The big idea: Under every scientific method sits a question about reasoning itself: how do you get from what you've seen to a general law?
There are two very different moves — and science leans hard on the shakier one.
Deduction — safe but tells you nothing new
- From general rule → to a specific case
- If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true
- e.g. all metals expand when heated; this is metal; so it expands
Induction — risky but discovers things
- From specific cases → to a general rule
- The conclusion is likely, never guaranteed
- e.g. every metal I've tested expanded, so ALL metals do
Science runs on induction: it watches particular events and leaps to laws about every case, everywhere, forever. That leap is exactly where the trouble starts.
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The deepest challenge to science's method came from a thinker you've already met.
Hume: the future needn't copy the past: David Hume asked a simple, devastating question. The Sun has risen every day so far — so it'll rise tomorrow. But why should it?
The circle in the argument
The reason
The only reason is that the future has always resembled the past.
The check
And how do we know THAT? Only because in the past, the future kept resembling it.
The circle
The argument quietly assumes the very thing it's trying to prove.
The problem of induction: This is the problem of induction: no matter how many times a pattern has held, nothing guarantees it holds next time.
Checkpoint — the problem of induction: In one line: science leaps from past patterns to universal laws, but nothing can prove the future will keep copying the past — so induction rests on habit, not proof.
Know your predicted grade
Take timed mock exams and get detailed feedback on every answer. See exactly where you're losing marks.
Hume's problem is never fully solved — so philosophers of science learn to work around it.
Go further — higher-level insight: See how Popper's whole theory (from 6.1.2) is a response to Hume. Naming Popper-as-answer-to-Hume is a top-band move.
Popper's dodge of Hume
Accept Hume
Popper accepts you can never confirm a law by piling up cases.
Drop confirmation
So he throws confirmation out entirely and rebuilds science on falsification.
Use deduction only
Falsification only ever needs deduction: one counter-example logically kills a law.
It's an elegant dodge of Hume's problem.
The open debate: Whether it fully escapes Hume's problem is the debate — real scientists clearly DO rely on past success.
Checkpoint — the whole topic: You now hold the whole of 6.1: what science is (demarcation) · Popper's test (falsification) · how science really moves (Kuhn, Feyerabend) · the reasoning underneath (induction and Hume's problem). The essay plan next shows how to turn all of it into marks.
How Section B works: Section B is an essay on one of the optional themes (like Philosophy of science) [25]. Every micro in this topic feeds a possible essay.
What the essay asks of you
- You're given a claim or question and must build an argued case.
- Explore more than one view.
- Weigh them, and reach a reasoned conclusion.
- The 5-step method below is the same one you use everywhere.
Evaluate the claim that a theory is scientific only if it could be proven false.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Common mistakes: 1. Describing views (Popper, Kuhn, Hume) instead of ARGUING with them. 2. Only one view — top bands need tension. 3. No conclusion — decide, with a reason. 4. Name-dropping — a name earns nothing without its argument. 5. Forgetting the claim — keep answering the exact question set.