Claim associated especially with Austrian philosopher Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) that science should aim not to verify or confirm hypotheses – as verificationists and inductivists in general claim – but to falsify them.
This is because science is interested (in Popper’s view) in universal affirmative conclusions, of the form ‘All As are Bs’, and if the universe is infinite (or merely too vast to explore) such conclusions could never be verified.
However, they could be falsified by the discovery of a counter-example. Popper also rejects the possibility of weak confirmation, replacing it by his own notion of corroboration – though how far this is really different might be disputed.
However, while verificationists claim that verifiability is essential for meaningfulness, Popper claims only that falsifiability is essential for scientific – as against metaphysical – status (not that it is so for meaningfulness).
Also see: hypothetico-deductive method, inductivism, deductivism, improbabilism
Source:
A O’Hear, Karl Popper (1980)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 Falsificationism (2010) ISBN: 4861631505 [Japanese Import]
- 2.2 Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture -- Essays on Science, Religion, Law, Literature, and Life
- 2.3 What is analytic philosophy?
- 2.4 A Defense of Computational Physics
- 2.5 Logics and Falsifications: A New Perspective on Constructivist Semantics (Trends in Logic Book 40)
- 2.6 Philosophico-Methodological Analysis of Prediction and its Role in Economics (Theory and Decision Library A: Book 50)
- 2.7 David Hume and Contemporary Philosophy
- hypothetico-deductive method
- verifiability (or verification) principle
- propensity theory of probability
- Karl Popper
- deductivism
Videos
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Falsificationism (2010) ISBN: 4861631505 [Japanese Import]
- Japanese (Publication Language)
- Tohoku University Publishing Co. (Publisher)
Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture -- Essays on Science, Religion, Law, Literature, and Life
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Haack, Susan (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 348 Pages - 05/14/2013 (Publication Date) - Prometheus (Publisher)
What is analytic philosophy?
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Kuczynski, J.-M. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 139 Pages - 04/07/2015 (Publication Date)
A Defense of Computational Physics
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Roache, Patrick J. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 100 Pages - 04/02/2012 (Publication Date)
Logics and Falsifications: A New Perspective on Constructivist Semantics (Trends in Logic Book 40)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Kapsner, Andreas (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 217 Pages - 01/07/2015 (Publication Date) - Springer (Publisher)
Philosophico-Methodological Analysis of Prediction and its Role in Economics (Theory and Decision Library A: Book 50)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Gonzalez, Wenceslao J. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 362 Pages - 02/19/2015 (Publication Date) - Springer (Publisher)
David Hume and Contemporary Philosophy
- Hardcover Book
- Ilya Kasavin (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 335 Pages - 11/01/2012 (Publication Date) - Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Publisher)
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