl, the urge to postulate and defend a theory of science which has an
analogical relation to the structure of what is today known in the history of
Philosophy as Kantian Copernican revolution. There was in Popper a shift from
the extant explanatory paradigm, a departure from the statusquo ante.
This anti-current stand was further strengthened immediately he perceived
clearly the destructive road along which the reigning ‘ideologies’ would stir
the scientific rudder, should the man of science adopt and appropriate them.
Yet the thought that the rationality and the empirical nature of science-,
which are tantamount to the existence of the said science,
are deeply dependent on its progressive advancement had earlier on fascinated
him. It thus became imperative for Popper to break the dead lock by turning the
table as it were. He thus faulted with the thesis that science is fundamentally
inductive in nature as well as with the verification principle of the Logical
Positivists and in general made a shift from the class of the exponents of that
age-long epistemological optimism which purports to assert the theory of
manifest nature of truth. He introduced in their stead, his
Hypothetico-deductive model in which he emphasized the asymmetry of
verifiability and falsifiability in their relation to empirical evidence.
Observations can falsify but not verify a given hypothesis, which he maintains,
is in all evolution of knowledge an a priori application. He saw in the history
of science, like the history of all human ideas, a history of irresponsible
dreams, of obstinacy and of error. With this verisimilitude (i.e. nearness to
the truth), instead of verification (in as much as the later entails
assignation of truth values to scientific theories), became in Popper’s scheme
the highlighted concept and the aim of science.
PURPOSE OF STUDY
How
successful was Popper in ensuring the growth of science in his account of
scientific method and procedure? Whether or not he accomplished successfully
this task in his model, and to what extent, is the major concern of the present
researcher in engaging in this worthwhile venture of expounding the Popperian
strategy for the growth of science.
SCOPE OF STUDY
Great are
the intellectual exploits of Sir Karl. He made wonderful contributions in
Epistemology, the nature of authentic polity, philosophy of science, e.t.c. It
is with the later that we are concerned. But I do not hope to explore all his
submissions in this regard, for his philosophical legacies in this area are in
no less a measure great. Only those submissions of his, which explicitly or
implicitly make assertions about the model of scientific growth, are offered
admittance into the confines of the present research.
METHODOLOGY
The
conceptual and methodological tools of exposition, analysis and critical
evaluation are the prisms through which the subject matter is viewed and
explored. The critical evaluation has both the historical and ahistorical
dimensions.
DIVISION OF WORK
The whole write-up, which has five chapters, begins with
an introduction that articulates in a striking manner a general overview of the
thesis, and presents the method employed as well as lays bare the purpose and
the scope of the essay. Chapter one delineates the climate within which the
Popperian strategy evolved. The fundamentals of the Popperian scheme and its
subsidiary aspects are respectively the main constituents of the second and
third chapters. While chapter four gives a critical historical and ahistorical
test of the scheme; the last segment presents a brief evaluation of a general
nature as well as a short conclusion.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0
TOWARDS
ESTABLISHING THE BACKGROUND OF
POPPERIAN
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE.
1.1 CAN FACTS CONSTITUTE THE TERMINUS A QUO
OF SCIENCE? (THE PROBLEM OF
INDUCTION)
It is one of the fundamental canons
of the empiricists, the positivists of all sorts and in fact the entire circle
of the inductivists, that the ladder of science can only be climbed through the
collection and assembling of our experiences. Put in another way, it is the
case that scientific knowledge requires primarily and basically the collection
of protocol sentences. The principle of induction can be expressed in the
following statement:
If a large number of
A’s have been observed under a wide variety of conditions, and if all those A’s
without exceptions possess the property of B, then all A’s have the property B.1
Thus if
various forms of metal expanded when heated at various occasions, one can
conclude that all metals expand when heated. This is essentially an inductive
process, which until the time of Popper was in the eyes of its exponents, a
non-optional extra for empirical sciences. This principle of induction, the
principle that scientific knowledge grows through the progressive movement from
the particular statements (i.e. statements about facts) to the general
(universal) statements, which are essentially the form in which, scientific
theories appear, is considered of supreme importance for scientific discovery
and advancement. Hence, Reichenbach makes bold to assert that the elimination
of this principle from the foundational structure of science is tantamount to
divesting science of its power to determine the truth or otherwise the falsity
of its theories. Science will, therefore, be in want of a veritable means by
which the veracity of her theories is established. There is no longer any
intellectual difference between the scientific posits and the fanciful,
arbitrary inventions of the poetic genius.2
Yet, Popper
despite the fact that the principle of induction is unreservedly accepted by
the whole of science and acquiescing to the possibility of universal error
maintained the untenable nature of this inductive procedure. This skeptical
view was already found in Hume and Kant, but only as precursors, for there are
remarkable differences between these and Popper’s. Popper contended that this
principle of induction is a muddle and is superfluous. For him it is destitute
of a strong basis as it is torpedoed by confusion and riddled with untold
logical inconsistencies.3
Scientific laws are always cast in the form of what the
philosophers term universal statements in the sense that they make reference to
all events of a particular kind. The problem emerges in the face of the
observation statements, which allegedly provide evidence for the general
scientific laws. The former are specific claims about a state of affairs that
are recorded at a particular time. They are what philosophers call singular (or
basic) statements or protocol sentences. Popper noted that there is no logical
justification for inferring the truth of the universal statements from the
singular, the numerical strength of the later not withstanding. This is because
there is no guarantee that the contrary will not be the case in the future.
This is fundamentally an impossible endeavour for any account of experience can
primarily and essentially be only a singular statement and not a universal one.
General scientific laws invariably go beyond the finite amount of the
observable evidence that is available to support them. The corollary is that
these evidences can never be established as the efficient progenitors of the
general scientific laws. It is impossible to logically deduce the later from
the available evidence. Any link, therefore, between singular and the universal
statements in which the former serve to authenticate the veracity of the later
is an illogical connexion, which impinges on the acceptance of the inductive
inference. This is the logical problem of induction and is made more complex by
the fact that it is impossible to justify a law by observation or experience as
highlighted above since it transcends experience; that science proposes and
makes use of laws at every point and time despite the paucity of the observed
instances upon which the laws are founded; and by the fact of the principle of
empiricism which asserts that in science, only observation and experience may
decide upon the acceptance or the rejection of scientific statements including
laws and theories.4
But what is the raison d’ etre of this sort of inference.
The issue raised here demands foremost that a principle of induction be
established – a principle which provides “a statement by means of which we
should be able to put inductive inferences into a logically accepted form.”5 How is the principle of induction to be
vindicated? We have seen that this is impossible logically. What is left is an
appeal to experience. Popper observed that any attempt to justify the practice
of induction by an appeal to experience must lead to an infinite regress. The
principle of induction must be a universal statement. Its justification is
based on a number of individual instances of its successful application. Thus,
use is made of inductive inference. Hence the justification of induction by an
appeal to experience involves assuming what one is trying to prove i.e. begging
the question. It is all about justifying induction by appealing to induction
and so is totally unsatisfactory.6
Hume’s attempt to give a psychological basis of the
principle of induction was in Popper’s estimation mistaken. It flies in the
face of the principle of transference, for what is false in Logic as we already
saw becomes true in psychology. Immediately Hume struck bargain with the
psychological justification of induction, he became an exponent of an
irrationalist epistemology. Popper was dissatisfied with his psychological
explanation of induction in terms custom or habit. If we follow Hume, having
established before now that inductive reasoning lacks any force as an argument
to assert that this sort of reasoning dominates our cognitive life or our
understanding, it means the exaltation of irrationalism for it is obvious then
that argument or reason plays only a minor role in our understanding. Our
knowledge is therefore not only depicted as being of the nature of belief but
also of rationally indefensible belief- of irrational faith.7 It is bizarre, Popper argues to explain
our propensity to expect regularities in terms of repetition. Events would
continue to be isolated unless man has the categories that connect them. Popper
submitted on logical reasons that repetition presupposes a point of view, ‘such
as a system of expectations, anticipations, assumptions or interests.’8 It is only within this climate of
thought that the questions of infinite regress or irrationalism are given a
final blow. This, Popper maintains, depicts the scientific procedure.
1.2 THE VIENNA
CIRCLE’S ATTACK ON METAPHYSICS
The logical positivists in the spirit of inductive
tradition held that science is fundamentally based on the accumulation of
facts. However they made a dogmatic extrapolation by holding a naïve and
naturalistic view of meaning in their verification principle. For them, the
genuine character and the meaningfulness of any alleged proposition is
determined by its being a truth function of, or its being reducible to,
elementary (or atomic) proposition expressing observations or perceptions.
Carnap articulates this somewhat lopsided position of the positivists in a
fascinating fashion:
It is certain that a string of words has meaning only
if its derivability relations from protocol sentences (observation sentences)
are given…that is to say, if the way to (its) verification… is known.
The meaning of a statement is,
thus, the method of its verification they concluded, to use the expressions of
Waisman.10 The result of this
unacceptable position of the Positivists is that the metaphysical sentences
stand revealed, by logical analysis, as pseudo- sentences. The propositions of
metaphysics are dismissed by them as non-sensical, and so lack any relevance
and force in the ensemble of gnoseological acquisitions. This is indeed a
calculated strategy towards a complete destruction of metaphysical principles.
They have become ipso facto avowed worshippers in the temple of that
Humean ideology in which metaphysics is viewed as ‘nonsensical twaddle,
sophistry and illusion,’ requiring to be committed to the flames.11
Popper in his unpublished book entitled Die beiden
Grund probleme der Erkenntnisthorie,
gave a fairly detailed criticism of this doctrine of elimination or
overthrow (ueberwindung) of metaphysics through meaning-analysis. This
anti-current action was done, not from a metaphysical framework, but from the
springboard of one whose interest is in science, and its unhampered growth and
advancement. Popper observed that this doctrine far from defeating the supposed
enemy, brought the keys of the beleaguered city to the beck and call of the
alleged enemy.13 The proponents were so
much fixated in their determination to oust metaphysics from the circle of all
informative discipline that they failed to realize that most of the scientific
theories, which they purport to shield, have also fallen on the same scrap heap
as the ‘meaningless’ propositions of metaphysics. Should this position of
theirs be taken in the least lightly, their efforts towards the radical
annihilation of metaphysics would also be an effort towards the eclipse of
science as most of the postulations of the later which have metaphysical features
would be destroyed simultaneously. It is an established fact that scientific
laws and theories, which appear in the form of universal propositions,
transcend experience and so are incapable of being logically reduced to the
elementary statements of experience. Were we to hold credence to the
Positivists’ criterion of meaning and apply such a criterion in a way that is
consistent, we shall in the final analysis jettison the natural laws, which
are, as Einstein says, the supreme task of the physicist,1
from the sphere of meaningful propositions. They can never be welcome into the
community of all genuine or legitimate statements.
Since Bacon, the most widely held view was that science
was characterized by its observational basis while pseudo-sciences and
metaphysics were typified by their speculative method. Popper hardly accepts
this view. The modern theories of physics especially Einstein’s theories were
highly speculative and abstract. They were very far removed from what might be
tagged their observational bases. All attempts to show the contrary were
unconvincing, Popper concluded.15 Most
scientific theories originate from myths. The Copernican system, for instance,
was precipitated from a Neo-Platonic worship of light of the Sun who occupied
the pride of place- the center because of his nobility. Copernicus, it must be
noted studied in Bologna, under the Platonist Novara.16 Atomisms, corpuscular theory of light
among others, are myths that have in no less a measure become vital for
physical sciences. It makes no meaning to say, Popper noted, that these
theories in one stage of their development were nonsensical expressions while
they suddenly become meaningful in another.17
Parmenides of Elea seems to have captured this sequence when he opined that out
of non-being comes non-being. No ‘sense’ can ever emerge from ‘non-sense’!
Furthermore, it is obvious that a
lot of realities which science posits are no more observable than metaphysical
entities. Should we have to talk about gravity, and various forms of forces,
Newtonian mass points—Popper calls these ‘occult metaphysical substances’18 to depict their non-observable nature.
Can we also observe time and space which have among others formed the
fundamentals of scientific knowledge? Thus, if following the Positivists, we
exclude these from all things meaningful, scientific boat would automatically
be rocked and shattered.
We have seen that the broom of the anti-metaphysicist
sweeps away too much. The anti-metaphysicist’s assertion that metaphysical
propositions are sheer gibberish, if a little protracted, throws science into
the wilderness of devastation. No wonder Popper had first to expose the
antiques of this position with regard to science, for his maps for the growth
of science would be irrelevant if the said science has been utterly
extinguished.
1.3 POPPER SETS OFF AGENDA
FOR THE THEORY-DEPENDENCE OF SCIENCE
Popper is not in the least undaunted in his conviction
that the advance of science can hardly result from the accumulation of
perceptual experiences in the course of time. No matter how dogged we are in
gathering and sorting them, it is impossible, he thought, for science to emerge
out of uninterpreted sense-perceptions. The canon of selection is ever utilized
in the scientific observations. Hence, before any meaningful observation can be
embarked upon, there is need for a choice of object, definite task—all of which
presuppose interests, problems and points of view.19
In the light of this, all observations involve interpretation. Pure,
unadulterated observational knowledge ‘would, if at all possible be utterly
barren and futile.’20 Chalmers seems to share this view when he
asserts:
How can we establish significant facts about the world
through observation if we do not have some guidance as to what kind of
knowledge we are seeking or what problems we are trying to solve?
Observation statements cannot be statements expressing
uninterpreted data. They are rather statements of facts in the light of
theories. “How odd it is,” Darwin notes, “that anyone should not see that all
observation must be for or against some view….”22
Nature must be cross-examined on the basis of the
experimenter’s theories, his ideas and his inspirations. Kant was after all
correct when he says that it behoves on the experimenter to question nature and
not wait until it pleases nature to make manifest her secrets.23 It must however be noted that unlike
Kant who asserts that our theories are valid a priori, Popper maintains
that they are only guesses, doubts, which must be tested empirically. This is
an adumbration of what he calls hypotheticism, which is one of the cardinal
points of his strategy. Hence he maintains that:
Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations and speculative
thought are our only means for interpreting nature; our only organon, our only
instrument, for grasping her.
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