Saturday, October 10, 2009

"Popperian Sense"

I was reading the IB Physics binder looking up information about the Group 4 project and I found something that I hoped Mr Perkins would clarify:
On Page four of the Diploma Programme the text reads, "There is no one scientific method, in the strict Popperian sense, of gaining knowledge, of finding explanations for the behaviour of the natural world..."
I surmised that this referred to Karl Popper's "Umbrell(a)ology" article. Mr Perkins: do all IB students worldwide read the same articles? If so, how were the five articles chosen?

4 comments:

Magister P said...

Rachel, it is indeed the same Karl Popper, but not a reference to that article. He was a philosopher well known for his contributions to philosophy of science. According to Popper, science should be distinguished form pseudo-science because of the method it uses to come to knowledge. This is what gives us the phrase "scientific method."

rachelc said...

Thank you Mr Perkins for the clarification.
Do all the IB students read the same five articles?

Magister P said...

All of my junior IB students are reading the same articles, but even my juniors do not necessarily read the same articles as my juniors two years ago, and there is no grand coordination throughout the IB program. I think some articles get shared among teachers...the really good ones...so some of those are read by multiple schools, but this is more chance than plan.

rachelc said...

Oh. Thank you!