The two psycho-analytic theories were in a different class. They were simply non- testable, irrefutable. There was no conceivable human behaviour which could contradict them. This does not mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing certain things correctly: I personally do not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance, and may well play its part one day in a psychological science which is testable. But it does mean that those 'clinical observations' which analysts naively believe confirm their theory cannot do this any more than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in their practice. And as for Freud's epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id,[161] no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than for Homer's collected stories from Olympus. These theories describe some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form.
At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all—or very nearly all—scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles' theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides' myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid
follow the social and moral codes of their culture; and the ego, which must negotiate between the demands of the id and the superego in order to make decisions about how to behave.
down from the beginning). I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or 'metaphysical' (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or 'meaningless', or 'nonsensical'. But it cannot claim to be backed by empirical evidence in the scientific sense—although it may easily be, in some genetic sense, the 'result of observation'.
(There were a great many other theories of this pre-scientific or pseudo-scientific character, some of them, unfortunately, as influential as the Marxist interpretation of history; for example, the racialist interpretation of history—another of those impressive and all-explanatory theories which act upon weak minds like revelations.)
Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or significance, nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the problem of drawing a line (as well as this can be done) between the statements, or systems of statements, of the empirical sciences, and all other statements—whether they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply pseudo-scientific. Years later—it must have been in 1928 or 1929—I called this first problem of mine the 'problem of demarcation'. The criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, for it says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
What question does Popper say he was trying to answer when he first conceived of his theory of science as falsification? What factors led him to ask this question?
How did the theories of Marx, Freud, Adler, and Einstein influence Popper in his quest to understand the scientific method? Which of these four theories does he consider pseudoscience? Which does he consider genuinely scientific?
What is the difference between the explanatory power of a theory and its scientific reliability? Why, according to Popper, do so many pseudoscientific theories seem to be able to explain so much?
What is the point of Popper's story about his conversation with Alfred Adler? Does the story reinforce the main point of the essay?
What is the main difference between Einstein's theories and those of Marx, Freud, and Adler? What makes Einstein's ideas "scientific"?
What does Popper mean by a "risky prediction"? MAKING CONNECTIONS
1. Apply Popper's ideas to the scientific arguments of Lucretius (p. 292) or William Paley (p. 311). Do either of these other scientists generate falsifiable hypotheses?
How does Popper's understanding of science compare with Richard Feynman's (p. 53)?
How is Popper's understanding of evidence different from the deductive method employed by Thomas Aquinas (p. 483)? Can Popper's model properly be called "inductive" (see p. 655)?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Examine the phrenology chart on p. 105. Write a paper explaining how the theory represented by this chart could be tested. Does phrenology contain any falsifiable claims?
Use Popper's idea of falsification to examine a recent scientific controversy, such as those over climate change and intelligent design theory. Which claims in the debate are falsifiable? Which are not?
barry commoner
The Four Laws of Ecology [1971]
BARRY COMMONER (1917-2012), a leading ecologist and environmental activist, and one of the founders of the environmental movement in the United States, was born in Brooklyn, New York. He studied zoology at Columbia University as an undergraduate and then attended Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1941. After a short stint in the army during World War II, he joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught courses in botany and plant physiology for more than thirty years.
Commoner combined academic research with political activism throughout his career. In the 1950s, he became a vocal opponent of above-ground nuclear testing, which the United States and the Soviet Union conducted during the Cold War, and which he saw as having an extremely negative effect on the world's ecosystems. He also wrote extensively on the connection between poverty and overpopulation. Unlike Garrett Hardin (p. 344), who believed that wealthy nations should refuse to give even minimal food aid to poorer, overpopulated countries, Commoner believed that poverty caused overpopulation and that industrialized nations could only address the root of the problem by radically redistributing the world's wealth.
In 1979, Commoner founded the Citizens Party, an organization that he hoped would serve as the political arm of the environmental movement. In 1980, he ran for president of the United States under the party's banner, receiving more than 200,000 votes and becoming the first minor-party candidate to qualify for federal matching funds. After the election, Commoner returned to his native New York City and spent the rest of his career at Queens College, where he was still listed as a senior scientist when he died in 2012 at the age of ninety-five.
Commoner is best known as one of the founders of the science of ecology, or the study of the ways that different natural systems are connected to each other. His bestselling book The Closing Circle (1971) has become a standard reference point in that field. In this book, he argues that the laws of ecology are as absolute and inflexible as the laws of physics and that the nations of the world must align their policies with those laws or pay a steep price. The example presented here, "The Four Laws of Ecology," offers four ironclad principles that, Commoner believes, should become the basis of all economic and social policy.
To survive on the earth, human beings require the stable, continuing existence of a suitable environment. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the way in which we now live on the earth is driving its thin, life-supporting skin, and ourselves with it,