Critical rationalism

Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper rejected any inductive logic that is ampliative, i.e., any logic that can provide more knowledge than deductive logic. In other words if we cannot assert it logically, we should at the least try to logically falsify it, which led Popper to his falsifiability criterion. Popper wrote about critical rationalism in many works, including: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934/1959), The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), Conjectures and Refutations (1963), Unended Quest (1976), and The Myth of the Framework (1994). Critical rationalists hold that scientific theories and any other claims to knowledge can and should be rationally criticized, and (if they have empirical content) can and should be subjected to tests which may falsify them. Thus claims to knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. They are either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not falsifiable and thus non-empirical. Those claims to knowledge that are potentially falsifiable can then be admitted to the body of empirical science, and then further differentiated according to whether they are retained or are later actually falsified. If retained, further differentiation may be made on the basis of how much subjection to criticism they have received, how severe such criticism has been, and how probable the theory is, with the least probable theory that still withstands attempts to falsify it being the one to be preferred. That it is the least probable theory that is to be preferred is one of the contrasting differences between critical rationalism and classical views on science, such as positivism, which holds that one should instead accept the most probable theory. The least probable theory is preferred because it is the one with the highest information content and most open to future falsification.

Covariations in ecological scaling laws fostered by community dynamics

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Silvia Zaoli, Amos Maritan

Scaling laws in ecology, intended both as functional relationships among ecologically relevant quantities and the probability distributions that characterize their occurrence, have long attracted the interest of empiricists and theoreticians. Empirical evi ...

2017

Clever Arbiters Versus Malicious Adversaries

Serge Vaudenay

When moving from known-input security to chosen-input security, some generic attacks sometimes become possible and must be discarded by a specific set of rules in the threat model. Similarly, common practices consist of fixing security systems, once an exp ...

Springer Berlin Heidelberg2016

The Mekong Delta Research Project as a Tool for Building a Pedagogical Approach

Covariations in ecological scaling laws fostered by community dynamics

Clever Arbiters Versus Malicious Adversaries

Clever Arbiters Versus Malicious Adversaries

The Mekong Delta Research Project as a Tool for Building a Pedagogical Approach

Covariations in ecological scaling laws fostered by community dynamics