🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct27.023900.29811@nuscc.nus.sg>,
matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Brett McInnes) writes:

>> I've included sci.physics in this discussion since there was a recent
>> discussion about the contributions (if any) Karl Popper has made to
>> the philosophy of science, and I think that Karl Popper's theory of
>> falsifiability is relevant to the question of confirming universal
>> laws (such as all crows are black).

>I think that Carlo Rubbia's Nobel should be given back. After all, by
>establishing the existence of the W bosons, he didn't falsify anything,
>right?

Wrong on several accounts. First of all, an experiment is a good
experiment, in Popper's sense, if it is an *attempt* to falsify a
theory. The search for the W can be viewed as an attempt to falsify
the Weinberg-Salaam model of weak interactions; if no W had been found
in the predicted energy range, then the WS model in its current form
would have been rejected. Second, every experiment, whatever the
outcome falsifies any theory that predicts some other outcome, so the
discover of the W falsifies any theory that predicts the nonexistence
of the W or that predicts a W of the wrong mass.

The experiment did *not* confirm the Weinberg-Salaam model, because
there are many possible models that are consistent with the result of
the experiment.

The only experiments that Popper's view would rule out as worthless
are one-time, nonrepeatable "confirmations" such as the nonrepeatable
discovery of a magnetic monopole or cold fusion.

>In fact, the only successful particle theory experiments, a la Popper,
>are those which find nothing.

That doesn't follow.

>Or did Rubbia falsify the belief that W particles do not exist?

Among other things.

>I suspect that physicists like to pay lip-service to Popper because his
>theories portray them in such a romantic way: as daring iconoclasts,
>rebels against dusty orthodoxy. How boring to say that the job of the
>scientist is to establish what is true! It's so much more sexy to
>imagine publishing one's papers in the Washington Post: Orthodox physics
>overthrown! Establishment coverup suspected.

I think you've got it entirely backwards. No single experiment, or even
ensemble of experiments can establish what is true, it can only set limits
on what can possibly be true. The Weinberg-Salaam model was not proved
true by the discovery of the W, and General Relativity was not proved
true by the discovery that gravity bends light. However, these experiments
establish new and tighter bounds on what any successful theory must be
able to explain.

I also disagree about the relative "glamour" of establishing what is
true versus what is false. When a prediction comes true, it makes all
the news, but when it is falsified, people tend to be quiet about it.
Notice the difference in press between the discovery of cold fusion and
the experiments that failed to repeat the discovery. Or notice the lack
of press that failures to detect proton decay received. In contrast, if
someone discovers proton decay, that will surely be front-page news!

>It is striking that very few real physicists seem actually to read or to
>heed Popper: they go on talking about proving their theories to be
>correct, etc. Perhaps they imitate Dr Johnson, who is supposed to have
>said of the novels of Congreve that he would sooner praise them than
>read them.

It is human nature to want your beliefs to be confirmed, but it is not
science. When scientists go about talking about such and such
experiment confirming their pet theory, or when they downplay
experiments that contradict their pet theory, they are doing
ego-building, not science.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY