Write Your Paper in Popperian Style
Any research, any hypothesis, any experimental observation, any theory under study, any scientific paper and even any opinion can be seen as an attempt to better understand an underlying problem. Science is a progressive attempt to better understand problems, which means the difficulties that themselves constitute the problem and the requisites of a good solution for it.
Problems are difficulties and research exists to make us better understand those difficulties and sometimes try to overcome them. However, almost always new problems, often deeper problems, arise from research or are discovered by it, and the scientific knowledge spiral towards more interesting and challenging problems grows.
This is the Popperian logic of science that puts problems as beginning and end of the scientific work, and this is how we encourage researchers and scientist to present scientific ideas and work results in the Open Science Repository.
Write the main content of your paper in Popperian style
What is the underlying problem of this research?
Problems are difficulties. You should describe here which are the difficulties, practical and/or theoretical, that your research paper helps to understand. Questions are a good way to describe them.
- The main underlying problem of this research is…
- This problem can be seen as constituted by the following difficulties: …? …? …?
- Some known requisites to overcome those difficulties are: …
- Some previously attempted solutions that did not work are: ...
What is (are) the solution(s) that this research studies?
Describe here the research proper. Always remember that any research or theoretical development helps to understand better the problem (difficulties) described above.
- We studied here the following solution(s) to the problem: …
- We used these methods and materials to perform the study: …
- We obtained the following results from the study: ...
How this research improves the understanding of the problem?
Explain how the research process and results helped to increase the knowledge about the problem. They should have helped to achieve a better description of the problem, revealed new difficulties or represented progress towards solving them. They could also have shown new or modified solution requisites for the problem or solutions that do not work. New satellite or central problems may have been uncovered by the research.
- This study helped to improve the description of the underlying problem in this way: …
- Some difficulties that constitute the problem are now better described in this way, including possible solutions to them derived from the research:
- Solution requisites for the problem are now understood like this: …
- Occasional failed attempted solutions helped to understand the problem in this way: …
- These are the new satellite or central problems that the research uncovered: ...
Find out more about Karl Popper
The Popperian Scientific Manifesto
- Science is a tentative explanation of things; it is made of compelling problems and hypothetical solutions for them.
- Science can dig deeper and deeper into the structure of reality, discovering new problems and proposing new theoretical solutions for old problems...
Popper's Problem-Centered Science
Science begins with problems (P) to which creative, bold theories (TT) are proposed as solutions. Theories (TT) must be objectively presented and exposed to critical discussion (EE), mainly comprising logical appraisal and empirical tests, from which difficulties and errors may be discovered. The discovery of new difficulties...
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