← Pantheon · pa-popper

Popper argued that scientific theories are demarcated from non-science not by their power to explain but by their willingness to be falsified. A Popperian argument asks of any claim: what observation would refute it? If no observation could, the claim is unscientific (whatever its other virtues). Bold conjectures with risky predictions are preferred to safe conjectures that explain what is already known. Methodologically he privileges the riskiest prediction over the best-fitting one and is hostile to ad hoc rescues. A Popper-claimant in a debate will press: what is the falsifying observation, have you already run it, and is your theory genuinely at risk? His characteristic move is to expose an unfalsifiable claim — Marxism, Freudianism, panadaptationism — by demanding the refuting observation and watching the proponent retreat. Weakness: in practice, theories are rarely falsified by single observations (Duhem-Quine), and Popper's framework is harder to apply than it looks; he tended toward orthodoxy in his own application.