[ExI] ​Popper and unscientific theories

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Mon Jun 13 05:12:09 UTC 2016


On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 5:12 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > if Popper knew what a 4D hypersphere was (and he almost certainly
>>> > didn't) he would say the existence of such a thing was a untestable
>>> > hypothesis and the simplest explanation that fit the observable facts
>>> > is the Earth is at the center of a regular old 3D sphere with a 13.8
>>> > billion light year radius and no fancy stuff is required. I would
disagree.
>>
>>
>> Where are you getting this from? I'm not a fan of Popper and I'm not sure
>> what he know about geometry, but he actually praised Einstein for
relativity
>> theory, especially general relativity because he believed Einstein's
theory
>> made testable predictions
>
>
> OK lets talk about testable predictions. If the universe were a finite
> 4D hypersphere
> then if you kept moving in a straight line you'd eventually come back to
> were you started, and if we look at the variation in the microwave
> background radiation in one part of the sky we'd expect it to match up
> with the pattern 180 degrees away, but we observe no such correlation.
> That could be explained if the universe is larger that 13.8 billion light
> years, the light informing us of such a correlation hasn't had time to
> reach us and in a expanding acceleration universe it never will. But
> that's not testable, Popper would say we're not allowed to hypothesize
> about places we can never observe, therefore things must be the way
> things seem to be and the Earth is at the center of the universe.

Let me state this a different way: Where does Popper hold this view? I've
only read his book on quantum mechanics and a few others things here and
there. My understanding is that he's not against positing unobservables in
scientific theories -- which unobservable parts of the universe would be,
be they subatomic particles or regions of space not open to inspection.

The example you use about, e.g., would seem to fall under his
falsificationist view because one thing a larger universe might have
(adding in a big helping of other assumptions) is parts that a correlated.
I'm not a Popperian, but I don't see why one couldn't take that tack if one
acceptable what seem to be the core ideas of Popper and Popperians. Let me
be more clear: Why couldn't Popperians hold all kinds of views that fit
with the consensus in cosmology now -- a consensus you seem to broadly
agree with?

And do you have textual support where Popper or Popperians make claims that
go strongly against the consensus in this area or of this area when they
were written?

I'm also not sure why you cut out the rest of my post -- you know, the part
that included:

"-- i.e., ones that could be falsified. (In fact, the usual targets for
Popper, in his demarcation of science from non-science, were Marxism and
psychoanalysis, which he believed the followers of insulated from
falsification.)"

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/
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