Exact Opposites

The problem of, and for, Popper's analysis of Scientific
philosophy-to-date, was the low/peripheral status of such efforts, in
real terms of influence/importance in the practical shape Science was
taking. Some of the great pioneers of science had certainly wondered how
this miracle was happening. Trying to describe what they were intuiting
about this was a natural thing to do. In the event they fell short of
nailing the problem and Popper set them straight.

But right or wrong, the significant point is in terms of the reality of
what was taking place in scientific discovery, other than to the extent
they were in fact correct (which they weren't as Popper says), had no
influence or bearing on how science was actually happening.

Which of course was one of the conclusions Popper himself came to, but
what he meant was actually something else. That his epistomolgy of
knowledge held that all knowledge, including scientific, evolves by the
same mechanism.....thus to the extent progress was made in science, the
explanation was C&R regardless of whether they thought it was something
else.

But Popper was seeing the causality along the lines of (1) Enlightenment
was a happy coincidence of developmetns (2) Criticism leR (3) Beginning
of infinity exponential progress was the result.....not because of but
despite the pioneers, whose ideas were comprehensively and exactly
wrong.

It may not seem important, but I think Popper was working with the built
in assumption that the philosophica attempts he had criticized reflected
how Science was being done by those people. The reason is partly this
would reflect the natural status he regarded philosophy with. There is a
significant mismatch between the status of philosophy in the world of
popper, and the status of those items of philosophy in the world of
science. But the main reason is that if Popper hadn't made that
assumption,  he would have recognized that while they could help shed
light on bad philosophy, what they couldn't do is shed any light on the
actual character of Science.

And neither could any other attempts at descriptions by those scientific
pioneers. The clear implication of getting everything wrong with their
philosophical efforts they had not yet got it clear in their heads what
they were intuiting. So Popper had no view of Science as it really was,
and the only way to acquire one would be directly, through a process of
immersment. This is the unavoidable implication of a situation whereby
Science is happening in a big way, but no one is clear what it
happening, or how, or why.

But unless I'm wrong....direct analysis of science as it was happening,
is not something that Popper ever did.

And this is a major problem. Third party accounts had proven totally
unreliable and generic words like 'method' and 'observation' where being
used to describe something that was very complex and multifaceted taking
place on the ground...as unique to science as was the revolutionary
progress. Popper needed deep first hand exposure to this and the other
unique features also. He needed not just to know how scientific
institutions operated, but how they came about in the first place.

He had judged Science to have failed to understand the importance - as
he saw it - of rejection of authority. But science did much more to the
concept of authority than appeal to it in a philosophical argument. The
concept became transformed into a mulidimensional construct that
manifested multifariously depending on context. It was revolutionary,
and unprecedented and it is and was impossible to asssess Science on
authority without studying it.