This is the second of two posts where I critique Susan Haack’s 2009 paper “Six Signs of Scientism” which recently appeared as a new chapter in the second edition of her book “Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture“.[1]
In this section, I would like to address the charge that Popper’s demarcation is a way of defining away bad-science as non-science, and that Popper advocated some sort of ‘scientific method’.
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Haack continues:
And suppressing the demarcationist impulse will also have the healthy effect of obliging us to recognize poorly-conducted science as just that, poorly-conducted science; and of encouraging us, instead of simply sneering at “pseudo-science,” to specify what, exactly, is wrong with the work we are criticizing: perhaps that it is too vague to be genuinely explanatory; perhaps that, though it uses mathematical symbolism or graphs or fancy instruments, these are purely decorative, and do no real work; perhaps that claims which are thus far purely speculative are being made as confidently as if they were well warranted by evidence; and so on.
This passage is another example of how Haack conflates ‘science’ as a set of theories, and ‘science’ as a human activity aimed at improving these theories.
She speaks of ‘poorly-conducted science’ (an activity) and then makes a plea for us to specify exactly what is wrong with pseudo-science, providing examples. “[P]erhap that it is too vague to be genuinely explanatory”, she suggests as one example. But by ‘it’ (and by implication ‘science’), she seems to be referring to a scientific theory – a predictive statement about the world.
We might well criticize instances of both of these meanings of ‘science’. But to do that, we must first have a grasp of the relationship between theory and experiment.
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Karl Popper’s great contribution to the philosophy of science was to clarify some of our confusions regarding how we acquire theories, and how we learn from experiment. His solution to Hume’s problem of induction was to realize that our relationship with the world makes it impossible to have certain knowledge about universal patterns. We are finite, and experience only a small glimpse of the universe. Yet, to improve, we make bold conjectures that the future will be like the past.
So, the theories of physics are not ‘knowledge’ in the antiquated sense of ‘justified, true, beliefs’. They are guesses. Sure, guesses that might be inspired by a myriad of experiment, but guesses nevertheless. Data that agrees with our theories have no logical significance to their probability, or their truth. Assuming such things has caused philosophical confusion for millennia. The only role agreeable data can have is a psychological feeling that we have made progress. There is no logical road to inventing theories.
This begs the question: ‘how can we learn from experience?‘ Popper’s response was to remind us that we learn from our mistakes. Our theories could never be demonstrated to be true, but we might abandon theories that persistently conflict with experiment in favor of better ones.
Popper’s work can be summarized as follows. We might (at the risk of redefining a word) say that ‘knowledge’ about the physical world is a human invention, constructed by the mind. The creation of new ideas might be inspired by new experiences, but their arrival in our consciousness a non-logical process. ‘Learning’ – or making progress with our theories is (contrary to popular belief) a destructive process. Experiment has the potential to logically contradict our faulty ideas about the world, but logic is incapable of proving scientific theories to be true.
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Now to my criticism of Haack’s statement. Popper’s view of our relationship with the world, and the relationship between theories and experiment, implies some strategic advice for how we can make progress with our knowledge.
First of all, we would do well to be wary of theories that are immune from criticism, for they might retard further progress and stultify our invention of better theories. Thus, Popper offers a criterion of demarcation between theories that allow the potential for learning, and those that do not. We can’t know if we are right or wrong, but we can know if we have made progress.
With these falsifiable guesses, we can aim to learn the fastest through a relentless criticism of these theories. We can search for logical inconsistencies between accepted idea, and attempt to refute these theories by either actively creating experiments or passively observing our cosmos.
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Therefore, I think that Haack wrongly dismisses demarcation as ‘scientism’. She charges Popper with simply redefining ‘poorly-conducted science’ as pseudo-science, without specifying what is wrong with it. Well, that is exactly what Popper does do!
It’s not the case that Popper defines false statements as pseudo-science, but warns against those that prevent progress by dubbing them as non-scientific. The distinction is one of utility, highlighting how we can learn and progress while avoid epistemological quagmires.
Haack reveals her misunderstand of Popper’s work with the final suggestion to criticize pseudo-science, mentioned in the above quotation. In a list of suggestions she asks us to consider, “…perhaps that claims which are thus far purely speculative are being made as confidently as if they were well warranted by evidence…“
If you have followed along so far, it should be clear that if Popper is correct, no one is capable of acquiring ’evidence’ for scientific claims.
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Next: scientific method.
The preoccupation with demarcation in turn encourages (and is encouraged by) the idea that real scientific inquiry, the genuine article, differs from inquiry of other kinds in virtue of its uniquely effective method or procedure …
Here, she implies that Popper is advocating some sort of method, and attempts to contrast this with a sober recognition of Feyerabend’s that there is no definable method for attempting to find the truth – reproducing his often-quoted aphorism, ‘anything goes‘.[2]
Haack also quotes the erudite popularizer of physics, Percy Bridgeman as an ally who dismisses philosophers’ attempts to analyze what scientists do. Bridgeman is always interesting, and makes a better case than Haack, so I quote the passage in full:
It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say about it. No working scientist, when he plans an experiment in the laboratory, asks himself whether he is being properly scientific, nor is he interested in whatever method he may be using as method. When the scientist ventures to criticize the work of his fellow scientist, as is not uncommon, he does not base his criticism on such glittering generalities as failure to follow the “scientific method,” but his criticism is specific, based on some feature characteristic of the particular situation. The working scientist is always too much concerned with getting down to brass tacks to be willing to spend his time on generalities. [3]
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However Popper never claimed to advance a ‘method’ for how one should practice scientific inquiry. Rather, he outlined solutions to several philosophical problems (including ‘the problem of induction’), and then proposed how best we might learn, given this new view of knowledge.
I even remember a story, possibly apocryphal (at least, until I can find in which book I read it), of Karl Popper commenting he was the head of a department that didn’t exist, after accepting the post of ‘Head of Scientific Method’ at the London School of Economics.
To criticize Popper for advocating a scientific method is to reveal a misunderstand of his philosophy of science. One clear message running through all of Popper’s work is that there is no logical procedure, no method, no algorithm for obtaining truth. We guess and attempt to refine our guesses. Even if we had the truth we could never know it.
Understanding that we can never prove scientific hypotheses keeps one humble. Understanding that learning occurs though being shown incorrect generates an impetus to experiment. Understanding demarcation keeps one wary of charlatans who waste our time and resources.
These are not a ‘methods’ for acquiring truth, but we might venture to call them ‘tactics for learning’. Popper wouldn’t care what we call them, as long as we didn’t call them, as Bridgeman did, ’ballyhoo’.
A clear philosophical understanding of our relationship with the universe, and a correct view of how we can acquire knowledge, can only be beneficial to how we choose to inquire. And how we choose to inquire determines how well we can learn.
References
[1] Haack, Susan (Dec 2oth, 2011) “Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture–Essays on Science, Religion, Law. Literature, and Life” (Updated Edition) Prometheus Books
[2] Feyerabend, Paul (2010) “Against Method” 4th ed, New York, NY: Verso Books
[3] Bridgman, Percy (1949) “On Scientific Method” [in 'Reflections of a Physicist' (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955)] p 81
