Popper

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Popper fore-shadowed
Below it seems that Charles Hodge in his book What is Darwinism fore-shadowed Popper's principle of falsifiability.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19192/19192-h/19192-h.htm#Footnote_34_34

2. There is no pretence that the theory can be proved. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to prove it. He admits that all the facts in the case can be accounted for on the assumption of divine purpose and control. All that he claims[Pg 145] for his theory is that it is possible. His mode of arguing is that if we suppose this and that, then it may have happened thus and so. Amiable and attractive as the man presents himself in his writings, it rouses indignation, in one class at least of his readers, to see him by such a mode of arguing reaching conclusions which are subversive of the fundamental truths of religion.

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It’s a pity that Wolpert slags off Karl Popper as being a waste of space. I wonder which book he read, with such disdain? If it was ‘The Logic of Scientific Discovery’, then I can understand his frustration, as this is difficult and intricate. But I found, e.g. the first chapter of “Objective Knowledge” thoroughy illuminating and quite unpretentious. Indeed one of Popper’s great virtues is to write modestly and with great clarity. As a social scientist I was abolutely stunned by Popper’s arguments showing that (i) the search for certainty in science is misguided, (ii) that we don’t progress by collecting facts and then interpreting them with a theory, and (iii) that the thing to try to do is to make a bold falsifiable conjecture and then test it. Popper was not writing a handbook on how to do science; he was pointing out what was of enduring value in the scientific method. The logical assymetry between the weakness of amassing positive examples (”every swan I’ve ever seen is white, so all swans must be white”) and the power of devastating negative examples (the very first black swan I see falsifies the rule: “all swans are white”)remains important, it seems to me. It might not have done it for Wolpert but for me, Science was never the same again.

Posted by Richard Fox | October 23, 2009, 12:40 pm 10.

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http://www.geocities.com/criticalrationalist/#online

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On Oct 19, 7:13 pm, wf3h  wrote: > > And there being no intent is a way of saying: What will be, will be. > > This was the Aristotelian, Epicurian, Empedoclian view, reformulated > > by DArwin as natural selection, a term he lifted from Patrick > > Matthews.

> > The fallacy is to say: What happens, happens(natural selection or > > theory of evolution) and then therefore a monkey gave birth to a > > human, which doesn't follow logically.

http://www.geocities.com/criticalrationalist/#online Sections 19 and 20 of Popper's "Logic of Scientific Discovery", in which he discusses "conventionalist stratagems" to rescue a theory from falsification. Popper writes, "Whenever the `classical' system of the day is threatened by the results of new experiments which might be interpreted as falsifications . . . the system will appear unshaken to the conventionalist."

Popper goes on to explain the stratagems the conventionalist will use to deal with the inconsistencies that have arisen between the predictions of the theory and the results of experiments:

1. Blame our inadequate mastery of the system. 2. Suggest the ad hoc adoption of auxiliary hypotheses. 3. Suggest corrections to measuring instruments. 4. Modify definitions used in the theory. 5. Adopt a skeptical attitude of the observer whose observations threaten the system by excluding his observations from science because (a) they are insufficiently supported; (b) they are unscientific; (c) they are not objective. 6. Call the experimenter a liar.

What is taking place is that Darwins concept as interpreted by Osborn, Burroughs, Kingsley and Waagen is being redefined, but the same terms are retained leading to huge confusion as to what we are talking about. Because Aristotle's what happens, happens notion reformulated and rebranded as theory of evolution can' be falsified. Nr.4 says that the conventionalist modifies definitions used.