On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Scott Martens wrote:
> The biggest boost relativity got was from predicting exactly the orbit
> of Mercury. This was a falsification test, Newton's theory was
> falsified by Mercury's failure to be where it predicted it would be,
> while Mercury was exactly where Einstein said it would be.
Actually this example, as well, I think, as all of your others, support the Kuhn/Lakotos consensus against Popper. When Kuhn and Lakotos are cited, somewhat misleading, as saying that scientific theories are not falsifiable, they mean not falsifiable in the original Popperian sense, where, as he put it famously and often, a single bad predication is enough by itself to falsify a theory (whereas no number of positive results can ever prove one.) Kuhn & Lakotos argue that if you look at the scientific record, every decisive falsification of one theory is at the same time the verification of a competing and better theory -- and both moments are indispensible. They argue that no working scientist throws out an established theory on the basis of on bad result alone -- if there is no good explanation of the discrepency, it becomes an "anamolous result." First they suspect measurement or experimental error, and when that is ruled out, it becomes an indication that something is wrong but nobody no knows what. It calls the theory into doubt, but it doesn't "falsify" it in the sense that scientists will throw it out. They won't do that until they have something better. Until then they'll work with it under advisement. After all, a theory only gets established because it accounts for a large set of predications; it can always be kept just by limiting its scope. The anamolous results might be ignored, or they might become central to further research. But they won't become a falsification until there is a comprehensive account that can explain them and (ideally) all of what the old theory could as well. When that happens, we have a "falsification" precisely because we have a verification. Verification was of course a concept Popper was trying desparately to get free of. He wanted a world where you could just appeal to facts. What you get instead is one where facts are of central importance, but finally inexplicable apart from the (competing) ideas that give them significance. The end result is that relation between ideas and facts becomes considerably more complicated and lifelike than it was in Popper's original formulation.
I think all of your examples, and your comments about the importance of interpretation, put you squarely in the Kuhn/Lakotos camp on this one. It is not an argument that falsification is unimportant or impossible. It's simply that its is more complex than Popper stated it originally.
At any rate, if you want to disprove Kuhn and Lakotos by example, what you need is a decisive experiment that at caused a scientific theory to be thrown out without ushering in a new one.
Michael __________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com