Īs a key notion in the separation of science from non-science and pseudo-science, falsifiability has featured prominently in many scientific controversies and applications, even being used as legal precedent. Philosophers such as Deborah Mayo consider that Popper "comes up short" in his description of the scientific role of statistical and data models. The experimental side and the associated methodology do have the Duhem problem and other problems such as the problem of induction, but, for Popper, statistical tests, which are possible when a theory is falsifiable, remain useful in science within a critical discussion.
In that context, Popper insisted that there is a clean asymmetry on the logical side and falsifiability does not have the Duhem problem because it is a logical criterion, as distinct from the related concept "capacity to be proven wrong" discussed in Lakatos's falsificationism. On the other hand, the Duhem-Quine thesis says that definitive experimental falsifications are impossible and that no scientific hypothesis is by itself capable of making predictions. In contrast, the observation of a single black swan is technologically reasonable and sufficient to logically falsify the claim. Verifying the claim "All swans are white" would logically require observing all swans, which is not technologically possible. Popper opposed falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability.
The purpose of falsifiability, even being a logical criterion, is to make the theory predictive and testable, thus useful in practice. A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable (or refutable) if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test that can potentially be executed with existing technologies. He proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation. įalsifiability 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 (1934). Here are two black swans, but even with no black swans to possibly falsify it, "All swans are white" would still be shown falsifiable by "Here is a black swan"-a black swan would still be a state of affairs, only an imaginary one.
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