Falsificationism

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Epistemology, Philosophy of Science

Overview

Popper proposed falsifiability as the criterion that separates genuine science from pseudo-science and metaphysics, replacing the search for confirming instances with a demand for testable, refutable risk. A theory that survives repeated attempts at refutation is corroborated, never proven true.

Position on

• Science and Pseudoscience

Held by traditions

• Critical Rationalism

  Question scope: Science and Pseudoscience

Rival positions

• Kuhnian Puzzle-Solving

  Question scope: Science and Pseudoscience

• Progressive Research Programmes

  Question scope: Science and Pseudoscience

References

• Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), ch. 1
• Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (1963), ch. 1 'Science: Conjectures and Refutations', which sums up that 'the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability'
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science and Pseudo-Science, §4.3 'Popper's falsificationism'
• Thomas S. Kuhn, 'Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?', in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1970), which argues against Popper that the mark of science is normal puzzle-solving under a paradigm rather than readiness to refute, so that astrology, whose failed predictions gave its practitioners no research puzzles, was never a science
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science and Pseudo-Science, §4.4 'The criterion of puzzle-solving' (Kuhn's astronomy–astrology comparison, and Popper's reply that the criterion is sociological rather than rational)
• Imre Lakatos, 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes', in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1970), which argues that no single theory is refuted by observation and relocates the criterion to a programme's record of predicting novel facts