Karl Popper, the enemy of certainty, part 2: the virtue of refutation

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/17/popper-enemy-uncertainty-virtue-refutation


Popper maintains that inductive logic is inherently flawed: just because the sun has risen every day until now does not necessarily entail that it will rise again tomorrow. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

When it comes to logical positivist analyses of the scientific method, Popper takes a metaphorical axe and hacks away at the roots: his critique of positivism is essentially a critique of induction itself.

Positivism stems from the work of the Vienna Circle, of Neurath, Carnap and Reichenbach, among others. It holds that the scientific method is based on verification, ie that a statement is only meaningful if it can be empirically verified or if it is analytic (the truths of mathematics and logic).

Empirical verification comes from induction. We seem to be pattern-matching creatures - when we have a theory, we cleave tightly to it. We go to considerable lengths to seek confirmatory instances of it. Unless we are scientists, and properly rigorous, we typically discount, explain away, reject falsifying examples. Yet following Hume's much earlier critique of this methodology, Popper maintains that inductive logic is inherently flawed: just because the sun has risen every day until now does not necessarily entail that it will rise again tomorrow. One instance of the sun's failure to rise will falsify the theory that "the sun always rises".

The scientist should reject theories when they are falsified. For instance, Einstein's theories generate hypothetical consequences which, if shown to be false, would falsify the entire theoretical structure on which they rest. Psychological theories, however, in their attempt to explain all forms of human behaviour, can continually be shored up by subsidiary hypotheses. Exceptions can always be found. On a Popperian model, psychology resembles magical thinking: if an expected result does not manifest, explanations can be found which explain that failure away, and thus the core theory remains intact. This, Popper considered, is a weak point – the theory cannot be properly tested if it is inherently unfalsifiable.

[leveymg]

1. There are few claims to theoretical certainty outside of the physical sciences.

Sociological science tends to speak in terms of probabilities that include conditionality and margins for error. Thus, Popper's Critique, while valid as far as it goes in its demand for falsifiability of good theory, is included as part of the method that is generally applied.

For instance, polling always includes reference to margins of error. Same goes for all properly constructed quantitative models of human behavior, simply because people do not behave like atoms. There are the elements of the irrational, the deceptive, and those who are "gaming the system" to take into account in the social sciences, particularly politics.