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Articles

The Problem of Dismissing Induction

The problem of induction, pointed out by David Hume, continues to baffle scientists and philosophers. Theo Clark explains why.

Of late I have been working my way through The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper. It provided me with a philosophical dilemma that threatened my faith in science; especially physics. After some initial fretting, I decided I needed to try to resolve this dilemma in an attempt to remove it from my mind. In his book, Popper outlines what he calls ‘the problem of induction’. It is a ‘problem’ that was first demonstrated by David Hume (1711-76) and as a piece of logic it is impossible to fault.

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