The Medawar Lecture 2004 The truth about science

Abstract

The attitudes of scientists towards the philosophy of science is mixed and includes considerable indifference and some hostility. This may be due in part to unrealistic expectation and to misunderstanding. Philosophy is unlikely directly to improve scientific practices, but scientists may find the attempt to explain how science works and what it achieves of considerable interest nevertheless. The present state of the philosophy of science is illustrated by recent work on the 'truth hypothesis', according to which, science is generating increasingly accurate representations of a mind-independent and largely unobservable world. According to Karl Popper, although truth is the aim of science, it is impossible to justify the truth hypothesis. According to Thomas Kuhn, the truth hypothesis is false, because scientists can only describe a world that is partially constituted by their own theories and hence not mind-independent. The failure of past scientific theories has been used to argue against the truth hypothesis; the success of the best current theories has been used to argue for it. Neither argument is sound.

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