Four among many features of science are Inductive Reasoning, Falsification, Occam’s Razor and Paradigm Shift, and these four are all elements of the building blocks, that make up the process that Derren Brown calls, ‘The System’. A System containing a hundred percent guaranteed method, in which horse races can be won one after another, without fail. A System that we later on find out, is a hundred percent, based on belief.
Firstly, Inductive Reasoning is the statement that allows a certain belief to move from singular to universal, in which an example may be: the apple fell to the ground; therefore, all apples in the future will fall to the ground. This feature of science is shown in The System through the confidence of Khadisha and many others, based on the winnings that Brown has somewhat predicted. They had basically started to accept that there is a System out there somewhere, and Brown has found it. Based on the third predicted winnings of the horse races that came true, at this point, to them, “all apples in the future will fall to the ground”. Furthermore, the money that they all won as a result of The System, can somewhat act as proof of this method, as they have actually won quite a sum of money themselves following this System.
However, their beliefs are actually flawed, as David Hume, a well known philosopher, points out that “we cannot rationally justify the claim that nature will continue to be uniform, as justification comes in only two varieties, and both of these are inadequate”. Basically, what he’s saying is that there can be no logical connection across time, and just because something has happened many times, doesn’t mean that it will happen again in the future. These are also predictions made from observation only, with no solid proof of the longevity in the repeated occurrences of an event. Therefore, with no solid proof that certain hypotheses of universal statements are true, only belief would fuel this to become a true fact in some minds. In the end, it is not down to inductive reasoning to discover truths, but the use of falsification.
This is next in-line as an aspect of science illustrated in The System. It is the ability of a theory and such to be proven wrong as Karl Popper states that nothing can prove that universal statements are right, however, truths are reached by the disproval of an idea or thesis. An example would be the hypothesis that all swans are right, this obviously cannot be proven right, as you would have to be able to observe all the swans on the planet to prove that all swans are white. On the other hand, the statement can be firmly disproved by any random person, preferably one who has seen a black swan. Then from this, new and better theories can be made, as knowledge will be increased and put to use from previous falsifications. Until finally a theory can’t be disproved, which will result in it becoming accepted as a truth, but maybe just for the time being.
At the beginning of The System, we are shown only Khadisha’s point of view and therefore start to believe in The System ourselves, as it seems that Brown actually has a guaranteed method to predict the winnings of a race horse. So falsification was not carried out then, because we weren’t shown the fact that there were actually another 7776 people in the exact situation as Khadisha. Which is basically falsification of The System, as Khadisha’s winnings are actually purely based on luck. As she is the only one that survived the so called System and ended up being in every group that was destined to win. This shows that falsification was carried out; even at the start when 5/6 groups of people were eliminated due to them not being in the winning race horse’s group. Those 5/6 people, and counting, have witnessed the falsification of The System.
Moving on to Occam’s Razor, named after William of Occam, a medieval philosopher, this is a straightforward principle that is “the simplest explanations are the best”. Which is in the case of The System is that, it simply does not exist. But a lot of people started to believe in it while they watched the show, as Brown has lots of tricks up his sleeve like the coin flips and Polaroid test. People actually started to doubt their disbelief in The System, as they did not know that it took nearly a whole day to actually get 10 consecutive heads for the coin flip, and the Polaroid test was never even explained.
Finally, a Paradigm Shift is a dramatic revolution where everyone has accepted something to be a truth, but when a new revolution occurs to that truth, everything changes, as many theories could then be disproved. In The System, this occurs when we were shown that the disbelieving experts, all somehow related to the race horse tracks, were clearly baffled by the (extremely creepy) results of the Polaroid test that they agreed to carry out. When this happened, a lot of things suddenly change, including the increasing amount of belief in The System after witnessing the event, as experts know a lot better that most people about their specialties, and if they believe in The System, then why shouldn’t we?
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