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Popper, Laws, and the Exclusion of Biology from Genuine Science

Acta Biotheoretica volume 55, pages 357–375 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to argue that biologists should stop citing Karl Popper on what a genuinely scientific theory is. Various ways in which biologists cite Popper on this matter are surveyed, including the use of Popper to settle debates on methodology in phylogenetic systematics. It is then argued that the received view on Popper—namely, that a genuinely scientific theory is an empirically falsifiable one—is seriously mistaken, that Popper’s real view was that genuinely scientific theories have the form of statements of laws of nature. It is then argued that biology arguably has no genuine laws of its own. In place of Popperian falsifiability, it is suggested that a cluster class epistemic values approach (which subsumes empirical falsifiability) is the best solution to the demarcation problem between genuine science and pseudo- or non-science.

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Notes

  1. Olmstead has recently added (in a personal communication to this author) that his impression at the time (still held by him as valid) was that many of the principals in the debate had either selectively quoted Popper or had knowingly misrepresented his writings in order to support their views, in both cases for a readership that they knew had probably never read Popper.

  2. Those who think that for Popper corroboration can be decoupled from falsifiability, or that an increase in corroboration means an increase in probability or likelihood, need to read his autobiography (1976), in which he makes it clear that the degree of corroboration is merely “a report of the manner in which a theory has passed—or not passed—its tests, including an evaluation of the severity of the tests” (p. 103). For Popper, “the decisive point” about corroboration is that it is “linked to improbability,” since the more a theory forbids (its empirical content) the more improbable it is. Hence, “it was thus impossible to identify it [corroboration] with probability (although it could be defined in terms of probability—as can improbability” (p. 104). What we may further add is that a falsified theory can still have a high degree of corroboration, although it would have zero likelihood or probability. The two concepts are not the same at all for Popper.

  3. For Popper on the logical positivists on laws of nature, cf. Popper (1959, 36n*4, 37n7, 40n*2, 79n2). In addition to Popper’s references, cf. the papers by Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Otto Neurath in Ayer (1959, pp. 107, 160–161, 283–286, 293).

  4. The passage in LSD that Jarvie (2001, 42f.) makes much of definitely seems to create a problem for this view. To make what Popper says there consistent, following the Principle of Charity, with what he elsewhere says about theories in world 3, I suggest that when Popper (1959) says that “it is impossible to decide, by analysing its logical form, whether a system of statements is a conventional system of irrefutable implicit definitions, or whether it is a system which is empirical in my sense; that is, a refutable system” (p. 82), we must read what he says in the light of the chapter that follows, ch. 5, “The Problem of the Empirical Basis.” There Popper responds to the objection that we can never know if and when we have a true basic statement that falsifies a scientific theory so that falsifiability must be rejected. Popper’s answer is that this is a practical problem, not a logical problem, and that in each case we must eventually make a “decision” and reach an “agreement” on when we have an actual falsifier. Popper could be read as saying the same thing in the passage Jarvie focuses on. If read carefully, Popper does not actually say that there is no logical distinction between a system of implicit definitions and a truly empirical system of statements, only that there is no conclusive way to decide. Hence the need for “decisions.” On this reading, then, world 3 would have in it genuinely scientific theories and systems of implicit definitions, but the latter, logically, would not be scientific.

  5. This conclusion is driven at but, alas, left implied in the otherwise excellent critique of Popper on history by Minogue (1995, pp. 229–234).

  6. Supervenience is an asymmetrical relation such that a property (also an object, state, structure, fact, kind, or relation) is said to supervene on a disjunctive base of subvenient properties (ditto) if one can infer from any one of the subvenient properties the supervening property and (ii) one cannot infer any one of the subvenient properties given the supervenient property. Information is often cited as a good example of a supervenient property, as are liquidity, fitness, consciousness, and goodness.

  7. Interestingly, Popper will not allow us to say for any domain that it has no laws. As he says in LSD, “In no case… can we say with finality that there are no laws in a particular field. (This is a consequence of the impossibility of verification.)” (1959, pp. 205–206). I should think it not only follows from the impossibility of verification but also from the impossibility of the empirical falsification of strictly existential statements. At any rate, contra Popper we can say that a particular field has no laws as a matter of inference to the best explanation and give good reasons why. In other words, we can debate concepts of laws and proposed cases of laws and conclude rationally that biology is a science without laws.

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Acknowledgments

A primitive version of this paper was read at the tail end of the Karl Popper 2002 Centenary Congress, held July 3–7 in Vienna. For the present much reworked and final version of the paper I am especially indebted to the editor of Acta Biotheoretica and three anonymous referees.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, York University, 4700 Keele St., North York, ON, Canada, M3J 1P3

    David N. Stamos

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Stamos, D.N. Popper, Laws, and the Exclusion of Biology from Genuine Science. Acta Biotheor 55, 357–375 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-007-9025-6

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Keywords

  • Popper
  • Science
  • Demarcation
  • Laws of nature
  • Biology
  • Evolution
  • Phylogenetic systematics