In his Saturday Times column Matthew Parris returned to a metaphor from an earlier column years ago.
Matthew Parris was talking specifically about the war in Afghanistan, & he also believes that this process of ignoral/acceptance depends on the psychological division between the conscious & the unconscious mind.
But you could interpret it as a neat metaphor for how we get from falsifiability to paradigm shift.
Popper’s falsifiability was never as simple as one black swan disproving the theory that all swans are white. We used to use the idea of black & white sheep, but I remember an argument which almost came to blows over the question of the whether the observation of one black goat also disproved the theory that all sheep are white.
Gradually the pile of black creatures accumulates; we can think of many reasons why this should be so, but of course none applies to sheep. Perhaps not even the last one which breaks the surface. The moment when we have to consider at least adjusting our theory to the subtly different one: sheep are the only animals that you can have in any colour you like as long as it isn’t black.
Like stones tipped into deep & muddy water, facts that do not fit the view
we choose to take are acknowledged briefly, then put from our conscious
thoughts. They sink, unreconciled, from our sight. But they do not go away. More
stones may be added, thrown on top, adding to the submerged heap, but still
invisible. And more … until one day the rubble breaks the
surface.
All you … see is the last stone … The adverse fact may in
itself be inconclusive, but because of what’s beneath it, it may assume an undue
prominence. It may be called the moment f truth, but it is only there because of
the submerged truth that lies beneath.
Matthew Parris was talking specifically about the war in Afghanistan, & he also believes that this process of ignoral/acceptance depends on the psychological division between the conscious & the unconscious mind.
But you could interpret it as a neat metaphor for how we get from falsifiability to paradigm shift.
Popper’s falsifiability was never as simple as one black swan disproving the theory that all swans are white. We used to use the idea of black & white sheep, but I remember an argument which almost came to blows over the question of the whether the observation of one black goat also disproved the theory that all sheep are white.
Gradually the pile of black creatures accumulates; we can think of many reasons why this should be so, but of course none applies to sheep. Perhaps not even the last one which breaks the surface. The moment when we have to consider at least adjusting our theory to the subtly different one: sheep are the only animals that you can have in any colour you like as long as it isn’t black.
