Yesterday was World Philosophy Day (as proclaimed by UNESCO), and the celebration continues today in Palermo. This prompts me to consider what I most like about the views of Karl Popper, the scientists’ favorite philosopher of science.
Popper discusses this in his essay, “Evolutionary Epistemology”, in which he argues that all knowledge develops from an evolutionary process of variation and selection. In its application to science, he termed this view “falsificationism”, the idea that scientific knowledge grows by conjecture and refutation, not by bits of observational evidence somehow congealing into theories and gradually solidifying into absolute truth. In biology, knowledge consists of genetic patterns that reflect the structure of the environment, and grows through genetic variation and natural selection (often, but too loosely, equated with differential mortality). Popper observed that the great advantage of the evolution of human knowledge, for those not irrevocably bound to their ideas, is that “Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.”
Like many others, I have quibbles with Popper’s formulation of falsificationism and his use of physics as a model for the whole of science, but the evolutionary epistemology perspective is (in my firm but not irrevocable view!) fundamental, universally applicable, and correct. In an essay titled “Why the Law of Effect Will Not Go Away”, another philosopher, Daniel Dennett, offers a brilliant exploration of how this principle emerges and operates in evolution at levels from blind genetics, to Skinnerian conditioning, to imaginative genius. Highly recommended for those with an epistemological inclination.
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