Chapter Three Popper’s Critical Rationalism

Notwithstanding the divergent intellectual and cultural background of the American pragmatist Dewey and the Austrian-born critical rationalist, Popper, there was considerable affinity in their work. In rejecting inductionism as a foundational basis for grounding science, they both identified the quest to resolve a problem as the critical starting factor in scientific investigation. They each in somewhat different ways drew out the importance of theory in guiding the initial sense of direction for research and linked competent inquiry to an increasingly refined relationship of idea formation and data analysis all the way through the analysis that includes the mediation of rigorous experimentation and the testing ground of falsification.

In drawing on truth as a regulative ideal, both Dewey and Popper were equally rigorous in their quest to become as precise as the data allows in the analysis of causation of any given problem. They both sought to expand upon common sense realism through formal scientific investigation and viewed science and more generally human experience as a potential field of unending growth. They both rejected idealism and positivism in science, grounding investigation in whatever methodologies, approaches, and theories were deemed most effective throughout the various stages of a research project. They were mutually broad in their application of scientific investigation to the problems of living experience. However, Popper had more of an orientation toward the resolution of scientific problems while Dewey focused on the quest for the intellectual organization of experience through the unity of reconstructed existential situations.

Logic as a theory of inquiry, in the language of Dewey, was of central interest to both, representing the passionate consummation of their work as they mutually focused on a rigorous methodological process through the iterative relationships between hypothesis formation, data analysis, experimentation, and testing. However, Popper was less inclined to accept the Deweyan thesis that logic accrued by a rigorous means-ends process of knowledge construction as the inquiry proceeded. Popper, rather, took a more open approach to theory construction, focusing less on its development and more on the capacity of a particular theory to progressively resolve problems that remained unresolved in a previous theory, and therefore providing a better approximation to the truth, an ideal that can never be conclusively established. Combined with a methodology of falsification Popper sought weighty explanations that possess the capacity to withstand critical testing. Dewey also stressed the litmus test of falsification, although he placed more focus on the emergence of theory growing out of an inquiry process as a result of rigorously controlled inferences, whereas Popper placed more emphasis on bold conjectures not necessarily dependent on developmental processes. These, then, would have to prove their mettle by the extent to which they resolved a problem, opened up new learning, and withstood the challenges of critical tests.

To press a point, one might argue that Popper sought objectivity more as an ideal than Dewey who emphasized critical inquiry processes linked to his quest to seek the intellectual organization of experience. As with Popper’s search for truth as a regulative ideal, Dewey’s vision was also an ideal never achievable except in aesthetically experienced consummatory moments, although it was one that prompted a powerful searching for its realization. The very effort, based on Dewey’s hope in a world under construction, and therefore partially open to human intervention, contributed, however meagerly, toward its progressive attainment

The commonalities between Dewey and Popper along with the depth of the probing of their scientific philosophies, alone, make their work of considerable importance in contributing to the development of a postpositivist science. Of value also are their subtle differences, which, when juxtaposed to their commonalities, add to a broad array of concepts that lend much weight to a postpositivist research design.

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1014