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Do the Successes of Technology Evidence the Truth of Theories?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Michael Smithurst
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Extract

Borrowing perhaps from mathematics, there is a custom of speaking of science as pure science and applied. Platonism, and other classical positions in the philosophy of mathematics, did not think of the applications of mathematics as a test of the truth of its theorems. 1 But the picture is otherwise for science and technology. It is initially tempting to say that the theories of pure science are empirical generalizations and that the applications of these theories in the makings and doings of technology, accordingly as they succeed or fail, test the theories. Qualifying factors and counter-acting causalities needing to be allowed for, falsification will not be immediate, but inexplicable and apparently irremediable technological failure is likely to be taken as falsifying a theory, and a continued and expanding pattern of technological achievement, a triumph of technology, as the superannuated trope has it, will be taken as a confirmation of a theory, from the inductivist perspective, adding in spadesful to the evidence for its truth.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 38 , March 1995 , pp. 19 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1995

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References

1 But emphatically these are not the only positions. See Ormell, C. (ed.), New Thinking about the Nature of Mathematics (Norwich: MAG-EDU University of East Anglia, 1992).Google Scholar

2 Warnock, G. J., review of The Logic of Scientific Discover. by Popper, Karl R., Mind LXIX (1960), 99–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Mellor, D. H., ‘The Popper phenomenon’, Philosoph. 52 (1977), 195–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Mellor ‘The Popper phenomenon’ puts the point dramatically: ‘A century of electromagnetic theory has transformed radio from the merest speculation to the firmest of facts … the whole point is that we have more reason to expect Mr Pye's transmitters to work than Mr Heath Robinson's. Popper is indeed hot for rationality; but by divorcing it from reasons for anticipating one future experience rather than another, he deprives it of much of its import. Obviously we have such reasons, and the progress of science has given us many more, as everyone's actions every day attest that they believe. Why will Popperians not admit to such beliefs, which they reveal every time they turn on the light or use the telephone?

4 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigation. (Oxford: Basil Black well, 1958).Google Scholar The references are to numbered sections.

5 Hume, D., Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, Nidditch, P. H. (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 38.Google Scholar

6 Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 115.Google Scholar

7 Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, p. 114.

8 Austin, J. L., Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 115 and 123.Google Scholar

9 Wittgenstein, L., On Certainty (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), 558. References to On Certaint. are to numbered sections.Google Scholar

10 For an account of this, see Gould, S. J., ‘An earful of jaw’, Eight Little Piggies, Reflections in Natural History (London: Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 95–108.Google Scholar