A Introduction
“I hate hypotheses,” is how one well-known neuroscientist sums up his feelings about the subject of this book. In earlier chapters, I've noted that there is a debate about the role of the hypothesis in modern science and mentioned that there are people who are not in favor of the hypothesis, though I haven't gone into their arguments.
It's time to go into them. In this chapter, I'll review the work of three prominent scientists who are opposed to the hypothesis. They oppose it with different degrees of intensity, for different reasons, and to promote different alternatives. They are united only in thinking that the hypothesis is no longer necessary for science. It is impossible to gain a full appreciation for the hypothesis today without evaluating their criticisms.The critics are Stuart Firestein (Ignorance: How It Drives Science1 and Failure: Why Science Is So Successful2—the quote that opens this chapter is his), David J. Glass3 (Experimental Design for Biologists, 2nd ed.), and David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World4). Their programs are called Curiosity- Driven Science, Questioning- and- ModelBuilding (QMB), and Conjectures and Criticism, respectively. Each shuns the hypothesis and advances another way of understanding and conducting science. Both Firestein and Glass accept the philosophical principle that empiricism (Chapter 1) is the ultimate standard for scientific truth. David Deutsch rejects empiricism. Deutsch is a theoretical physicist who is very sympathetic to the philosophy of Karl Popper (Chapter 2), but whose unique agenda supersedes Popper's ideas.
My plan is, first, to sketch out the key points of each program, trying to represent it in a light that its author would be comfortable with and then to analyze his reasons for spurning the hypothesis. Firestein's ideas are the most radical and the purest—he's against almost everything you learned about how to do science and what it's good for—and we'll start with them.
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