Friday, October 17, 2008

Deduction By Inductive Scientific Theory

Holy balls, this was messed up. My efiin' brain melted and my head exploded....there were swans and pasta on the wall....

Empirical sciences are characterized by the fact that they use 'inductive methods.'

The problem of induction is that "The Problem of Induction' is so darn hard to read/understand. Man, oh, man i feel like reading Aristotle went better.  One thing that helps is that key sentences are underlined. For fun's sake, here is a sample sentence: "A principle of induction would be a statement with the help of which we could put inductive inferences into a logically acceptable form." It goes on like this for, like, ever -- sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. Nonetheless, let me try to talk about what Sir Karl Popper is writing about.

"A scientist puts forward statements, or systems of statements, and tests them step by step. Within empirical science he constructs hypotheses, or systems of theories, and tests them against experience by observation and experiment. Popper argues that the role of the logic of scientific discovery is to provide a logical analysis of the method of the empirical sciences."

"Now I hold that scientific theories are never fully justifiable or verifiable." Dude, basically, so it seems to me, this Popper guy has issues with everything that scientists do from a philosophical or communicative manner. There are "Fundamental Problems" galore. He approves of philosophers like Kant, et al who have a strong sense of meta operations/considerations. Now, I am having such a hard time following this chapter and digesting everything, sort of how Aristotle just packs so much information, or at least words/ideas, that it's fair to say that i don't know squat. I am going to assume that Sir Mr. Popper is right but like a lot of theory i have read or experienced throughout college i have to wonder why it's important if it is not vital to institute; to employ in an effort to reform.

These scientists of all kinds are, apparently, not capable of grasping the multiple layers and dimensions of the words of their statements and theories and their larger, philosophical and practical effects. If the statements that Popper speaks of are not testable then how is anything understood or accomplished at all? How do toasters even exist? Can anyone explain that to me? Math seems to be translatable without much trouble.  Equations are universal and testable. The answer is the answer which is a right or wrong answer. Thus, voila!, somehow we get to measure or view the atom, or the DNA model. Oh well, i guess Popper fears for us. Something bad is gonna happen -- I've deduced it inductively.

1 comment:

Steven D. Krause said...

Ha! Longing for Aristotle!

Hey, don't forget that I changed the schedule around so we're not going to talk about this stuff until next Monday, not this Monday. Go check out the web site-- http://engl505.stevendkrause.com