Q1.
(a) Freud's psychoanalytic theory was one of Popper's favourite examples of pseudo-science. According to Popper, Freud's theory could be reconciled with any empirical findings whatsoever. Whatever a patient's behaviour, Freudians could find an explanation of it in terms of their theory - they would never admit that their theory was wrong. Popper illustrated his point with the following example. Imagine a man who pushes a child into a river with the intention of murdering him, and another man who sacrifices his life in order to save the child. Freudians can explain both men's behaviour with equal ease: the first was repressed, and the second had achieved sublimation. Popper argued that through the use of such concepts as repression, sublimation, and unconscious desires, Freud's theory could be rendered compatible with any clinical data whatever; it was thus unfalsifiable.
(b) The same was true of Marx's theory of history, Popper maintained. Marx claimed that in industrialized societies around the world, capitalism would give way to socialism and ultimately to communism. But when this didn't happen, instead of admitting that Marx's theory was wrong, Marxists would invent an ad hoc explanation for why what happened was actually perfectly consistent with their theory. For example, they might say that the inevitable progress to communism had been temporarily slowed by the rise of the welfare state, which 'softened' the proletariat and weakened their revolutionary zeal. In this sort of way, Marx's theory could be made compatible with any possible course of events, just like Freud's. Therefore, neither theory qualifies as genuinely scientific, according to Popper's criterion.
(c) Popper contrasted Freud's and Marx's theories with Einstein's theory of gravitation, also known as general relativity. Unlike Freud's and Marx's theories, Einstein's theory made a very definite prediction: that light rays from distant stars would be deflected by the gravitational field of the sun. Normally this effect would be impossible to observe — except during a solar eclipse. In 1919, the English astrophysicist, Sir Arthur Eddington organized two expeditions to observe the solar eclipse of that year, one to Brazil and one to the island of Principe off the Atlantic coast of Africa, with the aim of testing Einstein's prediction. The expeditions found that starlight was indeed deflected by the sun, by almost exactly the amount Einstein had predicted. Popper was very impressed by this. Einstein's theory had made a definite, precise prediction, which was confirmed by observations. Had it turned out that starlight was not deflected by the sun, this would have showed that Einstein was wrong. So Einstein's theory satisfies the criterion of falsifiability.
