From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Aug 23 2004 - 14:57:47 BST
Hi MSH, Ian, Dan, All,
MSH:
> Don't know if you've had a chance to look at the Popper link on
> Falsification that Dan sent us, but the thrust there is that
> scientific theories that don't allow falsification (that is, nothing
> that happens can be counted as evidence against them) are not
> scientific at all. For this reason, In his paper, he refers to
> Marxism and Psychoanalysis (despite terms like "political science"
> and "theory") as non-scientific. This would apply to anthropology as well.
>
> BTW, Popper's idea of Falsification applies to every religious
> "theory" you can think of. If the baby dies it God's will; if the
> baby lives it's by the grace of God. One of the reasons I drifted
> away from Catholicism at an early age.
A problem with Popper's idea of falsification that it doesn't work when
applied to his theory of falsification. In other words, his own theory
isn't falsifiable. Thus, it is as non-scientific and as questionable as
religious "theories."
Popper's theory is hoisted on its own petard.
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Aug 23 2004 - 15:09:25 BST