Let's Get Smart!

Sir Karl Popper:

Well, it is safe to say that a lot of this article went right over my head. However, the parts that I think I understand were fairly "logical".

The first idea I struggled with, and what probably made understanding the rest of the article difficult, was wrapping my head around what Popper meant by inductive. Inductive methods, inductive reasoning, problem of induction, principle of induction. It's everywhere, so I had to first try to understand what induction meant in this context. As I understood it, induction was taking specific details and using them to construct universal principles. So like the faulty example in the text, I see a ton of white swans (specific detail/personal experience) so I make the claim that all swans are white (universal statement). Thus the problem of induction, because somewhere out there a gray swan could exisit.

The next idea I latched on to was tautology. I decided (after some reading on dictionary.com) that this word in this context meant a faulty kind of logic (A is or is not A). An example of tautology from the text: "It will or will not rain tomorrow." Well duh. This is my way of testing if something is good logic, if you want to say "well duh" after it, that means it is bad logic. And in a sentence s simple as the one about rain, it is well duh. But I bet since scientists are smart people that a tautological sentence could be written and the "well duh" factor would be much more difficult to detect. Because of this, Popper feels that a statement or theory must be both provable and falsifiable for it to be empirical and true.

There was a conflict of thought in the text I found interesting and also unresolved. Popper seems to be saying that science needs to be objective. Biases and opinions take away from the possible validity of theories. There is a better chance of proving something if metaphysics stays out of the way. But Einstein is quotes in the text as saying that all theories, theses, and ideas about the natural world are based in creative thought and opinion. I agree with Einstein, but I can see how letting your heart guide your research can make some pretty garbage research.

This article just reinforces to me how problematic the positivists notion of Truth is.

Kenneth Burke:

I found the discussion of symbols and reality pretty intense, specifically the part where Burke is talking about how dependent humans are on symbols for out constructs of reality. He almost suggests that without maps, the layout of the continents and the oceans wouldn't really be "real" for us, despite existing.

I think the idea of terministic screens was explained clearly in this article. The example of Watson, Bowlby (creeper), and St. Augustine demonstrated how all three men observed the habits of infants, and based on their observations created/used different terms to describe similar actions, thus creating different realities of the same actions. Terministic screens seem to not only involve word choice, but also the context of the words in the field and social situation they are being used in.

Continuity and discontinuity are like comparing and contrasting terms. We can use terms to describe how something is like something, or how something is unlike something. But based on the Darwin example, using terms like this shouldn't be mutually exclusive because then the terms can fail to be accurate. It is the same as omitting the mention of certain writing that contradicts the claim you are trying to make on a certain topic. By neglecting to accurately present all sides of an argument or idea, the idea you are making is inaccurate and can be unethical.