Transcript Oct 20

Science news…
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NASA’s sky map!
NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (or IBEX) produces
the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system (2
dimensional) and of our place in The Milky Way
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If interested, go to: www.NASA.gov
Readings/topics on power point
we have not yet gotten to (but will)
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And, so, not covered on test one
“The Cosmology Primer” (first week)
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Slides: Seeing Natural Selection as an algorithm
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Demonstrates, again, the indirect evidence that supports “The
Big Bang Theory”
And as such, using reverse engineering to offer/generate/argue
for hypotheses about the origins of traits
Point: NS is not random; and reverse engineering as typical in
evolutionary theorizing – and, again, moving from what is
observable/observed to what is not.
Again, none of these readings/topics was sufficiently
covered in lectures or sections and will not be on test 1.
Popper: “Falsifiability is the criterion”
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His target: “pseudo-science” masquerading as
science. His examples:
 Adlerian
psychology
 Freudian psychology
 Marxist theory
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What they have in common:
 Their
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advocates see confirmations everywhere
Where (I contend) they differ:
 The
first two may well be “un-falsifiable” (see next
slide)
 The problem with Marxism (which was falsifiable,
originally) was with its advocates, not the theory itself
Popper: “Falsifiability is the criterion”
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His targets:
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Adlerian psychology
Freudian psychology
What renders them “un-falsifiable”?
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Not the uncritical attitude of their advocates
Each, because of its content, has in effect a “protective belt” that
repels any counterexamples…
And makes it compatible with any state of affairs
Adler: Everything is compatible with someone acting out of state
of inferiority
Freud: the theoretical notions of the unconscious, repression and
suppression can “answer” any objection based on “I did not
experience that…”
Popper: “Falsifiability is the criterion”
Popper has logic on his side; for while no empirical
theory can be proven, any (genuinely) empirical
theory can be disproven and, at least in principle,
by just one failed experiment or prediction, by just
one observation.
 Consider the generalization/hypothesis:
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 “All
swans are white”
 While each observation of a white swan adds support to
the hypothesis, it can never prove it
 But an observation of just one non-white swan does
falsify it conclusively…
Popper: “Falsifiability is the criterion”
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Although Popper makes it clear that it was not clear at the
time whether Einstein’s theory was true, it turns out to be
scientific on Popper’s view.
Eddington’s experiment:
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Einstein’s theories predicted that light, like material objects, is
subject to the gravitational “pull” of large objects
Hypothesis: light traveling from a star that is located near the sun
from the perspective of the Earth should bend as it passes the sun
(so we have a prediction from the theory that can in principle be
falsified)
A bold hypothesis and one that would take years to carry out.
Scientists had to wait for a solar eclipse so that a star’s light
coming towards us from the vicinity of the sun would be visible.
An hypothesis that, in principle, observation could falsify.
Eddington’s experiment
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A reconstruction of what Eddington’s photographs
demonstrated: