“ : lection 9 Inductive Hypothesis Generation 73 SOMMER RMA AR eee eee asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, “Observe!” is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, Unless the object ofthe transitive verb can be taken as under. stood.) Obs i KARL POPPER The Myth se problems. “A hungry animal,” writes Katz (1937) “divides the of Inductive environment into edible and iedible things. An avinal ns {ght sees roads to escape and hiding places... Quite ganz ly of ts aa ia ‘ We may add that objects can be classified, and can hove Hypothesis similar or dissimilar, only in this way—by being related te ges and interests. This rule applies not ony to aaimale bat i so to scientists. For the animal a point is provided Generation by its needs, the ious; for the sclent b ‘THE BELIE! i ceeds from observation to the- ie sill so widely and se firmly held that my dental Thave even been suspected of should show us that though beetles may profitably fed, observations may not. sics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture wat the following inet ‘ake pencil and paper: care- fully observe, and write down what you have observed!" They jeoty of inborn ideas is absur organism has inborn reactions or respon: responses adapted to impending events. These responses we may describe as “expectations” without implying that these74 KARLPOPPER | Inductive Hypothesis Generation or “expectations” are constiqus. The newborn baby “expects,” f _that our quest for knowledge must necessarily succe wich in this se, to be fed (and, one could even argue, to be ‘cla When Kant s protected and loved). In view of the close relation between ige we may even 51 a how strong and specific, maybe istaken. (The newborn child may_be abandoned. and starve.) ‘Thus. we are. born_wil ions; with “knowledge” From what I have said it is obvious that the Unk between the two problems which aia ime: demarcation, ce ined that the induction or scientific od. Jt was : came across an interesting form tion of this tuarkable philosophical book by a great physicist ‘ophy of Cause and Chance (1949:7). lows us to_generalize a numbi ch. In trvingto show how knowledge is passible, he heroporet a theory which had the unavoidable consequence76 KARL POPPER of the “‘vast communities of people ignorant of, or rejecting, the rule of science, among them the members of anti-vacci- nation societies and believers in astrology. Itis useless to argue ‘with them; I cannot compel them to accept the same criteria ma in which I believe: the code of scientific S rule or crait of “valid induction” is not exist, No rule can success, although he believes that it is based on induction.) Finduc- tion, but depends upon luck, /—duetive mules of critical Tmay summarize some of my conclusions as follo /* (a) Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure. (2) The actual procedure of science is to operate with con- jectures: to jump to conclusions—often after one single obser- vation (as noticed for example by Hume and Born) (8) Repeated observations and experiments function in sci- ence as tests of our conjectures or hypotheses, Le. as attempted refutations. makes theories only probable rather than certain.