Empiricist inductivism and Popperian approaches to science compared

Science

Critical Examination of the Empirical Iductivist and Popperian Approaches to the Scientific Method

The pursuit of science is often imagined untroubled by philosophical quandaries. Unfortunately, this is not the case. A number of complications arise in science, especially when intellectuals and academics attempt to ascertain what is known and how it is known that said facts are known. More importantly, distinguishing between scientific and non-scientific conceptions of the world around us can be difficult and not always apparent. Evidence for theories, even contradictory ones, abounds. Determining which theories and approaches are scientific and which are not can be a difficult proposition. The purpose of this study is to examine two epistemological frameworks through which scientific information can be (and has been) categorized and understood. The first is the empirical inductivist methodology, which has a history dating back to the mid-nineteenth century and before. The second was pioneered by Karl Popper specifically as an attack on inductivist reasoning and in order to delineate between theories that are scientific and others that are not. It will become evident, through critical analysis of these two approaches to science, that the empirical inductivist approach is less rigid and exacting that the Popperian approach. The latter is a better characterization of scientific epistemology.

The differences in these approaches to science are significant. First, however, it is important to conceptualize exactly what I mean when I refer to an empirical inductivist approach to science or the Popperian approach. Consider the component words of empirical inductivist. Empiricism is a simple enough concept to understand. It is the idea that factual information about the world can only be experienced through the senses. Induction is no more complex. In essence it is the logical inference of universal laws from individual instances and isolated facts. It is a process of abstraction and generalization that forms the backbone of the empirical sciences (Dolhenty, 2005). Thus, an empirical inductivist approach is the scientific process of taking observed and experimental facts and using them to deduce greater pieces of knowledge. An individual employing this kind of science would observe natural processes and then induce a hypothesis and natural law that could explain the available data.

Karl Popper's approach to science is literally diametrically opposed to empirical inductivist approaches. Admittedly, Popper states, science has been delineated from pseudoscience through the use of empiricism and induction. But Popper cautions that this is not acceptable. He points out that it is very easy to find evidence in support of a theory if we are looking for it (Popper, 1963). Consequently, Popper developed a series of intellectual challenges to the inductive process that he hoped would help demarcate science from pseudoscience. His approach is not a comment on the significance of information, its social value, or even the veracity of empirical evidence. Rather, Popper pointed out that a truly scientific theory must possess more than inductive reasoning to back it up. Some of his required elements include the fact that the theory must be refutable and every genuine attempt to test the theory must be an attempt to falsify it. The Popperian approach to science is essentially the argument that for a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable (Popper, 1963).

This, of course, is the most significant difference between these two approaches to scientific investigation. The empirical inductivist approach makes no claim that a theory must be falsifiable. It only requires that an individual can reasonably induce the theory from the given information. From that point, further evidence can be found in support of the theory. Popper makes the opposite claim. He points out that no number of singular statements of empirical evidence, no matter how accurate, can ever absolutely prove a theory; however, it only takes one false bit of evidence to disprove the theory (McKinlay, 1998). Therefore, the Popperian approach is anti-inductive. It is not interested in proving theories but rather with continuing to not disprove them. The distinction is significant and suggests that the approach undermines the whole of the scientific method established in the 19th century and built on the concept of induction.

The empirical inductivist approach was formalized in the mid 19th century, particularly by intellectuals like Francis Bacon. Its premise was that since science did not speak any human language we must use empirical evidence in order to figure out the natural laws that exist behind the natural processes (Wheeler, 2005). In this way, Bacon and his cohorts were employing a kind of Holmes approach to science in which evidence was used to formulate theories for which new evidence would then be sought out as corroboration. However, instead of applying this methodology to crime, the empirical inductivist approach applies it to science. The empirical inductivist approach emphasizes the primacy of observation and experimentation to the scientific process (Siegel, 2001). According to the approach, scientific laws and principles follow from observation and experimentation. Theories and laws are constructed based on the availability of data to create a broader understanding of the way that the world works. Advocates of this approach, of which most scientists and laymen are, argue implicitly and explicitly that only observation and experimentation can grant knowledge of natural laws (McKinlay, 1998).

Popper completely upset this conception of the scientific process by arguing that the induction could not be relied upon to produce scientifically rigid results. The Popperian approach claims that induction is invalid. No number of basic statements about the world can ever allow one to make a broad, abstract generalization, or theory, about those statements (McKinlay, 1998). For example, Popper would have no problem with an individual relying on empiricism to state that the chair in which I am sitting is brown. However, regardless of whether or not the next hundred chairs I see are brown, the Popperian approach would not permit me to then extrapolate that all chairs are brown.

Two rationales are often called upon to justify induction. The first is that we should accept induction because it's worked in the past. However, this is impossible to prove in a scientific manner. It is a circular argument that presumes the existence of some inductive, natural principle at some infinite point in the past in order to work. The second rationale would have us believe that induction is only a function of probability. But such a rationale must refer outside of itself to one's own experience and thus is also circular (McKinlay, 1998). There can be no probable experience that does not also rely on induction to demonstrate that these experiences are consequently probable in the future. The empirical inductivist approach, thus, becomes a case of the proverbial cart preceding the horse. With a theory in hand, proponents of this approach are then free to go out looking for corroborating evidence that the theory is correct. However, empirical evidence can always be interpreted and manipulated in order to produce acceptable results. Thus, this approach to science is demonstrably unscientific.