According to the view of science which I am trying to defend here, this is due to the fact that scientists have dared (since Thales, Democritus, Plato's Timaeus, and Aristarchus) to create myths, or conjectures, or theories, which are in striking contrast to everyday world of common [sensory or auditory] experience, yet able to explain some aspects of this world of common experience. Galileo pays homage to Aristarchus and Copernicus precisely because they dared to go beyond this known world of our senses . . ..
Sir Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 102.
Although Popper is always clear that science doesn't derive from natural observations or inductive logic so empowered, in the past he distinguish between the myth-makers, the religious high priests, versus the scientist. As was shown in the Popper threads, Popper claims that the scientist is different from the myth-maker or religious priest or prophet, in that whereas the former devises critical argumentation to test the mytho-theological tenet, the myth-maker merely accepts the tenet on faith, or religious dogmatism.
And yet in the statement above, Popper doesn't seem to want to distinguish between the myth-maker, Plato, and his myth, Timaeus, versus the scientist who would create experiments to test the myth-maker's dogmatic statements?
Popper unifies the myth-maker and the scientist in the statement (above) because he realizes that if the scientist never creates science by means of his natural observations (Popper says as much) then the scientist would have to have some other organ, or organon, of perception, able to see deeper into reality than what can be perceived by the eye or the ear. Popper realizes that if the eye and the ear, bodily means of perception, aren't the source of modern scientific insight (and he's clear they're not) then the scientist must have a non-empirical avenue to "see" reality in a clearer way than the way he sees it through his eyes and hears it through his ears.
Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the Lord.
Ezekiel 13:2.
And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears.
Isaiah 11:3
Do ya kinda see where this is going? What's the word of the Lord the true scientist must receive if he's not to be deceived by his lying eyes and ears? What's the means of arriving at viable theories of the true nature of the world if the eyes and ears, derived through evolution, don't cut the mustard? And more importantly, what does it mean that the human mind has an invisible organ, or organon, through which reality can be perceived since neither Darwinism, nor evolution, deal with invisible organs able to perceive reality:
It is quite hard to realize that every soul possesses an organ better worth saving than a thousand eyes, because it is our only means of seeing the truth.
Plato, Republic.
The advance of science is not due to the fact that more and more perceptual experiences accumulate in the course of time. Nor is it due to the fact that we are making ever better use of our senses. Out of uninterpreted sense-experiences science cannot be distilled, no matter how industriously we gather and sort them. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her.
Sir Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 280.
Even in this last statement Popper makes a gaff unfitting of his brilliance when he says "
Out of uninterpreted sense-experiences science cannot be distilled, no matter how industriously we gather and sort them." The statement seems to imply that "interpreting" sense-experiences is the fix to "uninterpreted sense experiences". And yet Popper is clear that no sense experience is the source of scientific thought, "
Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her."
Where do the bold ideas come from? Popper is clear: myth and religion. His disjointed statement above is a way of not facing what we can see clear as day: that Popper has no means for explaining how religious thought, mythological reasoning, or faith, arrives at peculiarly valuable scientific speculation. And it ain't lucky guesses, or purely speculative thought, since there must be something to speculate about, and Popper is clear that empirical observation isn't the source of the speculation. So what is?
John
