1.
Karl Popper [1902-1994]:
Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1959—a translation of his Logik der Forschung
(1934)] offered his view regarding “the problem of demarcation”—the issue of how to separate
science from pseudo-science. Popper’s orientation is distinctive in the history of the philosophy
of science. Instead of emphasizing the role of observation or the role of induction, or the role of
confirmation of theories, he emphasizes the fact that scientific theories are falsifiable. Popper
emphasized the falsifiability of scientific theories because he saw a central problem with the
traditional view in the philosophy of science that what scientists did was to try and prove (or
confirm) their theories. The problem was that we can never, logically speaking, verify a
universal statement (and given that scientific laws are such). Popper, instead, pointed to the
importance of falsifications for science.
As Stephen Thornton points out, however:
logically speaking, a scientific theory is conclusively fallible although it is not conclusively
verifiable. Methodologically, however, the situation is much more complex: no observation is
free from the possibility of error—consequently we may question whether our experimental
result was what it appeared to be.
Thus, while advocating falsifiability as the criterion of demarcation for science, Popper
explicitly allows for the fact that in practice a single conflicting or counter-instance is never
sufficient methodologically to falsify a theory, and that scientific theories are often retained even
though much of the available evidence conflicts with them.1
Popper’s way of accommodating this sort of insight is by emphasizing that it is the critical
methodology which is at the core of science. In his Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of
Scientific Knowledge [1963], he presents a picture of scientific theorizing as one of coming up
with falsifiable hypotheses and then endeavoring to refute them as the core of the scientific
enterprise. As Thornton notes:
scientific theories…are not inductively inferred from experience, nor is scientific
experimentation carried out with a view to verifying or finally establishing the truth of theories;
rather all knowledge is provisional, conjectural, hypothetical—we can never finally prove our
scientific theories, we can merely (provisionally) confirm or (conclusively) refute them; hence at
any given time we have to choose between the potentially infinite number of theories which will
explain the set of phenomena under investigation. Faced with this choice, we can only eliminate
those theories which are demonstrably false, and rationally choose between the remaining
unfalsified theories. Hence Popper’s emphasis on the importance of the critical spirit to science
—for him critical thinking is the very essence of rationality. For it is only by critical thought that
we can eliminate false theories, and determine which of the remaining theories is the best
available one, in the sense of possessing the highest level of explanatory force and predictive
power.2
As Popper sees it pseudo-scientific theories (he includes Freudian and Marxist theories here)
are not falsifiable and their practitioners do not endeavor to falsify them. Thus the critical
methodology can be employed to “demarcate” science.
Popper believed that the critical methodology which he championed would not simply yield a
sequence of refutable conjectures which move from unrefuted to refuted, but that it would
yield a growth of knowledge. In short, he held that science is a progressive enterprise which
would, while pursing falsifiable conjectures, produce a growth in human knowledge. Like most
modern epistemologists, Popper’s epistemology is optimistic—like the earlier theorists, he holds
that humans could know the world and the truth. However he believes that the modern
epistemological tradition encourages skepticism, relativism, and authoritarianism and he wants to
avoid these “evils.”
He believes that the modern view that the truth is manifest calls out for an explanation regarding
our ignorance of it, and here there will be one or more version of a conspiracy theory of
ignorance. Popper rejects both views. He wants an optimistic epistemology which will not lead
to an authoritarianism of foundations or sources of knowledge, a skepticism which denies us
knowledge, or a relativism which undercuts objective knowledge.
Moreover, Popper claims that disbelief in the human power to discern the truth encourages a
particularly pernicious appeal to authority—one which utterly distrusts human rational capacities
—encouraging a “blind faith” instead.
The Falsification Principle, proposed by Karl Popper, is a way of demarcating science from non-science.
It suggests that for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be able to be tested and conceivably
proven false. For example, the hypothesis that “all swans are white” can be falsified by observing a black
swan.
What is the theory of falsifiability?
A scientific hypothesis, according to the doctrine of falsifiability, is credible only if it is
inherently falsifiable. This means that the hypothesis must be capable of being tested and
proven wrong.
Opponents of Logical Positivists pointed out that many
general statements which are used by science cannot
be verified. For example how could we ever conclusively
verify a statement such as “metal expands when
heated”? It is always possible that the one piece of
metal we have not tested will not expand. In Logic the
following syllogism was used in the past.
All swans are white
This bird is a swan
Therefore this bird is white
• An example of Popper’s was astronomy against
astrology...
• Albert Einstein's theory of gravity was a scientific theory as it was potentially
falsifiable, meaning the truth or falseness of it could be tested against
empirical observations of the universe.
• However, the claims of the mystic astrologers make their prophecies so vague that
they are able to explain away anything that might refute their predictions had they
been more precise ‘In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of
their theory.’ (Popper)
