Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editors' introduction
- Introduction: Science and pseudoscience
- 1 Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes
- 2 History of science and its rational reconstructions
- 3 Popper on demarcation and induction
- 4 Why did Copernicus's research programme supersede Ptolemy's?
- 5 Newton's effect on scientific standards
- References
- Lakatos bibliography
- Index of names
- Subject Index
1 - Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editors' introduction
- Introduction: Science and pseudoscience
- 1 Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes
- 2 History of science and its rational reconstructions
- 3 Popper on demarcation and induction
- 4 Why did Copernicus's research programme supersede Ptolemy's?
- 5 Newton's effect on scientific standards
- References
- Lakatos bibliography
- Index of names
- Subject Index
Summary
SCIENCE: REASON OR RELIGION
For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge – proven either by the power of the intellect or by the evidence of the senses. Wisdom and intellectual integrity demanded that one must desist from unproven utterances and minimize, even in thought, the gap between speculation and established knowledge. The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the sceptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics. Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge. But few realize that with this the whole classical structure of intellectual values falls in ruins and has to be replaced: one cannot simply water down the ideal of proven truth – as some logical empiricists do – to the ideal of ‘probable truth’ or – as some sociologists of knowledge do – to ‘truth by [changing] consensus’.
Popper's distinction lies primarily in his having grasped the full implications of the collapse of the best-corroborated scientific theory of all times: Newtonian mechanics and the Newtonian theory of gravitation. In his view virtue lies not in caution in avoiding errors, but in ruthlessness in eliminating them. Boldness in conjectures on the one hand and austerity in refutations on the other: this is Popper's recipe.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Methodology of Scientific Research ProgrammesPhilosophical Papers, pp. 8 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1978
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