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Possibility of a statement to be proven wrong by observation / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the philosophy of science, falsifiability or refutability is the capacity for a statement, theory or hypothesis to be contradicted by an event with parts that are separately technologically possible,[upper-alpha 1] but which can be together impossible.[upper-alpha 2] For example, the law "All swans are white" is falsifiable because "Here is a black swan" contradicts it and, even if there were no black swans, this contradiction would still make the law falsifiable, because observing that a bird is a swan and seeing that a bird is black would still be separately possible.[upper-alpha 3]
This article is missing information about how falsifiability relates to fundamental concepts such as probability theory and the principle of parsimony required to discuss most of its applications. (April 2020) |
Falsifiability was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book Logik der Forschung (1934, revised and translated into English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation.
Popper opposed falsifiability to verifiability. For example, in order to verify the claim "All swans are white" one would have to observe every swan, which is not possible, whereas the single observation "Here is a black swan" is sufficient to falsify it.
As a key notion in the separation of science from non-science, falsifiability has featured prominently in many scientific controversies and applications, even being used as legal precedent.