The truth of science: Empiricists versus Popper versus Kuhn Abstract This paper is going to discuss the truth of science throughout the past centuries. So the Empiricists, who believed in truth by observation. And how Karl Popper (1902-1994) and Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) tried to get closer to a better scientific model by fal- sification and paradigm shifts respectively. 1 Introduction For as far as we know through writings and draw- ings people have always been interested in doing some kind of science. The word science comes from the Latin word ”scientia”, which means ”knowl- edge”. The Egyptians, Greek, Chinese and Romans already had ideas about science. Some of these sci- entific ideas were nicely documented and preserved. Up until the 20th century people used induction1 as means of proof without questioning the principles of induction. This paper is going to explain why ac- cording to Popper induction was not the way to do ”good science”. And how Popper thought science 1Induction is a specific form of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support a conclusion, but do not ensure it.[7] worked. Then compare this with the way Kuhn ar- gued science worked. 2 Definitions First …show more content…
He thought that induction was not a valid proof technique. Scientists should be critical and skeptical. Trying to reach the truth was ”one of the strongest motives for scientific discovery”[1]. But ’the truth’ does not exist according to Popper. We only get closer to it. This is why he introduced the concept of falsification. Which is, instead of try- ing to prove something is true, you try to prove it’s false. If you find a counter example, the hypothesis is rejected. If you can’t falsify2 it, your hypothesis become a rule until someone can falsify it. So the more you falsify, the closer we get to the truth (ac- cording to