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Science and falsificationism: the failures of current theories are necessary conditions for the emergence of new theories more powerful and more extensive

We return after this digression to the design falsificationism progress of science as a process leading to problems with speculative assumptions, in turn critical to their possible forgery and problems new. Two examples will illustrate this point, the first raite the flight of bats, the second of the progress of physics.

We start with a problem. Bats can fly with ease and speed, avoiding the branches of trees, telegraph son, other bats, in addition, they practically steal the night. This is problematic because the plausible theory that animals, like humans, with their eyes apparently falsified. A falsificationism try to solve this problem by issuing a conjecture or hypothesis ...

The development of physics from Aristotle to Einstein via Newton provides another example on a larger scale. Falsificationism description of this development is as follows. Aristotelian physics was awarded to a certain extent, many successes. She managed to explain many phenomena: the fall of heavy objects on the ground (they join their natural place in the center of the universe), the operation of siphons and pumps, lifts (including the explanation is based on the impossibility of the vacuum), etc..

But Aristotle's theory came to be falsified on numerous occasions.

stones dropped from a high mast in a ship moving uniformly fall on the bridge at the foot of the mast and not to a certain distance from the mast, as she predicted. The moons of Jupiter revolve around Jupiter, not around the Earth. Many other falsifications accumulated during the seventeenth century. Newtonian physics, on the contrary, having been created and developed on speculation like Galileo and Newton, proved superior to Aristotle's theory that it replaced.

If Newton's theory was able to account for falling bodies, the operation of siphons and pumps, lifts and all other phenomena already explained by the theories of Aristotle, it could also explain the phenomena that were problematic for Aristotle. In addition, Newton's theory could explain phenomena that were not taken into account by the theory of Aristotle.

AFChalmers, What is science?, "falsification and Progress

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