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Unfalsifiability
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the Philosophy of science, philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the demarcation problem, problem of demarcation. A Scientific theory, theory or hypothesis is falsifiable (or refutable) if it can be ''logically'' contradicted by an empirical test that can potentially be executed with existing technologies. Popper insisted that, as a logical criterion, it is distinct from the related concept "capacity to be proven wrong" discussed in #Falsificationism, Lakatos' falsificationism. Even being a logical criterion, its purpose is to make the theory predictive power, predictive and Testability, testable, thus useful in practice. Popper opposed falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of Verifiability (science), verifiability. Verifying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Swans
Black swan is the common name for ''Cygnus atratus'', an Australasian waterfowl. (The) Black Swan(s) may also refer to: Film and television * ''The Black Swan'' (film), a 1942 swashbuckler film * ''Black Swans'' (film), a 2005 Dutch drama film * ''Black Swan'' (film), a 2010 film starring Natalie Portman *"Black Swan", an episode of '' FlashForward'' *"The Black Swan", an episode of ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' Literature *Black Swan (imprint), an imprint of Transworld Publishers, UK * ''The Black Swan'' (Lackey novel), a fantasy novel by Mercedes Lackey * ''The Black Swan'' (Mann novel), a short book by Thomas Mann * ''The Black Swan'' (Sabatini novel), a 1932 pirate adventure novel by Rafael Sabatini *'' The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable'', a 2007 book about uncertainty by Nassim Nicholas Taleb *Black Swan (comics), a German Marvel Comics mercenary and enemy to Deadpool and Agent X *"The Black Swan", a 1994 work of short fiction by Grace Andreacchi *"Black Swans", a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-science
A non-science is an area of study that is not scientific, especially one that is not a natural science or a social science that is an object of scientific inquiry. In this model, history, art, and religion are all examples of non-sciences. Classifying knowledge Since the 17th century, some writers have used the word ''science'' to exclude some areas of studies, such as the arts and the liberal arts. The word ''nonscience'', to describe non-scientific academic disciplines, was first used in the middle of the 19th century. In some cases, it can be difficult to identify exact boundaries between science and non-science. The demarcation problem is the study of the difficulties in determining whether certain fields of study, near the boundaries of science and non-science, should be considered as one or the other. No single test has yet been devised that can clearly separate science from non-science, but some factors, taken as a whole and evaluated over time, are commonly used. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He is considered "one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers." Biography Carnap's father had risen from being a poor ribbon-weaver to be the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from an academic family; her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld. As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied Wilhelm Dörpfeld on an expedition to Greece. Carnap was raised in a profoundly religious Protestant family, but later became an atheist. He began his formal education at the Barmen Gymnasium and the Gymnasium in Jena. From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics. He also intently studied Immanuel Kant's '' Critique of Pure Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moritz Schlick
Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick (; ; 14 April 1882 – 22 June 1936) was a German philosopher, physicist, and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. Early life and works Schlick was born in Berlin to a wealthy Prussian family with deep nationalist and conservative traditions. His father was Ernst Albert Schlick and his mother was Agnes Arndt. At the age of sixteen, he started to read Descartes' ''Meditations'' and Schopenhauer's ''Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik''. Nietzsche's ''Also sprach Zarathustra'' especially impressed him. He studied physics at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Lausanne, and, ultimately, the University of Berlin under Max Planck. Schlick explained this choice in his autobiography by saying that, despite his love for philosophy, he believed that only mathematical physics could help him obtain actual and exact knowledge. He felt deep distrust towards any metaphysical speculation. In 1904, he completed his PhD the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Empiricism
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism. Flourishing in several European centres through the 1930s, the movement sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims by converting philosophy into "scientific philosophy", which, according to the logical positivists, ought to share the bases and structures of empirical sciences' best examples, such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Miller (philosopher)
David William Miller (born 19 August 1942, Watford) is an English philosopher and prominent exponent of critical rationalism. He taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. where he is Reader in Philosophy. He has been Honorary Treasurer of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. He was educated at Woodbridge School and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1964 he began to study Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Soon afterwards he became one of Karl Popper's research assistants. In a series of papers in the 1970s, Miller and others uncovered defects in Popper's formal definition of verisimilitude, previously a mostly ignored aspect of Popper's theory. A substantial literature developed in the two decades following, including papers by Miller, to assess the remediability of Popper's approach. Miller's '' Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence'' is an attempt to expound, defend, and extend an approach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modus Tollens
In propositional logic, ''modus tollens'' () (MT), also known as ''modus tollendo tollens'' (Latin for "method of removing by taking away") and denying the consequent, is a deductive argument form and a rule of inference. ''Modus tollens'' takes the form of "If P, then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P." It is an application of the general truth that if a statement is true, then so is its contrapositive. The form shows that inference from ''P implies Q'' to ''the negation of Q implies the negation of P'' is a valid argument. The history of the inference rule ''modus tollens'' goes back to antiquity. The first to explicitly describe the argument form ''modus tollens'' was Theophrastus. ''Modus tollens'' is closely related to '' modus ponens''. There are two similar, but invalid, forms of argument: affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent. See also contraposition and proof by contrapositive. Explanation The form of a ''modus tollens'' argument resembles a syllog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affirming The Consequent
Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark"), and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken"), even though that statement may not be true. This arises when a consequent ("the room would be dark") has other possible antecedents (for example, "the lamp is in working order, but is switched off" or "there is no lamp in the room"). Converse errors are common in everyday thinking and communication and can result from, among other causes, communication issues, misconceptions about logic, and failure to consider other causes. The opposite statement, denying the consequent, ''is'' a valid form of argument (modus tollens). Formal description Affirming the consequent is the action of taking a true statement P \to Q and invalidly concluding its converse Q \ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Fallacy
In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy, logical fallacy or non sequitur (; Latin for " tdoes not follow") is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure that can neatly be expressed in a standard logic system, for example propositional logic.Harry J. Gensler, ''The A to Z of Logic'' (2010) p. 74. Rowman & Littlefield, It is defined as a deductive argument that is invalid. The argument itself could have true premises, but still have a false conclusion. Thus, a formal fallacy is a fallacy where deduction goes wrong, and is no longer a logical process. This may not affect the truth of the conclusion, since validity and truth are separate in formal logic. While a logical argument is a non sequitur if, and only if, it is invalid, the term "non sequitur" typically refers to those types of invalid arguments which do not constitute formal fallacies covered by particular terms (e.g., affirming the consequent). In other words, in practice, "''non s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a general principle is derived from a body of observations. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from ''deductive'' reasoning. If the premises are correct, the conclusion of a deductive argument is ''certain''; in contrast, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is '' probable'', based upon the evidence given. Types The types of inductive reasoning include generalization, prediction, statistical syllogism, argument from analogy, and causal inference. Inductive generalization A generalization (more accurately, an ''inductive generalization'') proceeds from a premise about a sample to a conclusion about the population. The observation obtained from this sample is projected onto the broader population. : The proportion Q of the sample has attribute A. : Therefore, the proportion Q of the population has attribute A. For example, say there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Validity (logic)
In logic, specifically in deductive reasoning, an argument is valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. It is not required for a valid argument to have premises that are actually true, but to have premises that, if they were true, would guarantee the truth of the argument's conclusion. Valid arguments must be clearly expressed by means of sentences called well-formed formulas (also called ''wffs'' or simply ''formulas''). The validity of an argument can be tested, proved or disproved, and depends on its logical form. Arguments In logic, an argument is a set of statements expressing the ''premises'' (whatever consists of empirical evidences and axiomatic truths) and an ''evidence-based conclusion.'' An argument is ''valid'' if and only if it would be contradictory for the conclusion to be false if all of the premises are true. Validity doesn't require the truth of the premises, inst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Law
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) across all fields of natural science (physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology). Laws are developed from data and can be further developed through mathematics; in all cases they are directly or indirectly based on empirical evidence. It is generally understood that they implicitly reflect, though they do not explicitly assert, causal relationships fundamental to reality, and are discovered rather than invented. Scientific laws summarize the results of experiments or observations, usually within a certain range of application. In general, the accuracy of a law does not change when a new theory of the relevant phenomenon is worked out, but rather the scope of the law's application, since the mathematics or statement representing th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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