Talk:Falsifiability

This page should live at falsifiability, no? And Popper is not the only, or arguably even the main, guy to consider when writing about falsifiability. --LMS

Who are some others? (you're probably the best-versed in this area, Larry) --Seb

I might not be. Anyway, all the logical empiricists talked about it (i.e., discussed it, as an alternative to the verifiability theory of meaning), and it's an essential concept in the philosophy of science. It wasn't owned by Popper. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write up what I know about the topic soon, but probably somebody'll beat me to it.  :-) --LMS

I think all Conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. They can be proven true, but they can't be procen false. From the article about Conspiracy Theories: A conspiracy theory is the exact opposite

of a [scientific theory]?, in that it cannot be refuted: even evidence to the contrary is taken by the conspiracy theorist to support the notion that an extremely powerful conspiracy is at work, that just has fabricated this evidence.

Conspiracy theorists usually reject only some kinds of evidence,

those they think could have been falsified by members of the conspiracy.

But there's still many kinds of evidence that they accept, most notably "scientific" evidence. --Taw

"All green things are green" is not a good argument, given that philosophy of language people have "grue" and "bleen". A scientist observing a "grue" item would agree that it is green, until it transforms. GregLindahl

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No definition for 'falsifiable' or 'falsifiability' given here, only a list of things that aren't falsifiable. How can I determine whether ID is falsifiable, if there's no definition here? Ed Poor

You could always read a book about the history of science, and then write the definition yourself. GregLindahl

Hey, hey, hey - let's play nice. (IMHO) there's nothing wrong with saying "I think there should be more info on Wikipedia on 'X', but I'm not qualified to do it. Anybody?"

A couple excerpts from Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary:

falsifiable: capable of being falsified.

falsify: 2. to show to be unfounded or untrue; to disprove; to prove to be false.

There are other definitions of falsify, but I'm confident the above is the relevant one. It would seem that the question is whether there could exist any evidence which, if presented, would clearly demonstrate that the proposition in question is false.

--Wesley

Thanks, Wesley. Now how do work that definition into the body of the article? It's pertinent to reams of talk about Creationism and Evolution. Ed Poor

It ain't the definition that's the problem, it's the nitty-gritty. If I say that (for example) I've falsified the hypothesis that Argon dating is accurate, and you don't agree, how do we come to a consensus?

Um, you don't get it. Everyone would agree that "Argon dating is accurate" is a falsifiable statement. GregLindahl

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Moved here to /Talk until we decide whether this is or isn't an example of falsifiability.

"For example, before the 1960s, there was no way to disprove the proposition that there were little green men living on the other side of the moon. So it wasn't considered a scientific hypothesis. When it became possible to examine the moon closely with spacecraft-mounted cameras, the proposition gained falsifiability, because there was a way to disprove it. Alas, the "moon men" hypothesis's viability lasted only a short time, as an exhaustive photographic survey of the moon showed no evidence of life on the moon."

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The Little Green Man example is poor; we knew in the 1960s that eventually we would be able to prove whether or not LGMs lived on the back side of the Moon. Unfalsifiability is generally reserved for things which are considered to NEVER be falsifiable. Again, reading a book about the philosophy and history of science is probably a better way of learning about this topic... much better than giving incorrect examples all over Wikipedia. GregLindahl

You're begging for it, and here it comes. Go up one level in a minute or two.

Re your "Moon man" example: No, I think that's wrong. The idea is that if something is in principle unfalsifiable, then it isn't Science. I.e., "Are there little green men on the moon?" "Go check." "But it's far." "Well, build a rocket or something." -- in theory we can imagine a check or test of our hypothesis.

But something like "God created the Universe ten minutes ago exactly as we see it, including our memories" is an "airtight" hypothesis, no way to disprove, and not Science, by definition.

Thank you, that's a classic example of falsifiability, one that Ed would run into if he educated himself by, say, reading a book, as opposed to posting wrong stuff on Wikipedia. GregLindahl

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The theory of evolution as generally taught. It is not falsifiable, because it claims that God has nothing to do with the appearance of new species of life. There is no way to falsify this claim (as it is dependent upon an unfalsifiable premise), so it's not a scientific hypothesis, only a philosophical conjecture. People who claim to be scientists can make unscientific (and unfalsifiable) claims.

I disagree. The theory of evolution does not claim that God has nothing to do with the appearance of new species of life. It's quite possible that God saw evolution as a nice quick way of creating a stable ecosystem from basic components without creating each in turn. After all - it's the original genetic algorithm! And nothing stops God from carefully fiddling about with a pile of carbon atoms in deepest darkest Africa and creating something new.

So lets jettison the 'God' argument, and reduce this to the statement "Darwin's Theory of Evolution is non-falsifiable". At the present moment in time, there is no way in which we can go back in time and watch evolution take place. So at the moment it is unfalsifiable. However, in a billion years time (when we'll all be getting worried about the sun going red giant on us) there will be 1000 million years of data to look back on. If no new species arise, then patently it is false; if radically different species (ie: unrelated species) arise, then patently it is false; if we see evolution occurring then it appears to be true. At this point, it can be falsified.

It should be pointed out that the theory of evolution has a major caveat in it's title: it is a theory, not a proof. Theories are by definition unproven, and for all science (excepting the man-made sciences such as Mathematics) nothing can be conclusively proven. The best that can be hoped for is this: the theory must make a prediction prior to the making of an experiment, and must agree with all future experiments in this field. Darwin's theory of evolution does this (just) - therefore it is falsifiable. Given (lots of) time.

However, there are no other theories (by the definition of making a prediction) about how the species evolve (or, at least, I haven't heard of them). So the theory of evolution is the best working theory so far.

(Also, it might be a good example to put a good example of a scientific theory being found false, and how it could have been considered falsifiable before the evidence to the contrary: Newton's laws of motion might be a good choice.)

Please let me know at my name page if you add to this conversation.

Dave McKee

Natural selection can also be falsified without the wait, as even though speciation takes a long time, you can still witness the various stages of the process in different species. Plus the theory makes some predictions about the fossil record that one could go back and check, though I suppose these are more for checking gradual evolution than any particular mechanism. A historically important alternative to Darwin was Lamarck, which claimed that organisms aquire new traits through practice and then pass these on to their offspring. A step in the right direction, proved incorrect.

"it might be a good example to put a good example of a scientific theory being found false, and how it could have been considered falsifiable before the evidence to the contrary: Newton's laws of motion might be a good choice."

As I understand this, Newton's laws of motion have not been found false, but are rather a "special case" under Relativity (which admittedly seems to apply to 99% of situations humans encounter).

Thanks for the input! Dave McKee