KARL POPPER'S FALSIFICATION AND ITS

IMPLICATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

A Project report submitted in

partial fulfillment of the requirement

for the award of the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS, PHILOSOPHY

Submitted by

RATHEESH.A

Reg. No. 113PL109

Under the Supervision and Guidance of

Dr. V. Kumari Sunitha, M.A, M.Phil, PH.D.

To the

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS

MADRAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE

(AUTONOMOUS), - 2013DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

TAMBARAM,CHENNAI-59

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the Dissertation work entitled

“Karl Popper's Falsification and its implication in Social

Science” is a bonafide record of work done by me in partial

fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree

of Master Of Philosophy under the guidance of Dr. V. Kumari

Sunitha Department of Philosophy, Madras Christian College,

Tambaram, Chennai59, and the same has not been submitted

elsewhere for the award of any degree.

Place: Chennai (Ratheesh.A)

Date:

Associate Kumari Sunitha, M.A, M.PHIL, PH.D.

Department of Philosophy

Madras Christian College,

T

ambaram, Chennai – 600 059

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that RATHEESH , Reg. No 113PL109

submitted his Dissertation entitled “Karl Popper's

Falsification and its implication in Social Science” under

my supervision and guidance. It is of his original work. It

does not form part of any previous project, dissertation,

thesis or reports submitted to this college or any other

university.

Dr. M. Gabriel Dr. V. Kumari Sunitha

Head of the Department Supervisor and guide

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. V. Kumari

Sunitha, my dissertation supervisor, for her patient

guidance, enthusiastic encouragement and useful critiques of

this dissertation work. I would also like to thank the

H.O.D., Prof. Gabriel, the Department of Philosophy for his

advice and assistance in keeping my progress on schedule.

And also I wish to thank my parents for their support

and interest who inspired me and encourage me to go my own

way, without whom I would be unable to complete my

dissertation. At last but not the least I want to thank my

friends who appreciated me for my work and motivated me and

finally to God who made all the things possible.

THANKS.

CONTENTS

Chapter I

Introduction

1

Chapter II

2.1.Principle of Verifiability: The Legacy of Scientific

Method 8

2.2.The principle of presuppositionless observation and its

failure 15

3.3.The Merits and Demerits of the principle

18

Chapter III

3.1.The principle of Falsifiability: The objective reality

and logical investigation of 21

Falsifiability

3.2.A sketch of Popper's account of scientific method:

Relation between theory 27

and observation

3.3.Principle of Demarcation

30

Chapter IV

Falsification and its implication in social science

36

Conclusion

45

Bibliography

CHAPTER I

Introduction

Sir Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna on 28 July

1902. His rise from a modest background as an assistant

cabinet maker and school teacher to one of the most

influential theorists and leading philosophers was

characteristically Austrian. Popper commanded international

audiences and conversation with him was an intellectual

adventure - even if a little rough - animated by a myriad of

philosophical problems. His intense desire to tear away at

the veneer of falsity in pursuit of the truth lead him to

contribute to a field of thought encompassing(among others)

Political theory, Quantum mechanics, Logic, Scientific

method and evolutionary theory. Popper challenged some of

the ruling Orthodoxies of philosophers: Logical positivism,

Marxism, Determinism and Linguistic philosophy. He argued

that there are no subject matters but only problems and our

desire to solve them. He said that scientific theories

cannot be verified but only tentatively refuted, and that

the best philosophy is about profound problems, not word

meanings. Isaish Berlin, rightly said that Popper produced

one of the most devastating refutations of Marxism. Popper

has not only given solutions to the problems of induction

and also the demarcation of science from pseudo - science.

So, Popper's work is important not just to those who agree

with his new bold solutions, but to everyone who recognizes

the importance of the problems that Popper discovered,

analyzed and reformulated in a way that allows a solution.

Here, I brought out some important issues in my dissertation

from the Karl Popper's social philosophy which more

practical and necessary in human life

In my second chapter, I try to focus on the principle

of verifiability and the Legacy of Scientific method(Bacon's

Inductive method) . Bacon's ideas about scientific method

have subsequently become known as Baconian induction. This

method is expounded in his Novum Organum (published in 1620)

and in fact still forms the basis of what many people think

of as the method of science. Indeed, the notion of science

as a progressive accumulation of knowledge about the

material world, this was apparently first pronounced by

Bacon. So Bacon realized that facts have to be collected

methodically so that comparisons can be made. It was not

enough to search for confirming instances. Instead he saw

that tables needed to be drawn up so that negative instances

could be included and taken into consideration. He proposed

doing refuting experiments which some have seen us

anticipating Karl Popper's idea of falsification. This was a

revolutionary and original achievement for which there are

no prior instances in classical antiquity. Nevertheless,

very few great scientists have ever completely used Bacon's

methodology. It is too laborious. Instead they have tended

to augment rigorous experiment with imagination and

intuition which has enabled science to progress in leaps and

bounds. So Bacon over estimated the value of minute

observation and data collection and underestimated the use

of hypothesis and guesswork. From this concept I try to

bring out the necessary of falsification and the failure of

Bacon's inductive method. Bacon proclaimed that

presuppositionless observation is a true method, which give

us a clear understanding about the nature. In a way Bacon

argued that nature doesn't mislead us rather we look at the

nature in a prejudicial manner that become seems to be a

impurity in our mind when we try to explain the nature.

According to Bacon, the nature or essence of the method of

the new science of nature, the method which distinguishes

and demarcates it from the old theology and the metaphysical

philosophy, that basically explained, Man is impatient. He

likes quick results. So he jumps to conclusion. In a way

Bacon argued that the old speculative method is

anticipations of the mind. It is a false method, for is

leads to prejudice. This is Bacon's method of observation

and induction. To put it in a nutshell: pure untainted

observation is good, and pure observation cannot err;

speculation and theories are bad, and they are the source of

all error. This idea was basically not practical any

scientist to practice. Because we cannot make any

observations without some ideas concerning the nature of

what it is we are observing. All our observations are

conditioned by a sense of what type of thing or property in

our environment is to be focused on. This sense may be pre -

theoretical, as when we 'naturally' notice bright colors or

moving animals or what J. L. Austin memorably referred to as

the 'medium - sized dry goods' in our vicinity, or it may be

more theoretically inspired when, as with Bacon's own

example, we go round the world actively looking for examples

of heat. In either type of case, the idols of our mind are

stimulating us to pick out some features of our environment,

to the exclusion of the infinite variety of other features

we could have focused on had our sensory apparatus or

interests been different. Popper labels the Baconian view of

science "observationalism" Popper goes on to say that the

Baconian view of science is actually a religious dogma.

Bacon was not a scientist but a prophet.

I will also try to emphasis on the merits and

demerits of induction. I focus on more development of

falsification and the criticism of Bacon's inductive method.

while many philosopher believed that verification is very

important in order to have true knowledge about nature.

Especially Bacon vigorously argued that there should not be

any kind of presupposition while we are approaching the

nature. For that, the scientist should be like a bee

gathering materials from 'the flowers of the garden and of

the field, rather than neither ant that only collects and

nor a spider, spinning webs out of his own fancying. These

ideas was totally disagreed by Karl Popper, since he said

that there is no such things as 'pure' observation, that is

to say, an observation without a theoretical component. All

observation - and especially all experimental observation -

is an interpretation of facts in the light of some theory or

other.

The third chapter, I will discuss the importance of

Falsifiability and its various implications of the method.

I will also critically evaluate the objective reality and

logical investigation of Falsifiability. Popper has always

drawn a clear distinction between the logic of

Falsifiability and its applied methodology . The logic of

his theory is utterly simple: if a single ferrous metal is

unaffected by a magnetic field it cannot be the case that

all ferrous metals are affected by magnetic fields.

Logically speaking, a scientific law is conclusively

falsifiable although it is not conclusively verifiable.

Methodologically, however, the situation is much more

complex: no observation is free from the possibility of

error—consequently we may question whether our experimental

result was what it appeared to be. Here, I find out the

importance of Popper's scientific method and the relation

between theory and observation. It is within this framework

that must be understood, he apparently is not suggesting

that science must be refutable, but rather that until a

theory holds the quality of refutability, observations

neither hurt not help the theory. That is to say,

"observation should count for nothing unless the theory is

testable". This far more conservative view of refutability -

as it relates only to observation that makes much better

sense of Popper's epistemology. This should replace the

popular view that scholarship and science are 'testable' and

other things are not.

Finally, I discuses the importance of the principle

of demarcation. The problem of demarcation has long

preoccupied philosophers of science who wished to

differentiate pseudo - science from science itself. Many

solutions have been attempted, but it is still, in my

opinion, Popper's Falsifiability which addresses the

demarcation problem most effectively. Because Karl Popper,

he is the first person who has given the clear distinction

between science and pseudoscience. In this regards he wanted

to know about that, when should a theory be ranked as

scientific?. For this Popper said that by empirical methods

science can be distinguished from pseudoscience.

In my final chapter, I explain the major rule of

falsification and its implication in social science,

especially Karl Popper's idea about the open society. Popper

is, of course, also widely known for his political

philosophy. Especially his writing on 'The Open Society and

its Enemies' have had a deep and lasting effect on post -

world war II politics, especially in Britain and Germany. In

1979 Soros, a lifelong admirer of Popper's work, established

his Open Society Institute, which is dedicated to "opening

up closed societies, making open societies more viable, and

promoting a critical mode of thinking". Popper has been

widely read by the lay educated public, too, and some of his

ideas have become part of public discourse, most notably his

notion of an "Open Society".

Karl Popper is the most influential philosopher of

natural science of the twentieth century. Although his

influence on academic philosophers is perhaps not as great

as that of several other philosophers of science, Popper's

impact on working scientists remains second to none. When

asked to reflect on the method of science, contemporary

scientists, if they do not directly invoke Popper's name,

more often than not will cite Popperian ideas. Science, they

will say, requires commitment to severe testing of theories,

a scientific community dedicated to such critical scrutiny,

and, above all, theories that are empirically falsifiable.

All this is Popper's legacy.

We comprehend the truth only if we adopted correct

method more over the development of scientific knowledge in

the natural as well as social sphere has been possible so

for as science is adopt a correct method. The method of

scientific cognition, other hand, is that of observation and

experiments whether the theory is true or false it needs

verification and experiments. Experiment is a special form

of social practice. Given these basic philosophical frame

work I may approach the Popperian Falsification and its

implication in social science.

According to Popper, scientific theory should make

predictions which can be tested and the theory rejected if

these predictions are shown not to be correct. However many

confirming instances there are for a theory, it only takes

one counter observation to falsify it. Science progresses

when a theory is shown to be wrong and a new theory is

introduced which better explains the phenomena. For Popper

the scientist should attempt to disprove his/her theory

rather than attempt to continually prove it. Popper does

think that science can help us progressively approach the

truth but we can never be certain that we have the final

explanation. I shall elaborate all these aspects and its

implications in course of this dissertation.

CHAPTER II

2. Principle of Verifiability: The Legacy of

Scientific Method

Bacon is most commonly known for advocating the

inductive approach to science. Inductive method is usually

called a scientific method. He argued that there had been

limited progress over the ages due to the fact that

scholastic philosophers altered their findings on nature to

meet the requirements of scripture. He claimed that

Scholastic thinkers for their attachment to Aristotelian

doctrines, which he felt prevented independent thinking and

the acquisition of new ideas regarding nature. He argued

that to improve the quality of human life, the advancement

of science should not depend on ancient texts, and that old

authorities should be considered as a unnecessary one. He

believed that knowledge should be pursued in a new organized

way. His idea of an inductive approach included the careful

observable of nature with a systematic accumulation of data

draw upon. New knowledge should created based on the

knowledge of particular findings through testing and

experimentation. Bacon argued that the scientific inquiry

should be empirically rooted in the natural world. Francis

Bacon was among the first to appreciate the value of the new

science for human life. He stated that knowledge should help

utilize nature for human advantage and should improve the

quality of life by advancing commerce, industry and

agriculture

The methodical observation of facts as a means of

studying and interpreting natural phenomena. This empirical

method was formulated early in the 17th century by Francis

Bacon, an English philosopher, according to him, the

inductive method recommends, as we have seen, a stepwise

ascent in science from observation to theory. We begin by

collecting the relevant observations, as many as we can, and

as far as possible without presuppositions. We then tabulate

the data, so as to isolate the features which are constantly

associated with the phenomenon we are interested in, both

positively, in the sense of always being there when the

phenomenon is, and negatively, in the sense of never being

there when the phenomenon is not. If we find such features,

we may then infer that this is the cause of our phenomenon.

In effect, at this third stage; we will be saying that this

cause will always bring about that effect. We will be making

a generalization on the basis of our evidence, and we may

then put the generalization to the test, by trying it out in

various new conditions (fourth stage). Even if we are not

after a strictly causal theory, but simply want to discover

how various phenomena are correlated mathematically or in

some other way, for the inductivist the procedure will

follow the same four stages.

Bacon explains how his method is applied in his Novam

Organum (published1620). The examples he gives on the

examination of the nature of heat, Bacon creates two tables,

the first of which he names " Table of essence and

Presence",1 here he tried to make various circumstances

under which he find heat. In the other table, " the absence

in proximity" here he find out a kind of resemblance to

those of the first table and other table when the heat was

absent. From these analysis's he find out that there is

always a kind of similar answer both first table and second

table this may be because of natures. So the most important

1 Bacon, Novum Organum, II.XX.

job of the scientist should be to gather the facts, or

histories without any kind of pre-supposition that required

to create the tables of presence and absence. Such histories

would document a mixture of common knowledge and

experimental results. In his Novum Organum, he try to

explain the both negative and positive doctrines. The

negative doctrine is particularly expounded by Bacon in

terms of four types of 'idols' which have dominated and

distorted men's minds, delaying the acquisition of true

knowledge. " Idols of the Tribe,  are rooted in human nature

itself and in the very tribe or race of men. For people

falsely claim that human sense is the measure of things,

whereas in fact all perceptions of sense and mind are built

to the scale of man and not the universe.” (aph. 41)Bacon

includes in this idol the predilection of the human

imagination to presuppose otherwise unsubstantiated

regularities in nature. An example might be the common

historical astronomical assumption that planets move in

perfect circles. "Idols of the Cave, belong to the

particular individual. For everyone has (besides vagaries of

human nature in general) his own special cave or den which

scatters and discolors the light of nature. Now this comes

either of his own unique and singular nature; or his

education and association with others, or the books he reads

and the several authorities of those whom he cultivates and

admires, or the different impressions as they meet in the

soul, be the soul possessed and prejudiced, or steady and

settled, or the like; so that the human spirit (as it is

allotted to particular individuals) is evidently a variable

thing, all muddled, and so to speak a creature of chance...”

(aph. 42). This idol stems from the particular life

experiences of the individual. Variable educations can lead

the individual to a preference for specific concepts or

methods, which then corrupt their subsequent philosophies.

Bacon himself gives the example of Aristotle, “who made his

natural philosophy a mere slave to his logic.” (aph. 54).

"Idols of the market, there are also Idols, derived as if

from the mutual agreement and association of the human race,

which I call Idols of the Market on account of men's

commerce and partnerships. For men associate through

conversation, but words are applied according to the

capacity of ordinary people. Therefore shoddy and inept

application of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous

ways.” (aph. 43).Bacon considered these “the greatest

nuisances of them all” (aph. 59). Because humans reason

through the use of words, they are particularly dangerous

because the received definitions of words, which are often

falsely derived, can cause confusion. He outlines two

subsets of this kind of idol and provides examples (aph 60).

First, there are those words which spring from fallacious

theories, such as the element of fire or the concept of a

first mover. These are easy to dismantle because their

inadequacy can be traced back to the fault of their

derivation in a faulty theory. Second, there are those words

that are the result of imprecise abstraction. Earth, for

example, is a vague term that may include many different

substances the commonality of which is questionable. These

terms are often used elliptically, or from a lack of

information or definition of the term. "Idols of the

theatre, lastly, there are the Idols which have misguided

into men's souls from the dogmas of the philosophers and

misguided laws of demonstration as well; I call these Idols

of the Theatre, for in my eyes the philosophies received and

discovered are so many stories made up and acted out stories

which have created sham worlds worth of the stage.” (aph.

44). These idols manifest themselves in the unwise

acceptance of certain philosophical dogmas, namely

Aristotle's sophistical natural philosophy (aph. 63) which

was corrupted by his passion for logic, and Plato's

superstitious philosophy, which relied too heavily on

theological principles.

Bacon's view that, we should not be misled by

Aristotle's talk of experimentation and observation. The

effect of Bacon's negative doctrine is that any properly

established science will have to begin from and be

controlled by observation untainted by the presuppositions

of the idols, or any other sort. We have to approach nature

with an innocent and uncorrupted eye, and preserve this

innocence through our researches. For Bacon, the true

scientist will be the paradigm of the objective observer who

frees men from the illusions and myths of the past. The

presuppositionless observation required by Bacon is not,

however, conducted in a random or disorganized way. The

scientist is not a spider, spinning webs out of his own

natural behavior, but neither is he an ant who only

collects; he is rather a bee, gathering materials from 'the

flowers of the garden and of the field', but transforming

and digesting it 'by a power of its own'. Through this

method Bacon proposed that the scientists should have a

better of being true than theories produced by other

methods. He thinks that his stress on negative instances

helps to overcome some of the difficulties involved in

basing a theory simply on positive evidence.

Philosopher Karl Popper suggested that it is

impossible to prove a scientific theory true by means

of induction, because no amount of evidence assures us that

contrary evidence will not be found. Instead, Karl Popper

proposed that proper science is accomplished by deduction.

Deduction involves the process of falsification.

Falsification is a particular specialized aspect

of hypothesis testing. It involves stating some output from

theory in specific and then finding contrary cases using

experiments or observations. The methodology proposed by

Popper is commonly known as the hypothetico - deductive

method. Popper claims that the hypothetico-deductive model

of scientific method is superior to inductivist model for

the following reasons. First, it does justice to the

critical spirit of science by maintaining that the aim of

scientific testing is to falsify our theories and by

maintaining that our scientific theories however

corroborated permanently remain tentative. In other words,

the hypothetico-deductivist view presents scientific

theories as permanently vulnerable with the sword of

possible falsification always hanging on their head. The

inductivist view of scientific method makes science a safe

and defensive activity by portraying scientific testing as a

search for confirming instances and by characterizing

scientific theories as established truths. According to

Popper, the special status accorded to science is due to the

fact that science embodies an attitude which is essentially

open-minded and anti-dogmatic. Hypothetico-deductivism is an

adequate model of scientific practice because it gives

central place to such an attitude. Secondly, Popper thinks

that if science had followed an inductivist path, it would

not have made the progress it has. Suppose a scientist has

arrived at a generalization. If s/he follows the inductivist

message, s/he will go in search of instances which establish

it as truth. If s/he finds an instance which conflicts with

her/his generalization, what s/he does is to qualify the

generalization mentioning that the generalization is true

except in the cases where it has been held to be

unsupported. Such qualifications impose heavy restrictions

on the scope of the generalization. This results in

scientific theories becoming extremely narrow in their range

of applicability. But, if a scientist follows the

hypothetico-deductive view, s/he will throw away her/his

theory once s/he comes across a negative instance instead of

pruning it and fitting it with the known positive facts.

Instead of being satisfied with the theory tailored to suit

the supporting observations, s/he will look for an

alternative which will encompass not only the observations

which supported the old theory, but also the observations

which went against the old theory, and more importantly,

which will yield fresh test implications.2 The theoretical

progress science has made can be explained only by the fact

that science seeks to come out with bolder and bolder

explanations rather than taking recourse to the defensive

method of reducing the scope of the theories to make them

consistent with facts. Hence, Popper claims that the2 This work is taken from the Joint Initiative of IITs and IISC - Fundedby MHRD

hypothetico-deductive model gives an adequate account of

scientific progress. According to him, if one accepts the

inductivist account of science, one fails to give any

explanation of scientific progress. Thirdly, the

hypothetico-deductive view, according to Popper, avoids the

predicament encountered by inductivist theory in the face of

Hume's challenge. As we have seen, Hume conclusively showed

that the principle of induction cannot be justified on

logical grounds. If Hume is right, then science is based

upon an irrational faith. According to the hypothetico-

deductive view, science does not use the principle of

induction at all. Hence, even though Hume is right, it does

not matter to science if science follows the hypothetico-

deductivist lines of procedure. Also, Popper seeks to

establish that inductivism and hypothetico-deductivist are

so radically different that the latter in no way faces any

threat akin to the one faced by the former. In this

connection, he draws our attention to the logical asymmetry

between verification, the central component of the

inductivist scheme, and falsification, the central component

of the hypothetico-deductivist scheme.

2.2. The Principle of Presuppositionless Observation and its Failure

Bacon's new method, which he recommends as the true

way to knowledge. Here we must purge our minds of all

prejudices, of all preconceived ideas, of all theories -- of

all those superstitions, or 'idols', which religion,

philosophy, education, or tradition may have imparted to us.

When we have thus purged our minds of prejudices and

impurities, we may approach nature. And nature will not

mislead us. For it is not nature that misleads us but only

our own prejudices, the impurities of our own minds. If our

minds are pure, we shall be able to read the book of nature

without distorting it: we have only to open our eyes, to

observe things patiently, and to write down our observations

carefully, without misrepresenting or distorting them, and

the nature or essence of the thing observe will be revealed

to us. Since Bacon 's philosophy of science seems attractive

because it recommends a thorough cleaning of our mental

slate. It came at a time when there was optimism about

science and its possibilities, and when the effects of

centuries of obscurantism seemed about to be swept away. And

also it shows how better to sweep them away than by

cleansing the mind of all its presupposition and

prejudices. Unfortunately for the usefulness of Bacon's

ideas and also for the possibility of any project which

appears to require a presuppositionless reading of the book

of nature, we cannot make any observations without some

ideas concerning the nature of what it is we are observing.

All our observations are conditioned by a sense of what type

of thing or property in our environment is to be focused on.

This point becomes even more evident when we consider

what is central to Bacon's tabular methodology, the picking

out of repetitions of types of case, in Bacon's own example,

that of heat phenomena. It is, of course, an assumption on

Bacon's part that all the instances he is taking as examples

of heat are actually examples of the same natural kind, a

natural kind being a group of phenomena occurring naturally

in the physical world with the same underlying physical

constitution. Thus water is said to form a natural kind, by

virtue of its constitution as H2O, and so are members of

biological species, by virtue of their shared genetic

structure. On the other hand, things we group together in

ordinary discourse under some category may not constitute a

natural kind in this sense. It is very doubtful that all

Bacon's instances of heat have a common underlying nature,

and actually are all members of the same natural kind.

Bacon's model of presuppositionless observation is intended

to elicit the true nature or cause of a particular type of

phenomenon. The idea is that by listing the various features

of, say, heat, we will find which are constantly conjoined

with it, and so come to isolate the true cause. But this

process is not going to be nearly as straightforward as

Bacon appears to think. As Quinton puts it, 'he fails to see

that causes may be spatio - temporally remote from their

effects',3 once this is realized, though, the very notion of

the event or instance to be observed becomes hopelessly

indeterminate. We have already pointed out that the movement

of the tide is affected by the moon. Is the presence (or

even the absence) of the moon part of an instance of tidal

movement?. Are we supposed to record everything surrounding

the event we are interested in, the hope that our tables

will eventually reveal the other features of the environment

which are always present when the type of thing we are

interested in occurs? But this would be a hopeless and a

futile task, for again without some idea of the relevant

features of the surrounding environment we would never be

able to complete any list of the accompaniments to an event.

And there would in practice be precious little hope of

bringing the position of the moon into our observations of

tides without some pretty strong suspicion or presupposition

of its relevance.

3 Quinton, Francis Bacon, p. 62

Basically, Bacon showed an uncompromising commitment

to experimentation. Despite this, he did not make any great

scientific discoveries during his lifetime. This may be

because he was not the most able experimenter. It may also

be because hypothesizing plays only a small role in Bacon's

method compared to modern science. Hypotheses, in Bacon's

method, are supposed to emerge during the process of

investigation, with the help of mathematics and logic. Bacon

gave a substantial but secondary role to mathematics. So I

suggest, Bacon was not a scientist but a prophet. He had

the vision of a new age, of an industrial age which would

also be an age of science and of technology.

2.3. The Merits and Demerits of the Principle

Falsifiable contrasts with verifiable. A claim is

empirically verifiable if possible observation statements

logically imply the truth of the claim. If actual

observation statements do imply the claim, then it is

verified. "This Mirror has a reflection capacity", verifies

" There are Mirrors which has this reflective capacity.

Actually, during the time of 1930s the logical empiricists

of the Vienna circle proposed verifiability both as a

criterion of demarcation of science from nonscience and a

criterion of meaning. Their idea was that a statement is

meaningful if and only if verifiable in principle, and its

meaning is given by its method of verification. Karl Popper

was totally against this method in order that he coined the

term "critical rationalism" to describe his philosophy,

concerning the method of science, the term indicates his

rejection of classical empiricism, and the classical

observationalist - inductivist account of science that had

grown out of it. Popper argued strongly against the latter,

holding that scientific theories are abstract in nature, and

can be tested only indirectly, by reference to their

implications. He also held that scientific theory, and human

knowledge generally, is irreducibly conjectural or

hypothetical, and is generated by the creative imagination

in order to solve problems that have arisen in specific

historic - cultural settings. Logically, no number of

positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can

confirm a scientific theory, but a single counter - example

is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the

implication is derived, to be false. The term "falsifiable"

does not mean something is made false, but rather that, if

it is false, it can be shown by observation experiment.

Popper sought to explain the apparent progress of scientific

knowledge - that is, how it is that our understanding of the

universe seems to improve over time. This problem arises

from his position that the truth content of our theories,

even the best of them, cannot be verified by scientific

testing, but can only be falsified. Again, in this context

the word 'falsified' does not refer to something being

'fake', rather, that something can be shown to be false by

observation or experiment. Here, Popper argues that

falsifications makes precisely such a distinction; in his

own words . On the one hand, unlike the inductivity account

that empirical observations leading to scientific

discoveries follow some logical method, Popper argues that "

every discovery contains 'an irrational element; or 'a

creative intuition; in Bergson's sense" ,4 which means that

there is no such thing as the logic of scientific discovery,

and there are only irrational conjectures. On the other

hand, however, there is logic of scientific testing.

Contingent upon inductivism, the inductivity adopt

verificationism as the testing methodology. However,

according to Popper, there is an asymmetry between

verification and falsification, which means that, although

observations and deductive logic cannot establish the truth

of a scientific generalization, they can establish its

falsity. Therefore, adequate testing of theories and

4 Bacon, Francis. The Logic of Scientific discovery

statements require attempted criticisms and refutations

rather than verifications. In order to illustrate more

clearly Popper's criticism of verifiability as a demarcation

criterion. Popper's Falsificationism is not only a theory of

scientific method but also criterion of demarcation between

science and pseudo - science. Based upon inductivism,

previous philosophers of science applied verifiability

according to observation and experiment as the sole

criterion in demarcating scientific theories from

metaphysical theories. On the other hand, Popper argues that

the criterion of verifiability is in fact inadequate, and

that Falsifiability is a better demarcation criterion to

distinguish between science and pseudo - science.

CHAPTER III

3.1.The Principle of Falsifiability : A

Critique

The discussion of the empirical status of social in

the past has revolved around Karl Popper's formulation of

the doctrine of Falsifiability. This idea has had a

particularly noticeable influence on discussions of

methodology in the social sciences. Popper's requirement is

that all scientific hypotheses must in principle be

falsifiable that is, it must be possible to specify in

advance a set of empirical circumstances which would

demonstrate the falsify of the hypotheses. Popper writes," A

theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is

non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory

but a vice".5 Popper's Falsifiability these arises in

response to the general problem of anomaly in science.

Anomalies- facts or discoveries that appear inconsistent

with accepted theory- are found everywhere in the history of

science, since scientific inquiry is inherently fallible. If

a theory implies some sentence P and P is false, it follows

that the theory must be false as well. In such a case the

scientist is faced with a range of choices. He or she can

reject the theory in order to avoid the conclusion. Here

5 Karl, R Popper. Conjectures and Refutations, 1965, P.36

they can introduced new ideology or they can reduce some

ideas from S that don't match anywhere.

When faced with anomaly, the scientist must choose

whether to abandon the theory altogether or modify it if the

theory has a wide range of supporting evidence there is a

powerful incentive in favor of salvaging the theory, then

the scientist should have the confident to take over the

theory in order to have a good reputation. Postpostivist

philosophy of science has directed much of its efforts to

formulating more adequate standards for modifying theory in

the light of anomaly. Its chief insights have resulted from

a shift of attention from the level of finished theories to

the level of the research program, that is, from the formal

laws and principles of a theory to the more encompassing set

of presuppositions, methodological commitment, and research

interests that guide scientists in the conduct of research

and theory formation. The central focus of neopostivist

theory of science was the scientific theory, conceived

ideally as a formal system of axioms and deductive

consequences. Neopositivists distinguished between the

context of discovery and that of justification, and they

argued that only the latter fell within the scope of

rational control. This meant that only finished theories

could be rationally evaluated, whereas the conduct of

research was conceived of as an exercise of pure,

unregulated imagination. From this judgment followed

Falsificationism, verificationism, and various forms of

confirmation theory.

This conception of a progressive tradition may be

amplified into a more specific criterion of rational

adherence to an empirical theory in the face of anomaly.

First, the theory in question must have achieved some

empirical success. That is , it must produce empirically

adequate explanations of phenomena in areas other than those

affected by anomaly; otherwise it would be irrational to

remain committed to the theory. And second the

modifications, of the theory must themselves be, at least

potentially, empirically significant (i) They must give rise

to other consequences besides the range of phenomena they

were introduced to explain and (ii) They must be amenable to

further investigation. If these conditions obtain, and if

independent justification is produced for the new factors,

both hey and the earlier theory are vindicated.

Karl Popper believed that a theory is scientific, if

and only if it is falsifiable. Most scientists would agree

with this statement, and in fact would be shocked by anyone

who didn't. But, Falsifiability presupposes a belief in an

enlightment - style "objective" reality beyond that of our

own minds. "He asserted that if a statement is to be

scientific rather than metaphysical it must be falsifiable.

He then based his philosophy of science on the hypothetic-

deductive method, claiming that enumerative induction is

invalid, and indeed does not in fact occur, while

verification and confirmation are impossible. As his

philosophy of science said we should aim to eliminate the

false rather than establish the true.

"A falsifiable hypotheses is one which can be put to

a test by which it could conceivably be refuted. The concept

is important in Karl Popper's philosophy of science,

according to which the distinctive features of any

scientific theory is that its hypotheses can be put to a

test. The distinctive feature of a good scientific theory is

that its hypotheses pass the test. The contrast is with

pseudo-science. The adherents of a pseudo-science are able

to cling to it hypotheses no matter how events turn out,

because the hypotheses are notable".6

Popper accepted that unrestricted generalizations

could not be verified. But, he pointed out, they could be

falsified(while no amount of observation of black crows

verifies the statement "All crows are black, one-properly

authenticated - observation of a white crow falsifies it).

6 Mautner(2000)

And Falsifiability for Popper, is the hallmark of science.

Science, in other words, characteristically puts itself at

risk, commits itself, by implication at least, as to what is

, or would be, observed under specific circumstances; and

hence its theories are always liable to be discards or

modified if the observations fail to agree with is

expectations. If follows that no scientific theory is ever

conclusively verified, no matter how many tests it has

survived. And It is conclusion, Popper points out, accords

very well with the history of science: even something as

will at tested and widely accepted as Newtonian physics has

not proved permanently immune from revision.

Falsification is an effective rhetorical strategy.

Suppose your opponent defends thesis T. If you show that T

implies Q and Q is false, then the opponent has a problem.

This falsification strategy implements the modus tollens

relation of deductive logic.

If P then Q

Not Q

Therefore, not P

Since modus tollens is a valid deduction argument

form, it is rational to reject the conclusion 'not P' only

if one can show that one, or both, of the premises are not

true. Applications of this falsification strategy are

widespread within science, even in the early stages of its

development. Aristotle also applied the falsification

strategy to 'Empedocles, hypothesis that semen that enters a

hot womb produces male offspring, whereas semen that enters

a cold womb produces a female offspring. Aristotle pointed

out that if this hypotheses is true, then twins conceived in

the same womb are both males or both females. He noted,

however, that there so exist twins one of which is a male

and one of which is a female. The falsification strategy is

particularly effective when a scientist performs an

experiment to show that a consequence of a hypotheses is

false. Only in these case of systems only would be

falsifiable if treated in accordance with our rules of

empirical method is there any need guard against

conventionalist stratagems. Let us assume that we have

successfully banned these stratagems by our rules: we may

now ask for a logical characterization of such falsifiable

systems. We shall attempt to characterize the Falsifiability

of a theory by the logical relations holding between the

theory and the class of basic statements. Here we shall

assume that falsifiable basic statements exist. It should be

borne in mind that when I speak of 'basic statements', I am

not referring to a system of accepted statements. The system

of basic statements, as I use the term, is to include,

rather, all self-consistent singular statements of a certain

logical form-all conceivable singular statements of fact, as

it were. Thus the system of all basic statements will

contain many statements are mutually incompatible. As a

first attempt one might perhaps try calling a theory

'empirical' whenever singular statements can be deduced from

it. This attempt fails, however, because in order to deduce

singular statements from a theory, we always need other

singular statements- the initial conditions that tell us

what to substitute for the variables in the theory. As a

second attempt, one might try calling a theory 'empirical'

if singular statements are derivable with the help of other

singular statements serving as initial conditions. But this

will not do either; for even a non-empirical theory, for

example a tautological one, would allow us to derive some

singular statements from other singular statements. It would

not even be enough to demand that from the theory together

with some initial conditions we should be able to deduce

more than we indeed exclude tautological theories, but it

would not exclude synthetic metaphysical statements(for

example from 'every occurrence has a cause' and 'A

catastrophe is occurring here', we can deduce 'This

catastrophe has a cause').7 In this way we are led to the

demand that the theory should allow us to deduce, roughly

speaking, more empirical singular statements than we can

7 Karl, Popper. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959, P. 85

deduce from the initial conditions alone. This means that we

must base our definition upon a particular class of singular

statements; and this is the purpose for which we need the

basic statements. Seeing that it would not be very easy to

say in detail how a complicated theoretical system helps in

the deduction of singular or basic statements. According

popper, a theory is to be called 'empirical' or

'falsifiable' if it divides the class of all possible basic

statements unambiguously into the following two non - empty

subclasses. First, the class of all those basic statements

with which it is inconsistent ( or which it rules out, or

prohibits) : we call this the class of the potential

falsifiers of the theory; and secondly, the class of those

basic statements which it does not contradict. We can put

this more briefly by saying : a theory is falsifiable if the

class of its potential falsifiers is not empty. It may be

added that a theory makes assertions only about its

potential falsifiers. (It asserts their falsity). About the

'permitted' basic statements it says nothing. In particular,

it does not say that they are true.

3.2. A Sketch of Popper's Account of Scientific

Method: Relation between Theory and Observation

I would like to emphasize something more important of

Karl Popper's explanation about theory and observation. In

considering the relationship between theory and observation

in science, it is important to distinguish a weak thesis

about the suffusing of observation by theory from a much

stronger one. The weak thesis says that all observations are

conditioned by presuppositions. assumption regarding

similarity and dissimilarity, directions of interest, and so

on. Though often referred to as the thesis that all data are

'theory - laden', this thesis amounts to little more than

the positive side of the criticisms we made of Baconian

hopes for presuppositionless observation. The fact that

there are interests and schemes of classification behind any

observation of the world does not amount to an elevated

sense of 'theory'. It need not imply that precisely

formulated or systematic assumptions are guiding one's

observations, and is quite consistent with pretty random and

undirected noticing of aspects and features of one's

environment. Some of the features one notices by chance may

indeed be quite hard to reconcile with one's explicit

theories about the world, and pave the way for revision of

those theories; to that extent one can think of a lot of

one's observations as, in a significant sense, pre -

theoretical or non - theoretical. Whether or not one is

willing to do that, however, it is crucial to see that the

weak thesis about the theory - ladenness of all data does

not entail the strong thesis.

That all observation involves presuppositions and as

assumptions is undoubtedly true, but this does not imply

that there is no point in drawing distinctions between more

and less theoretical levels of observation. Philosophers of

science who see everything, in science and everyday life, in

terms of theories may be unable to see any point in doing

this. For such philosophers, as the intellectual successors

of logical positivism, once the presuppositions involved in

everyday observational talk became apparent, all becomes

theory, from the most banal talk about glasses of water to

the most recherché tracings of mesons and muons.

In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper

actually uses the statement 'Here is a glass of water' in

order to demonstrate the unverifiability and theory -

ladenness of even the simplest description: It is

theoretical because the words 'glass' and 'water' denote

physical bodies which exhibit law like behavior in the

future as well as in the past, and unverifiable because this

is something we cannot know when dealing with a particular

object and the liquid it contains.8 The upshot is that we

8 Popper, Karl. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1965, P. 95

simply decide to accept certain observation statements for

the purposes of science and everyday life, but, according to

Popper, we can give no justification for this. Absolutely

speaking, glasses of water and electrons are on a par, and

our decision to take the one rather than the other as our

observational basis is a psychological fact, something about

us, but not one that gives our talk of glasses and water any

firm grounding in reason.

Even if we accept the intuition underlying this

approach to observation, some significant differences

between observations and theories are still being

overlooked. As we saw in the previous section, there may

well be truths bound up in the observation of particular

instances of moons, hydrogen, and electrons which are

separable in principle and in practice from whatever

theories are current about these things. And the same goes

for water. To say, with Popper, that a belief that a certain

liquid is water may bring with it certain expectations that

it will manifest certain regular or law - like behavior, is

not at all the same as holding any explicit theory about

water. We might also be able to check the current behavior

of a liquid sufficiently to ascertain that it is indeed

water now, and, this again is different from verifying an

explicit theory about its future behavior, let alone a

theory about the chemical composition of all instances of

water throughout the whole of space and time. These

differences between observation statements and theories are

important because they form the basis of our ability to see

an observational common ground surviving theoretical change,

and they can be lost sight of if we accept uncritically the

doctrine of the 'theory - ladenness' of all observations.9

At the same time, proponents of the theory - ladenness of

observation are right to emphasize the significance of pre -

supposition, and sometimes of explicit theory, in directing

and forming our observations. There may then seem to be

little to distinguish the observing of a glass of water from

9 O' Hear, Antony. Karl Popper, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, P. 92

that of a planet or even of an electron. Both involve a

highly selective interpretation of specific features of the

environment, and, from an observation should count as more

basic than either of the others. Even the fact that

instruments have to be used by us in one case, but not in

the others, or that one observation is indirect where the

others are direct, may be of little significance when we

consider that the very sense organs which yield the

supposedly direct observations are themselves highly refined

and selective instruments for observing the world, and

highly fallible to boot.

Absolutely, there may be nothing to choose between

observations of electrons and of glasses of water, but we,

as human beings, do not stand in an absolute relation to the

world, with every aspect of the world equally open to us. As

human beings, we are naturally attuned to certain features

and aspects of the world; attuned, that is to say, by our

sense organs and intellect, to survival in and interaction

with the world at a certain ecological level. So there is a

very good reason for us to take glasses of water as more

basic and less theoretical than electrons, or even than

moons and planets. Observing and interacting with such

things as glasses of water is what we are, as it were,

programmed by nature to do.

3.3. Principle of Demarcation

In the Universe there are lot of things which we

don't know that either they are scientific or not, so

different people thought about these things to differentiate

among them. There are different views of different

philosophers about science. But before going to see what

science is, let's know that how a theory is considered as

scientific or non-scientific. In this regard some scientists

have proposed some conditions and they named it as

Demarcation Criteria. The problem of demarcation has long

preoccupied philosophers of science who wished to

differentiate solutions have been attempted, but it is

still, in my opinion, Popper's Falsifiability which

addresses the demarcation problem most effectively. Early on

in his book conjectures and refutations. The growth of

scientific knowledge, Popper notes that the logical

positivists differentiated science from pseudo - science by

its empirical method; in other words they believed that

science relied on induction from experience while non -

scientific disciplines did not. This, according to Popper,

was untrue, since he feels that such as astrology, a pseudo

- science, also used induction from observation to justify

their claims, relying on things such as horoscopes,

biographies etc... Unsatisfied, Popper notes that although

some pseudo - scientific claims might be just as truthful

as scientific ones, the problem of demarcation needed to be

solved so that philosophers, scientists and the public alike

could distinguish scientific theories from those which

merely pretended to be scientific. As Popper represents it,

the central problem in the philosophy of science. Popper is

unusual amongst contemporary philosophers in that

he accepts the validity of the Humean critique of induction,

and indeed, goes beyond it in arguing that induction is

never actually used in science. However, he does not concede

that this entails the skepticism which is associated with

Hume, and argues that the Baconian/Newtonian insistence on

the primacy of ‘pure’ observation, as the initial step in

the formation of theories, is completely misguided: all

observation is selective and theory-laden—there are no pure

or theory-free observations. In this way he establishes the

traditional view that science can be distinguished from non-

science on the basis of its inductive methodology; in

contradistinction to this, Popper holds that there is no

unique methodology specific to science. Science, like

virtually every other human, and indeed organic, activity,

Popper believes, consists largely of problem-solving.

Popper accordingly repudiates induction and rejects

the view that it is the characteristic method of scientific

investigation and inference, substituting Falsifiability in

its place. It is easy, he argues, to obtain evidence in

favor of virtually any theory, and he consequently holds

that such ‘corroboration’, as he terms it, should count

scientifically only if it is the positive result of a

genuinely ‘risky’ prediction, which might conceivably have

been false. For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is

refutable by a conceivable event. Every genuine test of a

scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute

or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies

the whole theory. In a critical sense, Popper's theory of

demarcation is based upon his perception of the logical

asymmetry which holds between verification and

falsification: it is logically impossible to conclusively

verify a universal proposition by reference to experience.

However the failure of Bacon's ideas might suggest that the

scientific spirit consists not in the way we formulate our

theories, so much as in our treatment of them once we have

got them. Our presuppositions are always with us, never more

so than when we think we are doing without them. Let us

accept this fact together with the role of creative insight

in scientific thought. Science then will gain its

distinctive character not from the elimination of

presupposition and intuition, but in the control an

impartial nature will exercise over them. "There can be a

million and one influences, intellectual, financial,

emotional, social, cultural, political, subjective, and

objective",10 which lead scientists to come up with the sort

of thoughts they do. The context of discovery is quite

uncontrolled - which is good because otherwise we would be

stuck with the same old thought processes and never gain new

perspectives. But what is being spoken of here is not really

the context of discovery. It is rather the context of

hypotheses - formation. We only get to discovery, if at all,

at the next stage, the so called context of justification,

when the theory that is proposed is shaped and formulated so

that it can be tested, and actually tested against nature.

10 O'Hear, Antony. Karl Popper, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, P.55

And what we have here is not strictly a context of

justification for the theory as a whole, because we cannot

justify it. The evidence of nature can never show that a

theory is really true, but at most that it survives so far.

The distinction between the context of discovery and the

context of justification appears to be difficult to grasp.

Many are so impressed by the influence of social and

historical context on scientific work that they fail to see

how this context fail to see how this context is significant

only to the context of discovery. Even if, as is sometimes

claimed, the spirit of capitalism created a climate in which

men would naturally seek to quantify, analyses, and exploit

nature, it does not follow that all the theories produced in

this context are not true. All this goes to suggest that it

might be possible to take empirical Falsifiability as the

distinguishing mark of a scientific theory. Proposing

falsifiable theories and actually testing them will control

the context of discovery and the scientifically impure

motivations and flights of fancy found therein. Weeding out

falsified theories and suggesting improved ones will also

give a reasonable hope that knowledge might grow. While this

will not amount to a guarantee of actual growth of

knowledge, the pressure will be on for researchers to expose

their theories to the objective demands of nature and so

extend our knowledge. And honesty and openness will be

preserved by the impartial testing by nature of the

creations of at times dishonest and highly partial men. That

science should be demarcated from the non - scientific in

terms of empirical Falsifiability is the proposal of Popper

which has most captured the imagination of the general

public, who have seen in it a means of justifying their

suspicions of influential pseudo - sciences. And certainly a

theory purporting to be about how the world is, but which is

not testable by means of observation and experiment, will

rightly be an object of suspicion. In the case of Marxism is

rather different. Here various predictions have been made.

Revolutions will occur in industrialized, capitalist

societies. In such societies there will be an increasing

polarization between capitalists and proletarians, with the

proletariat becoming more and more impoverished. Capitalism

itself will reach a stage of terminal crisis, and conditions

will be ripe for revolution. After the revolution, after a

period of proletarian dictatorship, the stat itself will

wither away. None of these things have happened, of course.

Marx did not foresee the rise of the administrative classes,

nor the extension of the welfare state, nor did he foresee

socialist revolutions in agrarian societies, nor understand

the extreme reluctance of workers states to wither away.

Popper's reaction to all this is to ask why Marxists do not

simply accept the falsity of Marxism. Instead they cling to

it as to a religion, devising ever more arcane and complex

explanations for the failure of its predictions. This in

itself would, from a Popperian point of view, be reason

enough for thinking Marxism is no longer a scientific

theory, properly speaking. It may once have been. It did

make predictions, but its proponent no longer treat it

scientifically, taking its but its falsifications on the

chin. Instead they weave and bob around the ring, ducking

blows and slipping out of clinches.11 Yet, while not a

science, like psychoanalysis it gains much of its prestige

from being thought of as, in some way, scientific.

11 Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations( Londres, Routledge & KeganPaul, 1965), P. 39

CHAPTER IV

Falsification and its Implication in Social

Science

It is easy to understand what the social and

behavioral sciences are: psychology, sociology, political

science, economics, anthropology and we might include also

disciplines that intersect and overlap these fields, such as

geography, demography, social psychology, history and

archaeology. It's not safe to assume you know what

philosophy is, even if you have studied a good deal of it

already. The reason is that there is nothing like conscious

among philosophers about exactly what would be their object

is. Here in order to understand what the philosophy of

social science is, and its important, the way Karl Popper

pointed out the importance of open society.

So, what did Popper mean by ‘the open society’? A

good way to answer the question is with reference to his

work in the philosophy of science, for which he is just as

well known as he is for his work in political philosophy,

described with 'critical introduction to the philosophy of

politics and of history', The Open Society had become, in

the seven years of its gestation, a major treatise on the

intellectual and social ills of the time, offering an

explanation of how totalitarianism had gained intellectual

respectability and how purging post-war society of it would

involve rethinking politics, education and social morality.

A closed society is one which takes a magical or tabooistic

attitude to tradition and custom, which does not

differentiate between nature and convention. An Open Society

marks that difference and confronts its members with

personal decisions and the opportunity to reflect rationally

on them. According to Popper, the open society and liberal

society is not to be identified with a popularly elected

government. No more is it a matter of what is just, good or

best, for none of these offers insurance against tyranny in

their name. In line with his theory of science, and of

knowledge generally, he proposes a via negative. The issue

is not what regime we want, but what to do about ones we do

not want. The problem with tyranny is that the citizens have

no peaceful way in which to rid themselves of it, should

they want to. Popper proposes a now famous and generally

endorsed criterion for democracy as that political system

which permits the citizens to rid themselves of an unwanted

government without the need to resort to violence. He

exposes Plato's question, 'who should rule?', and all

similar discussions of sovereignty as subject to paradoxes

because the question permits an inconsistency to develop

between of sovereignty as subject to paradoxes because the

question permits an inconsistency to develop between the

statement designating the ruler and what the ruler commands

(for example, the best or wisest may then tell us: obey the

majority, or the powerful). Popper noticed that the question

carries the authoritarian implication that whoever is so

named is entitled to rule. He replaces them with the

practical question 'how can we rid ourselves of bad

governments without violence?', with its implication that

rulers are on permanent parole. Popper's is a fundamentally

pessimistic view that all governments are to one extent or

the other incompetent and potentially criminal in their

misbehavior, and that only a political system which allows

them to govern at the sufferance of citizens who can

withdraw their support readily is one with more or less

effective checks against abuse. Even so, the fallibility of

our institutional hypotheses enjoin upon us an eternal

vigilance.

An ‘open society’, then, is a society characterized

by institutions which make it possible to exercise the same

virtues in the pragmatic pursuit of solutions to social and

political problems. For Popper, these are, pretty much, the

institutions characteristic of a modern liberal democracy.

And, what of its ‘enemies’? According to Popper, what makes

Plato an enemy of the open society is his ‘holism’. The

ideal state of Plato’s Republic is thus a ‘totalitarian’

vision of utopia. With the help of his Theory of Forms,

Plato is able to portray it as the rational state, the state

within which everything runs smoothly, like a well-oiled

machine, thanks to the way everyone concentrates on the job

he, or she, is best equipped to do. Against this, Popper

argues that there can be no uniquely ‘rational state’. Even

if there were such a thing, we would have as little chance

of establishing it as we do of arriving at the uniquely true

scientific description of the way things are, and any

attempt to establish such a state would soon result in

failure. (Popper explains the psychological pull of this

type of view in terms of a fear of change. Of course,

Plato’s state, being ‘ideal’, is a state of arrested

development from which the only road can be down.) By

contrast, the philosophical sin of which Hegel and Marx are

held to be guilty is ‘historicism’, the doctrine that

history must take a certain course. According to Popper,

utopianism and historicism are both flawed because both are

inimical to the only approach it is, in reality, possible to

take to the solution of social and political problems. In

the real world, you have to proceed pragmatically, by trial

and error. Flaws will inevitably show up when you try out

the first solution you think of, and you will be forced back

to the drawing board. In short, you have to be what Popper

calls a ‘piecemeal social engineer’. If you try the

alternative approach – the approach of ‘holistic’ social

engineering – you will just end up doing piecemeal social

engineering badly. The trouble with utopianism is thus that

it discourages piecemeal social engineering by ruling it out

as irrational. The trouble with historicism is that it

limits your choice of strategy. Either you can try to hasten

the pace at which history pursues its inevitable course, or

you can try to slow it down. (It depends on whether you want

to be ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’.) Especially Popper's

interest on essentialism was purposeful as well as

philosophical: it has been suggested that while the methods

of the natural sciences are fundamentally nominalistic,

social science must adopt a methodological essentialism.

This must, he maintained, is tendentious. After posting what

affects to be a viable alternative to the methods of the

natural sciences, the argument has insisted that the method

alone is relevant to sociology. So? in the grim light of

Marxism and its practice, Popper fears that the anti-

naturalistic doctrines of Historicism lead directly to the

notion that it is possible, and important, to discover

historical laws or trends. Such discoveries, although

undiscoverable in Popper's view, will then be paraded as

inevitably true. They will be accompanied by the assertion

that it is, by definition, morally improper, no less than

futile, to tamper with the inexorable (and inhuman) progress

of history. Having claimed that their style of political

theorizing conforms to scientific principles, historicists

insist on the importance of successful prediction and its

"corroboration". Popper concedes that, up to this point, he

has no large methodological quarrel with his opponents. What

is intolerable to him is when they move on to say, for

example, 'If it is possible for astronomy to predict

eclipses, why should it not be possible for sociology to

predict revolutions?. (p.36)

As soon as this demanding inquiry is made, it is

often modified. After all, if such a possibility does exist,

might it not - should it not? - be validated by a display of

successful predictions?. In order to avoid being put to

specific tests, the historicists answer is that

'qualitative' changes cannot be measured precisely. Instead

of backing down, however, he takes convenient refuge in

maintaining his ability to make long-term predictions or

large-scale forecasts. The convenience lies in the fact that

the truth or falsehood of long-term predictions lies 'over

the horizon'. Vindication or disappointment is often beyond

access in the lifetime of those who are, more often than

not, called upon to sacrifice themselves for the sake of

another generation, which can, in its turn, be called upon

for further necessary sacrifices. Thus, the coming of the

classless society, like that of the Messiah, has to be taken

on trust. The Marxist state of an alienated humanity lies on

the unseen side of the foreseeable struggle, which must lead

to the disappearance of capitalism. Because it is the nature

of humanity, or at least of the bourgeoisie, to kick against

the pricks, the withering away of the state and the end of

alienation may be delayed, for instance, by the necessity to

impose the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' we can and must

trust the evolutionary logic of history, but we have to

accept that the future cannot, of its nature, be

experimentally produced now. Unfortunately for this kind of

argument, Popper has a better one; the reason, he maintains,

that we can never accurately predict the future - and this

'never' is logical, as well as practical - is that it is

impossible for men to know now what they, or other men, will

know in the future. Hence we are never possessed of the data

that can allow us to make certain predictions about what may

lie over the horizon of our present stock of knowledge.

Marx, for instance, had no notion of modern industrial

methods or energy - production, still less of the forms of

economy that would be created as the result of his own

analysis of economic conditions and prospects. This is a

brief – and, I hope, accurate – outline of the main elements

of Popper’s position.

Actually, The Open Society,  was (as he once

described it) Popper’s ‘war work’. It was written during the

Second World War when Popper was a refugee, working as a

lecturer at Wellington University in New Zealand. By

attacking totalitarian utopianism and historicism Popper

was, or so he (rightly) thought, attacking the intellectual

roots of the great tyrannies which had plagued European

political life throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s. (The term

‘totalitarianism’ was coined around this time to

characterize such regimes, principally those of Hitler and

Stalin.) Possibly my impression of Popper was further

enhanced by the fact that he had something serious to say

about something serious, namely the relationship between

certain core ideas, central to the Western tradition of

political thought, and the contemporary world-situation.

While Popper produced an extensive body of literature

devoted to the social sciences, he has given too little

attention in modern social science historiography. Even

though he mainly concentrated on practical problems of the

methodology of the social sciences. Mostly the Popper's

writing were based on the social science methodology. To

understand Popper's social theories, it is necessary to

grasp his foundational ideas about the world. Popper

distinguished three groups of worlds! (a) the physical

world(world 1), which is the exterior and cosmic world, (b)

the world of mental states and subjective knowledge (world

2), and (c) the world of social and recorded knowledge

(world 3). World 1 concerns the cosmos and accompanying

physical forces. World 2 involves the mental and subjective

experiences of humans and the minds and feelings of animals.

World 3 embraces social phenomena, namely: culture,

language, laws, customs, and institutions, all of which are

found in a recorded form of knowledge ( e.g., houses, books,

masks, tablets, and the like). Though interrelated, the

three worlds are each autonomous and objective in that they

can be tested and demonstrated independently from the

subject. The tripartite cosmology provides the groundwork

from which to understand the Popperian division of sciences.

Inexplicably, authors tend to understand Popper's

classification of sciences separately from his world view,

although these classifications are essential to

understanding his social tenets as well. We will discuss the

characteristics of science and social sciences below, but

for now, note that the natural sciences are conceived of as

belonging to world 1, whereas the human and social sciences

correspond to world 2 and world 3, respectively. Even though

each of the three worlds designates particular categorical

qualities, each world can be connected with the same object

at different levels. To illustrate, a book can be considered

as a physical object, and for that reason the book belongs

to world 1.12 As a physical object , the book consisting of

paper, ink, illustrations, and a cover, manifests a series

of physical properties of the cosmos. However, the meaning

of the printed words, as well as any comment and annotations

made in the book, belong to world 2, since they represent

the mental states of the author and readers, which

correspond to a series of physical forces. The content of

the book is conveyed through forms of recorded knowledge

( e.g., alphabet, paragraphs, and chapters, etc..), which

belong to world 3. All these basically indicates the three

world are important and they also participate together in

the single and same object.

Here Popper understood the social and human sciences

to be interchangeable in order to have their best defend

scientific character, which is commonly thought to be

subjective, weak, non - measurable, etc.. In Popper's logic,

12 Cibangu, Sylvain K. Karl Popper and the Social Science, Regis University, Denver, USA.

three dominant concepts characterize the social sciences as:

(a) scientific (b) objective and (c) empirical. First,

Popper understood the social sciences as sciences in the

full sense of the word, a position that attempts to refute

the widespread idea that the social sciences represent a

weak form of science. Discussions of the scientific status

of the social sciences (their methods, theories, and laws)

are usually impaired by the common misunderstandings that

authors entertain about physics and its laws. The point

behind those misunderstanding is that Physical laws, or the

" laws of nature", are valid anywhere and always; for the

physical world is ruled by a system of physical uniformities

invariable throughout space and time. Sociological laws,

however, or the laws of social life, differ in different

places and periods.13

Popper's statement critiques the view that physical

laws are more universal than the laws of social life. This

view lacks empirical evidence and reveals a restricted

13 Popper, 1991, P.5

understanding of both the cosmos (world 1) and the social

world (world 3). Remember that all three worlds are made of

autonomous and objective physical entities. The laws of

physics are the same in each of the three worlds. Therefore,

by the virtue of their object of study, the social sciences

are objective. Popper elaborated, " although historicism

admits that there are plenty of typical social conditions

whose regular recurrence can be observed, it denies that the

regularities detectable in social life have the character of

the immutable regularities of the physical world. One needs

to bear in mind that historicism in the Popperian sense is

different from that encountered in social science

literature. According to Popper, historicism states that

human history involves regularities and patterns with which

the evolution of society can be understood and predicted. In

this sense, historicism simply means evolutionism.14 The

social sciences seek to pinpoint the regularities hidden in

the physical processes of the social world with the goal of14 Some particular sources on evolutionism and Popper's historicism are Cibangn (2009) and Urbach (1985), respectively

crafting newer problems and newer theories. "The method of

the social sciences, like that of the natural sciences,

consists in trying out tentative solutions to those problems

from which our investigations start. Solutions are proposed

and criticized. If a proposed solution is not open to

objective criticism, then it is excluded as unscientific".15

Popper also distinguished two kinds of societies; the

open society is based on critical discussion about such

human pursuits as achievements, decision, goals, and

authority, whereas the closed society does not allow for

social criticism, and may even exterminate individuals,

their ideas, and properties Popper thought that open society

introduce a new and practical view of social methodology

which resists closed thoughts, structures and actions. And

basically a closed society at its best can be justly

compared to an organism. The so - called organic or

biological theory of the state can be applied to it to a

considerable extent. A closed society resembles a hard or a

15 Ibid. P.66

tribe in being a semi - organic unit whose members are held

together by semi - biological ties, living together sharing

common efforts, common dangers, common joys and common

distress. It is still a concrete group of concrete

individuals, related to one another not merely by such

abstract social relationship as division of labor and

exchange of commodities, but by concrete physical

relationships such as touch, smell, and sight. And although

such a society may be based on slavery, the presence of

slaves need not create a fundamentally different problem

form that of domesticated animals. Thus those aspects are

lacking which make it impossible to apply the organic theory

successfully to have a open society.

Popper believed that, open society in which we are

actors of our history and makers of our destiny. The open

society gives a markedly social tenor to the wide range of

thoughts from scientific work, to knowledge and methodology.

Practically Popper brought the ideas under the philosophy of

science, even though he tried to explain some things in

political and social. This was because of his experience,

this was showed by Popper, through his writing, "by

inclination and by choice, my fields of study are the

natural science - physics and biology - and especially their

methods - yet I came to think seriously about the problems

of our political and social responsibilities, in my

sixteenth year, when I heard the news that Hitler had

invaded Austria, my homeland, I decided to write down some

of my thoughts about political freedom."16

Certainly, social issues became the focal point of

Popper's lifelong concerns. Psychology of the brain was

Popper's formative field, which drew primarily on physics

and biology, and left its indelible mark on Popper's

understanding of social science methodology. In effect,

though not always acknowledged, Popper's concepts are to be

taken "as means to brood social and political ends, and not

16 Ibid. P. 355

as ends in themselves"17. In light of the dire conditions

endured in Austria and beyond, open society has become

Popper's overarching thesis. A closed society is

characterized by abstract, repressive, uncontextualized, and

disconnected truths, all of which lead to passivity,

stagnation, misery, and monotony. An open society cherishes

creativity and participation of all individuals. The open

society does not come by the mere multiplication of nice and

good - hearted individuals talented with bright dreams, but

it comes by the hard work of criticizing what has been done

and what ought to be done in the interest of all. "What is

needed, what must be added to our dreams of a good society

is, more than anything is painful and unpopular".18 Policies

and decisions ought to be the subject of ongoing criticism

in order to implement an open society. Without critical

discussion, the offered basic criticism in order to

implement an open society. Without critical discussion, the

offered basic freedoms and other social advantages become17 Sassower, 2006, P. 4018 Popper, 2008, P. 289

unproductive and repressive. The open society is not a gift

or check generously awarded by powerfully philanthropic or

political figures, but it is a way of life secured by

critical thinking. The safety does not come from weapons,

but from critical thinking. Popper outlined the three

principles of critical thinking,

(i) I may be wrong and you may be right

(ii) Let us talk things over rationally

(iii) We may get nearer to the truth, even though we

do not reach agreement.

Here, the first principle is based on the fact that

humans are prone to error, even with the best intentions.

The second principle highlights the idea that errors can be

corrected and appreciated through critical discussion. Error

doesn't necessarily mean lack of knowledge. An error can

lead to a discovery stronger understanding of that which is

being studied. The third principle concerns the idea of

journeying, not arriving, towards the truth. Arriving means

there is no longer any horizon or vision to head to and long

for. We can arrive at a specific location or goal, but we

will always need horizons in order to see better and

farther. Popper used the open society and its core

methodology, critical thinking.19 Popper's critical

discussion comes into existence through inter - subjective

exchanges. Critical discussion bridges the space between

individuals and thus beyond subjectivity to reach the most

truth - like knowledge. As stated earlier, no theory or

ensuring institutions should outstrip the centrality and

urgency of criticism. Falsifiability concerns all theories

involved in the research process. It is worth pointing out

that the Popperian critical discussion is not synonymous

with agnosticism, a philosophical current that excludes all

knowledge. To be clear, Popper did not claim that a truth

and a theory cannot and should not be tested, accepted, and

maintained as such. Rather he advocated for an open society19 Cibangu, Sylvain K. Karl Popper and the Social Sciences, Regis University, Denver, USA. P. 31

that always assesses our vulnerabilities and attempts never

solutions. Open society does not mean a society void of

minimum goals, values, and priorities with which to go about

our daily lives. The question remains as to how far

toleration should go. This remark takes us to the

realization that Falsifiability is only a portion of

Popper's broader social program. Popper considered criticism

to be a responsible process whereby a person's selected

theories, propositions, hypotheses, and constructs are

called in question for a better grasp of reality and more

productive inquiry. Criticism is directed against a theory's

vulnerability. To be precise, in Popper's perspective, one

does not hold one's beliefs because they are true and

absolute, but because they are true - like and vulnerable.

Appraisal of the fittest theory does not eradicate

vulnerability. Though it is usually taken as negative,

vulnerability conveys the obligations, responsibilities, and

challenges that a given theory brings with it. Remember that

a closed society does not accept or acknowledge its

vulnerable areas. Only in an open society, can we capture

the points of vulnerability. As one can see, the open

society calls for a full review of our thinking in order to

bring about a better world for each and every human. An open

society implies an open universe, a universe which is

indeterminate in order to allow unrestrained and fuller

fulfillment of individuals. This also implies an

unrestrictive science which is always open and incomplete.

As Popper put it so well, " I regard freedom, political

freedom as well as a free and open mind, as one of the

greatest, if not the greatest, value that our life can offer

us". The open society is a way of life, from thinking to

acting to feeling to being. As mentioned above, science is

not exempt from the open society.

CONCLUSION

we have seen that how popper proposed the

falsification as a criterion, which demarcates science from

non-science. If a theory is falsifiable, then it is

scientific. If it is not, then it is unscientific. While

extensive literature has raised awareness about Popper's

idea of Falsifiability, this work has only given little

attention to Popper's social doctrines. His thinking is

remarkably social, seeking to defend and improve people's

lives in an open society, an open world, and an open

universe, through an open science. The idea of chosen people

is so engrained in our minds that we tend to see a few

people as actors on the stage of history and others as

recipients and emulators. Open society represents the core

tenet of Popper's writings. Against the widespread weak form

of social science, Popper supplied us with a strong sense of

the social sciences as being fully scientific, objective,

and empirical. It is erroneous to think that the laws of

physics do not apply to the form emotional and social

worlds. Popper attempted to show that science is not solely

experiment or rigor, but rather, science generates theory

and makes beneficial contributions to the world. Popper

suggested a richer understanding of scientific objectivity,

which he located in inter - subjective critical dialogue.

Popper was not an agnostic social thinker, advocating

Falsifiability for the sake of it, and reject all of

knowledge. Rather, he advocated the submission of scientific

knowledge to critical discussion as part of ensuring an open

society. Popper insists, again and again, that 'not one

example of a scientific description of a whole, concrete

social situation is ever cited. In today's an ideological

climate, where non - democratic blocs do not seriously

challenge western complacency, one is free to wonder whether

Popper's adherence to the notion that science alone can

provide a comprehensive model for human progress is not

itself, however genially, ideological. He seeks, like any

reasonable man, to discountenance false gods but he never

engages seriously with the notion of divinity. As a result,

he seems hardly to notice the deep social and intellectual

divisions implicit in the variety of religious responses to

the human condition. Popper did not prescribe universal

recipes for improving human lives; instead, he proposed an

open society in which individuals lives can be fully

actualized.

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