The Critical Rationalist Vol. 02 No. 03 ISSN: 1393-3809 15-Sep-1997
References
3 Reductionist NightmaresGame Trees and Ant Country
(13) Many, perhaps most scientists do not play this game, do not address the problems I have listed here. They understand their subject well, they perceive holes in our understanding of it, and they try to patch these holes, confident that the result will be a "whole cloth" (in the Perry Mason sense, a complete fabricated story with all the sub-stories tying in). I have addressed this question for biochemistry/molecular biology (Cohen & Rice 1996), suggesting that integration should not be only on one "level" but should permit integration with nearby theory in other disciplines. However, the work for that paper convinced me that Popper's unease with the "explanations"--usually adaptive theories--in much of biology was to be expected. So, rather than lauding the structure of physical theories while deploring that of biology, I take the reverse position.
(14) I believe the unsatisfactory, "bogus" nature of disproof in biology is (almost) equally applicable to chemistry and all but the most arid physics. The properties of the vast array of inorganic compounds sit so clumsily upon the physical-chemistry theories meant to explain--predict--them that they must be dealt with essentially as a Natural History (with organic chemistry's contribution being somewhat more ordered--like physiology or comparative anatomy, perhaps, in the life sciences). The zoo of "fundamental" particles and constants is clearly awaiting a Linnaeus rather than a Dirac or even a Mendeleev. The theories of physics which so beautifully exemplify Popper-in-action are, in fact, the most theoretical, the most mathematical, the most "invented". Brahe, Copernicus, Newton all took the theoretical road, invented a new mathematical form to apply to the recalcitrant data. But Newton was not successful because gravity fitted the data any better--epicycles had been pretty good; he invented a new way of looking at the paths of the planets. And the theorists of this kind have always been the heroes of our physics/astronomy stories. The descriptive stuff (Europa has an ice sheet 10-20 km deep over a sea of perhaps 50 km depth, Pluto/Charon are an unlikely pair, etc) needs another kind of mind to organise--perhaps a planetary Linnaeus, again. Popper was a good philosopher, and philosophical physics fitted his ideas well. But I am basically a "bench" biologist, and my distrust of disproof strategies extends from my own expertise outwards to bench chemists and physicists. Our "normal science" is indeed theory-laden and theory-led; but its theories are tested by a great swathe of logical and experimental methods, only rarely by the pure light of reason.
References
3 Reductionist NightmaresGame Trees and Ant Country
The Critical Rationalist Vol. 02 No. 03 ISSN: 1393-3809 15-Sep-1997
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TCR Issue Timestamp: Mon Sep 15 19:14:01 GMT 1997