Abstract

The paper explores possible influences that recent developments in the field of a branch of AI called Automated Discovery Systems might have upon some aspects of the old debate between Francis Bacon’s inductivism and Karl Popper’s falsificationism. Francis Bacon advocates mechanical induction as the legitimate, infallible method of science, and Karl Popper proposes his famous falsificationist view, according to which science proceeds by subsequent conjectures and refutations, and the question about where scientific hypotheses come from neither needs, nor is capable of, logical analysis. The traditional method of discussing such methodological debates relies on the analysis of various historical examples of discoveries in order to see how well the two models of scientific method account for them.