Popper, Art and Science.

Observe the two images below:

"La Maja Desnuda" by Francisco de Goya, c. 1795–1800. Museo del Prado. [A]

"Femme nue assise" by Pablo Picasso, c. 1909-10, Tate Modern. [B]

Call me artistically challenged, but I find both images hardly comparable. Mind you, there are similarities: (1) their authors were renowned Spanish artists; (2) both works are pictorial representations of naked female bodies, (3) held in the collections of respected European institutions.

For all these superficial shared features, there is something else much deeper those works share: they are works of art. Mind you, I am no authority in art and my guess is that it would be hard for anyone -- certainly, it would be impossible for me -- to adjudicate which one has the greatest artistic value. How to compare works so evidently different?

And if a judgement between two paintings is difficult, one might think it safe to conclude that the difficulty is only compounded if one were to compare works in different art forms: what is more valuable, "La Maja Desnuda" or Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote"? What about Richard Wagner, Akira Kurosawa, Oscar Niemeyer?

There may be a simple test, which you answer objectively with either a "Yes" or a "No" to decide, but if there is, I've never heard of it. In my ignorance, I believe there is no silver bullet to judge the merit of art works: liking it or not, one must rely on experts in the field -- a.k.a. artists -- for that (assuming they actually can produce a unanimously valid opinion).

And, if there is no fool-proof rule to judge the relative merits of two works of art, then there is no absolute criterion to say this is a work of art, this is not. Who establishes the acceptance threshold? On what grounds?

To pretend otherwise would be not only infantile, it would impose a destructive and arbitrary Procrustean bed on artists: Cubism does not conform to the artistic canon Goya established -- for instance -- therefore, Picasso's work is not art.

Or, following the Popperian Joan Robinson: I establish the threshold. Art is another elephant and I know one when I see one; only this is Art; that ain't. Add this and chop that off and maybe I'll let you into the nightclub.

Sounds absurd and arbitrary, right?

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Bouncer in Antwerp, 2010. [C]

One should imagine this argument could easily extend with little controversy to any science (science in its older, humbler sense: organised corpus of academic knowledge, including, among others, mathematics, logic, law, history, and, yes, philosophy).

Ah, but when it comes to the "Sciences" (in its more modern and exclusive meaning, involving experimentation) there is a wonderfully simple, fool-proof silver bullet to decide who goes to the party: Popperian falsificationism. What is absurd for science, suddenly becomes wisdom for "Science". Lucky us.

Don't get me wrong, falsificationism is just great; it allows philosophers of science speak in abstract with great authority about things they don't understand: this is Science, this ain't. And if you are a philosopher, what's not to like? The Philosopher of Science promoted to Big Brawny Bouncer at the door of the Science party.

It also compels mainstream economists to misappropriate the language of science, with their own self-interested re-definitions. Like underage teenagers with false IDs what matters is going to the party: check this box. Far from being an antidote to scientism, falsificationism enables it, gives it extra-strength.

Falsificationism has only two little problems: neither real scientists apply falsificationism, nor should they. If the very concrete 19th century astronomers John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier had applied abstract, manichean falsificationism, (1) Newtonian mechanics and Kepler's laws of planetary motion would have been unfairly falsified, and (2) Neptune would not have been discovered. One can only imagine their dilemma: stick to the recently "falsified" Newton/Kepler or go back to the also falsified Aristotle/Ptolemy?

Nobody told Popper -- and in his philosophising, he never learned of the fact by himself -- but there was no large population of alternative hypotheses in a quasi-Darwinian struggle for survival: there was no other "physics", warming up in the bench, ready to replace Newton/Kepler in the soccer match. The demise of Newtonian astronomy would have meant the "extinction" of astronomy, at least until another theory appeared to replace it.

Luckily for Le Verrier, Popper was born in 1902. We don't have the same luck. We have to put up with the Popperian Procrustean bed (incidentally, and to be fair, not all philosophers of science or physicists agree with the Privileged Kibbitzer).

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Okay, you don't care that there is an ideological agenda behind Popper's "abstract" falsificationism: all you care about is Science. At best, mine are antiquarian concerns. Yes?

Know this: the future of physics, for example, may well hinge on a very similar Dark problem existing today (more on this in the near future). That's the problem with silver bullets shot in the dark: anyone can be hit, not only those one doesn't like.

Image Credits:
[A] "La maja desnuda". Image in the public domain. Source: Wikimedia.
[B] "Feme nue assise". Image in the public domain. Source: Wikimedia.
[C] Bouncer giving the thumbs up. Author: Roger Price (04-09-2010). My usage of the image does not imply Price's endorsement in any way. File licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Source: Wikimedia.