Sorry, due to lack of a good night's sleep, I forgot to mention that I think Popper figured it all out! Well, maybe not everything -- he prob. couldn't accurately diagram rodent vulvae (I can) -- but come on! That's a big piece of the puzzle, is it not?!?! I'm EXCITED!!! I mean, Popperian science is the map by which humanity should plot the territory, not to blather all Korzybski-like at you -- I have been extremely delinquent in returning my 5th ed. copy of Science and Sanity to my local public library. Oh, I guess that makes me a "bad boy" -- being delinquent on returning it in addition to reading only 10 or so pages (10 enough pages to know of his quotation marks hang-up) of it becuz I'm "lazy". Ha, by your warped standards. Sometimes I question your standards.
Agree w. or challenge me! I welcome both sides of the coins you're all jangling in your pockets now, anxious hands liking the musical sound of your choice yet unmade: Loving-sympathetic-unity-of-existence-in-total-agreement heads or feisty-froggy-poopy-diapered-mad-at-the world-for-being-born-w.-flaky-tonenails tails? Or off-the-cuff ready w. a response but mulling over your approach: Hey, what'll my angle be? I'm sure it'll be great if you just put Jesus on the throne of your life!
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Sir Karl Popper and Science: The Evolutionary Epistemology
"In Popper's view, the advance of scientific knowledge is an evolutionary process characterised by his formula:
In response to a given problem situation (PS1), a number of competing conjectures, or tentative theories (TT), are systematically subjected to the most rigorous attempts at falsification possible. This process, error elimination (EE), performs a similar function for science that natural selection performs for biological evolution. Theories that better survive the process of refutation are not more true, but rather, more "fit"—in other words, more applicable to the problem situation at hand (PS1). Consequently, just as a species' "biological fit" does not predict continued survival, neither does rigorous testing protect a scientific theory from refutation in the future. Yet, as it appears that the engine of biological evolution has produced, over time, adaptive traits equipped to deal with more and more complex problems of survival, likewise, the evolution of theories through the scientific method may, in Popper's view, reflect a certain type of progress: toward more and more interesting problems (PS2). For Popper, it is in the interplay between the tentative theories (conjectures) and error elimination (refutation) that scientific knowledge advances toward greater and greater problems; in a process very much akin to the interplay between genetic variation and natural selection."
In response to a given problem situation (PS1), a number of competing conjectures, or tentative theories (TT), are systematically subjected to the most rigorous attempts at falsification possible. This process, error elimination (EE), performs a similar function for science that natural selection performs for biological evolution. Theories that better survive the process of refutation are not more true, but rather, more "fit"—in other words, more applicable to the problem situation at hand (PS1). Consequently, just as a species' "biological fit" does not predict continued survival, neither does rigorous testing protect a scientific theory from refutation in the future. Yet, as it appears that the engine of biological evolution has produced, over time, adaptive traits equipped to deal with more and more complex problems of survival, likewise, the evolution of theories through the scientific method may, in Popper's view, reflect a certain type of progress: toward more and more interesting problems (PS2). For Popper, it is in the interplay between the tentative theories (conjectures) and error elimination (refutation) that scientific knowledge advances toward greater and greater problems; in a process very much akin to the interplay between genetic variation and natural selection."
My introduction to K. Popper was by way of David Deutsch's stimulating (stimulating like entertaining profound challenges to your theretofore p.jane interpretation of your own existential experience -- alternately buoyant w. wonder / shivering and weeping, half a joint trembling on your lower lip, where's the Klonopin? I'm thinking God's thoughts, you know, Hegelian, I'm so alone, gonna masturbate these bad thoughts right outta my dick, my consciousness is as fragile as a frozen light bulb, kind of way) book, The Fabric of Reality.
Shortly thereafter I happened to find a copy of Wittgenstein's Poker (v. entertaining read, but Filosophy Lite). It started out as bathroom reading and then grew into something that I held in front of my face even after wiping "clean" my shit-smeared asshole).
If anyone's acquainted w. Popper, plz do comment. I may dig in further, but I think I've gleaned the gist, put it in a blender, and made a whey protein milkshake from the rantings of an Austrian-expatriate Jew w. an inferiority complex, and fed it directly into the mouth of my mind. MMMM, philosophy of science-y. . .
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