how science grows

• how science grows

  popper - many systems of thought claim to have true knowledge of the world such as religious and political ideologies, so he asks two questions about the emergence of science

  1. what distinguishes scientific knowledge from other forms of knowledge?
  2. why has scientific knowledge be able to grow so quickly in the last few centuries
• the fallacy of induction


  popper - rejects the view that the distinctive feature of science is inductive reasoning because of the 'fallacy error of induction'

  • famously uses the example of swans - it is easy to make the generalisation that all swans are white but it can't be proved as even one black swan completely disproves it
• falsificationism

  popper - scientific knowledge is able to be falsified which is what makes it unique, which means a good theory has two features

  1. it is falsifiable on principle but when tested stands up to all attempts to disprove it
  2. it claims to explain a lot - making large generalisations so it is at greater risk of being falsified
• truth

  popper - 'all knowledge is provisional, temporary and capable of refutation at any moment' so there is never absolute proof that anything is true
• criticism and open society

  popper - science is a public activity as a theory must be open to criticism in order for it to be falsifiable

  • science thrives in open societies that believe in free expression and the right to challenge accepted ideas
  • closed societies governed by any one belief that claims an absolute truth stifle the growth of science eg. marxism or nazism
• implications for sociology

  popper - most of sociology is ultimately unscientific because it uses theories that can't be falsified because of the processes they function on

  • however sociology can be scientific because it can produce hypotheses that are falsifiable
  • ford - hypothesised that comprehensive schooling would produce social mixing and was able to test that
• worth of unscientific theories

  popper - unfalsifiable theories like marxism aren't worthless as they may become testable at a later date and because they can still be examined for clarity an dlogical consistency

  • sociology may contain less falsifiable arguments because it hasn't existed as long as more established sciences and so may become one