Pardon me if these are silly questions the answers to which someone trained in the Popperian tradition would have learned on his or her mama's knee, as it were (we Heidegger specialists aren't known for being up on Anglo-American philosophy of science; we're far too fuzzy-minded, ahem, I meant to say, think far too poetically):
>Remember, you can't ever be certain that a scientific theory is true, you
>can only be certain that it is false.
I really don't see how one could ever be completely certain that a given scientific theory is false. As far as I know, for instance, noone has ever "falsified" the basic Ptolemaic understanding of the universe. Can't you just keep adding epicycles until your theory fits the data? This could get pretty clumsy after a while, admittedly, but I don't see how this is relevant unless theoretical efficiency and economy get made into criteria of truth. Is a basically pragmatist understanding of truth being espoused here? Which gets me to my second question:
>
>Yes and no. There are external criteria for determining which theories to
>favour. Like generality, brevity, and specificity. When a theory becomes
>laden with special rules and exceptions, one starts looking for an
>alternative.
These are aesthetic criteria, aren't they? Do we have some kind of epistemological basis for saying that truth resides a priori in the general, the brief, and the specific, other than that accepting the idea makes life easier for us?
Spasibo, Chris Doss ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com