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Realism and the Aim of Science (1983)
the very term ‘data’ (‘givens’) is misleading.
we are born with ideas, and with the ability to make progress by changing them.
Persephone,
theories are easily variable
bad explanations.
The quest for good explanations is, I believe, the basic regulating principle not only of science, but of the Enlightenment generally.
‘the West’ – grew around the values entailed by the quest for good explanations,
And good practical decisions
as tolerance of dissent, openness to change, distrust of dogmatism and authority, and the aspiration to progress both by individuals and for the culture as a whole.
Now consider the true explanation of seasons. It is that the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun.
That is a good explanation – hard to vary, because all its details play a functional role.
it is only when a theory is a good explanation – hard to vary – that it even matters whether it is testable.
Bad explanations are equally useless whether they are testable or not.
The best explanations are the ones that are most constrained by existing knowledge
explanation-based conception of science
The theory reaches out,
This reach of explanations is another meaning of ‘the beginning of infinity’.
It is the ability of some of them to solve problems beyond those that they were created to solve.
the present era in human history, unique for its sustained, rapid creation of knowledge with ever-increasing reach.
Explanation Statement about what is there, what it does, and how and why.
Reach The ability of some explanations to solve problems beyond those that they were created to solve.
Fallibilism
Problem A problem exists when a conflict between ideas is experienced.
Good/bad explanation An explanation that is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for.
The Enlightenment (The beginning of) a way of pursuing knowledge with a tradition of criticism and seeking good explanation...
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Rational Attempting to solve problems by seeking good explanations; actively pursuing error-correction by creating criticisms of both existing ideas and new proposals.
The West The political, moral, economic and intellectual culture that has been growing around the Enlightenment values of science, reason and freedom.
the real source of our knowledge is conjecture alternating with criticism.
adding to existing ideas with the intention of improving upon them.
I wondered whether I would be the first and last human being ever to pay conscious attention to a particular galaxy.
terms they only ever separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation is theory-laden.
Most ancient accounts of the reality beyond our everyday experience were not only false, they had a radically different character from modern ones: they were anthropocentric.
they centred on human beings, and more broadly on people – entities with intentions and human-like thoughts – which included powerful, supernatural people such as spirits and gods.
that anthropocentric approach has never yielded any good explanations beyond the realm of human affairs. In regard to the physical world at large, it was colossally misconceived.
‘Principle of Mediocrity’:
Stephen Hawking put it, humans are ‘just a chemical scum on the surface of a typical planet that’s in orbit round a typical star on the outskirts of a typical galaxy’.
‘in the cosmic scheme of things’
parochialism.
Spaceship Earth.
People are significant in the cosmic scheme of things;
The Earth’s biosphere is incapable of supporting human life.
the overwhelming majority of species that have ever existed on Earth (perhaps 99.9 per cent of them) are now extinct.
the ‘life-support system’ itself wiped them out
Earth’s ‘life-support system for humans’ has been provided not for us but by us, using our ability to create new knowledge.
There are people in the Great Rift Valley today who live far more comfortably than early humans did, and in far greater numbers, through knowledge of things like tools, farming and hygiene.
the biosphere is incapable of supporting human life. From the outset, it was only human knowledge that made the planet even marginally habitable by humans, and the enormously increased capacity of our life-support system since then (in terms both of numbers and of security and quality of life) has been entirely due to the creation of human knowledge.
ancient myths of a past Golden Age,
human abilities, including the distinctive ones such as the ability to create new explanations, are necessarily parochial.
progress in science cannot exceed a certain limit defined by the biology of the human brain.
reach:
