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Science doesn't "prove" hypotheses - it disproves them. For this to work, a hypothesis must be falsifiable. Most pseudoscience (and religion) makes non-falsifi
by aazaa 6y ago
Science doesn't "prove" hypotheses - it disproves them.
For this to work, a hypothesis must be falsifiable. Most pseudoscience (and religion) makes non-falsifiable claims, meaning they are incompatible with scientific discourse.
This simple observation is a powerful tool in any bullshit-detection kit.
Once produced, a scientific hypothesis of any merit will be attacked vigorously with experiments until enough parties are convinced that disproof is sufficiently unlikely. The process isn't always pleasant for those making the falsifiable claims.
Sadly, this is not how science is taught in most schools. There, students are given the "truth" and, on a good day, asked to verify it experimentally. We are now living with the terrible consequences of generations of youth who think science is about "proving" the truth.
- christiansakai 6y agoVery interesting
- hprotagonist 6y agoIronically, of course, Popperian falsifiability is itself unfalsafiable, and therefore does not meet its own definition as a member of itself. Popper knew this, by the way. So the inverse to the trap you point out here is the claims that "if not falsifiable, then unable to be true/useful", which is just as specious.
- seanwilson 6y agoIsn't this like saying if X is an axiom and you can prove Y via X, you shouldn't trust Y is true because you can't prove X is true? What systems for determining the truth exist that aren't built on top of some fundamental axioms?
- hprotagonist 6y agonone; you have to at least claim as an axiom "axioms are things that can be claimed" -- but that's not what's under discussion here: logic and math are neither of them empirical sciences, after all. my point is that "we define science as empirical falsificationism" is itself nonscientific by its own definition, and that that's OK, still capable of being true, and is a handy way to get stuff done.
- andreskytt 6y agoThat’s where Gödel’s theorem comes in. There’s always axioms unprovable without expanding the system
- wurp 6y agoGoedel's completeness and incompleteness only apply if the initial set of axioms is powerful enough to express addition over all the integers.
- _nalply 6y agoAha! Now that's why some people say that science is a religion, too.
- sameerds 6y agoI always allow for the possibility that science is a faith (not religion) simply because there is no way to prove that the universe actually obeys laws that we can discover. Just because an apple fell down in the same way in each of a million experiments, it's not necessary that the relationship we discovered is a "law" that defines the universe. It could just as well be that the next time we try it, the apple falls differently.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoThis is called the problem of induction and is indeed fundamental to the scientific method. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
- hprotagonist 6y agoit helps to translate “faith” as “trust in something, in which we can ground actions taken”, instead of “[intellectually] believing what we know ain’t so” and in that framing, yes, any endeavor requires an act of faith.
- hprotagonist 6y agofor much more, https://philpapers.org/rec/HAASSO https://philpapers.org/rec/HAASSO but at this point i would say that "religion" is a very squirmy thing to define meaningfully without a lot of "well, but except when ..." clauses tacked onto the end.
- captn3m0 6y agoMy favorite course in college was Sociology of Science, the majority of which was basically reading Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
- dschuessler 6y agoYou're correct in the sense that this is what science is per Popperian definition. However, I would be careful to assume that many scientists are actually so busy refuting hypotheses. The Popperian ideal and the reality in science are two different things. To cite a paper I currently read: > "As Chalmers (1999) remarks, when we turn to history of science, the idea that falsificationism is actively undertaken borders on laughable (see especially Feyerabend, 1975). Not only do scientists exhibit extreme reluctance to falsify their work (Woodward and Goodstein, 1996), but if falsification had been followed as a scientific method, then many of the theories generated by some of the best minds in science would never have progressed beyond their earliest explications (see Chalmers, 1999: ch. 7; Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970c: 234; 1970d: 13; Von Dietz, 2001: 22)." (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508409104504 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508409104504) I haven't read all the sources. But it's worth mentioning that your point is controversial.
- DataDaoDe 6y agoI would like to add to your remarks that science actually says something along the lines of "Grant me these assumptions/axioms/miracles(i.e. space-time, causation, etc.)" and then I can give you a theory of gravity, statistics, etc. This I think is hinted at in Gödel's core insight from his incompleteness theorem.
- perilunar 6y agoI had Alan Chalmers as a teacher once. An interesting man.
- sxp 6y agoThis isn't really true if you use Bayesian science. The idea you're stating is something like "It's not possible to prove hypothesis H1 if H1 is 'all swans are white' by sampling swans and only getting white ones, but it's possible to disprove hypothesis H1 by finding a black swan." However, you can prove hypothesis H2 that "there exists a black swan" by finding such a swan. And you can't really disprove it for the same reason that you can't prove H1. Neither of theses hypotheses are proven/disproven in the mathematical sense of "proof" but finding sufficient evidence in favor or against a hypothesis is practically the same in the case of science. The Bayesian version of this is that the hypothesis is something like "the probability of a swan being white is P" and the value of P will by updated based on the strength of the evidence. It will never be exactly 0 or 1, but it will be close enough in many cases. Then you avoid the argument about whether a hypothesis is a binary "true" or "false" but discuss a continuous probability. E.g, the a hypothesis about the Earth being round has a probability close to one for most people while Russell's teapot and Sagan's invisible dragon have probabilities close to zero until evidence shows otherwise.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoaccording to Karl Popper, yes. I prefer John Von Neumann's take on it... "“The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. ... The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work - that is correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area." these days, we adopt models. discard them if they fail and start all over again. seems to be a better and more elegant way.