popper-logic-scientific-discovery

200
some structural components of a theory of experience
Not only is it impossible to infer from the chance-like character of
the sequence anything about the conformity to law, or otherwise, of
the individual events: it is not even possible to infer from the corroboration
of probability estimates that the sequence itself is completely irregular. For
we know that chance-like sequences exist which are constructed
according to a mathematical rule. (Cf. appendix iv.) The fact that a
sequence has a Bernoullian distribution is not a symptom of the
absence of law, and much less identical with the absence of law ‘by
definition’. 1 In the success of probability predictions we must see no
more than a symptom of the absence of simple laws in the structure of
the sequence (cf. sections 43 and 58)—as opposed to the events constituting
it. The assumption of freedom from after-effect, which is equivalent
to the hypothesis that such simple laws are not discoverable, is
corroborated, but that is all.
70 THE DEDUCIBILITY OF MACRO LAWS
FROM MICRO LAWS
There is a doctrine which has almost become a prejudice, although it
has recently been criticized severely—the doctrine that all observable
events must be explained as macro events; that is to say, as averages
or accumulations or summations of certain micro events. (The doctrine
is somewhat similar to certain forms of materialism.) Like other
doctrines of its kind, this seems to be a metaphysical hypostatization
of a methodological rule which in itself is quite unobjectionable. I
mean the rule that we should see whether we can simplify or generalize
or unify our theories by employing explanatory hypotheses of
the type mentioned (that is to say, hypotheses explaining observable
effects as summations or integrations of micro events). In evaluating
the success of such attempts, it would be a mistake to think that nonstatistical
hypotheses about the micro events and their laws of interaction
could ever be sufficient to explain macro events. For we
should need, in addition, hypothetical frequency estimates, since statistical
conclusions can only be derived from statistical premises.
These frequency estimates are always independent hypotheses which
1 As Schlick says in Die Kausalität in der gegenwärtigen Physik, Naturwissenschaften 19, 1931, p. 157.