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Quoted message said:No a hypothesis should be based on facts.
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GH:- The philosophical issues involved in what should constitute a hypothesis is not as clear as
this statement suggests. Popper, for example, strongly disagree and he is considered the most
influential philosopher of science when it comes to hypothesizing. The notion that hypotheses should
be based on facts is a rather recently common notion, which I think has been driven by the operation
of funding agencies. It is, after all, more appealing to grant money to those proposing to test
hypotheses founded in facts than to those proposing to test factually unfounded hypotheses. It is
not clear, however, that this funding procedure is in the best interest of science in the bigger
picture. It might, for example, tend to lead to codification of preconceived notions and penalize
more creative good ideas.
JE:- It seems to me that as long as a hypothesis can be tested against nature, it can only be based
on factual information from nature, i.e. predictions of testable theories of nature itself. The
hypothesis that all witches have warts on their noses may seem testable, but it isn't because
witches themselves are not a testable theory, even if just a hypothesis of warts on their noses
superficially appears to be. The unfortunate tendency here is to reverse such a silly hypothesis
proposition into just a self fulfilling theory (a tautological view) where all people that may be
regarded as witches can be now be tested to be so by just inspecting their noses for warts.
Laughable? yes. Did it ever happen in human history? Yes. Would you laugh it happened to you? NO.
My point is that facts are products of testable but non refuted theories of nature and not _just_
the imagination. Only the most basic perception is granted to us, i.e. the brain requires a testable
theory just to make sense of even the most basic, perceptual patterns we may be receiving from our
senses. A histologist and myself peering down the same microscope may receive about the same
perceptual patterns but we do not conceive of the same objects, because without training, most of
the histological objects he can see do not exist, for me. Most of these objects, unlike just the
warts on a witches nose, are only visible to the histologist because they form predictions deduced
from testable theories of science.
The best new ideas seem to come from puzzling refutations of older, testable, ideas. Here the
imagination is forced to work in a unique way to make a prediction. So what would I fund to search
for newer and better ideas? I would firstly fund the testing to refutation of any established idea.
This, of course, INCLUDES the valid verification of such a view as well as its possible refutation.
I would then fund new ideas that may not be testable at moment but reasoned argument shows them
moving towards and not away from, testability. I would definitely not fund hypothesis of how best to
feed the fairies at the bottom of my garden even if political pressure urged me to do so.
Best Wishes,
John Edser Independent Researcher
PO Box 266 Church Pt NSW 2105 Australia
[email hidden]