{"id":6177,"date":"2016-09-01T20:45:29","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/?p=6177"},"modified":"2016-09-01T20:45:29","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T19:45:29","slug":"popper-on-scientific-objectivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2016\/09\/01\/popper-on-scientific-objectivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Popper on scientific objectivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\n&#8230;science and scientific objectivity do not (and cannot) result from the attempts of an individual scientist to be &#8216;objective&#8217;, but from the <em>friendly-hostile co-operation of many scientists<\/em>. Scientific objectivity can be described as the inter-subjectivity of scientific method&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Two aspects of the method of the natural sciences are of importance in this connection. Together they constitute what I may term the &#8216;public character of scientific method&#8217;. First, there is something approaching <em>free criticism<\/em>. A scientist may offer his theory with the full conviction that it is unassailable. But this will not impress his fellow-scientists and competitors; rather it challenges them : they know that the scientific attitude means criticizing everything, and they are little deterred even by authorities. Secondly, scientists try to avoid talking at cross-purposes&#8230;In the natural sciences this is achieved by recognizing experience as the impartial arbiter of their controversies. When speaking of &#8216;experience&#8217; I have in mind experience of a &#8216;public&#8217; character, like observations, and experiments, as opposed to experience in the sense of more &#8216;private&#8217; aesthetic or religious experience; and an experience is &#8216;public&#8217; if everybody who takes the trouble can repeat it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This is what constitutes scientific objectivity. Everyone who has learned the technique of understanding and testing scientific theories can repeat the experiment and judge for himself.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"right\">Karl Popper, <i>The Open Science and Its Enemies<\/i>, Chapter 23 (p217-218, Vol. II)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;science and scientific objectivity do not (and cannot) result from the attempts of an individual scientist to be &#8216;objective&#8217;, but from the friendly-hostile co-operation of many scientists. Scientific objectivity can be described as the inter-subjectivity of scientific method&#8230; Two aspects of the method of the natural sciences are of importance in this connection. Together they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-self-defence","category-quotes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5KQtW-1BD","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6180,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6177\/revisions\/6180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}