January 20, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Karl Popper's Characteristics
Last night I had introduced to you the
first of the seven characteristics that Karl Popper had proposed to consider
any theory (or any statement in general) to be scientific.
The rest of the six will follow suit.
Mind you that these ideas though were
proposed specifically for people engaged in science and research I think they
can serve as useful tools to be applied broadly in our everyday lives.
(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
agent is non-scientific.
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 the genuine test of the theory; and this means
that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify they
theory.
(I now speak in such cases of “corroborating
evidence”.)
(7) Some genuinely testable theories, when
found to be false, might still be upheld by their admirers – for example by
introducing post hoc (after the fact) some auxiliary hypothesis or assumption,
or by reinterpreting the theory post 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 cost of destroying, or at least,
lowering its scientific status, by tampering with evidence.
The temptation to tamper can be minimized
by first taking the time to write down the testing protocol before embarking on
the scientific work.
Even though it appears that in comparison to
other scientists Popper over emphasized the idea of falsification in scientific
theories (and for which he has been criticized by them) the essential message
and the wisdom must not be lost.
It is, in fact, not lost as we will see in
the nights to come the number of experimental tests that general relativity has
been subjected to and is being subjected till this very day.
The tests that general relativity has been
submitted to are divided into classical tests, modern tests, strong field tests
and cosmological tests.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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