God versus Particle Physics by John Davies

Author:John Davies
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, God, religion, particle physics, science, scientism, physics, cosmology, atoms, subatomic, metaphysics, quantum mechanics, quantum theory, faith, belief, Dawkins, God Delusion, dogma, universe, big bang, reductionism, positivism, philosophy, truth, CERN, supercollider
ISBN: 9781845405595
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2013-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

When is a refutation not a refutation?

The great philosopher of science referred to in the preceding paragraph, Carl Popper, is the author of the quote, “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”[3]

Notwithstanding this view, Popper had very clear, positive, if somewhat idealistic views on how science qua science proceeded, and ought to proceed.[4] To cut a very long story extremely short, the gist of the argument is something like the following. A person has an idea (an hypothesis) about how something in the world works, and does an experiment to test the hypothesis. Let us suppose that the results are consistent with the hypothesis. After a few similar experiments the researcher elaborates the hypothesis into a theory, the purpose of which is to generalise the specific hypothesis, tested in experimental settings, into a general statement about the world. The theory, however, is never proved to be true because the possibility always exists that someone will do a study somewhere, the findings of which contradict the developing theory. Moreover, no matter how many confirmatory studies have been performed that provide results consistent with the theory, a single refutation is all that is required to prove the theory wrong, and so at that point the current theory falls. The ‘old’ theory is then critically re-examined to take into account the new contradictory findings and data, and new hypotheses are suggested. Next, new experiments are undertaken to test the new hypotheses and develop a new theory which stands until the next refutation, and then the cycle repeats itself. That, according to Popper, is basically how science moves forward. Refutation is the key component, and progress thus rides on the back of refutation, which is the major stimulus to theoretical development and new knowledge. It requires, of course, a willingness to entertain the idea that current theory might be wrong, and a readiness to accept that your own pet theory might get junked by somebody else at any moment.

It is clear, however, that Popper’s vision of how science moves forward is somewhat idealistic, and contains an implicit assumption that scientists are all saintly individuals with no personal motives, no desire for fame and fortune, no ego, no personal animosities, and so forth. Thus, for example, a person who has spent twenty years devoted to a particular standpoint and has made a reputation perhaps for his/her work in a particular area is expected (according to Popper) to stand up and proclaim that their life’s work was all wrong and has just been refuted, when a new post-doc in a rival institution, whom they didn’t like very much anyway, comes up with findings that contradict their own. Of course, it doesn’t happen like that.

That is one of the reasons why Thomas Kuhn, in a celebrated and controversial book,[5] painted a rather different picture of scientific progress, whereby ‘paradigm shifts’, or changes

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