Verificationism

The Verification Principle: 

 

• The Vienna Circle were a group of philosophers who developed what has come to be known as the strong verification principle, or,
logical positivism
• The verification principle states that statements can only be meaningful if they are analytic statements or if they can be empirically
verified
• Analytic statements – are true by definition; tautologies such as “all bachelors are unmarried men”
• Empirically verifiable statements – can be proven with empirical evidence, for example “that car is blue” can either be verified or
falsified conclusively
• This leaves many areas of language and expression which become meaningless, for example:
• Emotion – feelings cannot be verified as to state that “Jenny feels sad” cannot be proven empirically & isn’t a tautology
• Opinions – “that statue is beautiful” & comments such as these automatically become meaningless for the same reason
• Historical events – “The Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066” is a meaningless statement for a verificationist, as one
cannot empirically see the Battle of Hastings happen at this time to verify it, & the Battle is not a defining quality of
the year 1066 – it is not analytically true
• Religious language – “God talk” is neither true by definition & also cannot be empirically verified, statements such as
“God is good” become meaningless
• Other empirical statements – the example given by Swinburne when criticising verificationism is “all ravens are black”.
While it seems logical to say that this statement is true, & in fact most would argue it’s fact, under the verification
principle this is meaningless, as it’s not a tautology & one cannot empirically prove every raven alive is black
A J Ayer & Verificationism: 

• The philosopher A J Ayer supported the verification principle

• According to Ayer, if a statement is not verifiable it is either a tautology or meaningless – by which he meant “of no factual
significance“
• Ayer distinguished between strong and weak verification, developing weak verification by stating that certain statements could be
verifiable “in principle”
Weak Verification 
– Ayer noted that there are certain statements which though they are neither tautologies or empirically verifiable, they are still
meaningless. For example “there is life on other planets”
– He gave the example of general practical laws which still hold meaning despite not adhering to the strong verification principle, for
example “all humans are mortal” 
– This also suggests that historical statements such as “Henry VIII had six wives” can still be considered meaningful, as although it
doesn’t work under the strong verification principle, it is verifiable in principle due to the amount of evidence we have of it
– However Ayer maintained that even weak verification could not be used to make metaphysical claims, namely claims about God, as
these are outside of our realm of understanding & knowledge
Responses to Verificationism: 
1 Verification is unverifiable 
2 – The verification principle itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable; therefore making it meaningless by its own
definition
3 God talk is eschatologically verifiable 
4 – John Hick suggests religion is not meaningless because its truth is in fact verifiable in principle. He uses the example of the
Celestial City, two travellers are on a path leading to the Celestial City, the journey is unavoidable. One believes the city
exists & view difficulties on the way as challenges to reaching it, the other doesn’t believe in the city & sees hardships as
necessary to endure. At the end of their journey, one of them will be proven right, meaning statements about religion will be
verified or falsified in death
5 Strong verification 
6 – The strong verification principle has been widely criticised for excluding vast areas of knowledge, for example history, general
scientific rules or understanding. One cannot say water boils at 100 degrees as one cannot test every water molecule
7 The evidence problem
8 – While Ayer developed weak verification to combat some of the problems of the Vienna circles initial ideas, he is inconsistent
with what he considers adequate evidence. For example general scientific rules are accepted as verifiable in principle, yet the
birth of Jesus with its many accounts both written and spoken is meaningless?
9 Meaningful but unverifiable
10– There are plenty of examples of meaningful but unverifiable statements. For example Schrodinger’s cat, while it is unknown
when the cat is in the box if it is alive or dead, this does not make the situation meaningless

History of Verificationism

Empiricism, all the way back to John Locke in the 17th Century, can be seen as verificationist. The basic tenet of Empiricism is
that experience is our only source of knowledge and Verificationism might be seen as simply a consequence of this
tenet. Empiricists like David Hume rejectedphilosophic positions about the existence of a God, a soul or even a self, since he was
unable to point to (read, verify) the impression from which the idea of the thing is derived. Although the early Empiricists were not
directly discussing the meaning of propositions, their general stance was still consistent with Verificationism.

The Positivism of Auguste Comte was based largely on the concept of Verificationism, and the Logical Positivism it gave rise to in
the early 20th Century was very much founded on Verificationism. Pragmatism did not set out to rule
out Metaphysics, Religion or Ethics with the verification principle in the same way as Logical Positivism did, but it still made use
of the concept, in an attempt to provide a standard for conducting good and useful philosophy.

Karl Popper (1902 - 1994) asserted that a hypothesis, proposition or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable (i.e. it can be shown
false by an observation or a physical experiment) rather than verifiable, leading to the concept of Falsificationism. However, he
claimed that his demand for falsifiability was not meant as a theory of meaning, but rather as a methodological norm for the sciences.

Some claim that Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument of 1953 is a form of Verificationism, although there is
some contention over this. The argument, at its simplest, purports to show that the idea of a language understandable by only a single
individual is incoherent.

Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine
which maintains that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cognitively meaningful, or
else they are truths of logic (tautologies).
Verificationism thus rejects as cognitively "meaningless" statements specific to entire fields such
as metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics. Such statements may be meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior, but not in
terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content.[1] Verificationism was a central thesis of logical positivism, a
movement in analytic philosophy that emerged in the 1920s by the efforts of a group of philosophers who sought to unify philosophy
and science under a common naturalistic theory of knowledge.

Origins
Although verificationist principles of a general sort—grounding scientific theory in some verifiable experience—are found
retrospectively even with the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce and with the French conventionalist Pierre Duhem[2] who
fostered instrumentalism,[3] the vigorous program of verificationism was launched by the logical positivists who, emerging from
the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle in the 1920s, sought an epistemology whereby philosophical discourse would be, in their
perception, as authoritative and meaningful as empirical science.
Logical positivists garnered the verifiability criterion of cognitive meaningfulness from young Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of
languageposed in his 1921 book Tractatus,[4] and, led by Bertrand Russell, sought to reformulate the analytic–synthetic distinction in a
way that would reduce mathematics and logic to semantical conventions. This would be pivotal to verificationism, in that logic and
mathematics would otherwise be classified as synthetic a priori knowledge and defined as "meaningless" under verificationism.
Seeking grounding in such empiricism as of David Hume,[5] Auguste Comte, and Ernst Mach—along with the positivism of the latter
two—they borrowed some perspectives from Immanuel Kant, and found the exemplar of science to be Albert Einstein's general theory
of relativity.

Revisions
Logical positivists within the Vienna Circle recognized quickly that the verifiability criterion was too stringent. Notably, all universal
generalizations are empirically unverifiable, such that, under verificationism, vast domains of science and reason, such as
scientific hypothesis, would be rendered meaningless.[6]
Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank led a faction seeking to make the verifiability criterion more inclusive,
beginning a movement they referred to as the "liberalization of empiricism". Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann led a
"conservative wing" that maintained a strict verificationism. Whereas Schlick sought to reduce universal generalizations to
frameworks of 'rules' from which verifiable statements can be derived,[7] Hahn argued that the verifiability criterion should accede to
less-than-conclusive verifiability.[8] Among other ideas espoused by the liberalization movement were physicalism,
over Mach's phenomenalism, coherentism over foundationalism, as well as pragmatism and fallibilism.[6][9]
In 1936, Carnap sought a switch from verification to confirmation.[6] Carnap's confirmability criterion (confirmationism) would not
require conclusive verification (thus accommodating for universal generalizations) but allow for partial testability to establish "degrees
of confirmation" on a probabilistic basis. Carnap never succeeded in formalizing his thesis despite employing abundant logical and
mathematical tools for this purpose. In all of Carnap's formulations, a universal law's degree of confirmation is zero.[10]
That same year saw the publication of A. J. Ayer's work, Language, Truth and Logic, in which he proposed two types of
verification: strong and weak. This system espoused conclusive verification, yet accommodated for probabilistic inclusion where
verifiability is inconclusive. Ayer also distinguished between practical and theoretical verifiability. Under the latter, propositions that
cannot be verified in practice would still be meaningful if they can be verified in principle.
Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery proposed falsificationism as a criterion under which scientific hypothesis would be
tenable. Falsificationism would allow hypotheses expressed as universal generalizations, such as "all swans are white", to be
provisionally true until falsified by evidence, in contrast to verificationism under which they would be disqualified immediately as
meaningless.
Though generally considered a revision of verificationism,[4][11] Popper intended falsificationism as a methodological standard specific
to the sciences rather than as a theory of meaning.[4] Popper regarded scientific hypotheses to be unverifiable, as well as not
"confirmable" under Rudolf Carnap's thesis.[4][12] He also found non-scientific, metaphysical, ethical and aesthetic statements often rich
in meaning and important in the origination of scientific theories.[4][13]

Decline
The 1951 article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", by Willard Van Orman Quine, attacked the analytic/synthetic division and apparently
rendered the verificationist program untenable. Carl Hempel, one of verificationism's greatest internal critics, had recently concluded
the same as to the verifiability criterion.[14] In 1958, Norwood Hanson explained that even direct observations must be collected,
sorted, and reported with guidance and constraint by theory, which sets a horizon of expectation and interpretation, how observational
reports, never neutral, are laden with theory.[15]
Thomas Kuhn's landmark book of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—which identified paradigms of science overturned
by revolutionary science within fundamental physics—critically destabilized confidence in scientific foundationalism,[16] commonly if
erroneously attributed to verificationism.[17] Popper, who had long claimed to have killed verificationism but recognized that some
would confuse his falsificationism for more of it,[11] was knighted in 1965. In 1967, John Passmore, a leading historian of 20th-century
philosophy, wrote, "Logical positivism is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".[18] Logical positivism's fall
heralded postpositivism, where Popper's view of human knowledge as hypothetical, continually growing, and open to change
ascended,[11] and verificationism became mostly maligned.[2]

Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.[1] It is one of
several views of epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the role of empirical evidence in the
formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions.[2] However, empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to
relations of previous sense experiences.[3]
Historically, empiricism was associated with the "blank slate" concept (tabula rasa), according to which the human mind is "blank" at
birth and develops its thoughts only through experience.[4]
Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of
the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely
on a priorireasoning, intuition, or revelation.
Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and
probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification".[5]Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement
tools, guides the scientific method.
Empiricism is the philosophical stance according to which the senses are the ultimate source of human knowledge. It stands in contrast
to rationalism, according to which reason is the ultimate source of knowledge. In Western philosophy, empiricism boasts a long and
distinguished list of followers; it became particularly popular during the 1600's and 1700's. Some of the most important British
empiricists of that time included John Locke and David Hume.
Empiricists Maintain That Experience Leads to Understanding 
Empiricists claim that all ideas that a mind can entertain have been formed through some experience or – to use a slightly more
technical term – through some impression. Here is how David Hume expressed this creed: "it must be some one impression that gives
rise to every real idea" (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Section IV, Ch. vi). Indeed – Hume continues in Book II – "all our ideas
or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones."
Empiricists support their philosophy by describing situations in which a person’s lack of experience precludes her from full
understanding. Consider pineapples, a favorite example among early modern writers. How can you explain the flavor of a pineapple to
someone who has never tasted one? Here is what John Locke says about pineapples in his Essay:
"If you doubt this, see whether you can, by words, give anyone who has never tasted pineapple an idea of the taste of that fruit. He
may approach a grasp of it by being told of its resemblance to other tastes of which he already has the ideas in his memory, imprinted
there by things he has taken into his mouth; but this isn’t giving him that idea by a definition, but merely raising up in him other
simple ideas that will still be very different from the true taste of pineapple."
(An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter IV)
There are of course countless cases analogous to the one cited by Locke. They are typically exemplified by claims such as: "You can’t
understand what it feels like …" Thus, if you never gave birth, you don’t know what it feels like; if you never dined at the famous
Spanish restaurant El Bulli, you don’t know what it was like; and so on.
Limits of Empiricism 
There are many limits to empiricism and many objections to the idea that experience can make it possible for us to adequately
understand the full breadth of human experience. One such objection concerns the process of abstraction through which ideas are
supposed to be formed from impressions.
For instance, consider the idea of a triangle. Presumably, an average person will have seen plenty of triangles, of all sorts of types,
sizes, colors, materials … But until we have an idea of a triangle in our minds, how do we recognize that a three-sided figure is, in
fact, a triangle?
Empiricists will typically reply that the process of abstraction embeds a loss of information: impressions are vivid, while ideas are
faint memories of reflections. If we were to consider each impression on its own, we would see that no two of them are alike; but
when we remember multiple impressions of triangles, we will understand that they are all three-sided objects.
While it may be possible to empirically grasp a concrete idea like "triangle" or "house," however, abstract concepts are much more
complex. One example of such an abstract concept is the idea of love: is it specific to positional qualities such as gender, sex, age,
upbringing, or social status, or is there really one abstract idea of love? 
Another abstract concept that is difficult to describe from the empirical perspective is the idea of the self. Which sort of impression
could ever teach us such an idea? For Descartes, indeed, the self is an innate idea, one that is found within a person independently of
any specific experience: rather, the very possibility of having an impression depends on a subject’s possessing an idea of the self.
Analogously, Kant centered his philosophy on the idea of the self, which is a prioriaccording to the terminology he introduced. So,
what is the empiricist account of the self?
Probably the most fascinating and effective reply comes, once again, from Hume. Here is what he wrote about the self in the Treatise
(Book I, Section IV, Ch. vi):
"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or
cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe
any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself,
and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor
love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me
a perfect nonentity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I
can reason no longer with him. 
All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps,
perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me. "
Whether Hume was right or not is beyond the point. What matters is that the empiricist account of the self is, typically, one that tries
to do away with the unity of the self. In other words, the idea that there is one thing that survives throughout our whole life is an
illusion.

Empiricism is the theory that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,
especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, and argues that the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori (i.e.
based on experience). Most empiricists also discount the notion of innate ideas or innatism (the idea that the mind is bornwith ideas or
knowledge and is not a "blank slate" at birth).

In order to build a more complex body of knowledge from these direct observations, induction or inductive

reasoning (making generalizations based on individual instances) must be used. This kind of knowledge is therefore also known
as indirect empirical knowledge.

Empiricism is contrasted with Rationalism, the theory that the mind may apprehend some truths directly, without requiring the medium
of the senses.
The term "empiricism" has a dual etymology, stemming both from the Greek word for "experience"and from the more specific
classical Greek and Roman usage of "empiric", referring to a physician whose skill derives from practical experience as opposed to
instruction in theory (this was its first usage).

The term "empirical" (rather than "empiricism") also refers to the method of observation and experiment used in the natural and
social sciences. It is a fundamental requirement of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested
against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition or revelation. Hence, science is
considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.

History of Empiricism Back to Top

The concept of a "tabula rasa" (or "clean slate") had been developed as early as the 11th Century by the Persian
philosopher Avicenna, who further argued that knowledge is attained through empirical familiarity with objects in this world, from
which one abstracts universal concepts, which can then be further developed through a syllogistic method of reasoning. The 12th
Century Arabic philosopher Abubacer (or Ibn Tufail: 1105 - 1185) demonstrated the theory of tabula rasa as a thought
experiment in which the mind of a feral child develops from a clean slate to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society on a
desert island, through experience alone.

Sir Francis Bacon can be considered an early Empiricist, through his popularization of an inductivemethodology for scientific inquiry,
which has since become known as the scientific method.

In the 17th and 18th Century, the members of the British Empiricism school John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume were the
primary exponents of Empiricism. They vigorously defended Empiricism against the Rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza.

The doctrine of Empiricism was first explicitly formulated by the British philosopher John Locke in the late 17th
Century. Locke argued in his "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" of 1690 that the mind is a tabula rasa on which
experiences leave their marks, and therefore denied that humans have innate ideas or that anything is knowable without reference to
experience. However, he also held that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and
reasoning alone.

The Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley, concerned that Locke's view opened a door that could lead to eventual Atheism, put
forth in his "Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" of 1710 a different, very extreme form of Empiricism in
which things only exist either as a result of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an entity doing the perceiving.
He argued that the continued existence of things results from the perception of God, regardless of whether there are humans around or
not, and any order humans may see in nature is effectively just the handwriting of God. Berkeley's approach to Empiricism would later
come to be called Subjective Idealism.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume brought to the Empiricist viewpoint an extreme Skepticism. He argued that all of human
knowledge can be divided into two categories: relations of ideas (e.g. propositions involving some contingent observation of the
world, such as "the sun rises in the East") and matters of fact (e.g. mathematical and logical propositions), and that ideas are derived
from our "impressions" or sensations. In the face of this, he argued that even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, or even
in the existence of the self, cannot be conclusively established by reason, but we accept them anyway because of their basis
in instinct and custom.

John Stuart Mill, in the mid-19th Century, took Hume and Berkeley's reasoning a step further in maintaining that inductive
reasoning is necessary for all meaningful knowledge (including mathematics), and that matter is merely the "permanent possibility of
sensation" as he put it. This is an extreme form of Empiricism known as Phenomenalism (the view that physical objects, properties and
events are completely reducible to mental objects, properties and events).

In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, several forms of Pragmatism arose, which attempted to integrate the
apparently mutually-exclusive insights of Empiricism (experience-based thinking) and Rationalism (concept-based thinking). C. S.
Peirce and William James (who coined the term "radical empiricism" to describe an offshoot of his form of Pragmatism) were
particularly important in this endeavor.

The next step in the development of Empiricism was Logical Empiricism (or Logical Positivism), an early 20th Century attempt to
synthesize the essential ideas of British Empiricism (a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain
insights from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This resulted
in a kind of extreme Empiricism which held that any genuinely synthetic assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set
of ultimate assertions) which expresses direct observations or perceptions.
 Empiricism is the philosophy of knowledgeby observation. It holds that the best way to gain knowledge is to see, hear, touch, or
otherwise sense things directly. In stronger versions, it holds that this is the only kind of knowledge that really counts. Empiricism
has been extremely important to the history of science, as various thinkers over the centuries have proposed that all knowledge
should be tested empirically rather than just through thought-experiments or rational calculation.
Empiricism is an idea about how we know things, which means it belongs to the field of epistemology.

Empiricism is often contrasted with rationalism, a rival school which holds that knowledge is based primarily on logic and intuition, or
innate ideas that we can understand through contemplation, not observation.
Example
Rationalists hold that you don’t have to make any observations to know that 1+1=2; any person who understands the concepts of
“one” and “addition” can work it out for themselves. Empiricists argue the opposite: that we can only understand 1+1=2
because we’ve seen it in action throughout our lives. As children, empiricists say, we learn by observing adults, and that’s how we
gain abstract knowledge about things like math and logic.
Of course, ideally, knowledge consists of both observation and logic; you don’t have to choose between the two. It’s more a matter
of which one you emphasize.

There is a combined philosophy, called constructivism, which represents one way to get the best of both worlds. Constructivists,
like empiricists, argue that knowledge is based, first and foremost, on observing the world around us. But we can’t understand what
we see unless we fit it into some broader rational structure, so reason also plays an essential role. Constructivism is a high-profile
idea in the philosophy of education, and many teachers use it to design their lessons: the idea is to present information in an order
that builds on previous information, so that over time students “construct” a picture of the subject at hand, and at each step they are
able to “place” the new information in the context of old information.

The History and Importance of Empiricism

Philosophers have long tried to arrive at knowledge through some combination of observation and logic — empiricism and
rationalism. For example, the ancient rivalry between Plato (rationalism) and Aristotle (empiricism) shaped the future of
philosophy not only in Europe but also throughout the Islamic world, stretching from Africa to India and beyond. European and
Islamic philosophers argued for centuries about whether the best sort of knowledge was deduction from abstract principles
(following Plato) or observing the world around us (following Aristotle).
The debate is even older than ancient Greece, as empiricism and rationalism had already appeared in Indian philosophical texts
dating back centuries before Plato and Aristotle were born. Most Indian philosophers, however, took the view that both empiricism
and rationalism were necessary, whereas European philosophers tended to argue that one had to be victorious over the other.

Empiricism really took off in Europe during the Scientific Revolution, when scholars began conducting systematic experiments and
observations of the world around them. These observations led to earth-shattering discoveries, such as the fact that our planet
revolves around the sun rather than the other way around. However, the Scientific Revolution also owed a lot to rationalism, which
is involved in coming up with experiments to begin with, and deriving knowledge from their results. Rationalism was especially
influential in promoting mathematical reasoning as an essential part of deriving scientific conclusions.

V. Empiricism in Popular Culture

Example 1
Many RPGs (role-playing games), such as Skyrim, give players the ability to combine various items to make potions, weapons,
armor, etc. In many cases, you have to get there by pure trial-and-error because there’s very little rhyme or reason — no patterns.
These games encourage empiricism because you have to learn by repeated experiments and observation rather than abstract
reasoning.
Example 2
“Call it what you will, it’s about getting up off your chair, going where the action is, and seeing things firsthand.” (David Sturt)
David Sturt is a self-help author and motivational speaker. In this quote, he’s promoting a kind of empiricism as a philosophy of
life. See things for yourself! Experience the world directly! This is similar to the epistemological empiricism that we’ve been
discussing in this article. However, it’s a little different in that true empiricism is a theory of where knowledge comes from. In
other words, empiricism is a theory about how best to know reality (through direct experience).
Controversies

Empiricism and Skepticism

Many empiricists are also skeptics: they argue that many common-sense ideas are not empirically observable, and therefore that
either those ideas are not true or, at best, we can’t know whether they’re true. For example, David Hume, one of the most famous
empiricists, argued that we could not empirically demonstrate the existence of causality! His argument went something like this:
 You see a baseball flying towards a window.

 Moments later, you hear a crash and see the window break.

 You infer that the ball caused the window to break.

David Hume argued that only (1) and (2) are empirical; they’re observations. But (3) isn’t an observation; it’s
an inference (technically, an inductive inference). Therefore, according to Hume’s empiricism, we can’t really know whether the
ball caused the window to break! We only know for sure that certain things happened, not whether they’re connected! Therefore
it’s impossible to know whether any event causes another or whether they just occurred one after the other. In other words, we can
observe separate events, but we can never observe a causal link between them.
Later empiricists would question Hume’s argument. For example, William James argued for what he called “radical empiricism,”
or the view that you can actually observe causality. He argued that Hume was being overly reductive about what counts as
“observation,” and failing to account for more abstract observations that we make all the time.
For example, we might say “I saw the ball break the window.” This is more than just an observation of two separate events; it’s also
an observation of one event, an event involving causation, which we directly observe.

"Black swan problem" redirects here. For the theory of response to surprise events, see Black swan theory.
Not to be confused with Mathematical induction.
The problem of induction is the philosophical question of what are the justifications, if any, for any growth of knowledge understood
in the classic philosophical sense—knowledge that goes beyond a mere collection of observations[1]—highlighting the apparent lack of
justification in particular for:

1. Generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that
class (e.g., the inference that "all swans we have seen are white, and, therefore, all swans are white", before the discovery
of black swans) or
2. Presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (e.g., that the laws of physics will
hold as they have always been observed to hold). Hume called this the principle of uniformity of nature.[2]
The traditional inductivist view is that all claimed empirical laws, either in everyday life or through the scientific method, can be
justified through some form of reasoning. The problem is that many philosophers tried to find such a justification but their proposals
were not accepted by others. Identifying the inductivist view as the scientific view, C. D. Broad once said that "induction is the glory
of science and the scandal of philosophy". In contrast, Karl Popper's critical rationalismclaimed that inductive justifications are never
used in science and proposed instead that science is based on the procedure of conjecturing hypotheses, deductively calculating
consequences, and then empirically attempting to falsify them.
The original source of what is known as the problem today was proposed by David Hume in the mid-18th century, although inductive
justifications were already argued against by the Pyrrhonistschool of Hellenistic philosophy and the Cārvāka school of ancient Indian
philosophy in a way that shed light on the problem of induction.
David Hume was a Scottish empiricist, who believed that all knowledge was derived from sense experience alone. He is perhaps most
famous for popularizing the “Problem of Induction”. I’ll address that in a later article. For now, however, we focus on his “Is-Ought
problem”. The Is-Ought problem is a problem of how to derive moral judgements, namely, “Ought” statements, from facts of the
world, or, “Is” statements.

For instance, it may be said that “One ought to run fast”. But no fact of the world is a valid reason to run fast. It can only be
(rationally) said that “One ought to run fast if one wishes to win the race”. The fallacy in this instance then, lies with whether one
wishes to win the race. There are several rebuttals to this, and I shall present two.

The first is known as fact-value entanglement, and notably advocated by Hilary Putnam. The issue raised by the entanglement is that,
“you cannot explain the activities that conform the task labeled as “describing what the facts are” without introducing a good deal of
values in the picture”, Angel M Faerna writes in Moral Disagreement and the Fact Value entanglement. [1]
A.N. Prior says that from the statement that someone is a sea captain it follows that he ought to do what a sea captain is doing.
However, this seems to not be the case. The set or category of “sea captain” only encompasses people who are doing what sea
captains do, not those who ought to be doing what sea captains do. The claim that a sea captain should or ought to be doing what a sea
captain does seems to me the wrong sort of ought. It follows only in the sense that, “If one is a sea captain and my expectation of a sea
captain are correct, he will be doing what a sea captain does.” The ought is a different kind of “ought” and I therefore say that it is a
false equivalence.

Immanuel Kant provided perhaps the most famous response to the is-ought problem. The categorical imperative is composed of three
maxims. The first is the Formula of Universality, which states, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time
will that it should become a universal law.” However, this maxim allows for certain immoral actions. A consequence of the
universality exemplified by Kant’s Formula of Universality is that no difference can be made from the circumstances of the situation.
Lying to protect a child is no more moral under the Formula than lying as a stock swindler, for instance. Most people do not consider
lying to protect a child immoral because it protects a child’s life. By protecting the child’s life, it stops a hypothetical murder. This
outlines my essential problem with maxim-based systems of morality. Different people under different circumstances will derive
different maxims from the same situation. The statement that the person was merely saving a child seems to be no less valid than the
claim that they were lying.

James Fieser of University of Tennessee Martin states that this problem is naught, because Kant stated that maxims were to be created
from underlying motive. For instance, he gives the example of hitting a pedestrian with a car. Kant would, according to him, use the
underlying motive as a maxim. For instance, I may have hit the pedestrian because I hated him. However, this seems to create an
infinite regress of motives no better than that created by the Is-Ought problem. What was the motive for hating him, what was the
motive for that…etc?

In addition, even if motive could be absolutely defined, that motive may not determine morality. For instance, in Star Wars, the
Empire’s motive in destroying Alderaan was to suppress rebellion and maintain order. According to Kant, this is a perfectly fine
action because the motive can be made universal while remaining logically consistent.

Kant’s second formulation, The Formula of Humanity, is based on the first formula and the distinction between objective ends. It
states that people should not be treated as a means to an end, but as an end themselves. The third maxim is merely an extension of the
other two maxims, and states that each will must be universally self-legislating. Things we will must be willed to ourselves as well.

However, again, the second and third are based upon the first, and I disagree with the first. As stated before, moral laws seem to be
based upon numbers of examples and counterexamples. Based on an examination of how moral systems are developed, I believe that a
maxim is only supported insofar as it produces logically following moral results that are agreeable to the population. See my example
of The Surgeon Problem above.

The most interesting, but likely the most complicated response to the is-ought problem is John Searle’s example of lending money. It
follows (his revised example): [2]

P1: Jones uttered the words, ―I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars.

P2: Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars.

P3: Jones placed himself under (undertook) an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.

P4: Jones is under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.

P5: As regards his obligation to pay Smith five dollars, Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars.

Essentially, the obligation rests on the idea that facts can be separated into two types—brute facts (facts which are non-reducible), and
institutional facts (which are). For instance, the article I cited provides these as examples. “Judith has a million dollars”, and
“Raymond won the tennis match” are reducible to the statements “Judith has a lot of paper with green ink on it”, and “Raymond hit
the yellow sphere and the person on the other side of the net did not hit it back.”
Essentially, this divide means that within Institutional Facts, ought judgements can be derived. Within the example of lending money
for instance, institutionally, a promise is composed of an “ought” (that one ought to pay back the money), so this promise comprises a
judgement.

My attempts at a response:

While obviously not a philosopher, and this obviously not being a truly logical response, I will present this as my attempt.

My response follows as such. In saying that it is impossible to derive an ought from an is, Hume makes a perfectly sound logical
argument. However, if this argument were true, we would have no reason to believe or accept it. The only way in which we would
have an obligation to believe it is if there were some way to find moral judgements, which itself refutes the argument.

If moral reasons are presented without logical support from “is” statements, and can still be considered binding, then this rule could
apply to every ought judgement. Without a reason to follow logic, we have no reason to follow logic or even Hume’s own argument.
The only world in which in which it is permissible to logically say that we “ought” to follow Hume’s argument is one in which either
it is possible to derive an ought from an is, or one where it is logically permissible to assume them without logical support. Of course,
this doesn’t logically refute the issue, only points out that it is self-defeating.

The Problem of Induction

Francis Bacon described "genuine Induction" as the new method of science. Opposing his new idea to what he thought Aristotle's
approach had been in his Organon (as misinterpreted by the medieval Scholastics), Bacon proposed that science builds
up knowledge by the accumulation of data (information), which is of course correct. This is simply the empirical method of collecting
piece by piece the (statistical) evidence to support a theory.

The "problem of induction" arises when we ask whether this form of reasoning can lead to apodeictic or
"metaphysical" certainty about knowledge, as the Scholastics thought. Thomas Aquinas especially thought that certain knowledge can
be built upon first principles, axioms, and deductive or logical reasoning. This certain knowledge does indeed exist, within a system of
thought such as logic or mathematics. But it can prove nothing about the natural world.

Bacon understood logical deduction, but like some proto-empiricists among the Scholastics (notably John Duns Scotus and William of
Ockham), Bacon argued in his Novum Organum that knowledge of nature comes from studying nature, not from reasoning in the ivory
tower.

Bacon likely did not believe certainty can result from inductive reasoning, but his great contribution was to see that (empirical)
knowledge gives us power over nature, by discovering what he called the form nature, the real causes underlying events. 

It was of course David Hume who pointed out the lack of certainty or logical necessity in the method of inferring causality from
observations of the regular succession of "causes and events." His great model of scientific thinking, Isaac Newton had championed
induction as the source of his ideas. As if his laws of motion were simply there in the data from Tycho Brahe's extensive observations
and Johannes Kepler's orbital ellipses.

"Hypotheses non fingo," Newton famously said, denying the laws were his own ideas. Although since Newton it is obvious that the
gravitational influence of the Sun causes the Earth and other planets to move around their orbits, Hume's skepticism led him to
question whether we could really know, with certainty, anything about causality, when all we ever see in our inductive study is the
regular succession of events.

Thus it was Hume who put forward the "problem of induction" that has bothered philosophers for centuries, spilling a great deal of
philosophical ink. Hume's skepticism told him induction could never yield a logical proof. But Hume's mitigated skepticism saw a
great deal of practical value gained by inferring a general rule from multiple occurrences, on the basis of what he saw as the
uniformity of nature. What we have seen repeatedly in the past is likely to continue in the future.

While Hume was interested in causal sequences in time, his justification of induction also applies to modern statistical thinking. We
infer the frequency of some property of an entire population from the statistics of an adequately large sample of that population. 

The Information Philosopher's solution to this problem (more properly a "pseudo-problem," to use the terminology of twentieth-
century logical positivists, logical empiricists, and linguistic analysts) is easily seen by examining the information involved in the
three (or four) methods of reasoning - logical deduction, empirical induction, mathematical induction (actually a form of deduction),
and what Charles Sanders Peirce called "abduction," to complete one of his many philosophical triads.
Mathematical induction is a method of proving some property of all the natural numbers by proving it for one number, then showing
that if it is true for the number n, it must also be true for n + 1. In both deduction and mathematical induction, the information content
of the conclusion is often no more than that already in the premises. To be sure, the growth of our systems of thought such as logic,
mathematics, and perhaps especially geometry, has generated vast amounts of new knowledge, new information, when surprising new
theorems are proved within the system. And much of this information has turned out to be isomorphic with information structures in
the universe. But the existence of an isomorphism is an empirical, not a logical, finding.

The principal role of deduction in science is to derive, logically or mathematically, predictable consequences of the new theory that
might be tested by suitable experiments. This step simply draws out information already present in the hypothesis. Theory, including
deductions and predictions, is all done in the realm of ideas, pure information. 

Abduction is the formation of new hypotheses, one step (rarely the first) in what some philosophers of science in the twentieth century
described as the scientific method - the hypothetico-deductive-observational method. It can be described more simply as the
combination of theories and experiments. Observations are very often the spur to theory formation, as the old inductive method
emphasized. A scientist forms a hypothesis about possible causes for what is observed. 

Although the hypothesis is an immaterial idea, pure information, the abduction of a hypothesis creates new information in the
universe, albeit in the minds of the scientists.

By contrast, an experiment is a material and energetic interaction with the world that produces new information structures to be
compared with theoretical predictions. Experiments are Baconian accumulations of data that can never "prove" a theory (or
hypothesis). But confirmation of any theory consists entirely of finding that the statistical outcomes of experiments match the theory's
predictions, within reasonable experimental "error bars." The best confirmation of any scientific theory is when it predicts a
phenomenon never before seen, such that when an experiment looks, that phenomenon is found to exist.

These "surprising" results of great theories shows the extent to which science is not a mere "economic summary of the facts," as
claimed by Ernst Mach, the primary creator of logical positivism in science.

Mach had a great influence on the young Albert Einstein, who employed Mach's idea in discovering his special theory of relativity.
The positivists insisted on limiting science to "observable" facts. Atoms were not (yet) observable, so despite the great chemical
theories of Dalton explaining molecules, the great statistical mechanical work of James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig
Boltzmann explaining thermodynamics, it remained for Einstein to predict the observable effects of atomic and molecular motions on
the motions of visible particles like pollen seeds in a liquid. 

The experimental measurements of those visible motions, with exactly the extent of motion predicted by Einstein, confirmed the
reality of atoms. The motions had been observed, almost eighty years earlier, by Robert Brown. Einstein's 1905 hypothesis - a "free
creation of the human mind," as he called it and his other extraordinary theories, together with the deduction of mathematically exact
predictions from the theory, and followed by the 1908 experiments by Jean Perrin, gives us a paradigmatic example of the scientific
method.

In information philosophy terms, the abstract immaterial information in the Einstein theory of Brownian motion, was found to
be isomorphic to material and energetic information structures in the universe.

In his early years, Einstein thought himself a disciple of Mach, a positivist. He limited his theories to observable facts. Special
relativity grew from the fact that absolute motions are not observable. 

But later when he realized the source of his greatest works were his own mental inventions, he changed his views. Here is Einstein in
1936,

We now realize, with special clarity, how much in error are those theorists who believe that theory comes inductively from
experience. Even the great Newton could not free himself from this error ("Hypotheses non fingo")...

There is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics. Failure to understand this fact constituted the
basic philosophical error of so many investigators of the nineteenth century. It was probably the reason why the molecular theory and
Maxwell's theory were able to establish themselves only at a relatively late date. Logical thinking is necessarily deductive; it is based
upon hypothetical concepts and axioms. How can we expect to choose the latter so that we might hope for a confirmation of the
consequences derived from them?
The most satisfactory situation is evidently to be found in cases where the new fundamental hypotheses are suggested by the world of
experience itself. The hypothesis of the non-existence of perpetual motion as a basis for thermodynamics affords such an example of a
fundamental hypothesis suggested by experience; the same holds for Galileo's principle of inertia. In the same category, moreover, we
find the fundamental hypotheses of the theory of relativity, which theory has led to an unexpected expansion and broadening of the
field theory, and to the superseding of the foundations of classical mechanics. 

(Physics and Reality," Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol.221, No.3, March, 1936. pp. 301, 307)

And here, Einstein wrote in his 1949 autobiography,

I have learned something else from the theory of gravitation: No ever so inclusive collection of empirical facts can ever lead to the
setting up of such complicated equations. A theory can be tested by experience, but there is no way from experience to the setting up
of a theory. Equations of such complexity as are the equations of the gravitational field can be found only through the discovery of a
logically simple mathematical condition which determines the equations completely or [at least] almost completely.
("Autobiographical Notes," in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, 1949, p.89)

Werner Heisenberg told Einstein in 1926 that his new quantum mechanics was based only on "observables," following the example of
Einstein's relativity theory that was based on the fact that absolute motion is not observable. For Heisenberg, the orbital path of an
electron in an atom is not an observable. Heisenberg said of his first meeting with Einstein,

Einstein himself discovered the transition probabilities between states in the Bohr atom, ten years before this conversation with
Heisenberg
I defended myself to begin with by justifying in detail the necessity for abandoning the path concept within the interior of the atom. I
pointed out that we cannot, in fact, observe such a path; what we actually record are frequencies of the light radiated by the atom,
intensities and transition-probabilities, but no actual path. And since it is but rational to introduce into a theory only such quantities as
can be directly observed, the concept of electron paths ought not, in fact, to figure in the theory.

To my astonishment, Einstein was not at all satisfied with this argument. He thought that every theory in fact contains unobservable
quantities. The principle of employing only observable quantities simply cannot be consistently carried out. And when I objected that
in this I had merely been applying the type of philosophy that he, too, had made the basis of his special theory of relativity, he
answered simply "Perhaps I did use such philosophy earlier, and also wrote it, but it is nonsense all the same." Thus Einstein had
meanwhile revised his philosophical position on this point. He pointed out to me that the very concept of observation was itself
already problematic. Every observation, so he argued, presupposes that there is an unambiguous connection known to us, between the
phenomenon to be observed and the sensation which eventually penetrates into our consciousness. But we can only be sure of this
connection, if we know the natural laws by which it is determined. If however, as is obviously the case in modern atomic physics,
these laws have to be called in question, then even the concept of "observation" loses its clear meaning. In that case it is theory which
first determines what can be observed. These considerations were quite new to me, and made a deep impression on me at the time;
they also played an important part later in my own work, and have proved extraordinarily fruitful in the development of the new
physics.

(Encounters with Einstein, 1983, pp.113-4)

Since philosophy has made the "linguistic turn" to abstract propositions, the problem of induction for today's philosophers is subtly
different from the one faced by David Hume. It has become an epistemological problem of "justifying true beliefs" about propositions
and thus lost the connection to "natural philosophy" it had in Hume's day. Information philosophy hopes to restore at least the
"metaphysical" elements of natural philosophy to the domain of philosophy proper. 

In contemporary logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of science, there is now the problem of "enumerative induction" or universal
inference, an inference from particular statements to general statements. For example, the inference from propositions

p1, p2,... pn, which are all F's that are G's

to the general inference that 

all F's are G's.

This is clearly a purely linguistic version of the original problem. Divorcing the problem of induction from nature empties it of the
great underlying principle in Hume, Mill, and other philosophers, namely the assumption of the uniformity of nature, which alone can
justify our "true?" belief that the sun will come up tomorrow.
In information terms, the problem of induction has been reduced, even impoverished, to become only relations between ideas. Perhaps
"ideas" is too strong, much of philosophy has become merely logical relations between statements or propositions. Because of the
inherent ambiguity of language, sometimes philosophy appears to have become merely a game played using our ability to make
arbitrary meaningless statements, then critically analyze the resulting conceptual paradoxes.

Karl Popper famously reprimanded Ludwig Wittgenstein's claim that there are no real philosophical problems, only puzzles and
language games.

On a close examination, it appears current philosophical practice has reduced the problem of induction to one of permissible
linguistic deductions.

Consider these examples from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

1. Inductions with general premises and particular conclusions:

o All observed emeralds have been green.
o Therefore, the next emerald to be observed will be green.
2. Valid deductions with particular premises and general conclusions:
o New York is east of the Mississippi. 
o Delaware is east of the Mississippi.
o Therefore, everything that is either New York or Delaware is east of the Mississippi.

The first example is clearly inductive, and insofar as it refers to real world objects, it depends on the uniformity of nature. But what
happens when language modifies the definition/meaning of green. Maybe it's the color, or maybe it's just the name of the color
"green." Maybe it's blue, or Nelson Goodman's inductive riddle "grue?"

The second example is purely deductive, appropriate for philosophical puzzles, which are merely ideas, today merely relations
between words. But it does not belong to the historical problem of induction. It is the problem of philosophers redefining the terms of
debate!

What Is the Problem of Induction? (with pictures)

The problem of induction is a question among philosophers and other people interested in human behavior who want to know
if inductive reasoning, a cornerstone of human logic, actually generates useful and meaningful information. A number of noted
philosophers, including Karl Popper and David Hume, have tackled this topic, and it continues to be a subject of interest and
discussion. Inductive reasoning is often faulty, and thus some philosophers argue that it is not a reliable source of information.

Swans are not always white, as Cygnus atratus, a species of swan that are native to Australia and New Zealand, develop black feathers
as an adult.
In the course of inductive reasoning, a series of observations are used to draw a conclusion on the basis of experience. One problem
with this logic is that simply because a set of experiences all support a logical conclusion doesn't mean something isn't out there to
contradict that conclusion. One of the most famous examples is that of the black swan. A subject sees a series of white swans and
concludes on the basis of this information that all swans are white, as whiteness must be an intrinsic state of swans. When this person
sees a black swan, it disproves that conclusion and illustrates the problem of induction.
Humans are forced to make logical decisions on the basis of inductive reasoning constantly, and sometimes these decisions are not
reliable. In finance and investing, for example, investors rely on their experiences with the market to make assumptions about how the
market will move. When they are incorrect, they can incur financial losses. After the fact, they understand that the conclusion they
reached was wrong, but they had no way of being able to predict this when the market always behaved in a way that matched their
expectations before.
The problem of induction can play a key role in understanding probability and how people make decisions. In a situation where
conclusions hinge on a series of positive observations with no negative to contradict them, the conclusions could be more accurately
expressed in terms of probability, as opposed to statistics. For example, if a rider has never fallen off a horse and prepares to try out a
new mount, she could say she is unlikely to be thrown, based on her previous experiences, but she should not rule out the possibility
altogether.
Thanks to the problem of induction, people can make decisions on the basis of limited information, and this may lead them to make
bad choices. Each event that reinforces the conclusion is taken as further supporting evidence for the conclusion, instead of another
data point to consider. This can create a false sense of confidence. The problem of induction can also play a role in logical fallacies
like the belief that an observed correlation is evidence of causation.

Karl Popper - Theory of Falsification

Summary of Popper's Theory

 Karl Popper believed that scientific knowledge is provisional – the best we can do at the moment.
 Popper is known for his attempt to refute the classical positivist account of the scientific method, by replacing induction with
the falsification principle.
 The Falsification Principle, proposed by Karl Popper, is a way of demarcating science from non-science. It suggests that for a
theory to be considered scientific it must be able to be tested and conceivably proven false.
 For example, the hypothesis that "all swans are white," can be falsified by observing a black swan.
 For Popper, science should attempt to disprove a theory, rather than attempt to continually support theoretical hypotheses.
 Karl Popper is prescriptive, and describes what science should do (not how it actually behaves). Popper is a rationalist and
contended that the central question in the philosophy of science was distinguishing science from non-science

Karl Popper and Falsificationism

“A million successful experiments cannot prove a theory correct, but one failed experiment can prove a theory wrong.” 
Perhaps you’ve heard someone use this cliché to describe the scientific method as a tough-minded and unsentimental pursuit of an
accurate understanding of nature. The sentiment has its roots in Karl Popper’s mid-20th-Century account of scientific investigation
called “falsificationism,” so it is perhaps unsurprising that Popper’s views have been popular among many proponents of science.
Unfortunately, if we are to take the cliché literally, and in the way Popper intended, the central dictum of falsificationism turns out to
be false. While something of the attitude implied by the cliché may remain, Popper’s original point about the logical structure of
scientific discovery has difficulty standing up to scrutiny.
In a series of famous works starting in the late 1950s, Popper criticized some (supposedly) scientific fields of study as insufficiently
rigorous. It seemed to him that some researchers were focused only on finding positive evidence that could be used to confirm their
favorite theories rather than really challenging their theories by trying to find evidence against those theories. For example, Freudian
psychologists frequently claimed scientific success after showing that Freudian theory was able to explain a wide range of proposed
human behaviors. However, as Popper pointed out, we should be suspicious of that supposed success after recognizing that the theory
is so vague and malleable that it can be bent to explain any conceivable human behavior.
Popper labeled such theories “unfalsifiable” and argued that a properly scientific theory should instead tell us what ought not happen.
If repeated attempts to find the theory’s forbidden phenomena all fail, then, and only then, has the theory passed a truly risky test and
earned some scientific praise. Freudian theory was not capable of subjecting itself to that sort of risky testing, and so was impossible
to reject, thus rendering it unscientific according to Popper.
Popper’s views on science were guided by his preference for formal logic. Using particular instances of positive evidence to support
a general conclusion, i.e., moving from the particular to the general, requires the use of inductive logic. Unfortunately, it has long been
understood that induction can never conclusively prove a general statement about nature to be true. On the other hand, however, when
we use negative evidence to contradict a general statement, i.e., when we falsify, we are using deductive logic, and unlike induction,
deduction can provide conclusive proof. Thus we arrive at the cliché quoted at the beginning of the essay.
Popper understood that in order for falsificationism to be an accurate account of scientific reasoning, it must describe actual scientific
practice. With that in mind, Popper picked the famous Eddington experiment of 1919 in which starlight was observed to follow a
curved path around the sun. Newton’s long-standing theory of physics made the general claim that light never follows a curved path
through a vacuum, yet that exact curving phenomenon was observed. According to Popper, that observation alone was enough to
falsify Newtonian theory, allowing Einstein’s general relativity to take its place.
If Popper’s description of scientific reasoning were correct, then the 1919 episode would indeed be powerful support for
falsificationism. However, it turns out that Popper’s description didn’t fully capture scientific practice. Rather than reject Newtonian
theory outright, the scientific community defended their familiar and successful older theory. It was suggested that due to their limited
measuring abilities at the time, it was entirely possible that the sun’s corona extended out far enough to refract the light as it passed. It
wasn’t until more careful and reliable work continued to support Einstein over Newton that the scientific community very gradually
shifted to general relativity. In Popper’s defense, one could claim that the Newtonians were just being stubborn, and if they had
followed proper scientific logic, they would have rejected their old theory and stopped trying to come up with wild ways to defend it.
To see why this is a mistaken characterization, let’s look at some more examples of unquestionably good and unquestionably bad
scientific practice.
Suppose a student in Chem 101 is conducting a laboratory exercise in which the liquid in a test tube is supposed to turn blue. Instead,
the liquid turns green and the student, following Popper’s reasoning, claims to have falsified the current theory of chemistry. That
obviously is bad science because the conclusion is far too hasty. The more reasonable explanation is that the experimenter did
something wrong. And that’s not just true for beginners. After bringing the Large Hadron Collider up to full power for the first time,
the scientists at CERN failed to find the Higgs boson. If they followed Popper, they would have concluded that the standard model of
quantum mechanics was false and stopped looking. Again, that would have been be far too hasty. Instead, they decided to keep
searching until they could no longer blame the search’s failure on problems with their methods or equipment, and their efforts
eventually paid off in grand fashion.
Popper’s main problem is that his deductive process of falsificationism can never provide a clear refutation of a theory. There always
is the possibility that the theory is correct and it was some other detail of the experiment that was responsible for the negative
outcome. He may have been right to insist that scientific theories should be subjected to risky tests, but Popper went too far in
insisting that the practice of science is a clear-cut deductive process of elimination. 
Perhaps, then, the cliché cited at the beginning of this essay should be amended to say, “A million successful experiments cannot
prove a theory correct, but one failed experiment can prove that either the theory is wrong or that some mistake was made in the
experimental procedure or something totally unexpected happened.” That’s a much messier and more confusing way to describe the
scientific process, but nature itself is messy and confusing, so perhaps we should not expect our investigation of it to be much
different.

Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery emerged as a major critic of inductivism, which he saw as an essentially old-
fashioned strategy.
Popper replaced the classical observationalist-inductivist account of the scientific method with falsification (i.e. deductive logic) as the
criterion for distinguishing scientific theory from non-science.
All inductive evidence is limited: we do not observe the universe at all times and in all places. We are not justified therefore in making
a general rule from this observation of particulars.
According to Popper, scientific theory should make predictions which can be tested, and the theory rejected if these predictions are
shown not to be correct.  He argued that science would best progress using deductive reasoning as its primary emphasis, known as
critical rationalism. 
Popper gives the following example.  Europeans for thousands of years had observed millions of white swans. Using inductive
evidence, we could come up with the theory that all swans are white.
However, exploration of Australasia introduced Europeans to black swans.  Poppers' point is this: no matter how many observations
are made which confirm a theory there is always the possibility that a future observation could refute it.  Induction cannot yield
certainty.
Karl Popper was also critical of the naive empiricist view that we objectively observe the world. Popper argued that all observation is
from a point of view, and indeed that all observation is colored by our understanding. The world appears to us in the context of
theories we already hold: it is 'theory-laden'.
Popper proposed an alternative scientific method based on falsification.  However many confirming instances there are for a theory, it
only takes one counter observation to falsify it. Science progresses when a theory is shown to be wrong and a new theory is introduced
which better explains the phenomena.
For Popper the scientist should attempt to disprove his/her theory rather than attempt to continually prove it. Popper does think that
science can help us progressively approach the truth but we can never be certain that we have the final explanation.
Critical Evaluation
Popper’s first major contribution to philosophy was his novel solution to the problem of the demarcation of science. According to the
time-honored view, science, properly so called, is distinguished by its inductive method – by its characteristic use of observation and
experiment, as opposed to purely logical analysis, to establish its results.
The great difficulty was that no run of favorable observational data, however long and unbroken, is logically sufficient to establish the
truth of an unrestricted generalization.
Popper's astute formulations of logical procedure helped to reign in the excessive use of inductive speculation upon inductive
speculation, and also helped to strengthen the conceptual foundation for today's peer review procedures.
However, the history of science gives little indication of having followed anything like a methodological falsificationist approach.
Indeed, and as many studies have shown, scientists of the past (and still today) tended to be reluctant to give up theories that we would
have to call falsified in the methodological sense; and very often it turned out that they were correct to do so (seen from our later
perspective).
The history of science shows that sometimes it is best to ’stick to one’s guns’. For example, "In the early years of its life, Newton’s
gravitational theory was falsified by observations of the moon’s orbit"
Also, one observation does not falsify a theory. The experiment may have been badly designed, data could be incorrect.
Quine states that a theory is not a single statement; it is a complex network (a collection of statements). You might falsify one
statement (e.g. all swans are white) in the network, but this should not mean you should reject the whole complex theory.
Critics of Karl Popper, chiefly Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Imre Lakatos, rejected the idea that there exists a single method
that applies to all science and could account for its progress.