Prejudices of the Senses
The problem that troubled most of philosophers of science today, after the rise of the new logic, is that of observation. Since science discusses not observations but observation reports, this raises the question, how do we verbalize what we observe? This
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Prejudices of the Senses
The problem that troubled most of philosophers of science today, after the rise of the new logic, is that of observation. Since science discusses not observations but observation reports, this raises the question, how do we verbalize what we observe? This question is very troublesome. It invites scientific theories of observation and of language1 yet as it is at the basis of science it should precede science (Popper 1935, §25). What do people see? More precisely, what do people see when they have no ideas? Why is the second version preferable? It looks suspicious, as it raises the question, can people have no ideas? Since other animals cannot articulate, we may ask, perhaps, how do they see facts? How do they see the world? We do not know. This question becomes too abstract and too remote from traditional philosophy of science, so that here we may ignore it. We may then take an item that is standard in the physical sciences since 1917: the photographic plate. The simplest way to deceive the scientific community is to mislabel a photograph of some experiment. We may dismiss this kind of example too, and again as too abstract. Our disposition towards naïve realism is very strong, and it tells us to ignore this problem altogether. To bring the problem home, so as to prevent its dismissal as too abstract, suffice it to observe that the Encyclopedia Britannica, first edition (1768–1771), endorses the phlogiston theory, viewing it as a successful set of pure observations-reports—ones free of theory. This portrays the theory of phlogiston much too favorably. The current edition of the same encyclopedia ignores all this; it portrays the same theory much too unfavorably. To learn from this story, we may wish to be cautious and not take for granted as quite unproblematic any observation that looks to us as plain as our noses.
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The claim that observation reports are unproblematic combines the view that some observation reports are theory-free, that they are verifiable, and that the ideal language shares a structure with the world—the picture theory of language so-called. All this is too naïve for words.
J. Agassi, The Very Idea of Modern Science: Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 298, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5351-8_6, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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Prejudices of the Senses
The Problem of Observation
We hardly doubt the commonsense view that the world of experiences (as Kant has called it) comprises theory and factual information combined. How they combine is not obvious. The problems of methodology concern the combination of thought and observation, namely, the accord between theory and experiment. Since theories are questionable, they undergo tests by observations. Galileo said, a test is no good if it is guaranteed to defend the theory come what may: “So no one can never win against you, but must always lose; then it would be better not to play” (Galileo 1953, 439). Now the theoretical part of any observa
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