Induction can only prove falsity, but can not prove correction

Induction can only prove falsity, but can not prove correction

Although in the field of science, induction takes the so-called "independent repeatability" as the standard to ensure the effectiveness of experimental results, this does not mean that the laws we summarize through induction must be true.

In the 18th century, Scottish philosopher David Hume mentioned the problem of induction in his book the study of human understanding, which is also known as the "Hume Problem". He believes that "we cannot prove by prior knowledge that the future will be consistent with the past because the obvious fact that can be thought out (logically) is that the world is no longer consistent". In short, what Hume put forward is the so-called "fallacy of induction", which actually emphasizes that the future world may not be the same as the past or present world, so the laws that were effective in the past or present may not still be established in the future, that is, small probability events within a certain space-time boundary are generalized to the laws common to the whole class of things beyond space-time. In fact, many mistakes made by human beings are due to the improper pushing of the laws within the boundary to the outside of the boundary.

Taking the cognition of swans we mentioned earlier as an example. The swans we see in Europe are white, and the swans we see in Africa are white. Does that really mean that all swans are white? Of course, the answer is no, because, in Australia, there is still a small but real population of black swans.

The fallacy of induction illustrates a terrible fact: in the past thousands of years, the thinking mode we have been using and will continue to use in the future can not accurately interpret the laws behind things. Even if all the premises are correct, we cannot ensure that the results obtained from the summary are true. However, the existence of independent repeatability verification rules can only be used to judge whether there are problems in the summary results, but cannot verify the correctness of the results. In other words, the conclusion of induction is the hypothesis waiting to be overturned.

As the British philosopher, Karl Raimund Popper said, scientific theories and all knowledge mastered by human beings are conjectures and assumptions. Human beings inevitably incorporate imagination and creation in the process of solving problems, so that problems can be solved in a certain historical and cultural framework. People can only rely on the only data to put forward this scientific theory. However, it is impossible to have enough experimental data to prove that a scientific theory is absolutely correct. On this basis, Popper came to the first characteristic of Science - falsifiability, that is, the knowledge that may be proved to be wrong is science. If learning can never be proved wrong, then it is not science.

In a word, induction can only prove falsity, but can not prove correction.