[ExI] ​Popper and unscientific theories

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 1:08 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> The philosopher Karl Popper said
> a theory is unscientific if it makes a prediction that can't
> be falsified
> regardless of how good experimenters become,
> but what if
> a theory that makes lots of predictions that could have been proven false
but
> weren't and instead were confirmed, but
> the same theory
> also makes some predictions that can't be falsified?
> Should we just pretend those predictions don't exist?
> The Big Bang Theory makes a lot of predictions that have been confirmed
> and one of them is that the universe is 13.8 billion years old
> ,
> and so regardless of where we point out telescopes
> it predicts we can
>  never see anything more distant than 13.8 billion years. And
> indeed our telescopes have never
> see n anything more distant than 13.8 billion years. T
> here are only 2 conclusions
> that can be drawn from that observation:
>
> 1) There are
>  lots of stars more distant than 13.8 billion
> light years but we'll never be able to see
> them because light hasn't had enough time to reach
> us and due to the accelerating universe there will never
> be enough time to reach us.

Never say never. :)

> 2)
> Nothing exists that is more distant than 13.8 billion light years and t
> he Earth is at the center of the Universe.

I think that would be the road strict positivists might take -- or
something like it. Maybe something along the lines of, If you can't observe
it, it's not meaningless to discuss it.

> Despite what Popper might say I think #1 is the more scientific
conclusion.
> In a similar way Everett's Many Worlds Theory does such a good job
> explaining how the 2 slit experiment works
> I don't think it's unscientific to conclude other worlds might exist.

I don't agree with Popper's solution to the demarcation problem, but what
makes you think one is scientific and the other not? It seems like you're
just arguing that it sounds good to you. (And, unlike positivists, I've no
problem with positing unobservables.) The issue would be why it sounds good
and what makes it so. I won't fault you for not having a ready answer to
this because it enters the dense thicket of philosophy of science,
something that's been debated now for several centuries.

Regards,

Dan
  See my latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," at:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
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