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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What is this thing called "falsificationism"?, February 15, 2002
Alan Chalmers wrote this book (first published in 1976) because there was no suitable introductory text for undergraduate studies in the history and philosophy of science. The preliminary chapters are devoted to a close scrutiny and demolition of the old orthodoxy in the pre-Popperian philosophy of science, an orthodoxy still nurtured by admirers of the late David Stove. Anything Goes by David Stove is supposed to be a weapon in the battle against the barbarians of deconstructionism but if Chalmers and Popper are on the right track, then turning to Stove and the inductivists for help is like fighting fire with petrol. It can be argued that the long domination of the logical positivists in the philosophy of science created such a mess (and a boring mess to boot) that many students were driven into the sociology of science or to the more radical camp of the deconstructionists.Chalmers notes the common belief that the authority of science depends on the way that it "is derived from the facts". However, as many research students discover when they turn from the bench to start writing up their results, it is very misleading to hope that accumulated observations will turn into general principles or theories (or a thesis). Still, scientific theories are supposed to be based on facts and confirmed by facts, and for a long time the official scientific method was an alleged process of induction, whereby scientific knowledge starts with the unbiased observation of the regularities which exist in the world around us and is finally warranted or verified by inductive proof. Chalmers explains with meticulous care how and why inductive verification and warranting does not work. Moreover he explains that it is not necessary to account for the growth or rationality of scientific knowledge. One of the problems with the observational origin of theories is the abstract nature of advanced scientific theories. Electrons, wave currents and force fields are simply not accessible to observation, nor are the principles of natural selection or the laws of supply and demand. Equally embarrassing is the logical problem of induction. However many black ravens you observe, there is no way to prove that all ravens (in the universe) are black. Popper's contribution to advance the debate was a revamped version of the hypothetico-deductive method foreshadowed by Jevons, Whewell, Pierce and the French physiologist Bernard. He argued that knowledge advances by a problem-oriented process of conjecture, followed by rigorous testing of tentative solutions. Then we may select the best among the competing theories by its ability to survive the process of testing, or for its convenience if it is to be used for engineering calculations, or for its fertility if it is to used to inspire further research. Falsified theories need not be discarded because they may stage a revival, they may have instrumental value and they may persist as components of a larger structure. Popper's ideas were unfortunately labeled "falsificationism" because they were advanced in the 1930s as a rejoinder to the logical positivists who wanted to use factual verification as a criterion of meaning. The "falsificationism" label was unfortunate and very misleading. As Popper recognized, there are problems with experimental or observational testing which preclude logically decisive falsifications. When other people noticed these problems, they claimed that this "falsified" Popper's theory of knowledge and scientific method. This is not the case, because Popper's theory is more appropriately called "the non-authoritarian theory of knowledge" (because there is no ultimate authority) or "conjectural objective knowledge" (in contrast with the traditional quest for justified beliefs). But still, the impossibility of obtaining decisive falsifications was used by critics as the rationale to prematurely eliminate Popper from the main game in the 1970s. This was partly due to the raging success of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which captured the sociological spirit of the age with a beguiling account of the diffusion of intellectual innovations in the scientific community. One of the most valuable sections of this book is the scrutiny of Kuhn and here Chalmers identifies profound ambiguity. Kuhn insists that there is evolutionary progress in science, on the other it is hard to reconcile this view with the `gestalt switching' process that is supposed to occur as people move from one paradigm to the next. Chalmers points out that the "gestalt switching' and the notion of incommensurability of paradigms can be put aside if one makes some fairly uncontroversial assumptions about the objectivity of scientific theories. In a previous publication, Science and its Fabrication, Chalmers has argued in a similar vein against the strong proponents of the sociology of science. Turning to Lakatos, with his notion of a "hard core" of a research program which has to be protected from falsification by deflecting criticism to other "non core" elements of the program, Chalmers finds that there is no satisfactory guide to the selection of theories to be protected from the rigors of criticism. The radical views of Feyerabend are carefully dissected and Chalmers concedes that there are probably no universal and timeless standards in the philosophy of science. However this is not a concession that "anything goes" because it simply mirrors the situation in science itself. This book can be recommended for anyone who wants to obtain a firmer grasp of science and its rationale. The writing style is clear, engaging and unpretentious. The book is packed with episodes from the history of science so that there is a great deal to be learned about science itself in addition to the philosophical lessons that Chalmers has to convey. The major deficiency in the book is the inadequate characterization of Popper as a "falsificationist" and the neglect of Popper's theory of metaphysical research programs which appeared in the third volume of his "Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery" in 1982.
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