Cosmology and convention

I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are 'conventionalist’ in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in response to observations that falsified the standard model as it existed at the time. The use of conventionalist stratagems in response to unexpected observations implies that the field of cosmology is in a state of 'degenerating problemshift’ in the language of Imre Lakatos. I show that the 'concordance’ argument, often put forward by cosmologists in support of the current paradigm, is weaker than the convergence arguments that were made in the past in support of the atomic theory of matter or the quantization of energy.     

科学结论的逻辑问题——科学研究规律探讨之四

讨论了科学研究的成果——科学结论的逻辑问题,因为从特定的事例归纳到普遍的规律存在着“归纳逻辑谬误”,所以,在科学研究中特别要注意科学结论外推的局限性.介绍了波普的关于科学结论的证实和证伪的观点:科学本质上是一系列命题的集合,现实世界的综合命题本体,至少在原理上可以用经验的观察来证伪,这就是科学,科学不是以它的学科内容或声称掌握某种知识的确定性为特征,而是以建立和检验命题的方法为特征的.最后,讨论了科学结论的解释功能和预言功能.     

论知识增长方式与图书馆学知识的实证特征

提出了知识增长模式的"证实和证伪"原则,指出了人类知识必须经历证实和证伪检验才能发展和演化。分析了图书馆知识的证实和证伪特征;强调了知识一旦被证实或证伪都将作为真理的一部分进入人类知识体系。     

规制会计信息造假的法律思考

导致会计信息造假的原因很多,经济与政治利益的驱动、监督管理机制的不协调、会计法律体系的不完善等都是会计信息造假的诱因。会计信息造假会给国家、企业及会计行业本身造成严重的后果,因此,我们有必要从明确会计法律责任主体的范围、改变举证责任方式、加大惩罚力度、完善会计法规体系这四个方面来完善相关的法律制度,以达到预防会计信息造假的目的。     

科技编辑证伪的必要性及其意义

借鉴证伪法的理论提出了科技编辑证伪法.对于优化传播科技创新成果,科技编辑证伪具有必要性;为不埋没科技创新成果,编辑证伪具有合理性;对于编辑的特点来说,证伪具有可行性.科技编辑证伪可以发掘自身的批判意识,通过反驳剔除科技成果中的错误.     

Falsificationism Falsified

A conceptual analysis of falsificationism is performed, in which the central falsificationist thesis is divided into several components. Furthermore, an empirical study of falsification in science is reported, based on the 70 scientific contributions that were published as articles in Nature in 2000. Only one of these articles conformed to the falsificationist recipe for successful science, namely the falsification of a hypothesis that is more accessible to falsification than to verification. It is argued that falsificationism relies on an incorrect view of the nature of scientific inquiry and that it is, therefore, not a tenable research methodology.     

科学靠证伪而不是反伪向前发展

科学是靠证伪向前发展的。反伪不可能造成科学的发展,有时还会阻碍科学的发展。科学史上唯一的反伪“英雄”李森科就阻碍了苏联遗传学的发展。多一些证伪英雄,少一些反伪“英雄”,中国科学就能更顺利地向前发展。     

Withdrawing Unfalsifiable Hypotheses

There has been little research into the weak kindsof negating hypotheses. Hypotheses may be unfalsifiable. In this case it is impossible tofind a contradiction in some area of the conceptualsystems in which they are incorporated.Notwithstanding this fact, it is sometimes necessaryto construct ways of rejecting the unfalsifiablehypothesis at hand by resorting to some external forms of negation, external because wewant to avoid any arbitrary and subjectiveelimination, which would be rationally orepistemologically unjustified. I will consider akind of ``weak' (unfalsifiable) hypotheses that arehard to negate and the ways for making it easy. Inthese cases the subject can ``rationally' decide towithdraw his hypotheses even in contexts where it is``impossible' to find ``explicit' contradictions: theuse of negation as failure (an interestingtechnique for negating hypotheses and accessing newones suggested by artificial intelligence) isilluminating. I plan to explore whether this kind ofnegation can be employed to model hypothesiswithdrawal in Poincaré's conventionalism of theprinciples of physics and in Freudian analyticreasoning.     

从"可证伪度"、"确认度"到"逼真度"

波普尔的证伪主义方法论是否具有只重视经验证伪而完全否认经验“证实”的片面性,学术界对此的回答基本上是肯定的;而他的科学哲学思想是否前后一致,则是学术界的一个重大分歧。本文试沿着波普尔的思想轨迹,通过对他先后提出的三个理论评价标准的深入剖析,阐明了自己的看法。     

Genesis of Karl Popper's EPR-like experiment and its resonance amongst the physics community in the 1980s

I present the reconstruction of the involvement of Karl Popper in the community of physicists concerned with foundations of quantum mechanics, in the 1980s. At that time Popper gave active contribution to the research in physics, of which the most significant is a new version of the EPR thought experiment, alleged to test different interpretations of quantum mechanics. The genesis of such an experiment is reconstructed in detail, and an unpublished letter by Popper is reproduced in the present paper to show that he formulated his thought experiment already two years before its first publication in 1982. The debate stimulated by the proposed experiment as well as Popper's role in the physics community throughout 1980s is here analysed in detail by means of personal correspondence and publications.