Philosophy of science
The principal task of philosophy of science is to analyze the methods of enquiry used in
various sciences. It helps one uncover assumptions that are implicit in scientific practice
but are not talked about explicitly. This allows one to question the assumptions that are
taken for granted by scientists.
Deduction and induction and the Problem of Induction
Logicians make an important distinction between deductive and inductive patterns of reasoning.
Deductive reasoning follows that if premises put forward are true then the conclusion must also
be true.
Inductive reasoning is an activity of the mind that takes us from the observed to the
unobserved. From the fact that the sun has risen every day thus far, we conclude that it will
rise again tomorrow. The essence of inductive reasoning lies in its ability to take us beyond the
confines of our current evidence or knowledge to novel conclusions about the unknown. Hume
argued that all such reasoning is founded on the relation of cause and effect. It is this
relation that takes us beyond our current evidence, whether it is an inference from cause
to effect, or effect to cause, or from one collateral effect to another.
Deductive reasoning is a much safer activity than inductive reasoning. When we reason
deductively, we can be certain that if we start with true premises, we will end up with a true
conclusion. But the same does not hold for inductive reasoning. On the contrary, inductive
reasoning is quite capable of taking us from true premises to a false conclusion. Despite this
defect, we seem to rely on inductive reasoning throughout our lives.
Scientists use inductive reasoning whenever they move from limited data to a more general
conclusion, which they do all the time.
David Hume, in his book “A treatise of human nature” (1973) proceeded to raise a
fundamental question now known as “the problem of induction” He argued that the use
of induction cannot be rationally justified at all.
He began by noting that whenever we make inductive inferences, we seem to presuppose what
he called the 'uniformity of nature' (UN)
UN: Our reasoning seems to depend on the assumption that objects we haven't
examined will be similar, in the relevant respects, to objects of the same sort that we
have examined. That assumption is what Hume means by the uniformity of nature.
However, the UN assumption cannot be proved true as it is possible to imagine a universe
where nature is not uniform, but changes its course randomly. One cannot find empirical
evidence for UN to be true - as an argument that assumes UN to be true is actually
assuming UN from the onset. In other words, since nature behaved uniformly in the past, we
cannot know that it will continue to do so in the future. Therefore, arguing for UN on empirical
grounds is reasoning in a circle. Therefore, to argue that induction has worked until now thus is
trustworthy, is arguing inductively.
(Philosophy of Science, S. Okasha, 2002)
The problem: Science is seen as an epitome of rational enquiry but since its based on
induction and induction cannot be rationally justified, science is unreliable.
What are the grounds for such inductive or causal inferences?
In attempting to answer this question, Hume presents both a negative and a positive argument
In his negative thesis, Hume argued that our knowledge of causal relations is not attainable
through demonstrative reasoning, but is acquired through past experience.
Hume’s negative argument undermines the assumption that the future will resemble the past.
This assumption cannot be demonstrated a priori because it is not contradictory to imagine that
the course of nature may change
Hume’s positive argument: argues that it is custom or habit that leads us to make inferences in
accordance with past regularities. A correspondence is set up between the regularities in the
world and the expectations of the mind. Moreover, Hume maintains that this tendency is
“implanted in us as an instinct” because nature would not entrust it to the vagaries of reason. In
modern terms, then, we are prewired to expect past associations to hold in the future
(The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning, 2005)
Karl Popper: Nicholas Maxwell, believed in an idea that just might save the world which is that
science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of
humanity. A version of this idea can be found buried in the works of Karl Popper.
He wrote several books:
• 1) The logic of scientific discovery 1934
• 2) The open society and its enemies 1945
• 3)Conjectures and refutations 1962
• 4) The poverty of historicism 1957
• 5) Unended queries 1976
• 6)All life is problem solving 1994
A major issue which concerned Popper was the status of the psychological pursuits of Freud
(psychoanalysis), Adler (individual psychology) and others. Since the enlightenment, science
had fought a long battle to separate the rational and empirical truths of scientific inquiry from
the revealed truth of religion. Were these new subjects’ part of science or merely new
dogmatisms?
Critical rationalism; falsifiability: Popper first formed his key idea of falsification at the age of 17.
He was concerned about the problem of demarcation, which he formulated as: how can science
be separated from pseudo-science? He had been shocked by the fact that the Marxists (whose
central claim was that they were social scientists) and the psychoanalysts of all schools seemed
able to interpret any conceivable event as a verification of their theories
“my earlier ideas fell into place. I understood why the mistaken theory of science which had
ruled since Bacon - that the natural sciences were the inductive sciences, and that induction was
a process of establishing or justifying theories by repeated observations or experiments - was so
deeply entrenched. The reason was that scientists had to demarcate their activities from
pseudoscience as well as from theology and metaphysics, and they had taken over from Bacon
the inductive method as their criterion of demarcation. (On the other hand, they were anxious
to justify their theories by an appeal to sources of knowledge comparable in reliability to the
sources of religion.) But I had held in my hands for many years a better criterion of demarcation:
testability or falsifiability” (Popper, 1976a, p 79)
Popper was impressed by the difference between the theories of Marx, Freud and Adler on the
one hand, and Einstein’s general theory of relativity, on the other. The former theories seemed
able to explain phenomena whatever happened; nothing, it seemed, could tell against these
theories. Einstein’s theory, by contrast, issued in a definite prediction: light travelling near the
sun would pursue a curved path due to the gravitational field of the sun. If this did not happen,
Einstein’s theory would be refuted. Popper decided, around 1921 (he tells us) that this
constituted the key difference between pseudo and genuine scientific theories: whereas the
former were unrefutable, the latter were open to empirical refutation (see Popper, 1963,pp.
34–9; 1976a, p. 38; see also Hacohen, 2000, pp. 91–6).
He took the view that: 'In matters of the intellect, the only things worth striving for are true
theories, or theories which come near to the truth - at any rate nearer than some other
(competing) theory, for example an older one' (Popper, 1976a, p 22).
The results of his investigation into epistemology were published in Logik der Forschung
(Popper, 1934). The book was devoted to two problems, the problem of induction and the (2)
problem of demarcation, and their interaction. It was meant to provide a theory of knowledge
and, at the same time, to be a treatise on method, the method of science (Popper, 1976a, p
85).
On falsification, the key point is that universal theories cannot be induced from singular
statements as induction would have it (from many observations of white swans it cannot be
concluded that 'all swans are white'). However, the situation is asymmetric: universal theories
may be refuted by singular statements (the observation of a black swan) (Popper, 1976a, p 86)
To call a theory falsifiable is not to say that it is false. Rather, it means that the theory makes
some definite predictions that are capable of being tested against experience. If These
predictions turn out to be wrong, then the theory has been falsified, or disproved. So a
falsifiable theory is one that we might discover to be false - it is not compatible with every
possible course of experience. Popper thought that some supposedly scientific theories did not
satisfy this condition and thus did not deserve to be called science at all; rather they were
merely pseudo-science.
On demarcation, the logical positivists held that any statements, which could not be assessed
either by appeal to empirical evidence (synthetically true or false) or by appeal to the meaning
of words and the grammatical structure that constitutes them (analytically true or false), were
meaningless; this included metaphysical, religious, aesthetic, and ethical claims. (Fotion, 1995,
p 507).
From there, Popper laid out his essential conclusions, which are useful to any thinker trying to
figure out if a theory can be put in the scientific realm:
• 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 a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
• 5) Every genuine test of 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 a genuine test of
the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt
to falsify the theory i.e ‘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 the 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.e ‘conventionalist twist’ .
• 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.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery ([Link].D.) begins by spelling out what are, for Popper, the two
fundamental problems concerning the nature of scientific inquiry.
(1) The problem of induction: how can scientific theories be verified by evidence, in view
of Hume’s arguments which seem to show that this is impossible?
(2) The problem of demarcation: How is science to be demarcated from non-science
(pseudoscience and metaphysics)?
As we saw above, Popper’s solution to the second problem is that, in order to be
scientific, a theory must be empirically falsifiable. This, for Popper, solves the first
problem as well. Scientific laws and theories cannot be verified by evidence at all; they
can only be falsified. However much evidence may be amassed in support of a theory, its
probability remains zero. But despite this negative conclusion, science can still make
progress. This comes about as a result of theories being proposed as conjectures, in response
to problems; these conjectures are then subjected to a ruthless barrage of attempted empirical
refutation. The purpose of observation and experimentation is not to verify, but to refute.
When a theory is refuted empirically, this creates the problem of discovering a new conjecture, a
new theory, which is even more successful than its predecessor in that it meets with all the
success of its predecessor, successfully predicts the phenomena that refuted its predecessor,
and predicts new phenomena as well. When such a theory is formulated, the task then becomes
to try to refute this new theory in turn. Thus science advances, from one falsifiable
conjecture to another, each successfully predicting more than its predecessor, but none
ever having probability greater than zero. All theoretical knowledge in science is
irredeemably conjectural in character. But science makes progress precisely because, in
science, it is possible to discover that theories are false, and thus need to be replaced by
something better.
CONCLUSION: There is no such thing as the verification of theories in science; there is
only refutation. Scientists put forward theories as empirically falsifiable conjectures or
guesses, and these are then subjected to sustained attempted empirical refutation.
Science advances through a process of trial and error, of conjecture and refutation.
