axioms

[Tom Givon]

Good point. But was he right? The fact that some P. of  Sci. people 
agree with him is fine, they are probably confirmed deductivists. But 
R.N. Hanson (Patterns of Discovery) surely wouldn't agree, nor would 
biologists with some philosophical bent (Mayr, e.g.).  In fact Mayr 
would characterize such position as typical of people who take physics, 
with it's highly math-dependent structure, as the paradigm for science. 
Mayr argued that biology & other biologically-based sciences 
(psychology, linguistics), where variation & population curves are the 
name of the game, are very different. So there you go. It is not that I 
don't appreciate Popper, he was great, but he had his limits too. Best,  TG


Steen, G.J. wrote:
> Dear funknetters,
>
> Karl Popper would not agree with Tom Givon that axioms are not a useful notion in empirical science. In his The Logic of Scientific Discovery, he discusses how axioms can be used to construct and re-construct scientific theories that can be tested (1977: 71-75 and elsewhere). Popper thus makes an attempt to make the notion of axiom productive for empirical science in a way that has been rather influential in subsequent philosophy of science. You do not have to agree with him, but may learn a lot from his analysis.
>
> Best,
>
> Gerard Steen
>
> Professor of Language Use and Cognition
> Director, Language, Cognition, Communication program
> Faculty of Arts, 11A-35
> Department of Language and Communication
> VU University Amsterdam
> De Boelelaan 1105
> 1081 HV Amsterdam
>
> T: ++31-20-5986433
> F: ++31-20-5986500
>
> http://www.let.vu.nl/staf/gj.steen/
> ________________________________________
> From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tom Givon [tgivon at uoregon.edu]
> Sent: 03 January 2009 19:37
> To: funknet
> Subject: [FUNKNET] axioms
>
> RE: Bischoff:
>
> Maybe it would be useful to point out that "axioms" is not really a
> useful notion in  empirical science, but rather belongs to the domain of
> logic. It is of course true that formal linguists may have left some
> with the impression that "axioms" can be imported into linguistics, but
> this simply points out to a profound misunderstanding about what is or
> isn't "empirical". The closest one comes in science to "axioms" are
> facts that have been around for such a long time that, by general
> agreement, we take them for granted, i.e. presuppose them at the start
> of any new investigation. But their logical status is still not that of
> "axioms", since initially they had to be discovered and defended on
> empirical grounds. Axiomatic systems tend to be, by definition, closed
> and and internally consistent. According to both  Russell ('theory of
> types') and Goedel, they are thus incomplete. Science, on the other
> hand, is never closed, but rather an open-ended system that keeps
> changing with new facts & new insights.  Happy New Year,  TG
>
>