ABSTRACT
By plucking such phrases from his various works, it is possible to synthesize Popper’s conception of science, in which its results are never ‘certain’ because they do not spring magically from data, facts and observations that are free from any possibility of deformation [ibid.]. Science is, more modestly, the result of people’s efforts to understand the world and themselves-hence its restructuring, as it loses much of its centuries-old authority; but hence also its greater flexibility, and a realization that it is part of the human creativity once reserved for the arts. This creative aspect strikes one immediately when one thinks that science invents theories on the basis of problems, and that the data would not yield anything if human beings were unable to connect and structure them in such a way that they provided an explanation of events and a plausible solution to the problem in question. This operation also involves the by no means neutral processing of what is given, the highlighting of certain aspects and the disregarding of others in accordance with the investigator’s point of view. In this sense, ‘science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit’ (P2:44).
