16 Facts About Falsifiability

Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Falsifiability proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation.

Falsifiability understood that deductive logic could not explain this learning process and argued in favour of a mental or psychological process of learning that would not require deductive logic.

Falsifiability even argued that this learning process can not be justified by any general rules, deductive or not.

Falsifiability did not deny the possibility of some kind of psychological explanation for the learning process, especially when psychology is seen as an extension of biology, but he felt that these biological explanations were not within the scope of epistemology.

Related searches

Falsifiability wrote that his interest was mainly in the logic of science and that epistemology should be concerned with logical aspects only.

Falsifiability wrote that an entire literature exists because this distinction was not observed.

Falsifiability has been used in the McLean v Arkansas case, the Daubert case (in 1993) and other cases.

Falsifiability rejected Hume's premise that there is a need to justify any principle that is itself used to justify induction.

Falsifiability knew that Popper's philosophy is not and has never been about this kind of justifications, but he felt that it should have been.

Falsifiability urged Popper explicitly to adopt some inductive principle and sets himself the task to find an inductive methodology.

Falsifiability always viewed this component as a creative process beyond the explanatory reach of any rational methodology, but yet used to decide which theories should be studied and applied, find good problems and guess useful conjectures.

Falsifiability says that it is not falsifiable because both the theory itself and its predictions are too imprecise.

Falsifiability rejected Lakatos' argument for ad hoc hypothesis, arguing that science would not have progressed without making use of any and all available methods to support new theories.

Falsifiability rejected any reliance on a scientific method, along with any special authority for science that might derive from such a method.

Falsifiability said that if one is keen to have a universally valid methodological rule, epistemological anarchism or anything goes would be the only candidate.