Starting The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
I have bought Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Given my attraction to the Friesian school, and their reliance on the Popperian method, I will have to determine whether there is anything to it, even though I still regard myself as primarily Kuhnian. Popper will need to provide a lot of argument to counter Kuhn's claims, but his book is over five hundred pages long, so he's already got a good start.
One thing I notice immediately is that Popper's PhD is in Philosophy, while Kuhn's is in Physics; this counts against Popper. Equally, Kuhn's writing is full of references to the history of physics, while Popper's is mainly abstract theorising about science; this also counts against Popper. Kuhn's seems by far the more empirical approach, and this makes me more likely already still to side with Kuhn. Nevertheless, if I am to affiliate myself with the Friesian school, I am going to have to find some way of reconciling these two views. Even if I side completely with Kuhn, I am going to have to show how this does not contradict Friesianism--not that I think that that would be too hard. The main thing that Friesianism seems concerned with is simply not obscuring knowledge, but it seems to me that Kuhn is not doing this. For all the reasons I adumbrated in the section, "Finished The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Kuhn is a firm believer in scientific progress in ways that seem clearly rationalistic.
Nevertheless, analogies from Popperian science were proving fruitful, as my sections on moral falsifiability show. Let's also remember that we were looking at science through the lens of Kuhnianism before, but Popperianism might be at least as illuminating. If nothing else, some more fruitful analogies might well be coming from the pages that I read herein.
One thing I notice immediately is that Popper's PhD is in Philosophy, while Kuhn's is in Physics; this counts against Popper. Equally, Kuhn's writing is full of references to the history of physics, while Popper's is mainly abstract theorising about science; this also counts against Popper. Kuhn's seems by far the more empirical approach, and this makes me more likely already still to side with Kuhn. Nevertheless, if I am to affiliate myself with the Friesian school, I am going to have to find some way of reconciling these two views. Even if I side completely with Kuhn, I am going to have to show how this does not contradict Friesianism--not that I think that that would be too hard. The main thing that Friesianism seems concerned with is simply not obscuring knowledge, but it seems to me that Kuhn is not doing this. For all the reasons I adumbrated in the section, "Finished The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Kuhn is a firm believer in scientific progress in ways that seem clearly rationalistic.
Nevertheless, analogies from Popperian science were proving fruitful, as my sections on moral falsifiability show. Let's also remember that we were looking at science through the lens of Kuhnianism before, but Popperianism might be at least as illuminating. If nothing else, some more fruitful analogies might well be coming from the pages that I read herein.
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