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4 ideas
| 15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In the physical sciences the particular observations and experimental results are usually orderable, while in the biological sciences it is the classes of organism which are ordered, not the particular organisms. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: Harré is interesting on the role of ordering in science. Functions can be defined by an order. Maths feeds on orderings. Physics, he notes, focuses on things which vary together. |
| 15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In accounts of experiments, by Faraday and others, the role of the guiding hand of the actual experimenter is written out in successive accounts. The effect is to display the phenomenon as a natural occurrence, existing independently of the experiments. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: He records three stages in Faraday's reports. The move from active to passive voice is obviously part of it. The claim of universality is thus implicit rather than explicit. |
| 15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
| Full Idea: When we come upon a counter-instance to a generalisation we can save the putative law, by treating it as potentially analytic and claiming it as a definition. ...Thus magnetism doesn't hold for phosphorus, so we say phosphorus is not a magnetic substance. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: He notes this as being particularly true when the laws concern the dispositions of substances, rather than patterns of events. |
| 18284 | Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper] |
| Full Idea: Whereas particular reality statements are in principle completely verifiable or falsifiable, things are different for general reality statements: they can indeed be conclusively falsified, they can acquire a negative truth value, but not a positive one. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws' | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's approach to science, but I prefer to look at coherence, where very little is actually conclusive, and one tinkers with the theory instead. |