The Death of Socrates

The Death of Socrates

Friday 14 January 2011

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

The senses and any dialectic based on sense data cannot achieve episteme "comprehensive knowledge" (?). As Neil says, representational perception is the only communication between existent reality and our consciousness.

On the other hand, with the help of intuition, inspiration, imagination,  speculation and guess-work. one might hope to jump off the end of the pier of opinion and belief "doxa" built up by rational discussion based on the interpretation of experimental and experiential data and attain an understanding which is not founded on such data but only corroborated by it.

This final "jump off" is not a safe option. It is always a "leap of faith" and cannot be known to result in "episteme", but it is the best we can do.

Popper discourses at length on "Conjecture and Refutation" as the true "Logic of Scientific Discovery" and I think that he is spot on in this.

Theoreticians speculate and propose. Experiment and experience disposes. The dialogue between these two agencies seems to result in a progressive deepening of understanding, even though it cannot be shown to necessarily do so. Hopefully, it will eventually result in episteme.

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