Falsification

This text is about quite interesting topic - Falsification. What makes a theory scientific and what is the principle of falsification? In this text we will analyse Popper's theory, criticism of induction and what constitutes real science.

Sir Raimund Karl Popper was born in 1902 in Vienna, Austria. But later he emigrated to New Zeeland because of the rise of Nazism in Germany and Austria. Then he went to Great Britain where he spent most of his life teaching at the London School of economics. He is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, and of course it is difficult to summarize his contributions in one text.
Karl Popper was living at the time when Albert Einstein formulated his theory of relativity. Einstein formulated various theories but at that time he did not yet have experimental proof for this theory. His theory made predictions, but the actual test to see if the predictions were correct was not performed yet. If the Einstein’s theory will be proven correct or not. If the result of the experiment affirms the theory, then the theory will be strengthened, If not, then Einstein’s theory will be abandoned.

He pointed out that Albert Einstein put his ideas out in the open by suggesting how they could be tested and possibly shown false if by any chance they were. Then Popper said pseudo-sciences do just the opposite of this, no matter the outcome they'll say “This shows that my idea is true”, "Oh, a different outcome. Well that must also mean my idea is true." Karl Popper continued that Science requires strict falsification to be scientific. The Falsification Principle is the heart of Karl Popper's philosophy of science. Essentially it states that a claim is scientific only to the extent that it can be falsified. It makes no claim about non-scientific claims.

Popper was concerned about the difference between Science and Pseudo science and not necessarily about the truth of a theory. This is where the philosophy of science as falsification emerged. Popper believed that Science starts with problems rather than with observations and based on the specific problems, it then leads the scientist to then make observations. According to Popper, the scientist's observations are therefore designed to test the extent to which a theory satisfactorily solves the initial problem. Popper’s point is that, whereas no amount of evidence in favour of a universal claim can prove that claim to be true, but one, just only one opposite example can prove it to be false. Science, therefore, should proceed by making bold (that is, falsifiable) conjectures which it then sets out to refute.

According to Popper scientific theories cannot give you certainty. Maybe in the future another new experiment will prove the theory wrong. That means it is always necessary to search for a new theory that is able to explain both the old and the new experimental results. As a matter of fact, even hundreds or thousands of proofs are not enough to prove a theory absolutely correct. You can never be certain, maybe the next experiment will prove all these thousands theory false. One single experiment is enough to falsify a theory, no matter how many times the theory has been proven correct before.