Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese healing practice, is considered pseudoscientific by most scientists. This belief has led to the persecution of women as witches and control over the public. Pseudoscience is a system of beliefs that masquerades as true science but lacks the rigor, skepticism, openness, and evolution of real science. There are five trends in pseudoscience today, such as scienceploitation, body optimization, integrative medicine, wellness, and the fear of genetic modifications.
Pseudoscience is an antithesis of science in the individuated rather than the unindividuated sense. There is no unified corpus of pseudoscience corresponding to the unindividuated sense. Psychologists Tania Lombrozo suggests certain criteria can help us spot pseudoscience when it presents itself as science.
Pseudoscience is an antithesis of science in the individuated rather than the unindividuated sense. There is no unified corpus of pseudoscience corresponding to the unindividuated sense. Alternative medicine, spiritualism, and witchcraft follow religion and show higher endorsement rates than any of the other sciences.
Witchcraft, magic, and psychic experiences are considered pseudoscience because they are events that science cannot study due to the fact that they are not scientifically proven. Trial records for accused witches and witchcraft texts include references to Devil marks, which are considered pseudoscience.
In conclusion, pseudoscience is a system of beliefs that masquerade as true science but lacks the rigor, skepticism, openness, and evolution of real science. By understanding and identifying pseudoscience, we can better understand and address the issues surrounding these practices and their impact on society.
📹 Karl Popper, Science, & Pseudoscience: Crash Course Philosophy #8
The early 1900s was an amazing time for Western science, as Albert Einstein was developing his theories of relativity and …
📹 Deception, Magical Thinking and Pseudoscience in Autism | Russ Lang | TEDxTexasStateUniversity
… fallacies and magical thinking in their own life by examining examples of pseudoscientific products from the past and present.
I LOVE that you did an entire episode on karl popper. No one considers him in these discussions of scientific demarcation anymore, and if they do it’s like a foot note. He was able to link modus tollens (on a lot of ways the implication that most closely defines logical form itself) to the scientific method. His critical rationalism is, in my opinion, the foundation of an epistemic pyramid. Thank you crash course!
I’m not sure why, but this entire episode made me so incredibly happy! While I’m sure I’m not the only one, I feel like I’ve come to the conclusions and thought experiments that a lot of these old philosophers did on my own. But there have been so many light bulbs going off in my head during this series!
Using the scientific method, and the knowledge I obtained from this article, I can reasonably assume that you have had a bigger influence on my intelligence then all other forms of education I have recieved. I went to disprove this theory by visiting my Youtube history and have found that I have watched at least 90(+/-5%) of Crash Course, 75%(+/-10%) of SciShow, and <5% of all your other articles. Without unreasonable doubt, I believe I now possess a BA in Hank Green, and that despite any official organization to issue this, I now feel more qualified and educated then the majority of college grads; so I will be adding this to my resume. Lol, I look forward to completing my MA with you soon!
Would have loved to see some connection made between this and the work of Thomas Kuhn and WVO Quine. For instance, Popper’s idea was that you cannot prove anything only disprove it. However Quine (and to a lesser extent Duhem) showed that you can’t actually disprove anything either. Rather you have a system of beliefs that are interconnected that color your interpretation of data (there is no neutral observer). You will change tertiary beliefs to protect secondary ones, and secondary ones to protect primary beliefs (eg the explanation of retrograde motion to avoid heliocentricity). Eventually the system becomes too untenable and must be abandoned. Thomas Kuhn labeled this a paradigm shift. Since then you have two primary methods of observational science. Popper’s null hypothesis (one you try to disprove) and independent confirmation/verification. All valid scientific theories must not only be falsifiable, but they must be testable and the tests reproducible. However, not all theories can be scientific, as Quine would go on to point out against the Logical Positivist movement of which he was a central figure until his publication of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” arguably the most important philosophical work of the twentieth century.
I have an academic / scientific background and philosophy is one of my dearest hobbies, but I have to say that Popper’s much celebrated philosophy of science diverges increasingly of both the practice of actual research scientists as well as my ideas on the topic. Using established theories / methods etc. and extending them in regions where they have not been explicitly tested and seeking to confirm the starting hypothesis is the bread and butter of most experimental scientific efforts. Often the initial results do not agree with expectations and the preferred method is to consider what might have gone wrong and to investigate a tweaked theory that is consistent with the data. Typically the initial hypotheses, if not confirmed, never make it into the publications, usually the method and interpretation that seem consistent are the ones written about (usually for good reasons). These are not poor practices, but the standard way in which science progresses. So, Popper’s observations do not always apply at the level of data collection and interpretation, but are rather inherent in a layer where they lurk beneath the surface. An example of this might be most analytical science (analytical chemistry).
i learned this the hard way my biology teacher made us read about a type of nematode worm (C.elegance) and then next day in the lab got us a similar looking new type of worm to observe, we explained most of the observations through our knowledge of C.elegance. most of us failed but we learned a very valuable lesson about the importance of the scientific method and how it can help eliminate the observer bias.
Beautiful, thank you! I keep trying to show my science colleagues how they are falling prey to pseudoscience due to their beliefs as well but they are blind to see it. They are so busy confirming, that they truly think they are critically investigating. They are having a really difficult time seeing that they are doing this. They think random isolated facts about their beliefs is evidence.
I learnt about Popper in sociology while we were learning about what makes a science and science as an ideology in secular society. It was really interesting and as a christian that is in love with science I found his explanation of what makes a science clear and practical. However, when it came to applying this philosophy onto sociology and whether it should be considered a science was when a whole centuries worth of worms popped out of the can. But, anyway I really enjoy learning through my faith, science and philosophy. They explain the world that I view in such contrasting yet complimentary ways in my opinion. Science really doesn’t bother me because I learnt that all ideologies are tools used by humanity to do whatever we want, plus to have my faith be wavered by science shows how weak the foundations of my faith in Jesus Christ is. Philosophy caters to my curiosity and allows me to form questions about life, the world and meaning which I take up to God and pray for wisdom and humbleness as I seek the answers to these questions. All 3 of these things, the most important to me is my faith, has helped me as a philosopher and a scientist so much. I am able to have a non binary view thanks to my approach and my faith continues to grow as I study YHWH’s creation. I learn about human relationship, personal development and love through my faith. Science allows me to chase knowledge of the world through falsification and objectivity. Philosophy trains my tongue and thoughts in formulating decisive critiques in an arguement as well as analysing the language I use in an arguement; it feeds my never ending curiousity that science does not fulfill whole heartedly.
As someone who has studied natural science in college as an underclassmen and has a degree in social science, I found there to be no discernible difference between the underlying methods of chemistry and economics with the use of logic, reason, and mathematics to make predictions that usually are accurate in predicting the future and can be disproven. Most old papers in both of these fields are still useful, as a result of their rigor, and many basic models used in both of these fields are still used. Even experimentation is used in both fields. It makes as much sense to divide science on this line based on how much humans are involved as it does to divide it based on scale, as much illogic as to say that astronomy can’t be a science because it is so big while chemistry and quantum physics obviously would count under this equally absurd notion. The real difference is in whether the science can 1. make accurate predictions for the future and 2. once ideas are established they generally stick for the long run. This tells us whether the methods used by professionals are valid and whether they should be listened to. Using this method we find that economics, astronomy, political science, biology, sociology, and chemistry (among many others) are without a doubt sciences because the ideas established by these fields usually stick for the long run. Fields like psychology and psychiatry use so many fallacies (eg small sample sizes, sample bias, etc.) that is hard to call them sciences and they are pseudosciences given the inability of their theories to stick in the long run, frequently due to an invalid use of mathematics (particularly statistics), and indeed most old theories in these pseudosciences over 50 years old have been discarded as hookum.
I really like this series. I am not much into philosophy. To admit, I really dislike it to the point that I got into an argument with a friend about it. But I like the series and would really recommend it as a quick way to get a grasp of the basic concepts. Of course.. I can’t say if it is wrong or right to do so. I am just not very well versed in it. And this one, Karl Popper really got me interested. Thanks for that!
Sadly, many in the Humanities and Social Sciences like to dispute falsifications. Same with psychology and philosophy, where positive anecdotes are basically seen as 100% certain. If you paid attention in the history of philosophy of science, you would know philosophers turned away from science in the 70s.
This is the best freaking article I’ve seen in a while that has shaken me inside my guts. As a forming scientist this is like music to my ears, it’s really beautiful. Sadly, I’ve read somewhere academic magazines papers and thesis nowadays aren’t particularly ruled by this Popper philosophy of science. Today is more about just publish papers in order to get prestige and funding, than getting close to knowledge of how nature works. It mentioned also, that repeatability is very low nowadays, since researchers get encouraged to publish “successes” rather than mixed results and why not, mistakes. What you mention reminded me of the article, and is very important, publishing false believes disproven by experimentation, in order to get closer to the truth. Still. Thank u hank, when I’m out there doing sciency stuff I’ll take this deeply seriously. Love Crash Course Philosophy ❤️❤️❤️
In a really subtle and roundabout way, Hank makes the claim in this article that only science is knowledge. Science in the sense of being falsifiable, and knowledge in the sense of justified true belief as stated in the previous article. Then he segues into the idea that the rules of science should also be applied to knowledge as a whole, even for those outside of science. In his closing remarks, he implies that something is only “justified” if it is falsifiable in an act of future-predicting. This blocks off a huge proportion of human knowledge, strangles alternate ways of thinking about ideas, and elevates science as a more legitimate method of pursuing the truth above others. I don’t think this is emphasized enough, but there is a lot of knowledge outside of science. It makes no sense to apply the scientific method to, say, history or mathematics because the structure of knowledge within those disciplines don’t allow for the tools of science. But just because we can’t apply the scientific method to these areas don’t necessarily make these less “true”. The scientific method is not intended to make any normative statement on what “truth” is as a whole. It’s designed to only answer the question “is the proposition supported by evidence?”, and only among those propositions that qualify as under the purview of science. You can’t replicate history, so you can’t experiment with the past. And mathematics can only be proven with mathematics so there’s no independent truth-value that can be tested true or false.
I see in the comment section that a lot of people are talking about God. I think it is pretty clear what this article says about the God theory. 5:16 “the only genuine test of a theory is one that is attempting to falsify it.” The theory is ‘there is a god’. The theory is a bad one because there is no way to genuinely test it because there is no way to disprove it. 5:39 “Irrefutable theories are not scientific.” The theory that there is a god is irrefutable. Therefore, the theory that there is a god, and whatever evidence you may have for god’s existence, is not scientific.
I have now watched this twice, at least. It is that good. It made me think about consciousness as a thing, how to test my mind, my ideas, & weather or not a cigar is just a cigar. On the APA website there was a free look up that had a paper I found. It was titled, “The Feeling of Personal Ownership of One’s Mental States: A Conceptual Argument and Empirical Evidence for an Essential, but Under Appreciated, Mechanism of Mind”, by Dr. Klein from December of 2015. The article brings up a clear point, can you scientifically prove something so obviously real as consciousness? “Despite the optimistic claims of some (e.g., emergent materialists), continuing struggles with this topic show little evidence of any imminent resolution.” Thousands of years, & we are not really closer to cracking the case. Can we even use his methods to inform our conclusions on such things? I guess as far as to know things like, what an unconscious person is, sure. That is not a definition of what it is to be conscious really, as that is like saying your awake, but then there are things like sleep paralysis. Your conscious & trapped in a dream, kinda, but your awake, sorta. Or what about meditation & altered states due to trances. How about if we were to simulate an entire consciousness on a machine? Do we understand it then? Or just understand our simulation of what we approximate it to be? All this to say, I watched this article & it sent me searching. What can I prove? What can I safely apprehend? Lastly, what is beyond apprehension?
7:03 “For Popper, knowledge was about probability and contingency. We are justified in believing whatever seems most probable given our current data. ” Actually, this is wrong. Popper was strictly against probabilities, and he was also against “justificationism”. Popper believed that there was no need to justify anything, because we are free to criticize anything.
“…he was one of those rare philosophers who managed to hit on an idea so right that we don’t really argue about it anymore.” That’s blatantly false. What about Thomas Kuhn, what about Mario Bunge, and what about Gustavo Bueno? Epistemology, gnosiology and philosophy of science have come a long way since Popper… And, as for Popper himself, he stated in his “Intellectual Autobiography” that he had come to the conclusion that Darwinism was not a testable scientific theory, but a “metaphysical research programme.” That’s not to say he didn’t actually value Darwinism, thus stating that, though metaphysical, Darwinism was of much help to science as a possible framework for testable scientific theories. What about that? Needless to say, I am well educated about the modern evolutionary theory and I know the scientific evidence that supports it. I ‘m not a creationist of any sort. Just in case!
Alright so it’s mentioned that one must be willing to “give up an idea” if there’s enough evidence to falsify it, but later it’s suggested that knowledge is measured in probabilities and that we should always be willing to revise our beliefs in terms of available data. What I’ve concluded is that nothing really can be ruled out as “improbable” because dismissal of an idea is also a belief and there always will be some probability of it being true (since the future is uncertain and may provide evidences that support a once-disproven theory).
What I like about Popper is not that he gave a definitive account of the logic of the logic of scientific discovery, put to rest inductivism, or had the final say on the demarcation problem. Rather, it’s that falsificationism, even if not entirely satisfactory as an answer to all the philosophical questions it aimed to address, captures something right about the scientific spirit as an attitude toward one’s beliefs. I think there’s a very natural human tendency to cherish our beliefs and want to insulate them from counter-evidence; we see this in confirmation bias, filter bubbles, and related socio-psychological phenomenon. Scientists are human too and exhibit these tendencies, but scientific culture as a whole encourages the intellectual virtue of really seeking out counter-evidence, ideally outright falsification, of your views and putting them through the ringer of the most rigorous tests you can devise. The most saintly in respect of this virtue can even delight in being proven wrong, unlike the rest of us wretches who simmer and seeth at the thought of it. Popper doesn’t have to have nailed the answer to the demarcation problem to have made a positive contribution in his emphasis on falsification as an important aim of scientific inquiry.
Best article on this subject I have ever seen! How is it not obvious… “looking to the past to predict the future”..economics, patriarchy, feminism, climate change, evolutionary sciences. predictive sciences… astropysics, architectural engineering, structural engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics.. Has John seen this article btw?
Hum, Popper didn’t call psychology pseudoscience, he called psychoanalysis pseudoscience. And great numbers of scientists and philosophers do agree with him. Even after all these years, psychoanalysis fails on critical features: • Falsifiability • Experimental control • Replication (which coupled with the above, raises questions of actual testability) • Abductively validating hypotheses through backward chain inferences • Having the property of being hard to vary (i.e. not being able to change details in the theory to keep it working when falsified, since this would be ad hoc reasoning). That’s just too much epistemic failures for psychoanalysis theory to be a scientific theory. Therefore, it is unscientific.
Oh boy. This was the episode I was most curious about when I first saw that Crash Course philosophy was going to be a thing. It was the one subject I was afraid would be done incorrectly. Well, to my dismay, it was. So let’s break this down a little. The article isn’t completely off, but it’s certainly riddled with oversimplification and misunderstandings. Popper was primarily concerned with what he called “falsificationism”. This was less of a response to Freud and more to the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle who espoused “verificationism”. An oversimplified explanation of those terms: Verificationism – A scientific theory is confirmed by the collection of data that confirms a hypothesis. It’s worth noting here that Albert Einstein was a close associate of the Vienna circle and espoused a philosophy in line with the logical positivists. In the article, he’s portrayed as doing the opposite, but his attempts to verify his predictions fall well within the line of verificationism. It’s also worth noting that it was the logical positivists who were most concerned with labeling fields of study like psychology as pseudo-science. Falsificationism – A scientific theory is accepted so long as none of the data disproves the hypothesis. This is specifically what Popper was about. The white swan example was unfortunate in this article, because Popper uses it to cast doubt not only on verificationism, but also on science itself. That is, Popper argued that one would have to be able to observe every swan in the universe at any point in the past, present, or future to verify that all swans are white.
I’m a Popper fan and I still think that falsificationism is onto something. That said, this article grossly overstates the extent to which Popper’s views have won consensus in the philosophy of science. In fact, it’s widely held that it is generally not possible to decisively test an isolated hypothesis because so many auxiliary hypothesis about the experiment design and conditions are also on the line. Moreover, many philosophers these days are more optimistic about induction than Popper was, following Carnap in thinking that the mathematical science of probability can be applied in the philosophy of science to develop a logic of induction. Still other philosophers, following Thomas Kuhn and often citing the aforementioned problem of auxiliary hypotheses, argue that all confirmation and falsification are relative to a “paradigm”, the acceptance or rejection of which cannot be assessed by logical standards alone or even, according to some radical positions, any rational standard at all. This is all very controversial of course, but it is a misrepresentation of philosophy to bury the controversy as if it were dead; philosophy is where intellectual controversies live on, sometimes almost zombie-like, but nevertheless.
Popper’s ideas on the distinction between science and pseudo-science have been almost universally rejected actually, there are two main arguments so far as I remember: 1) Scientists in real life rarely act to disconfirm their theories, when asked what his reaction would be if the study of the eclipse (Hank talks about) showed his theory to be wrong about Einstein said: “Then I would feel sorry for the dear lord, the theory is correct anyway.” Also Newton’s theory of gravitation gave rise to predictions of a planet which does not exist, but rather than finding this a damning inditement of his theory the scientific community continued to search for the planet despite years of not finding it, until relativity explained the disagreement. 2) When we test a theory we actually test the theory and the background assumptions made about the theory, so when one tests a theory about some new particle we actually test the theory and a network of other premises and assumptions, such as the theories we have about the mass of other particles, or the nature of energy etc. Which is to say that no theory is actually disconfirmable, it is also true that most scientists are more willing to give up commitment to background assumptions than to their new and elegent theory which they have (usually) spent years developing. It may be true that Popper elucidates the difference between certain kinds of statements, but his criterion has been widely rejected for being too vauge to actually help demarcate science from non-science.
I have a question. According to the previous article, knowledge is “justified true belief”, but how about pseudoscience, it is also believed and can be true and even justified…So, is pseudoscience also knowledge?(even if it isn’t science). In addition, if science is irrefutable, falsifiable, how can I “believe” it, to what extent I should “believe” it? If pseudoscience is not falsifiable, does it mean it is always right???
Enjoyed to talk! Now I know a lot more about Popper and falsifiability. I came here because I’m curious about the “multiverse” theory, supposedly explaining recent evidence in physics which would otherwise lead to a creationist view of cosmology. I was wondering if multiverse is actually ‘scientific,’ or just pseudo science. Now, I think I know.
The difference between physics or mathematics on the one side and psychology on the other is that mathematics and physics can reduce their topics to either ideals or to small-scale objects devoid of any semblance of will. Einstein could apply relativity to any particle and establish that the speed of light in a vacuum is THE absolute of nature. One cannot add velocity to the speed of light by adding to the light the velocity of a light source. But that is fairly simple. The mathematics of relativity are at the level of mathematical sophistication of the typical college student. In contrast, human behavior is not so easily reducible. It may be the result of the interactions of subatomic particles within a brain, but so understanding human nature is provably impossible. For good reason, wise people read fiction — great fiction and even mythology. Freud did that and did it well. There’s still much to learn about human behavior and social reality from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Hugo, and Tolstoy. That’s before one even tries to study psychology. But there are basics. Abuse and humiliation as a child can create a monstrous adult. There’s a huge difference between Dr. Martin Luther King and Charles Manson.
As a graduate student, much of my core theory and methods courses center around this very premise of disconfirmation and null hypotheses. Why do we do research in the way that we do? Because of Popper, essentially. Honestly, I think this article should be required viewing for all undergrads, or really just everybody, especially with such common misconceptions generated by the colloquial use of “theory.”
Ever since i heard Penn Jillette say that he is always thinking to him self: I could be wrong. I have turned many false beliefs around. And if you put your self in the oppositions shoes two things can happen: you will change your mind for the better, or you will be that much stronger in set belief. Questions, Questions, Questions, Questions, Questions, Questions, Questions, Questions…
Notes on Crash Course Philosophy article 8: Karl Popper, Science, & Pseudoscience Karl Popper: born in Austria, distinguished between science and pseudoscience Freud predicted childhood experiences would weigh heavily on who you grew up to be Popper noticed that Freud could make any data point work for his theories Popper saw that Einstein was predicting the future rather than using the past to predict the present Popper called what Freud was doing was pseudo-science. This method can prove anything basically. Ancient Greek idea of scientific method: observe world with no preconceived notions Popper argued that everyone has preconceived notions about the world though Popper argued that science seeks to disconfirm theories rather than to confirm them, because it’s easy to find evidence of a theory if you are looking for it. Confirmation should only count if it comes from risky predictions, that are prohibitive, or rule things out. The only good test of a theory attempts to falsify that theory. Popper said irrefutable theories are not scientific, because they cannot be tested. Let false beliefs go. Modern science is testable, refutable and falsifiable. We don’t argue with Popper because he is so right. In philosophy, we use Popper’s ideas when we reason using the concepts of probability and contingency. We conclude what is most probable based on evidence and remain willing to give up these beliefs if we determine they are false based on new data. Popper didn’t think certainty was important.
I would agree that most wouldn’t consider mainstream psychology today a pseudoscience, but it’s hard to say Popper was wrong at the time. Freud had some great insights and his frameworks can still be useful for discussions, but there’s a reason there aren’t many high profile psychologists and psychiatrists who call themselves Freudian today.
+CrashCourse At 7:30 “Always remaining open to the idea that your current beliefs might be wrong is the best way to get ever closer to the truth.” How then, will we know if we have attained truth? If and when we inevitably perfect our theories to the point they are irrefutably correct, how will we know when to realize they are true and stop believing our “current beliefs might be wrong”? Or will we forever trying to perfect something that already is, chasing aimlessly at what is right before us?
What if everything that i have ever perceived is just in my mind, all my perceptions, so all of human history and everyone who has ever “lived”. That would make me a genius because Einstein’s ideas and all ideas from other geniuses would actually be mine. Doing philosophy is great for your confidence.
6:47 “But that’s how right Popper was. He was one of those rare philosophers who actually managed to hit on an idea so right that we don’t even argue about it anymore.” I’m really hoping this is a really bad attempt at a joke. His critique of confirmation as a sole criteria was spot on, yes. But the reason we don’t even argue about it (read:falsification critieria) is because he was so… sooooo wrong. For the few philosophers that still find the demarcation problem interesting, they really don’t consider him as providing even a vaguely plausible criterion. For any interested read about the Duhem-Quine Thesis and the interpretations of the criterion (basically you have to pick between logical and practical falsifiability, either one is a bad choice). 6:26 “But if you’re a scientist you’re going to have to be willing to let your beliefs go.” And this is precisely the problem, no? You can give up, if logic is the sole criterion in selecting which beliefs to give up, pretty much any belief. I mean this is precisely one of the problems that Popper sort of mentions in LSD and then says “there are good methodological criterion we can use… but I can’t give you a complete non-arbitrary list”. I’m hoping to god these points are something you’re going to address later, otherwise there should be a disclaimer. Otherwise you tend to run into a lot of people who weirdly praise Popper to the high heavens.
Are there people that still consider Freud as valid psychological theory? I know that we still teach about him in intro Psych classes, but I think most research psychologist would say that his theories were pseudoscience. Freudian theories really have more use in literary analysis than psychology since Freud influenced generations of writers about how to think about human development and personality.
“What you decide to observe is determined by what you already care about enough to observe in the first place” Sure, although you may observe things which you have not decided to observe and be surprised. Also you may decide to go into a situation in which you don’t have much of an idea of what you will observe, even though you may have some preconceived notion that it will be good for you, at least to satisfy your curiosity. Also it’s ok to have preconceived notions as long as you allow yourself to go out there and take the risk to observe what could potentially falsify your initial beliefs.
Is there any actual reason to accept the distinction between social science and hard science? From what I know about both, they seem basically the same. The only difference is that social science is harder to do because the object of study is more complex, but they both operate in the same way on a fundamental level. Predictions are made, tested, and confirmed or disconfirmed. The complexity of the object of study can make results subject to interpretation, but not to the point where no possibilities are ever ruled out.
good analysis and very important (taken together with the scishow on ego deflation it’s a great cautionary tale) but how about you also tackle here or in another course sociology of knowledge and sociology/anthropology of science and the disconnect between philosophy of science and the actual practice of science from hard to soft to marginal sciences. Science is a lot messier than Popper imagined IMO (which does not make him wrong).
Good day congratulations for the excellent articles, I am a philosophy teacher in Mexico, I would like to know if there are plans to translate them into Spanish, if not, I would like to offer to help, or request permission to translate into Spanish as a teaching support for my students, I would upload it to youtube, without modifying the article, guaranteeing all the credits as creators of the material article, thank you very much and continue with this fabulous work, Horacio Monroy.
There isn’t a single thing without at least 1% applicable truthfulness. Carl Popper had some valid points about the philosophy of science. Equally so, some invalid ones. An analysis focusing only on the valid parts of his philosophy, is biased. It doesn’t showcase the great amounts of scientists disputing the soundness of his conclusions, nor the now accepted silliness of his postulate that science only uses deduction. For people not studying the entirety of Poppers’ philosophy, this article essay implies we unequivocally accept the entirety of his ideas, which is not the case.
Sadly, I live in Argentina, one of the two countries where psychoanalysis still is widely used, the other country is France. Psychologists from my country hate science based therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and always get angry even if you mention CBT or if you criticize psychoanalysis. And psychiatrists also are dogmatic advocates of Freud and Lacan. We are 40 millions of people almost without mental health assistance (but obviously paying for it).
How exactly does this solve the problem of knowledge? How does one seek to disprove a theory with data when data must be knowledge and knowledge must be gained by disproving theories with knowledge/data? This begs the question that one has knowledge in order to gain knowledge. How was that knowledge that is used to falsify a theory gained without assuming knowledge in the first place. Eventually one has to get back to an assumption of knowledge, especially concerning the nature of reality, and cease arguing that only evidence-based knowledge through falsifiability is true knowledge.
Question about this article: Would Karl Popper call Philosophy (the “mother science”) a Pseudoscience? What about metaphysics? Are those two fundamental to and foundational for modern Science? If he would have to call Philosophy and Metaphysics Pseudoscience by his own definition, what does that say about Science/Empiricism/Scientific method? Does the house of card fall down? What would a debate between Popper and Richard Rorty look like? Rorty would make the claim that science is simply social solidarity or a function thereof. Thoughts anyone?
We should add nuance to the concept of confirmation and not completely ruling it out because when a theory successfully withstands an attempt at falsification, a scientist will, quite naturally, consider the theory to be partially confirmed and will accord it a greater likelihood or a higher subjective probability
I think this article was a bit to optimistic about popper’s ideas. He thought that science could break through the already concepted ideas. However, as Kuhn pointed out a few years later, science isn’t so much able to do that. Popper’s ideas have been under heavy debate and can be seen as slightly outdated. I hope he does talk about it in further articles, for Popper was far from perfect in his theories about scientific method.
There is one thing I’m curious about though: if being certain of something causes you to close your mind, is it likely that religious people who have a set of “certain” beliefs tend to be less open minded? I identify myself as a religious person and I would say that I’m open to other beliefs that might even contradict my own. But I would also argue that people need to be certain of something. If you question everything nonstop it will become mentally strenous. I think that falsification is a legitimate ideal for modern science, however it’s not always realistic. We are humans after all and very biased (no matter how hard we try to avoid that or overcome it).
Great article Hank, but based on my limited understanding of philosophy of science, while Popper’s ideas are highly respected and influential, they are hardly universally accepted. Many have said his theory renders the theory of evolution unscientific and the work of people like Thomas Kuhn (who you should do a article on) have put into doubt Popperian progress based models of science.
great very useful article… I would be a huge fan of a similar article that more specifically addressed some of modern and currently relevant conspiracy theory/cognitive dissonance/psuedo-science “goto” staple arguments. Disinformation is a disease… do not become infected! Knowledge is free… understand it… THEN share! ✌
Karl Popper’s Tolerance Paradox: “We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
Death Battle, a series all about debates, definitely involves many theories (since the show is about fictional characters, so there’s no real fact). I had a discussion with some dude regarding one of the episodes, and he convinced me to change my opinion. But the dude denounced and spited me for doing so, saying that changing my belief was a sign of weakness: that I should have remained anchored to my argument indefinitely. W-what?
According to what I have read, Einstein wrote to the Nobel Prize Committee and said that they should not give a prize to Freud because what he was doing, according to Einstein, was not science. Popper and probably others have pointed out that “survival of the fittest” is tautological. It is analogous to saying “the victory of the winners.” He also cautioned that tolerance is not always such a wise idea. What if the intolerant people you are tolerating become powerful? We tolerate the Klan and the Nazis, but what if they are no longer small marginal groups?
Yes! This is why science is great. It makes it objective and sceptical. Too bad the sentence “Science has proven *insert shocker here *” can be heard and/or read all too often even nowadays. Also, this ruleset, while science’s greatest strengh, is also its greatest weakness in my eyes, because it sets its boundaries and limitations.
just wondering Popper mentioned that for us to distinguish between pesudoscience and science it must have three characteristics, it must testable, refutable and falsifiable. Take for instance, Darwin’s theory of evolution and Big Bang theory, they’re untestable bcs it happens back then in time does this makes them pseudoscience ?
if you’re always supposed to keep your mind open to the fact that you can be wrong then how can we for sure accept that this way of thinking is correct? shouldn’t we keep our minds open to the fact that maybe Popper was wrong and we should instead accept what we believe and not be open to changing our minds?
I think I aproach philosphy I’m a rather scientific way- I do think they are very similar- as did the Greeks to an extent. They both try and find answers. Science uses empirical and a posterior while philosphy uses a prior and reasoning. Philosphy isn’t just whatever you think of and call it a theory. You need proof, evidence and justification for your proposals just like in science.
“The only genuine test of a theory is one that’s attempting to falsify it.” That statement contradicts Popper’s other statement “Methods like his(Freud) that only served to confirm beliefs were pseudo-science. And they could be used to confirm anything.” If your goal is to disconfirm then your goal is already warped by preconstructed notions, and any data you find could be used to confirm anything (including disconfirmation). SO science’s disconfirming is just as inept as pseudoscience’s confirming. Thus the only way to truly know something without bias corruption is to either apply both techniques equally comparing data/results OR do neither and maintain complete neutrality(at which point you’ll have accomplished nothing).
I find it interesting that in the comments section the tone is less “We can only even begin to speculate on what we cant disprove” and more “QED god is dead suck it theists!” A wiser head would realize that it’s a rather futile argument given our current understanding of the world around us and, more importantly, our understanding of exactly how much we are yet able to comprehend; In doing so you could safely say that you couldn’t surely answer either way in a manner satisfactory with contemporary reason and logic, unless you were willing to venture the realm of unverified beliefs, making you and your argument absolutely moot.