Deutch and Popper

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Wed Jan 2 09:37:53 PST 2002


On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Daniel Davies wrote:


> It absolutely amazes me that Popperians like Deutch have no problems at all
> talking about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and other
> things which appear on the face of them to be utterly unfalsifiable, but
> have a scunner against astrology, which provides me with twelve falsifiable
> predictions free every day with my newspaper.
>

Yep. But just like any practical scientist, Popperians ignore or explain away examples that contradict their favorite theory. And this is not meant to diss scientists: holding onto a theory in the face of "unruly" data is in fact a crucial characteristic of science (PKF's stuff on Galileo is great on this). Anybody who thinks that scientists digilently throw out an elegant theory just because some data contradicts it needs to put down the Popper and actually talk to some practicing scientists.

Miles



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list