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#89505 12/15/02 01:45 AM
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From "engines 1542:
Most important, it was Bacon who insisted that true
science has to be falsifiable. When we stop looking
for ways to prove our science wrong, we cease to be
scientists. That was Bacon's objection to the
alchemists. They reasoned as a debate team might
reason; they reasoned to win rather than to inquire.
What Bacon insisted on (and what any real scientist
must do) is to go where nature directs. A science
that begins with its own conclusions is no science at
all.

I know what he means, but i don't think that word fits. Comments?


#89506 12/15/02 03:28 PM
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A science that begins with its own conclusions is no science at all.

The political, social and psycological fields' attempts at 'science' should use the same *directive.


#89507 12/15/02 03:58 PM
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falsifiable

Just means capable of being proven wrong. Not sure what your problem is, Dr. Bill.


#89508 12/15/02 04:37 PM
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Falsify is to prove or make something false.

If all science were "falsifiable" science would have no value. I'm sure what was meant was that
science should be able to withstand intelligent criticism.


#89509 12/15/02 04:50 PM
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If all science were "falsifiable" science would have no value.

Capable of being falsified and having been falsified are two different things. If you come up with something that is not capable of being unmasked for a bunch of claptrap, it isn't science. A theory is only valid as long as it hasn't been falsified, but if there's no possibility of falsifying it it doesn't qualify as a theory; it's just a myth.


#89510 12/15/02 05:05 PM
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"If you come up with something that is not capable of being unmasked
for a bunch of claptrap, it isn't science."
Please, Faldage, listen to what you have said. You have said that all science is worthless.



#89511 12/15/02 06:06 PM
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Not at all. I'm saying that you can't trust anything that is not, by its nature, capable of being proven false. E.g., The universe was created by and is controlled by the Invisible Pink Unicorn. It's a question of what is meant by capable of being falsified. It doesn't mean that it is ineveitable that it will be disproven. For example, it was hypothesized that two objects of different weights would fall tthrough the air at the same speed. You disprove it by dropping two such weights and showing that the ten pound weight falls ten times as fast as the one pound weight.


#89512 12/15/02 06:16 PM
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Dear Faldage: Science must be verifiable There are many things about the universe
that we cannot verify. But I am willing for instance to believe that black holes exist, because so many
observations are consistent with the existence of them.


#89513 12/15/02 06:20 PM
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I gotta thank you. I guess I pretty much took the notion of falsifiability to be Popperian. I had thought his was a response to the positivists (who that that something had to be provable to be scientific). But the problem was that the positivists didn't answer Hume's question about induction. I've never actually read anything Bacon wrote, and I'm sure that I'm a worse person for it.

The problem with alchemy - and a lot of other things that pretend to be science - is that there is no way of proving they are false - EVEN IF THEY ARE FALSE. Saying that a thing is falsifiable is not the same thing as saying that it is false. What falsifiable means - at least what the proponents of the notion intend it to mean - is that a thing is capable of being proven false - if it is in fact false.

It's a curious use of language, I admit, but scientists start from the premise that they don't know the answer (at least in the Popperian / Baconian view). They have this explanation, this hypothesis, about how things work, but they aren't sure about it. For it to be a scientific hypothesis, it must be falsifiable, that is "IF IT IS FALSE, there must be a way to prove that it is false."

For example, "God exists" is not a scientific hypothesis. It can't be proven false, even if it is false. Of course, this doesn't mean that god doesn't exist. Saying that something is not scientific does not mean that it's false or that it's useless or that it's wrong.


OTOH, evolution is falsifiable, because IF IT IS FALSE, then it can be proven false. (That doesn't say that it is is false.) How to prove evolution false? Well, find me a fossil hominid that has a clean date back to 2 billion years. I think that would pretty much be a nail in the coffin.


A lot of the terminology and conclusions of logic are very confusing. One thing that still nags at me is the phrase "ONLY IF." Really makes no sense linguistically and you have to memorize the meaning (actually, most people who use the phrase don't even think about it). Another weirdness is the value of the conditional p>q. If the premise is false, the value of the conditional is true regardless of the value of the conclusion. So F->F evaluates to T.


I'm not sure of a relation offhand, but this factiod, might even shed some light on 'falsifiability'.

k



#89514 12/15/02 06:49 PM
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Thanks, FF. Goddam philosophers snow me under. I had not thought of the "engines" writer
as a philosophy enthusiast, and had no way of knowing he was using the word in a special sense.
At least it seems to have been worth discussing.


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