Dear 85-ga;
Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting
question.
Karl Popper (1902-1994), rose from a lowly cabinet maker to one of the
most influential theorists and leading philosophers of our time. He
gained attention from his peers as he began to dispute that which had
been widely accepted as scientific fact. Popper believed that men are
all infinitely ignorant and that the only thing that differentiates us
from one another is what little amount of knowledge we each have. He
suggested that with some cooperative effort we may get nearer to the
solution of many questions but most will likely remain scientifically
unproven to us. He contented that scientific theories (a phrase he
considered an oxymoron) cannot be verified but only tentatively
refuted therefore it is a more accurate and logical approach to
endeavor to scientifically DISPROVE something than PROVE it to be fact
through theory. Popper introduced the idea that a scientific fact will
be consistently apparent through experimentation even if the
experiment is conducted a hundred times. A theory however, may
consistently produce the same results until the moment that the
experiment fails on the 101st try. Why then, he asks us, should we
conduct an infinite number of experiments in order to prove that
something is true, when it is wiser to see what, if anything, would
make an experiment fail? If we choose to prove that a theory is true,
how many experiments would be necessary to prove it? On contrast, if
we strive to disprove a theory, it might only take once. By showing
the ability to make an experiment fail we can more effectively dispute
a theory, but a lifetime of experimentation that tends to support a
particular theory would be scientifically meaningless.
As a philosopher, Popper detested the concept of practices, beliefs
and actions based upon theories alone (not just Freudian theories, but
any theory). He insisted that a “theory” could only be considered
scientific if it makes predictions of events, which, if they do not
occur, will show that the theory is false. He is quoted as saying
"Theories are ... never empirically verifiable." and "A theory that is
not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific.
Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but
a vice." “Popper states that any experiment must be a serious attempt
to disprove or invalidate the theory being tested, and further, that
any theory so disproven cannot be considered science.” The logical
assumption then is that since ideologies are not actually constructed
by the methods of the physical sciences it cannot be assumed that they
are scientific.
“Popper's work seemed to outlaw all such argument from the province of
thought, ruling, since it was not science, it was metaphysics, a word
which he used vaguely and which many of his audience took to mean
simply nonsense.”
TWO MODES OF KNOWING: ABSTRACT AND NARRATIVE
http://www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/Intro3b-Antidotes-to-triumphalism.html
Popper’s philosophies were important in that they gave birth to a new
wave of crude scientism. People began to question accepted scientific
“facts” instead of blindly following what others had “proven” before
them. Generations of scientists have assimilated the knowledge accrued
through earlier observation and experimentation in order to expand on
what is known. This standard practice came into question and now it
seemed incumbent upon each scientist to not only strive to discover
new facts, but to confirm the observations of his predecessors in
order to lend credibility to his discovery.
Popper’s position on this issue is quite clear in this explanation:
“On the question of what makes a theory a genuinely scientific one,
Karl Popper's criterion of demarcation, as it is called, has now
gained very general acceptance: viz. that every genuine scientific
theory must be testable, and therefore falsifiable, at least in
principle - in other words, if a theory is incompatible with possible
observations it is scientific; conversely, a theory which is
compatible with all possible observations is unscientific (Cf. Popper,
K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery).”
THE INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PSYCHOLOGY: SIGMUND FREUD
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/freud.htm
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Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga
INFORMATION SOURCES
TWO MODES OF KNOWING: ABSTRACT AND NARRATIVE
http://www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/Intro3b-Antidotes-to-triumphalism.html
A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF SIR KARL POPPER
http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~tkpw/intro_popper/intro_popper.html
KARL POPPER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
http://pages.zdnet.com/trevor.morrison/MisunderstandingPeople/Misund4.htm
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
http://macserver.ius.indiana.edu/humanities/philosophy/programs/courses_s96/x303papers/paper-3.html
THE INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PSYCHOLOGY: SIGMUND FREUD
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/freud.htm
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