Big Bang?

[Dave Monroe]

>From Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The
Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 47-48 ...

(1) It is easy to obtain confirmations, or
verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for
confirmations.

(2) Confirmations should count only if they are the
result of risky predictions;that is to say, if,
unenlightened by the theory in question, we should
have expected an event which was incompatible with the
theory-an event which would have refuted the theory.

(3) Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition:
it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory
forbids, the better it is.

(4) A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable
event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue
of theory (as people often think) but a vice.

(5) Every genuine testof a theory is an attempt to
falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is
falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability;
some theories are more testable, more exposed to
refutation, than others; they take, as it were,
greater risks.

(6) Confirming evidence should not count except when
it is the result of agenuine test of the theory; and
this means that it can be presented as a serious but
unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now
speak in such cases of"corroborating evidence.")

(7) Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be
false, are still upheld by their admirers-for example
by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by
re-interpreting theory ad hoc in such a way that it
escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always
possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation
only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering,
its scientific status. (I later described such a
rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a
"conventionalist stratagem.")

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion
of the scientific status of a theory is its
falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~fotoole/321.1/popper.html

http://www.geocities.com/healthbase/falsification.html

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

http://www.friesian.com/popper.htm

But do note as well, e.g., ...

Finding the flaw in falsifiability

Karl Popper's "principle of falsifiability" is one of
the few philosophical ideas that physicists regularly
mention. But science is far more complex than it
suggests ...

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/15/12/2/1

And see esp. ...

Lakatos, Imre and Paul Feyerabend.
   For and Against Method.  Ed. Matteo Motterlini.
   Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13766.ctl

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n02/hack01_.html

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/lakatosi/fandam.htm

http://www-ceel.gelso.unitn.it/staff/motterlini/files_07_2003/A%20dialogue.pdf

Paul Feyerabend

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/


		
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