"Principle of verification and falsification of Karl Popper"

Yakimenko A.A., group EAPU-07m

Content

1. Lead
2. The principle of verification in positivism
3. Limitation of the verification criterion
4. K. Popper's falsification criterion
5. Conclusion
6. List of sources

Introduction

Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) is considered one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He was also a social and political philosopher large scale, who declared himself as a "critical rationalist", a staunch opponent of all forms of skepticism, conventionalism and relativism in science and in general in human affairs, a faithful defender of the "Open Society", and an implacable critic of totalitarianism in all its forms. One of the many outstanding features of Popper's philosophy is the extent of his intellectual influence. Because epistemological, social and scientific elements can be found in Popper's work, the fundamental unity of his philosophical vision and method is largely dispersed. This paper traces the threads that bind Popper's philosophy together, and also reveals the degree of relevance of the concept of Karl Popper for modern scientific thought and practice.

The principle of verification in positivism

The goal of science, according to neopositivism, is to form a base of empirical data in the form of scientific facts, which must be represented in a language that does not allow ambiguity and inexpressiveness. As such a language, logical empiricism proposed a logical-mathematical conceptual apparatus, which is distinguished by the accuracy and clarity of the description of the phenomena under study. It was assumed that logical terms should express cognitive meanings observations and experiments in sentences recognized by empirical science as sentences of the "language of science".
With the introduction of the "context of discovery" by logical positivism, an attempt was made to switch to the analysis of empirical statements from the point of view of their expressibility with the help of logical concepts, thereby excluding questions related to the discovery of new knowledge from logic and methodology.
At the same time, empirical epistemology was endowed with the status of the basis of scientific knowledge, i.e. logical positivists were sure that the empirical basis of scientific knowledge is formed solely on the basis of the language of observation. Hence the general methodological setting, which presupposes the reduction of theoretical judgments to statements of observation.
In 1929, the Vienna Circle announced its formulation of the empiricist criterion of meaning, which was the first in a series of such formulations. The Vienna Circle stated: the meaning of a sentence is the method of its verification.
The principle of verification provided for the recognition of scientific significance only for that knowledge, the content of which can be substantiated by protocol sentences. Therefore, the facts of science in the doctrines of positivism are absolutized, have primacy over other elements of scientific knowledge, because, in their opinion, they determine the meaningful meaning and truth of theoretical proposals.
In other words, according to the concept of logical positivism, "there is pure experience, free from deforming influences from cognitive activity the subject and the language adequate to this experience; the sentences expressed in this language are directly verified by experience and do not depend on theory, since the vocabulary used to form them does not depend on the theoretical vocabulary.

Limited Verification Criterion

The verification criterion for theoretical statements soon declared itself to be limited, causing numerous criticisms in its address. The narrowness of the verification method first of all affected philosophy, for it turned out that philosophical propositions are unverifiable, since they are devoid of empirical significance. This side of the lack of the doctrine of logical positivism is pointed out by H. Putnam.
The average person cannot "verify" special relativity. Indeed, nowadays the average person does not even learn special relativity or the (comparatively elementary) mathematics necessary to understand it, although the basics of this theory are taught in some universities within the elementary physics course. The average person relies on the scientist for a competent (and socially accepted) evaluation of theories of this type. The scientist, however, given the instability of scientific theories, apparently will not attribute even such a recognized scientific theory as the special theory of relativity to "truth" tout court.
However, the decision scientific community is that special relativity is "successful" - in fact, like quantum electrodynamics, an unprecedentedly successful theory that makes "successful predictions" and is supported by a "wide set of experiments". And in fact, other people who make up society rely on these decisions. The difference between this case and those cases of institutionalized norms of verification that we touched upon above lies (apart from the non-binding adjective "true") in the special mission of the experts involved in these latter cases, and the institutionalized veneration of these experts.
But this difference is nothing more than an example of the division of intellectual labor (not to mention the relationship of intellectual authority) in society. The decision that special relativity and quantum electrodynamics are "the most successful of the physical theories we have" is a decision made by those authorities that are defined by society and whose authority is enshrined in practice and ritual and thus institutionalized.
The first to point out the weakness of the positivist doctrine of the logical analysis of scientific knowledge was K. Popper. He noted, in particular, that science mainly deals with idealized objects, which, from the point of view of the positivist understanding of scientific knowledge, cannot be verified using protocol sentences, and therefore are declared meaningless. In addition, many laws of science expressed in the form of sentences of the type are unverifiable. The minimum speed required to overcome the Earth's gravity and enter the near-Earth space is 8 km/s, since their verification requires a lot of particular protocol proposals. Under the influence of criticism, logical positivism weakened its position by introducing a provision in its doctrine of private empirical verifiability. From this it logically followed that only empirical terms and sentences expressed with the help of these terms have certainty, other concepts and sentences that are directly related to the laws of science were recognized as meaningful (confirmed) due to their ability to withstand partial verification.
Thus, the efforts of positivism to apply the logical apparatus to the analysis of knowledge expressed in the form of declarative sentences did not lead to scientifically significant results; they faced problems that could not be solved within the framework of the reductionist approach to cognition and knowledge adopted by him.
In particular, it is not clear why not all statements of science become basic, but only some? What is the criterion for their selection? What are their heuristic possibilities and epistemological perspectives? What is the mechanism of the architectonics of scientific knowledge?

K. Popper's falsification criterion

K. Popper proposed another criterion for the truth of a scientific statement - falsification.
Science, according to Popper, is a dynamic system that involves continuous change and growth of knowledge. This provision determined a different role of the philosophy of science in scientific knowledge: from now on, the task of philosophy was not to substantiate knowledge, as it was in neopositivism, but to explain its change on the basis of a critical method. So, in logic scientific discovery" Popper writes: "the central problem of the theory of knowledge has always been and remains the problem of the growth of knowledge," and "... the best way to study the growth of knowledge is to study the growth of scientific knowledge." As the main methodological tool for this purpose, Popper introduces the principle of falsification, the meaning of which is reduced to the verification of theoretical statements by empirical experience In what way is falsifiability better than verifiability and what is the logic of Popper's reasoning?
Having declared the task of methodology to study the mechanisms of the growth of scientific knowledge, Popper is based on the understood and perceived reality that constitutes the sphere of scientific knowledge. According to his deep conviction, science cannot deal with the true, because scientific research activity is reduced to putting forward hypotheses about the world, assumptions and conjectures about it, building probabilistic theories and laws; such is common path knowledge of the world and adaptation of our ideas about it. Therefore, to put it mildly, it would be frivolous to accept some of these ideas as true, and to refuse some, i.e. there is no universal mechanism that could identify from the variety of existing knowledge which of them are true and which are false.
Therefore, the task of philosophy is to find a way that would allow us to approach the truth. In Popper's logical and methodological concept there is such a mechanism in the form of the principle of falsification. K. Popper believes that only those provisions that are refuted by empirical data can be scientific. The refutation of theories by the facts of science, therefore, is recognized in the "logic of scientific discovery" as the criterion of the scientific nature of these theories.
At first glance, this provision is perceived as nonsense: if it turned out that all our speculative constructions that we build about the world are refuted by our own empirical experience, then, based on their common sense, they should be recognized as false and thrown out as untenable. However, Popper's reasoning is based on a different logical sense.
Anything can be proven. It was in this that the art of the sophists manifested itself, for example. Popper believes that scientific statements stating the existence of material objects do not belong to the class of those confirmed by experience, but, on the contrary, to those refuted by experience, because the logic of the world order and our thinking tells us that scientific theories refuted by facts really carry information about objectively existing world.
The same methodological mechanism, which allows scientific knowledge to approach the truth, i.e. the principle of falsification of theories, by refuting them with facts, is accepted by Popper as a criterion for the demarcation of descriptive (empirical) sciences (from theoretical and from philosophy itself, thereby rejecting the neo-positivist criteria of demarcation (induction and verifiability).
The ideological content of the theories of falsification and demarcation has a value that brings us to the worldview dimension. Popper's concept of "logic of discovery" is based on the idea, which has taken the form of conviction, about the absence of any truth in science and any criterion for its detection; meaning scientific activity is reduced not to the search for truth, but to the identification and detection of errors and misconceptions. This, in essence, worldview idea determined the corresponding structure:
a) ideas about the world, accepted in science as knowledge about it, are not truths, because there is no such mechanism that could establish their truth, but there is a way to detect their fallacy;
b) in science, only that knowledge meets the criteria of scientific character that can withstand the procedure of falsification;
c) in research activity "there is no more rational procedure than the method of trial and error - assumptions and refutations".
This structure is a structure that is meaningful and accepted at the worldview level by Popper himself and implemented by him in science. However, therefore, the influence of worldview beliefs on the model of the development of science created by the thinker.
At first glance, the procedure for refuting theories and searching for new theories that differ in permissive abilities seems to be positive, involving the development of scientific knowledge. However, in Popper's understanding of science, its development is not assumed for the reason that in the world itself there is no development as such, but only change. The processes that take place at the inorganic and biological levels of nature's existence are just changes based on trial and error. Accordingly, theories in science, as conjectures about the world, do not imply their development. The change from one theory to another is a non-cumulative process in science. Theories that replace each other do not have a successive connection with each other; on the contrary, a new theory is new because it distances itself as much as possible from the old theory. Therefore, theories are not subject to evolution and development does not take place in them; they just replace each other without keeping any evolutionary "thread" between them. In that case, where does Popper see the growth of scientific knowledge and progress in theories?
He sees the meaning and value of the new theory that replaced the old one in its problem-solving ability. If a given theory solves problems other than those that it was intended to solve, then, of course, such a theory is recognized as progressive. "... The most significant contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge," writes Popper, "that a theory can make, consists of new problems generated by it ...". From this position it can be seen that the progress of science is conceived as a movement towards solving problems that are more complex and deeper in content, and the growth of knowledge in this context is understood as a gradual change from one problem to another or a sequence of theories replacing each other, causing a “problem shift”.
Popper believes that the growth of knowledge is an essential act of the rational process of scientific research. “It is the mode of growth that makes science rational and empirical,” argues the philosopher, “that is, the mode in which scientists distinguish between existing theories and choose the best of them, or (if there is no satisfactory theory) put forward grounds for the rejection of all available theories, formulating the conditions that a satisfactory theory must fulfill.
By a satisfactory theory, the thinker means a new theory capable of fulfilling several conditions: first, to explain two kinds of facts: on the one hand, those facts that the previous theories successfully coped with and, on the other hand, those facts that these theories could not explain; secondly, to find a satisfactory interpretation of the experimental data, according to which the existing theories were falsified; thirdly, to integrate into one integrity problems - hypotheses that are unrelated to each other; fourthly, the new theory must contain verifiable consequences; fifth, the theory itself must also be capable of withstanding a rigorous test procedure. Popper believes that such a theory is not only fruitful in solving problems, but even has a heuristic possibility to a certain extent, which can serve as evidence of the success of cognitive activity.
Based on the criticism of traditional synthetic and analytical thinking, Popper proposes a new criterion for cognition, which he calls the "criterion of falsifiability". A theory is scientific and rational only when it can be falsifiable.
There is a clear asymmetry between verification (confirmation) and falsification. Billions of confirmations are not capable of perpetuating a theory. One rebuttal and the theory is undermined. Example: "Pieces of wood do not sink in water" - "This piece of ebony does not float on water." Karl Popper used to repeat Oscar Wilde's famous quote: "Experience is the name we give own mistakes". Everything must be tested by falsification.
Thus, a provocative approach to reality was asserted, that is, the author of the theory open society in general, I would approve of the actions of Russian peasants from the famous joke about Japanese woodworking equipment. “A Japanese car was brought to a Siberian sawmill. The peasants scratched their heads and put a huge pine tree into it. , fidgeted and gave out the boards. "M-yes," the peasants already said with respect. And suddenly they see: some poor fellow is carrying a rail. The rail was enthusiastically thrust into the mechanism. The mechanism sighed, sneezed and broke. "M-yes," - the workers said with satisfaction and took up their axes-saws. Popper would have noticed that there cannot be such a machine that turns EVERYTHING into boards. There can only be such a machine that turns SOMETHING into boards.
Popper's logical model assumes new concept development. It is necessary to abandon the search for the ideal, finally right decision, and look for the optimal, satisfactory solution.
"The new theory not only finds out what the predecessor succeeded, but also his searches and failures ... Falsification, criticism, justified protest, dissent lead to the enrichment of problems." Without introducing hypotheses with a twist, we ask ourselves why the previous theory collapsed. The answer should be a new version, the best theory. "However," Popper emphasized, "there are no guarantees of progress."

Conclusion

In the history of science, two principles have been proposed to draw a line between scientific theories and what is not science.
The first principle is the principle of verification: any concept or judgment has a scientific meaning if it can be reduced to an empirically verifiable form, or it cannot itself have such a form, then empirical confirmation must have its consequences, one verification principle is applicable limitedly, in some areas modern science it cannot be used.
The American philosopher K. Popper proposed another principle - the principle of falsification, which is based on the fact that direct confirmation of a theory is often difficult due to the inability to take into account all special cases of its action, and to refute a theory, just one case that does not coincide with it is enough, so if a theory is formulated so that the situation in which it will be refuted can exist, then such a theory is scientific. The theory is irrefutable, in principle, can not be scientific.

List of sources

1. Martynovich S.F. The fact of science and its determination. Saratov, 1983.
2. Putnam H. How it is impossible to talk about the value //Structure and development of science. M., 1978.
3. Popper K. Logic and growth of scientific knowledge. M., 1983, S. 35.
4. Quoted. Quoted from: Ovchinnikov N.F. "On Popper's intellectual biography".// Questions of Philosophy, 1995, No. 11.

Any scientific theory must be supported by facts. However, no matter how many supporting facts we find, there may always be a fact that refutes it. But more importantly, if such a fact cannot exist, then the theory is unscientific.

Verification

It would seem obvious that any scientific theory must be supported by facts. However, this is obvious to us, people of the 21st century, who, as Newton said of himself, "stand on the shoulders of giants." We have a science and a philosophy of science created and developed by many generations of scientists. Moreover, education is very widespread in our country, and science itself is often firmly intertwined with everyday life.

In fact, it was only in the first half of the 20th century that a group of scientists from Vienna proposed to accept empirical confirmation of a theory as the main criterion for the scientific character of a statement. By introducing this criterion, they sought to distinguish between science and non-science, to make science more pure, consistent and reliable, and to get rid of metaphysics. They hoped to build new system sciences based on logic and mathematics (in this regard, their course was called logical positivism) and wanted to develop for it a unified methodology, unified criteria for verifying the truth.

Members of this "Viennese circle" called this principle verification (from Latin verus - "true" and facere - "to do"). They believed that any statement can be transformed into a so-called protocol sentence like "someone saw such and such a phenomenon at such and such a time in such and such a place." Technically, everything that happens in the world can be described using such sentences. Off-protocol sentences should simply be a summary of what the protocol says.

The task of the scientist, in fact, should be reduced to verifying the truth of protocol sentences. According to the members of the Vienna Circle, this would get rid of unnecessary philosophical disputes and exclude unverifiable claims from science, such as claims that there is a soul or God. For such assumptions, it is impossible to find confirmation of a protocol sentence like "X observed god in such and such a place at two o'clock in the afternoon." Therefore, there is no need to talk about the truth and scientific nature of such a statement.

falsification

Logical positivists considered themselves heirs of the ideas of the English philosopher David Hume. However, Hume already drew attention to the following problem. No amount of empirical confirmation of a theory guarantees its truth, but a single refutation nullifies the whole theory. If we do not consider all the objects and cases in the Universe described by the theory (and this is impossible in the vast majority of cases), then we cannot assert with absolute certainty that the theory is true, since there can always be a fact that refutes it.

Another English philosopher Francis Bacon, even before Hume, paid attention to the fact that people, adhering to the idea that any theory requires confirmation, were looking, first of all, for the facts proving their ideas, and did not notice the facts that refuted them. Therefore, he believed that it was necessary to look for those facts that, on the contrary, would refute this or that theory, and if they were not found, consider it true.

Karl Popper

But the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper suggested going even further. His idea was to replace verification in a sense with its inverse criterion: falsification. The essence of this criterion is that only that idea can be recognized as scientific, which is theoretically possible to refute by finding a fact that contradicts it. If the theory is capable of explaining all the facts in general, then it, in fact, explains nothing.

So, for example, he criticizes psychoanalysis, since it can be used to explain any human behavior. We can imagine a person who is willing to push a child into the water and drown him, and a person who is willing to sacrifice his life to save him. Psychoanalysis could provide an explanation for the actions of both people, even if they had a completely identical biography. Such a situation could be satisfactory from the point of view of the criterion of verifiability, but, from the point of view of the criterion of falsifiability, the ability of psychoanalysis to explain absolutely any choice, regardless of the circumstances, on the contrary, is evidence of its unscientific nature, because in this case, psychoanalysis, in fact, does not give we have no new knowledge.

The shift from verificationism to falsificationism marks a new way of looking at scientific knowledge. According to this view, scientific knowledge is not at all an absolute, final truth, but, on the contrary, only an intermediate interpretation of it. Science only creates hypotheses that explain certain facts and phenomena, and does not establish immutable laws of the Universe.

Interestingly, from this point of view, logic and mathematics are not sciences, since they are not falsifiable. They are qualified in this system as the languages ​​that science uses to describe phenomena. We can always build a mathematical or logical system based on other axioms. And the mathematics that we use (that is, based on Euclidean geometry) often describes phenomena that cannot be represented.

It is also interesting that, in terms of Popper's proposed criterion, his theory must also be falsifiable. However, it is not clear what fact must be found to disprove it.

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Not so long ago I had such a strange conversation with one of my comrades. He argued that, in essence, what the logical positivists proposed and what Popper proposed were one and the same. Therefore, I have long wanted to make this record to clarify the situation in the sense that I personally see it.

First, a few words about logical positivism. This may sound a bit simplistic, but still.
Logical positivism is a certain movement that has developed on the basis of the so-called. "Vienna Circle", organized in 1922 by M. Schlick. Logical positivists set an interesting task - finding a reliable basis of scientific knowledge. In addition, they were very interested in the problem of demarcation - the separation of scientific knowledge and non-scientific; they, in particular, really wanted to expel philosophy (metaphysics) from science. According to logical positivists, in order for a sentence (in the logical sense) to have the status of a scientific one, it is necessary that it can be expressed through some elementary (protocol) sentences that are empirical (for simplicity, we will consider it this way, although there is something else -what). That is, in essence, any scientific knowledge must be strictly reduced to empirical experience in one form or another. On the other hand, theoretical knowledge is built on the basis of empirical knowledge through its inductive generalization. The logical positivists put forward verification principle which a scientific theory must satisfy. His logical form has the form

where T is a theory, a is a consequence logically deduced from the theory T, and at the same time an elementary sentence expressing an empirically reliable fact. In such a case, the theory is said to be confirmed by the empirical fact a. The more empirical facts, the higher the degree of confirmation of the theory. This scheme is thus based on induction - particular facts confirm the general theory.

The concept of Karl Popper opposes logical positivism on a number of points, in particular:

1. Against induction. Induction as a logical method includes an irrational moment (which was also mentioned by David Hume): at what moment can one interrupt the enumeration and move from premises (a finite set of facts) to a conclusion (a general statement about all such facts)? Logically, never. There is no logically justified transition from premises to conclusion. And induction is the logical foundation of empiricism. Thus, empiricism is not logically justified.
2. Against the principle of verification. It is rather difficult to establish the truth of some statement. For example "All swans are white" will be true if each of the swans is white. That is, you need to check each swan. But it is possible to show the falsity of such a statement by finding at least one counterexample. In this way, there is some asymmetry between confirmation and refutation.
3. Against the discrediting of philosophy (metaphysics) by positivists. Popper showed (see his "Logic of Scientific Research") that if one uses the principles of logical positivism, it becomes clear that not only philosophy falls out of the category of science - many statements of theoretical physics also turn out to be extrascientific. Here I am reminded of the history of the general theory of relativity. People who understand the issue understand that there is not a single complete confirmation of this theory. There are a number of (generally speaking, very small) confirmations that are based in one way or another on the calculation of corrections to the Newtonian potential. But this does not make us doubt this theory. And here the point is that it is theory, not experience, that comes to the fore. Popper did not believe* (nor did Einstein, by the way) that a theory should be based on empirical facts, or be somehow provoked by them.

Based on his concept, Popper puts forward an alternative to the principle of verification - falsification principle, whose logical scheme looks like:

where T is a theory, b is a consequence, not b is an empirical fact that contradicts the consequence. The conclusion asserts the falsity of T.
As a result:
1. The importance of empirical knowledge remains.
2. This mode is deductive and its conclusion is logically certain.
3. Induction is saved - in a specific sense: inductive orientation of lies from false private knowledge in the premise to false general knowledge in the conclusion.

The principle of falsification is put forward as a criterion of scientificity (demarcation): a theory must have the potential to conflict with empirical facts. The more unsuccessful attempts at refutation, the better for the theory. Therefore, falsifiability is a logical relationship between a theory and a class of potential falsifiers (this includes not only pure empirical knowledge, but also mental statements). An attempt to rehabilitate a false theory leads, according to Popper, to dogmatism. And that's why. If b is deduced from theory, but not-b is obtained in practice, then the statement of not-b must somehow be introduced into the theory. But this can lead to the fact that the theory will contain a contradiction, and this, as you know, leads to the fact that anything can be deduced from the theory. To demonstrate this simple statement, I will quote Popper's words from his article "What is Dialectics":

"By applying our two rules, we can actually show this. Let's say there are two contradictory premises, let's say:
(a) The sun is shining now.
(b) The sun is not shining now.
Any statement can be deduced from these two premises, for example, "Caesar was a traitor."
From premise (a), we can deduce, according to rule (1), the following conclusion:
(c) The sun is shining now V Caesar was a traitor. Now taking (b) and (c) as premises, we can finally deduce, according to rule (2):
(d) Caesar was a traitor.
It is clear that by the same method we could derive any other statement, for example, "Caesar was not a traitor." So from “2 + 2 = 5” and “2 + 2 not = 5” we can deduce not only the statement that we would like, but also its negation, which may not have been included in our plans.

Concerning verification, Popper says the following:

“I can illustrate this with two very different examples of human behavior: the behavior of a person who pushes a child into water with the intention of drowning him, and the behavior of a person who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save that child. Each of these cases can be easily explained both in terms of Freud and in terms of Adler. According to Freud, the first person suffers from the suppression of the (say, Oedipus) complex, while the second has achieved sublimation. According to Adler, the first person suffers from a feeling of inferiority (which makes him need to prove to himself that he is capable of daring to commit a crime), the same happens with the second (who has a need to prove to himself that he is able to save a child). So, I could not think of any form of human behavior that could not be explained on the basis of each of these theories. And just this fact - that they coped with everything and always found confirmation - in the eyes of their adherents was the most powerful argument in favor of these theories. However, a suspicion arose in my mind as to whether this is not an expression not of the strength, but, on the contrary, of the weakness of these theories?
<….>
Astrology is not tested. Astrologers are so delusional about what they consider to be supporting evidence that they pay no attention to examples that are unfavorable to them. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague, they are able to explain everything that could prove to be a refutation of their theory, if it and the prophecies that follow from it were more accurate. To avoid falsification, they destroy the testability of their theories. This is the usual trick of all soothsayers: to predict events so indefinitely that the predictions always come true, that is, that they are irrefutable.
The two psychoanalytic theories mentioned earlier belong to a different class. They are simply untestable and irrefutable theories. … This does not mean that Freud and Adler did not say anything correct at all… But it does mean that those “clinical observations” that psychoanalysts naively believe confirm their theory do so no more than the daily confirmations found by astrologers in your practice. As for Freud's description of the I (Ego), Super-I (Super-Ego) and It (Id), it is essentially no more scientific than Homer's story of Olympus. The theories under consideration describe some facts, but do so in the form of a myth. They contain very interesting psychological assumptions, but they express them in an unverifiable form.
— Popper K.R. Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London and Henley. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.

Popper managed to identify the main shortcomings of the program of logical positivism, he actually closed the problem of the existence of a reliable source of knowledge. The old question of what is decisive in cognitive activity: feelings or reason - turned out to be incorrectly formulated, because. there are no "pure" empirical facts. They always depend on a particular theory. Popper made us think about the nature of theoretical knowledge and the role of induction in its emergence. The main purpose of the scientist is to put forward risky hypotheses, the falsification of which leads to new problems and even more risky hypotheses.
The disadvantages traditionally include the fact that the consistent implementation of the principle of falsification in real scientific practice has never taken place. A real scientist, faced with contradictions, will not, even after a certain period of time, abandon his theory, but will find out the reasons for the conflict between theory and facts, look for an opportunity to change some parameters of the theory, that is, he will save it, which is fundamentally prohibited in Popper's methodology.

*) Generally speaking, as far as I remember, Karl Popper himself did not receive a humanitarian education at all, rather he was close to mathematics and theoretical physics, as, indeed, were many members of the Vienna circle.

Principles of verification and falsification

Verification- (from Latin verificatio - proof, confirmation) - a concept used in the logic and methodology of scientific knowledge to refer to the process of establishing the truth of scientific statements through their empirical verification.

Verification consists in correlating a statement with the real state of affairs by means of observation, measurement, or experiment.

Distinguish between direct and indirect verification. With direct V., the statement itself, which speaks of the facts of reality or experimental data, is subjected to empirical verification.

However, not every statement can be directly correlated with facts, because most scientific statements refer to ideal, or abstract, objects. Such statements are verified indirectly. From this statement we deduce a consequence relating to such objects that can be observed or measured. This corollary is verified directly.

The B. of the corollary is considered as an indirect verification of the statement from which the given corollary was obtained. For example, suppose we need to verify the statement "The temperature in the room is 20°C". It cannot be verified directly, because in reality there are no objects to which the terms "temperature" and "20°C" correspond. From this statement, we can deduce a consequence that says that if a thermometer is brought into the room, then the mercury column will stop at the “20” mark.

We bring a thermometer and by direct observation we verify the statement “The mercury column is at the “20” mark”. This serves as an indirect V. of the original statement. Verifiability, i.e. empirical testability, of scientific statements and theories is considered one of important features scientific. Statements and theories that cannot be verified in principle are generally not considered scientific.

FALSIFICATION(from Latin falsus - false and facio - I do) - a methodological procedure that allows you to establish the falsity of a hypothesis or theory in accordance with the modus tollens rule of classical logic. The concept of "falsification" should be distinguished from the principle of falsifiability, which was proposed by Popper as a criterion for demarcating science from metaphysics, as an alternative to the principle of verifiability adopted in neopositivism. Isolated empirical hypotheses, as a rule, can be subjected to direct F. and rejected on the basis of relevant experimental data, and also because of their incompatibility with fundamental scientific theories. At the same time, abstract hypotheses and their systems, which form scientific theories, are directly unfalsifiable. The point is that empirical testing theoretical systems knowledge always involves the introduction of additional models and hypotheses, as well as the development of theoretical models of experimental facilities, etc. The discrepancies between theoretical predictions and experimental results that arise in the process of verification can, in principle, be resolved by making appropriate adjustments to individual fragments of the theoretical system being tested.

Therefore, for the final F. theory, it is necessary alternative theory: only it, and not the results of the experiments themselves, is able to falsify the theory being tested. Thus, only in the case when there is a new theory that really ensures progress in knowledge is the rejection of the previous scientific theory justified methodologically.

The scientist tries to ensure that scientific concepts satisfy the principle of testability (the principle verification ) or at least the principle of refutation (the principle falsifications ).

Principle verification states that only verifiable statements are scientifically meaningful.

Scientists scrutinize each other's discoveries as well as their own discoveries. In this they differ from people who are alien to science.

To distinguish between what is being tested and what is in principle impossible to verify, helps "circle K but rnapa" (it is usually considered in a philosophy course in connection with the topic "Neopositivism"). The statement is not verified (scientifically meaningless): "Natasha loves Petya." The statement is verified (scientifically meaningful): "Natasha says she loves Petya" or " Natasha says that she is a princess frog.

Principle falsification does not recognize such a statement as scientific, which is confirmed any other statements (sometimes even mutually exclusive), and cannot even be basically refuted. There are people for whom any the statement is yet another proof that they were right. If you tell something like that, he will answer: "What did I say!" You tell him something directly opposite, and he again: "You see, I was right!"

Having formulated the falsification principle, Popper supplemented the verification principle as follows:

a) scientifically meaningful such concept, which satisfies experimental facts and for which there are imaginary facts that, if they are discovered, can refute it. This concept is true.

b) Scientifically meaningful such concept, which refuted facts and for which there are imaginary facts capable of confirming it when they are discovered. Such a concept is false.

If conditions are formulated at least indirect check, then the asserted thesis becomes more reliable knowledge.

If it is impossible (or very difficult) to find evidence, try to make sure that at least there are no rebuttals (a kind of "presumption of innocence").

Let's say we can't test some assertion. Then we will try to make sure that the statements opposite to it are not confirmed. In a similar peculiar way, "on the contrary," one frivolous person checked her feelings: "Honey! I meet other men to make sure that I truly love only you ..."

A stricter analogy with what we are talking about exists in logic. This so-called apagogic evidence(from the Greek apagōgos - diverting). The conclusion about the truth of a certain statement is made indirectly, namely, the statement that contradicts it is refuted.

Developing the principle of falsification, Popper sought to implement a more effective demarcation between scientific and non-scientific knowledge.

According to Academician Migdal, professionals, unlike amateurs, are constantly striving to refute themselves...

The same idea was expressed by Louis Pasteur: the true researcher is the one who tries to "destroy" his own discovery, stubbornly testing it for strength.

So in science great importance the reliability of the facts, their representativeness, as well as the logical validity of the hypotheses and theories created on their basis are attached.

At the same time, scientific ideas include elements faith . But this is a special faith that does not lead to a transcendent, other world. It is exemplified by "taken on faith" axioms, basic principles.

I.S. Shklovsky, in his scientific bestseller book The Universe, Life, Mind, introduced a fruitful principle called the "presumption of naturalness." According to him, every open phenomenon is assumed to be automatically natural, unless the contrary is absolutely reliably proven.

Closely interrelated within science are the orientations towards believe, trust And recheck.

More often than not, scientists only believe what they can verify. Not everything can be verified by yourself. Someone double-checks, and someone trusts the one who double-checked. Reputable professional experts are most trusted.

Often "what a priori* for personality, a posteriori for the genus” (on this thesis, see Topic 16 on CSE, as well as the question on “Evolutionary Epistemology”).

How would you react to my words that I invented the “standard of invisibility”, but I can’t show it to anyone - because it is invisible.

This statement can be either true or false in a particular case. After all, not every Natasha loves every Petya. Some Natasha, perhaps, loves some Petya, but the other Petya either does not know, or is indifferent to him. Yes and love different people understand differently. For some, “to love means to run into the depths of the courtyard and until the rook night, forgetting about everything, chop wood, playfully with your strength” (Vl. Mayakovsky). And for someone it is a voluntary death (“The Case of Cornet Elagin” by I.A. Bunin).

You can check the truth of the statements "Natasha received a diploma" or "Peter lost the keys." But love is a deeply internal, subjective, intimate feeling. And no "lie detector" will help to "check" love from the side of its unique inherent value for a person.

Verification called the method of confirming a hypothesis or theory by its independent experimental verification or establishing its compliance with empirically verified and generally accepted fundamental theories (9. - P.102-104).

The concept of verification (verification and confirmation) was proposed in the 20s. 20th century a group of scientists united in the so-called. "Vienna Circle" (Carnap, Neurath, Godel, etc.) and developed a number of ideas of L. Wittgenstein ("logical positivism").

Initially, verification was a way of fixing experimental facts without any subjective change. Such facts were recognized as reliable, and science was invited to work with them. On their basis, primary generalizations (the so-called "protocol proposals") are formed. That which does not coincide with protocol proposals was recommended to be eliminated from science.

Today, the essence of verification is the scrupulous observance of the objectivity, problematic and methodical nature of knowledge and the application of the so-called. "criteria of truth".

IN humanities and philosophy, the use of verification is limited high proportion subjectivity in interpretation. Here, such confirmation extends, first of all, to the logic of reasoning and to the observance of generally accepted rules for the organization of the text, for example, to the correlation of a scientist with a certain tradition, scientific context or qualification requirements.

The main verification role in philosophical knowledge, As in artistic creativity, play taste and reasoning. Philosophical work must be convincing and intellectually beautiful.

At the same time, verification as a way of final proof comes into conflict with the fact that for the complete verification of any theory, an infinite number of facts must be collected.

Another, alternative way verification of the theory - falsification (10. - P. 752). The idea of ​​falsification was proposed by K. Popper and, in the opinion of both himself and his followers (for example, I. Lakatos), it works more accurately and achieves greater reliability than verification. It is assumed that if an infinite set of facts is needed to verify a theory, then one is enough for falsification and refutation. However, the absence of refuting facts does not give the theory the quality of truth, it becomes only scientific and justified.

falsification just as verification makes it possible to establish the conformity of a hypothesis with experimental data and fundamental theories. However, if verification achieves direct correspondence, then falsification performs verification by continuous criticism and attempts to refute theories.

With a falsification approach, there is a search for refuting data. This idea comes from the notion that a theory should work not only for a narrow group of subjects studied, but also for all subjects of a given class. Therefore, the appearance of new objects in the field of vision of science forces, first of all, to apply existing theories to them and thereby test the ability of theories to explain.

Because of its critical focus, falsification, more than verification, corresponds to the ongoing dialogue of diverse points of view and positions in the humanities. Therefore, here the confirmation is more of a falsification than a verification character.

The verifiability and falsifiability of research results is the basis for confirming its scientific status. So, for example, in a competent study, the problem, subject and methods are indicated at the very beginning of the work. Their application allows for an independent examination of the results and constitutes the so-called. "academic style" scientific works. If a problem is posed, a subject is defined, a method is chosen and a result is obtained, and then an article is written, then any specialist can pose the same problem, take the same subject and method, and then he should get the same or similar results. If the results turned out to be different, then this means that someone made a mistake, did the work incorrectly, and his qualifications as a specialist in his profile are low.