chekmate

In my Philosophy of Science class, I am supposed to be writing a paper of an analysis/comparison of the ideas of Popper, and how Sagan (in DHW) expands upon them. Frankly, I don't see the comparison... Any help?

Vorkosigan

Both are discussing pseudoscience. One of Popper's most important contributions was his demarcation idea, that science could be marked off from pseudoscience by the criterion of falsification. This is often taken for a definition of science and termed naive falsificationism, but Popper only intended it as a way to tell science from pseudoscience.

So you might ask, how does Sagan expand, enlarge upon Popper's criterion of demarcation and deploy it against the forces of ignorance and evil?

Hugo Holbling

Vorkosigan suggested:

I think this is a good idea, chekmate. Popper's criterion of falsifiability took something of a battering at the time from Lakatos; you might like to look into whether or not Sagan's expansion took account of this criticism and was able to overcome it.

G V

Hugo Holbling:
"Popper's criterion of falsifiability took something of a battering at the time from Lakatos; you might like to look into whether or not Sagan's expansion took account of this criticism and was able to overcome it."

RE: 'at the time' & 'took account of' made me ask myself when were these phil of sci books published ?

For my own future reference I made this list:

Popper 1902-94 [Logic... pub in German 1935]
Polya 1887-85 [2 books 1957 & 62]
Kuhn 1922-96 [Structure...62 & 2nd ed 70]
Lakatos 1922-74 [all amazon titles after 74]
Feyerabend 1924-94 [Against Method 1975]
Sagan 1934-96 [DHW 96]

Ergo Sagan could refer to all of above BUT Lakatos died in 1974 and could not answer 'Against Method' or anything written later.

Hugo Holbling

G V wrote:

I mentioned Lakatos as i've recently read "For and Against Method", wherein his lectures on scientific method are published. As i understand it, he intended to use these lectures as the basis for his answer to Feyerabend. Lakatos is very critical of falsification as a demarcation criterion in these lectures; ergo, it would perhaps be of interest to ask whether or not philosophy of science had overcome these problems by the time of Sagan. This may be enlightening precisely because Lakatos died before he was able to tackle Feyerabend, although their letters give an indication of how the battle would fare.

Of course i could be wrong. I wonder if Sagan read Lakatos' lectures?

[ October 06, 2002: Message edited by: Hugo Holbling ]</p>

G V

Hugo asked:I wonder if Sagan read Lakatos' lectures?

I tried to get Sagan's DHW but it was checked out of public library yesterday.

It occurs that amazon might have DHW index...

will check and return.

G V

Sorry all.
I changed my display name before I saw Hugo's reply. The thread showed the old name when I replied to Hugo's reply to my reply.......

Hugo, you may want to edit the above reference to the old name......

G V

Popper 1902-94 [Logic... pub in German 1935]
Polya 1887-85 [2 books 1957 & 62]
Kuhn 1922-96 [Structure...62 & 2nd ed 70]
Lakatos 1922-74 [all amazon titles after 74]
Feyerabend 1924-94 [Against Method 1975]

None of above appear in the index to DHW. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Hugo Holbling

It looks like my suggestion is of little help to chekmate, then...

Rusting Car Bumper

This is an excellent list except for a glaring ommision.

You would to add to this any of Feynman's essays that deal with philosophy of science. IMO, he does a better job than Sagan by a longshot.

Check out the relevant portions of Character of Physical Law for starters.

DC