Naturalismo y Psicología Evolutiva. A Book in Process III.

After a short introduction on the History of Philosophy concerning the beginning of Naturalism (matter at the base of all that exist, but there is more than matter, like consciousness, values, ethics, culture which spring from that material base), the first chapter of this book in progress offers the principle of demarcation for Biology and Evolutionary Psychology as science from other non-scientific disciplines like Psychoanalysis, religion, metaphysics, sociology, Marxism, Gestalt, or post-structuralism in our Post-Truth present. Karl Popper and the falsicationist methodology will be at the center in this chapter. As a true heir of the Enlightenment, the new era in the West after Christianity, what the falsicationist methodology has to offer is how to understand science, Naturalism, and Evolutionary Psychology from other disciplines. For example:

Theoretical physics, the most advanced science, demonstrated the power of falsification. Relativity theory triumphed in a series of crucial experiments. Falsification of prognoses threw into crisis an entire theoretical structure, Newtonian physics. Scientists isolated the hypothesis at fault, substituting Einsteinʼs relativity. Or better, as Popper put it two years later, scientists searching for falsification had an alternative theory (relativity) to guide them, and designed experiments so that they could decide between the two theories. Falsification made choice among them possible … Verification of natural laws was forever impossible. They remained hypothetical and could only be assigned a provisional truth value. Their falsification, however, was final … [natural laws are] never [absolutely] true, but sometimes false.

…

There was no synthetic a priori. Lawfulness could not be conclusively demonstrated, but this did not mean complete skepticism. Scientists increasingly purged prejudicial lawfulness by replacing deficient theories with better ones. This meant the growing approximation (Annährung) of knowledge to truth.

…

Science progressed not by discovering unshakable truths but by eliminating errors. Change was its hallmark. Intersubjectivity was the sole guarantor of progress … Science needed philosophy. Philosophy was a theory of knowledge (Erkenntnistheorie), a methodology, a secondary science, both descriptive and prescreptive. It did not accept uncritically scientific practice, but directed it to procedures that had proved successful. Learning from the most advanced science, physics, it helped less advanced ones: biology, psychology … Philosophy was a critical theory of science (from Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945, Cambridge University Press, 2000).