Sublime

Popper introduced the mechanism of conjectures and refutations, which works as follows: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong. This is the alternative to our search for confirmatory instances. If you think the task is easy, you will be disappointed—few humans have a natural ability to

Bacon’s inductive method is faulty through insufficient emphasis on hypothesis. He hoped that mere orderly arrangement of data would make the right hypothesis obvious, but this is seldom the case. As a rule, the framing of hypotheses is the most difficult part of scientific work, and the part where great ability is indispensable. So far, no method

HARK is an acronym for Hypothesizing After Results Known. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with gathering data, poking around to find the patterns, and then constructing a hypothesis. That’s all part of science. But you then have to get new data to test the hypothesis.