Re: Disparaging Popper

[ArtSippo@aol.com]

<<The whole point of science is to provide a trustworthy guide to the future, 
not a series of hopeful guesses...But, behind the stylistic differences, 
there is little to choose
between the two philosophies, for both deny that it is possible to identify
the truth...>>

The biases of the author of this remark are very obvious.  He wishes to 
determine absolute truth using the scientific method.  By definition,this 
means depending in large part on inductuve reasoning and on statistical 
analysis of data. Quite bluntly, even Aristotle knew that this was fallacious 
2400 years ago.

The author of this book obviously doesn't know what he is talking about.  
Popper, Lakotas, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Butterfield have all written 
extensively to dispel the myth of absolute truth in science, but htis is a 
message that no one wants to hear.  Bayesianism is more to their liking 
becasue it commits the probabalistic fallacy:  what is likely to be true MUST 
be true.  This elevates their conjectures to dogma and gives their opinions 
absolute authority in science.

Following the advice of the anti-Popper crowd, "scientific" conclusions would 
be considered sacrosanct and "true" instead of tentative and "probable."  If 
we applied that to scientific opinions accepted in earlier centuries, then 
Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Bohr were all wrong for bucking the 
scientific establishment.  

Popper et al were right.  Their is still room to criticize their 
methodologies, but their underlying premise remains tenable.  Scientific 
theories are merely pragmatic mythology and are all therfore tentative.  When 
these myths are shown to be more problematic than alternative theories -- no 
matter how outlandish the alternatives appear -- they need to be scrapped 
without prejudice.

Art Sippo MD