How effective are inductivism and disprovism in establishing scientific knowledge, and what are their limitations?

Inductivism and disprovism have been proposed as the main methodologies for establishing scientific knowledge, but each has its own limitations, such as lack of logical justification and lack of clarity in disproving, which makes them not perfect alternatives.

 

The philosophy of science has evolved to provide a logical procedure for establishing scientific knowledge and how certain theories can be established as knowledge. Inductivism, advocated by Francis Bacon and others in the 17th century, played an important role in establishing modern philosophy of science. Scientists of this era believed that an inductive approach to scientific inquiry, which involved collecting empirical data and deriving general laws from it, was the best way to discover scientific truth. In the early stages of scientific inquiry, inductivism particularly emphasized the importance of experimentation and observation, which were seen as essential tools for scientists to expand their understanding of natural phenomena.
The later school of thought, disprovism, sought to address the logical problems of inductivism. Proposed by Karl Raimund Popper, it offered a new methodology for verifying the truth of scientific theories. It emphasized that all scientific knowledge is provisional and subject to revision as new evidence emerges. As such, it argues that scientific progress is achieved through the repeated disproving and revising of theories. But does disprovationalism completely solve the problems of inductivism?
Inductivism refers to a type of logical structure in which scientific knowledge is gained through induction, where induction is the process of empirically generating laws based on various observations. If a phenomenon is repeated over and over again without exception, it is assumed that the remaining cases will be the same as the observed cases based on those cases, and it was Francis Bacon who organized this into logical steps. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon laid out the premise of scientific knowledge, which is that one should not have any prior beliefs when collecting cases. “Francis Bacon, for example, directly criticized the scientific knowledge of Aristotle, which had been believed in Europe for about 2000 years. Next, we observe a specific situation to get the facts we want, using methods such as experiments. Finally, we use generalization, or induction, to derive scientific theories from our observations. This way of explaining science is quite reliable because it’s based on objective data.
However, there is a fatal flaw in the inductive method of generating scientific knowledge from objective data: the principle of induction itself cannot be logically justified. A famous example is the scientific knowledge “All swans are white.” This knowledge is derived from many observations. This knowledge is obtained inductively by observing individual swans and determining that each of them is white. However, the fact that all swans observed to date are white does not guarantee that all swans observed in the future will be white. Since we haven’t observed all the swans in the world in order to obtain this knowledge, it is possible that the black swan has not yet been observed, i.e., the knowledge is false due to lack of observation. As you can see from these examples, induction relies on the combination of individual objects to describe a whole, so the results are inevitably incomplete.
The limitations of inductivism aren’t just limited to logical problems. As scientific discovery progresses, it’s not uncommon for previously generalized laws to be invalidated by new evidence. For example, in classical mechanics, Newton’s laws were long considered scientific truths, but with the advent of Einstein’s theory of relativity, it became clear that these laws could only be applied under specialized conditions. These historical examples demonstrate the incompleteness of inductivism. Nevertheless, inductivism played an important role in the early stages of scientific inquiry, allowing for the systematic analysis and generalization of empirical data.
Therefore, Karl Raimund Popper advocated for disprovism to solve the problems of induction. Disprovism is the scientific view that the best theory of a particular phenomenon is the one that has withstood repeated attempts to disprove it. “According to Karl Raimund Popper, scientific theories always have the characteristic that they can be refuted by empirical facts, which is called the requirement of disprovability. Therefore, even if a theory has not been disproved so far, it is not necessarily true. However, such theories can be considered better than previous theories. In other words, disproversialists believe that no scientific theory is perfectly true, and that theories in a particular field continue to evolve as they become better and better, as theories that can withstand multiple disproofs emerge.
As you can see above, disprovationalism claims that there are no cases in which a theory is true, thus solving to some extent the problem of inductivism, which derives true theories from individual cases. Disprovism has deepened our understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry in that it emphasizes that science is a constantly revising and evolving process rather than a definitive truth. However, it did not solve any of the fundamental problems with inductivism, for the following reasons.
First, observations can be wrong. In disproving theories, disproversialism relies on observing counterexamples to refute existing theories. However, when observations or experiments are conducted to find counterexamples, existing theories are used, which, in Karl Popper’s view of disproving theories, are currently the best theories but are never true. In other words, there is no guarantee that the counterexample is true, so the counterexample cannot properly refute the existing theory. In order to refute a theory, the observations that refute it must be based on some theory, and since all theories are not true according to disprovism, there is no foundation for refuting a particular theory. Even in inductivism, inaccuracies in observations lead to logical leaps, and theories are created to replace them, but inductivism does not solve this problem at all.
Second, it is unclear what is being disproved. Gilbert Durand, a French philosopher of science, argues that scientific propositions are not verifiable in isolation, but in combination with auxiliary assumptions. In other words, if T is a theory, O is an observation, and A is an auxiliary assumption, it is not just T that implies O, but T&A. “According to Van Quine, A can include mathematical statements, logic, and even logic. Therefore, when verifying a theory, we cannot determine whether T is wrong or A is wrong. In order to refute a theory, it is necessary to show that T is wrong, but it is also possible that T&A is wrong because A is wrong. Therefore, the method of disproof used by disproversialism cannot be used to say with certainty that a theory is wrong.
Third, disprovationalism is also limited in its ability to explain the progression of scientific theories. While it argues that a theory can be temporarily accepted if it is not disproved, it does not adequately explain scientific revolutions or paradigm shifts. For example, Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory shows that scientific progress is often made in leaps and bounds rather than incrementally, in which old theories are discarded entirely in favor of new ones. These examples suggest that disprovism does not fully capture how science actually works.
For these reasons, disprovism has also been criticized as an inadequate theory for validating scientific knowledge. Not only did it fail to solve the problems of inductivism, but it also had its own problems. In light of this, it was never a good substitute for inductivism.