On Thu, 3 Jan 2002 00:31:23 +0000 (GMT)
"=?iso-8859-1?q?Cian=20O'Connor?=" <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> --- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: >
> >
> > Popper's theory goes beyond a simple argument that
> > corrections must
> > be made on the basis of reasonable doubt, rather
> > than whims.
> >
> > Popper (1) rejects, like Hume before him, induction
> > and opposes
> > verificationism; (2) holds that a single genuine
> > counter-example
> > falsifies the whole theory; and (3) maintains that
> > one may claim a
> > theory is scientific only if one is prepared to
> > specify in advance a
> > crucial experiment (or observation) which can
> > falsify it, and it is
> > pseudoscientific if one refuses to specify such a
> > "potential
> > falsifier."
> >
> > The history of science contradicts (2) and (3), to
> > say nothing of the
> > impossibility of setting up, in advance, criteria
> > that should allow
> > one to distinguish, in practice, genuine
> > counter-examples from
> > spurious ones.
>
> The actual practise of scientists is distinct from the
> body of knowledge they create.
>
> As for (3): I can't exactly follow what point you're
> trying to make. It's quite easy to specify criteria
> for Newton's laws.
I am not so sure about that. Whenever, those laws (or the laws of the conservation of energy or momentum) appear to be violated, physicists are quick to come up with ad hoc hypotheses to explain the apparent anomalies and thus save these laws. That was how neutrinos were first hypothesized back in the 1930s, when certain nuclear experiments were indicating an apparent violation of the conservation of momentum law. Neutrinos were postulated to explain the "disappearing" momentum. Only years later were their existence definately verified by experiment.
I think that we got to be Duhemian-Quinean here and recognize that when a hypothesis seems to be contradicted by observation or experiment, we almost always have a choice of saving our hypothesis by invoking ad hoc hypotheses (which may be nothing more than that of "experimental error" or even "experimenter incompetence"!), or we can choose to reject our hyothesis, in which case we say that it was "falsified." The point here being we are not forced a priori into following one course or the other. Very often, if we have a theory that is able to explain most things in a very comprehensive but parsimonous manner, then we will most likely make great efforts at saving our theory if it is apparently contradicted by a few observations. In the case of less parsomonous, less elegant theories, we may be more likely to "allow" them to be falsified, if we run into anomalous observations.
>It's not easy to do with Marxism.
> Which is possibly why it's a seperate field of
> enquiry.
In these respects, I think that Marxism's differences with the natural sciences are more a matter of degree rather than that of a fundamental difference in the kind of inquiry being pursued.
>
> And if Marxism is a science, why isn't history? And if
> history is a science, then surely the resulting
> definition of what a "science" is, is so loose and
> wooly that it's completely useless and we need new
> definitions. Non-experimental science maybe.
Some natural sciences are non-experimental, or mostly non-experimental, like astronomy, geology, and paleontology.
Jim F.
>
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