FALLIBILISTS VS. FABULISTS :

Remembering Karl Popper (Piers Norris Turner, Hoover Digest)

Popper was a fallibilist, one who perceives great error and danger in any theory of knowledge-or regime-that claimed to offer certain truth. In such a system, there would be no incentive to establish social and political structures that promote learning or the free exchange of ideas; truth is already at hand. [...]

Popper argued that progress requires a critical structure within which competing theories can be tested. Popper captured his philosophy, called falsificationism or critical rationalism, with the motto "I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth." Instead of attempting futilely to verify or justify our theories, Popper claimed we should try to falsify them since we need only a single negative instance to refute a universal theory. Consequently, what matters in rational debate is that different positions are open to criticism, which becomes the engine of progress by removing from consideration false theories, leaving only the provisionally best theories behind. The "best" theories could still not be verified or justified, but since they had not been falsified either, they would be preferable to falsified theories. The rationality of holding a particular position would be granted to the extent to which the theory is open to criticism. This makes possible not only progress but also optimism, which is for Popper a moral duty.

Popper's central insight, inspired by Socrates, is that we can never know anything for certain, which has important consequences for the way we approach the theory of knowledge and critical debate in general. Popper argued that this ought to humble us and cause us to understand our limitations. He wrote, "We know nothing-that is the first point. Therefore we should be very modest-that is the second. That we should not claim to know when we do not know-that is the third."

In response to the Ten Doubts About Evolution, some Darwiniacs seem to think that it is a strength of the theory that it can not be falsified. In fact, that is what makes it more of a religious belief than a scientific theory. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2002 12:56 PM