The natural as well as the social sciences always start from problems, from the fact that something inspires amazement in us, as the Greek philosophers used to say. To solve these problems, the sciences use fundamentally the same method that common sense employs, the method of trial and error. To be more precise, it is the method of trying out solutions to our problem and then discarding the false ones as erroneous. [3]
Trial and error—it’s what we always do anyway
- By PeterM in .Popper, Karl, All Life is Problem Solving
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3 August 2011
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1 comment
Problems may evolve on our way towards their solution.
Besides knowledge gained by strict solution-oriented processes, we sometimes happen to discover things we didn’t expect. With these, new problems arise or at least the existing ones may change. Two questions should never be too far from one’s mind: “What am I doing here?” and more importantly “Why am I doing this?”