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From: books@michaels.demon.co.uk (Rodney York)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!hookup!swrinde!pipex!demon!michaels.demon.co.uk!books
Subject: Re: Why scientists popularize premature speculations?
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Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 11:07:40 +0000
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Sorry if this delay seems disjointed: the mail item I'm responding to took
a long time to reach me.

I wrote:
"There's no such thing as a validated scientific result.
"
" (1) There is no validation procedure.
"
" (2) Results generally accepted as valid are sometimes shown not to be. E.g.,
"
"    (c): The theory of gravitation and classical mechanics were accepted as
"         being true for many years. They are now considered to be an
"         approximation, very accurate if speeds are relatively low and energy
"         levels relatively high.

<3cmsae$pqg@pobox.csc.fi>: grohn@finsun.csc.fi "Lauri Gruhn" responds:
"        Classical mechanics works very well. The science began when
"somebody also validated his thoughts about how object falls, roll etc.

We're not speaking about working very well, we're speaking about something
called "validation". The second sentence doesn't seem to make sense.
Much light can be cast on things by examining a specific case and requiring
specific details, rather than generalities which can conceal vagueness.

We are talking about a specific case here, so, if your argument is to hold
water, you must be able to answer:

1) Who is the "somebody"?
2) How did (s)he validate his thoughts about how object falls?
3) How did (s)he validate his thoughts about how object roll?
4) What is the criterion of validity used in each case?

As you may have guessed from my original message and my comments here I
find the ideas of Sir Karl Popper regarding the demarkation between science
and non-science (nescience, if you prefer the word) very useful. (There is
nothing wrong about non-science; the division into science and non-science
is not a value judgment.) He made the point (in Logic of Scientific
Discovery) that science is about falsifiability; a result can be called
scientific if and only if it is capable of being proved false. For example,
"the planet Neptune is made of green cheese" is a (false) scientific
statement, as it can be falsified by checking. "People are reincarnated when
they die" is not scientific, as there is no way to falsify it.

Following this criterion, any scientific statement can be falsified by a
single counter-example, but can never be verified, however many times it is
confirmed.

--
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