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falsificationism

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun epistemology A scientific philosophy based on the requirement that hypotheses must be falsifiable in order to be scientific; if a claim is not able to be refuted it is not a scientific claim.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

falsification +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • The way I see it, a critique of Popper's falsificationism is useful, but for rather bizarre reasons this critique regularly gets inflated into the absurd claims that demarcation is hopeless and "pseudoscience" is a useless term.

    Demarcation as Politics 2006

  • I was presumably asking "falsificationism" to "justify its own success," a goal that is, in the words of his essay, "utterly pointless."

    The Karl Popper Problem Miller, David 1983

  • But Popper's ideas themselves, Feyerabend alleges, were not new to him, deductivism having been defended as early as 1925 by Viktor Kraft, and falsificationism being “taken for granted” at Alpbach.

    Paul Feyerabend Preston, John 2009

  • On the other hand, the shift in Popper's own basic position is taken by some critics as an indicator that falsificationism, for all its apparent merits, fares no better in the final analysis than verificationism.

    Karl Popper Thornton, Stephen 2009

  • Each of these theories springs from purely logical roots, confirmationism from Carnap's work on inductive logic, and falsificationism from Popper's rejection of inductive logic coupled with his assertion that universals can be falsified by a single counter-instance.

    Historicist Theories of Rationality Matheson, Carl 2008

  • There appear to be serious tensions between Popper's falsificationism and his defense of situational logic, and his discussion of situational logic has not been as influential as his falsificationism.

    Philosophy of Economics Hausman, Daniel M. 2008

  • I think some expansion on Popper's falsificationism (which is just as fundamental as demarcation, in his epistemology), would have been in point here.

    Demarcation, Demarcation, …. 2006

  • Generalizations with exceptions illustrate some subtle nuances in the relationship between Popperian falsificationism and the learning-theoretic idea of reliable convergence to the truth.

    Formal Learning Theory Schulte, Oliver 2008

  • The above sort of situation is, IMHO, much more common than some kind of crude dogmatic Popperian falsificationism that you seem to think is so common.

    Demarcation as Politics 2006

  • Before that point, the two dominant theories of rationality were confirmationism (scientists should accept theories that are probably true, given the evidence) and falsificationism (scientists should reject theories that make false predictions about observables and replace them with theories that conform to all available evidence).

    Historicist Theories of Rationality Matheson, Carl 2008

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