Falsification and Certainty

Falsification of a universal statement such as “all swans are white” requires verification of a particular statement such as “this swan is black.” Verification is an inductive process because it consists in examining one feature of the bird after another. The color of the feathers is not sufficient (the bird with black feathers could be a crow); many other features have to be compared. The identification of the bird as a whole is induced from considering its parts. Karl Popper’s struggle with verification and induction is defeated by the very method (falsification) he advocates. This pretty obvious point is well-known: “there can, in fact, be no falsification without a background of accepted truth” (O’Hear 1995, p.4). Popper failed to perceive another consequence of his philosophy: if it is impossible to verify a given statement, then it is equally impossible to falsify it. If the statement “this swan is black” is always conjectural, falsification of “all swans are white” remains in doubt. We’ll end up with an infinite chain of opposing conjectures and no answer for or against any claim. Popper compares the scope of falsification with the overwhelming importance of natural selection in biology. Actually, natural selection is not sufficient to explain life and its evolution, which requires something positive – reproduction with modification. Professor Rennolls (2010) believes that Popper’s philosophy of falsification is most certainly adopted by scientists is an overstatement. This belief does not agrees with recent titles of the literature dealing with Popper’s inheritance: “Is Popper’s philosophy alive or dead?” (http://philpapers.org/rec/GODPPO) and “Debunking Popper: A Critique of Karl Popper’s Critical Rationalism” (http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/philn/philn065.htm). Along with a desire to falsify a truth of yesterday, scientists are driven by the admiration of a new idea, which we are ready to defend against all odds. It is perverse to destroy what we have created and Popper’s advice to seek refutation of our ideas is as natural as infanticide. That is why scientists are reluctant to follow Popper’s philosophy. Mahoney and DeMonbreun (1978) compared critical thinking of 15 scientists (all with PhD’s) with that of the same number of ministers of various Protestant denominations (including Assembly of God, Baptist, and Pentacostal). Three of the ministers had master’s degrees; the education of the others was at the bachelor and high school levels. Trained to trust the authority of sacred books, ministers are believed to be more dogmatic and less critical than scientists. Both groups showed marked tendencies to confirm rather than refute their hypotheses. In fact, the scientists appeared to be strongly inclined to jump to conclusions with relatively little experimentation. They also