Karl Popper is the bomb I reckon. Everyone bags him because they say he's just a positivist. From what I've read he isn't at all, and he's happy with a small, very sensible sort of proposition. If I've read it right, he basically said that instead of saying "facts" are things we know to be true, let's call facts things that could be proven wrong, but no one has been able to prove wrong.
So a theory makes some claim. It describes ways in which that claim is predictive and describes events that would prove the theory wrong were they to occur. Then everyone runs off to their laboratories and telescopes and does their best to prove it wrong. If no one can, then you can tentatively call it a fact. It doesn't mean that something is right, only that so far no one has shown that it's wrong. Which seems very good sort of assumption to make.
Which is the scientific method.
Willem / 8:38pm / 24 June 2004
That’s what I thought. It is the method they use in a lot of the natural sciences I think. But apparently all those philosophy of sciences sorts ridicule the sciences that use it. They seem to think Kuhn is the man.
Ryan / 8:43pm / 24 June 2004
Oh my goodness – now there’s a flash back! Would you believe I used to read Popper when I was at Uni??? How it applied to Information Science I don’t recall. Uni was a long time ago …
lesley / 8:45pm / 7 May 2005