A S L 3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 31: Falsifiability, Thomas Kuhn, Inductive Reasoning
Document Summary
Popper fully accepted the importance of theories in scientific thinking. What distinguishes science from non-science, he argued, is not that the former is based on facts (observations, verifications) and the latter on ideas (dogma, prejudices. Falsificationism statements that cannot be falsified make no clear predictions thus aren"t scientific. Degrees of falsifiability the more falsifiable (dependent on level of detail & scope) a theory the better the theory is the more facts a theory explains, the better it is. The clearer and the more precise a theory, the higher its status if it stands repeated falsification tests. What distinguishes scientific from non-scientific theories is that scientific theories are falsifiable impossible to prove the truth of an inductive conclusion, it is easy to prove the falseness of an inductive conclusion. In later writings popper pointed to the need not only for falsifiability, but also for a commitment by the proponents to put their ideas to the test effectively.
