November 21, 2008
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 [...]
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October 25, 2008
Scientists in an increasing number of fields are doing science in new ways, exploiting powerful new data-collection technologies with the aid of computational methods and a little humility.
Tradition demands that science always be hypothesis-driven: First, try to guess the truth, and only afterward collect experimental data to test whether the guess predicts the results. Indeed, [...]
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