Theory Comes First

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Karl Popper would begin his philosophy of science lectures with a simple instruction: "observe."

Then he'd wait in silence.

Eventually, a student would ask the inevitable question—what should we observe? This was Popper's demonstration of a fundamental flaw in empiricism.

"Scientific observation is impossible," he would explain, "without pre-existing knowledge about what to look at, what to look for, how to look, and how to interpret what one sees."

You can't observe without a framework. You can't collect data without first having some theory about what matters. The theory has to come first, Popper insisted. It has to be conjectured, not derived from observation.

The same principle applies to imitation, he noted—you can't copy something without first having an idea of what's worth copying. The blank instruction to "just observe" or "just imitate" is meaningless. We need the theory before we can make sense of what we see.