Popper Vs Khun: Advancement of Knowledge

Popper: Science is more like a negative gaining of knowledge where you break things down to make them more and more true. The progression of knowledge is the process of getting rid of the false information. “Accumulation of knowledge is just learning from your mistakes.” A mistake being a belief or concept that you had in the past that is not correct so now you have a body of knowledge that’s a little more true than the last body of knowledge you had.

Example: “Demand curves slope down.” Why do some economists disagree with this? How can you argue that this statement is true? 1. You could solve it logically, as the price increases in a good, the opportunity cost increases so you have to forego more of it, so as prices go up you can only get fewer. So you use the opp costs to state that as price increases the opp cost increases, so you’re going to consume fewer of all other goods (unless you’re perfectly demand elastic with respect to all other goods, you decrease demand for the original good. 2. You could use imperial proof, aka looking at the data. Chanel bags have a higher demand at a higher price than at a low price. So this has an upward sloping demand curve. You could help fix the statement via an indifference curve. The substitution effect would be much smaller and a greater income effect. So the demand curve slopes up when the income effect is opposite and larger than the substitution effect.

Thomas Khun: focuses on what defines the advancement of knowledge and he calls this advancement “paradigm shift.” A Paradigm is an axiom or a small fact that you use to characterize something. It’s a small building block used to go on to define something larger. They’re broadly sweeping. So a paradigm shift is when you redefine the accurate characteristics.

Example: What defines a swan? So for Kuhn you make a list of axioms or characteristics to define the swan.

You have to answer three sub questions:

1. How much can we know about a “swan” without introducing explicit generalizations? About or what define what a swan is. Example: All swans are white. They seem to have larger necks. Etc.

2. Under what circumstances or events should we add a new generalization to the definition of a swan? So when you look around the pond and you see that your generalizations can fit other bird types, you have