Conjectures and Refutation

The next development in the philosophy of science occurred in the 1960's with the publication of Karl Popper's "Conjectures and Refutation". Popper criticized the criteria used by logical positivism to validate statements. He argued that the criteria is simultaneously too broad and too narrow. It is too broad since some statements resulting from sensory experience might be false and too narrow since some phenomena cannot be detected by sensory experience. Denial of non-empirical knowledge makes it useless, because it prevents the ability to criticize it, and to produce applicable knowledge out of it (Popper 2009).

Popper argued that a scientific theory cannot be proven, but only contradicted. A scientist needs to make infinite attempts in order to prove a statement but only one successful refutation, to deny a statement. For that reason, scientific progress can only be obtained by eliminating false conjectures. Popper suggested the Refutability Principle as an alternative to the empirical requirement of logical positivism. This principle determines two conditions for considering a theory as scientific: testability and repeatability. A statement, interesting as it may be, is not a scientific statement unless it can potentially be refuted. In this way, Science developing forward, evolving from elimination of refuted previous assumptions. However, refutability is determined by the phrasing of the theory and the possible conditions for its refutation. These conditions should be reasonable and testable (Grunbaum, 1976; Kluge, 2001).