How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There' (inductive reasoning, falsification, Occam's Razor, Paradigm Shift)?
One of the features of science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There' is inductive reasoning.
This occurs when a single observation is made into a universal statement. Inductive reasoning is mainly based on a person's past experiences. This is obviously logically flawed and does not help in finding the truth.
Several participants have gained confidence in 'The System' and have decided to bet large amounts of money based on the positive experiences they have made with 'The System' previously. Their decision and trust was thus entirely based on inductive reasoning.
Falsification, another feature of science, states that 'scientific statements cannot be verified, but we merely falsify them' (Popper).
Except for the last remaining participant (K.) in the experiment, all other participants have witnessed a falsification of 'The System' and it has thus been proven wrong.
At the end of the documentary the participant K. also knows that the system is wrong.
Even though falsification limits our choices of truths, it does not help in finding it.
Occam's Razor states that 'The simplest explanations are the best.'.
This has been proven right in 'The System'. While watching the documentary, the simplest explanation for the miracles occuring would have been that 'The System' does simply not exist.
This theory has been proven right by the host of the show.
The occuring of a paradigm shift is another feature of science. It consists of a revolutionary change in the way we perceive an event or an occurance. It is important to note that there exist a certain 'inability to reject one view without replacing it with another.'
In 'The System' horse experts are invited to witness 'The System' in action. Before being introduced to it, they were all convinced that a system to predict winners of horse races does not exist. After they experienced 'The System' and saw it's effectiveness, they were conviced otherwise and believed that it is not entirely impossible for a such a system to exist.
But we as viewers can not be entirely sure that a paradigm shift occured in them, since it might all have been pretense.
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