Göbekli Tepe
German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt proposed that it was the center of a death cult, with the departed laid to rest among the gods and afterlife spirits and the animals carved on the pillars to protect them. “First came the temple,” Schmidt concluded, “then came the city.” Scientists had previously assumed the march of human progress was based on procuring food: we evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers, domesticating plants and animals along the way and then building towns and cities around our collective farms. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe cast doubt on this assumption, suggesting that the problem of death motivated architectural advances that had nothing to do with practical concerns. These religious monuments predated agriculture and may have even helped stimulate its development.
“Women ought to be free -as free as we are,” he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.
degree of corroboration ≠ probability
Sayfa 33
Üst bir kural
In establishing these rules we may proceed systematically. First a supreme rule is laid down which serves as a kind of norm for deciding upon the remaining rules, and which is thus a rule of a higher type. It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.
Sayfa 33
METHODOLOGICAL RULES AS CONVENTIONS
Methodological rules are here regarded as conventions. They might be described as the rules of the game of empirical science. They differ from the rules of pure logic rather as do the rules of chess, which few would regard as part of pure logic: seeing that the rules of pure logic govern transformations of linguistic formulae, the result of an inquiry into the rules of chess could perhaps be entitled ‘The Logic of Chess’, but hardly ‘Logic’ pure and simple. (Similarly, the result of an inquiry into the rules of the game of science—that is, of scientific discovery— may be entitled ‘The Logic of Scientific Discovery’.)
Two simple examples of methodological rules may be given. They will suffice to show that it would be hardly suitable to place an inquiry into method on the same level as a purely logical inquiry.
(1) The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.
(2) Once a hypothesis has been proposed and tested, and has proved its mettle,*1 it may not be allowed to drop out without ‘good reason’. A ‘good reason’ may be, for instance: replacement of the hypothesis by another which is better testable; or the falsification of one of the consequences of the hypothesis. (The concept ‘better testable’ will later be analysed more fully.)
These two examples show what methodological rules look like. Clearly they are very different from the rules usually called ‘logical’. Although logic may perhaps set up criteria for deciding whether a statement is testable, it certainly is not concerned with the question whether anyone exerts himself to test it.
Sayfa 32