From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Sat Jun 08 2002 - 14:47:25 MDT
[Hermit]
In order to comply with the scientific method, as currently employed, all things are at least in principle testable and falsifiable- including the scientific method.
[rhinoceros]
This is interesting. It should be so, but how can the validity of the scientific method itself (hypothesis - testing - theory) be proved false inside its own framework? I cannot think of any way.
[Hermit, quote from the Lexicon]
1. Truth
Godelian incompleteness and Popperian falsifiability together necessitate that outside of a formal system of limited application, a "truth", to have any measure of rational support, must by necessity, always be provisional, incomplete and falsifiable, in other words, there must always, at least hypothetically, exist some evidence which would permit that supposed truth to be rejected.
This implies that outside of formal systems, the truth of a thing is not an absolute, but encompasses a range of probabilities which will have varying truth values (i.e. from "false" through "insufficient evidence to adduce a truth value" to "true") depending on the evidence for or against such a thing.
[rhinoceros]
Either my English is inadequate or this entry needs rewriting (most probably, both). To my knowledge, Goedel's Theorem says that *inside* a non-trivial axiomatic formal system we can formulate propositions which can be neither proved nor disproved. So, it is the formal system -- not the propositions -- which is incomplete, while the propositions mentioned above may be falsifiable outside the formal system (inside a broader one). Well... maybe this one is no better.
[rhinoceros]
One comment about faith, confidence, etc. Suppose that I have studied physics and I can solve partial differential equations involving the interaction of two quantum particles, but I find it difficult to solve problem involving even three particles. I "trust" that Hawking knows what he is talking about when he talks about the big bang, and I also trust that the experimental evidence published are correct and that they mean what they are supposed to mean, because I trust that they used the scientific method.
However, when this subject comes up, we always talk about physics. In other sciences, there are many more contradictory and mutually exclusive theories promoted from academic institutions funded by various interest groups. We cannot interpret the data of every specific scientific field, so we usually have no choice but to accept the favorite of the media (or do some speculation and just take the oposite option). Another example is virians and politics. So, very often we form opinions and make decisions without any real scientific justification.
[Walter]
(see Greimas, ON MEANING, and Popper, THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY and CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS)
[rhinoceros]
A short comment about Karl Popper, the father of the principle of falsifiability. This great mind was something analogous to a grumpy art critic. My impression is that he was happy to destroy anyone's illusions about finding a general pattern in reality, and to take them back to the trial and error method.
He mostly argued against Platonism, Hegelianism and Marxism, as well as against Historicism and Psychanalysis. However, while arguing against the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivism (where he used to be an occasional participant), he did not hesitate to say that metaphysics had produced useful results, because the beliefs about primary elements and primary causes in nature had led to real scientific theories. Eventually, the Vienna Circle crumbled under Goedel's Theorem, but the grumpy old man had already taken his distance.
So, if you ever need to develop an original theory, stay away from Popper for some months when you need intution, but don't fail to take him seriously into account during the verification.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25551>
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