The Poverty of mathematical and existential truth: examples from fisheries science

Abstract

Several years ago I suggested that the harvesting of our commercial fisheries could be improved if the non-falsifiable models of a fisheries science were to be replaced with the falsiable models of a fisheries economics. In an attempt to better explain this positionI have returned to Aristotle's categorical propositions. It has not always been apprechiated that Karl Popper's falsiability or testability criterion, the criterion he uses to to distinguish or demarcate beween a science and a non-science is a modification of Aristotle's distinction between universal and particular propositions. While we cannot base our management decisions on fisheries models that are certain or known to be true we are, nevertheless able to guide our management decisions with those bold falsifiable models and policies that have been selected by a falsification of their competitors.