Karl Popper Part II — Creation and Evolution

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The philosophy of science is an important part of the creation-evolution debate, though sadly it is hardly ever discussed in detail. In this second video about Karl Popper, we explore his philosophy of science and especially his demarcation criterion of falsification. Then we turn our attention squarely on the theory of evolution and evaluate it systematically with Popper’s philosophy in mind.

— Bibliography in pinned comment —

Also: a big thank you to my reviewers (you know who you are :) )

0:00:17 Index
0:00:45 Summary Part I
0:03:20 Falsificationism – The Basic Idea
0:04:23 The Method of Induction
0:05:42 Gathering and Organizing Data
0:10:34 Making a Hypothesis
0:12:46 Testing Your Hypothesis
0:16:34 Verificationism vs. Falsificationism
0:19:24 Pseudoscience
0:19:43 Astrology
0:20:59 Phrenology
0:23:09 Eugenics
0:24:20 Marxism and Psychoanalysis
0:31:54 Metaphysics in Science
0:33:11 What Is a Metaphysical Theory
0:36:49 Popper on Evolution and Falsification
0:43:35 Michael Ruse Disagrees
0:47:09 Karl Popper Recants
0:50:24 Summary of the Debate
0:51:49 My Thoughts on Evolution and Falsification
0:54:14 Falsifying Evolution Occurring Now
1:00:38 Heredity, Variety, Selection
1:04:04 Falsifying Evolution Having Occurred
1:08:08 Consilience
1:17:15 Summary
1:19:08 What Will Be in Part 3
1:19:55 Next Video in this Series

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Infraction - Memories:

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#creation #evolution #creationandevolution #popper #karlpopper #science #philosophy #philosophyofscience #pseudoscience #falsification #verification

[SolomonsCave]

Karl Popper Bibliography

Primary sources

Books by Karl Popper:
- Popper, Karl, Logik der Forschung
- Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- Popper, Karl, The Open Society and its Enemies
- Popper, Karl, Conjectures and Refutations
- Popper, Karl, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- Popper, Karl, The Myth of the Framework
- Popper, Karl, Unended Quest, An Intellectual Autobiography
- Popper, Karl, "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind"

Interviews of Karl Popper:

Secondary sources

About Karl Popper:
- Ackerman, Robert John, The Philosophy of Karl Popper
- Fernandes, Sérgio L. de C., Foundations of objective knowledge: the relationship of Popper's theory of knowledge to that of Kant
- Hacohen, Malachi Haim, Karl Popper, the formative years, 1902-1945
- Magee, Bryan, Karl Popper
- Magee, Bryan, Philosophy and the Real World: An Introduction to Karl Popper
- O'Hear, Anthony, Karl Popper
- Schlipp, Paul Arthur, The Philosophy of Karl Popper; Volume I and II (contains articles by Karl Popper)
- Shearmur, Jeremy and Stokes, Geoffrey (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Popper

On the Philosophy of Science:
- Blake, R.M., Ducasse, C.J., Madden, E.H., Theories of Scientific Method
- Buckman, James et al., "Refuting phylogenetic relationships" (2006)
- Bunge, Mario Augusto (ed.), The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy
- Chalmers, A. F., What is This Thing Called Science? (third edition)
- Heller, Michael, Philosophy in Science; An Historical Introduction
- Humphreys, Paul (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science
- Zawistowski, Krystian, Order and Contingency The Duhem Thesis
- Ladyman, James, Understanding Philosophy of Science
- Lakatos, I, and Musgrave, A., (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
- Losee, John, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (fourth edition)
- Okasha, Samir, A Very Short Introduction Philosophy of Science
- Newton-Smith, N. H., The Rationality of Science
- Salmon, M. H., et al., Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
- Stamos, David N., "Popper, Laws, and the Exclusion of Biology from Genuine Science" (2007)

On Evolution and Creationism
- Elgin, Mehmet and Sober, Elliott, "Popper's Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory", The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, vol. 7 (Spring 2017), pp. 31-55
- Ruse, Michael, "Karl Popper's Philosophy of Biology", Philosophy of Science, Vol. 44.4 (Dec. 1977), pp. 638-661

[svengineer]

Bravo! Thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated. Thank you so much for creating and sharing it!
I expect to watch and re-watch over the coming years with both my sons as part of their home school curriculum, too.

[wesleycolemanmusic]

I adore this series! Can't wait for the third installation!

[alizo]

This video is soo important, thanks alot

[wp]

Marvelous. Certainly, I've come across the complaint that the Theory Of Evolution is a tautology. I never gavin the much consideration until now. Coming at this video as such a "newbie, " gave me a great appreciation for the question and substantial insights drawn from the arguments presented. It accomplished this (in my case) with a "Goldilocks" pedagogy, not overwhelming, technically, but far from trivial. Thank you and Kudos for that.

The last proposal on falsifying evolution led me to the conclusion that Popper's falsification criterion ma fail, not on the basis of logic, but on practical grounds. Should the world allocate from its science budget funds to pursuit that project you outlined? Or, would that money yield greater benefit (whatever that means) being spent on other pursuits. My gut take is the latter. Do other things with that money. I also feel very confident in my conclusion. I accept evolution as almost certainly true. Am I being the least bit rational in my assessment? I ask the same question of you. How confident are you that Evolution is the mechanism for the variety of living things on our planet? I don't expect your answer to differ much from mine. So, how then do we explain ourselves?

[Goat-eg]

You talking about probability of events in evolution towards the end. How good is it. Popper himself was someone who rejected induction. How does this add up

[pmyou]

A few criticisms….
I will say that I expect much of what is below will be criticisms of Popper rather than of you. I have not delved deeply into Popper apparently extensive volume of work.
1. You waved your hands about how much disagreement would falsify evolution. (~1:14:25) Good scientists provide error bars. It should be possible to evaluate this and discuss degrees and falsification at any current state of the field.
2. The disagreement you are talking about above the consilience of 4 lines of evidence. (~1:13:23) They are independent approaches. When you mention a new paper being rejected for contradicting previous publications from a different approach, that is actually wrong. The new paper may be returned to address the issue, but not rejected because it is contradictory. The conspiracy theory that there are gatekeepers designed to prevent disagreement doesn't hold up. Disagreement in science is what energizes further research. Repeatability tests will undoubtably show contradictions. That is how science self corrects. What will be called The Current Theory for any branch of science will always be the estimation of what comes closest to complete accuracy, but will remain less than perfect. That is why falsification needs to be always possible.
3. The idea that evolution must be ENTIRELY falsifiable neglects the nature of observation. It I am wearing a red T-shirt, that is an observation and I don't need a falsifiable theory to accept that. So, too, evolution is not a single theory, but a collection of best theories of all the subfields and particulars that lend it support. If I take the idea of evolution as "descent with modification and survival of the fittest", then this is observable. This is not theory so much as observation. Children are different from parent: observation. Fitness is tautological, yeah, they live or die, so not falsifiable.
4. One argument creationists attempt to use (no, you did not cover this in your videos so far), which mirrors the requirement for evolution to be 'entirely falsifiable, it the argument evolution MUST include other topics, such as abiogenesis, planetary formation, stellar formation, and other topics. (See Ken Ham.) If there was a LUCA, great. If it somehow turns out there were 2 or 3 or even 100 independent early cells from which all subsequent life descended, that would only mean a refinement of an aspect of abiogenesis, for a falsification of it. If something like that to happen I would not accept any claim that "all biology must be thrown away as falsified and we need to start from scratch!" Science if intended to be self-correcting, not self-annihilating.
5. You also cover how Popper recanted he original views of falsifiability of evolution to something more nuanced. When you recounted falling apples as an example of how you don't know all future instances, that applies for evolution, too. When relativistic mechanics was discovered, it did not falsify Newtonian mechanics, but rather added constraint on under what circumstance we could neglect relativistic effect and get
6. The concept of falsifiability has not been calibrated here. If you do an experiment that produces results that falsify a hypothesis, you have not demonstrated that the experiment was validly carried out. I will point you to the experiment that detected superluminal neutrinos. Turns out, no, the neutrinos were not actually going faster than the speed of light. Experimental defect in the cable cause bad results. So falsifiability is no more secure than experimental verification as proving a theory true.
OK, I have to move on, so will stop here.
Despite my comments above, I do appreciate your work on this series. It is approaching the top from a different direction that I have seen before and I am learning and having fun with it.
Thank you.