Does Falsifiability Provide A Satisfactory Method Of Demarcating Science From Non-Science?
Karl Popper aims to show, through falsification, his account of what science is and how it should be demarcated. His claim is that anything without a hypothesis that is testable through falsification is not a science. I will argue that falsification is the only true method of demarcating science, though I will look at criticisms concerned with how Popper’s method denies those disciplines that we so regularly call science. I will focus, therefore, upon Darwinism and argue that this is not, in fact, a science.
The demarcation problem is an issue regarding what methodology should be adopted to satisfy the differentiation between the scientific and the non-scientific/pseudoscientific. The view I will be arguing for, that falsifiability is the true means for demarcating science, begins with the method of testing theories. From a new idea that is not justified yet (i.e. a hypothesis), logical deduction must be carried out to draw the conclusions and these can then be compared with other statements to examine any relations between them (Rosenberg, 2000).
If the theory stands to such testing positively and its singular conclusions can be denoted as verified then we have no reason to discard it, at least for the time being, as it is always open to further testing where it can be falsified. However, the decision may be falsified, whereby testing has produced negative results and this falsification means the theory is false on a principle of logical deduction. If a theory can hold to such vigorous testing, and another theory does not override it, then we are able to say it is ‘corroborated’ by past experience (Popper, 1999). This is to say that one can accept that the theory has so far proved itself and has passed its tests – though it is not necessarily true as it will stay open to testing and could be falsified in the future.
The objections raised in rejecting induction is that Popper deprives empirical science of its apparently most crucial feature – to give positive knowledge and information, truths, or facts – but he argues that this is precisely why it is being rejected (Popper, 1999). To reject inductivism as a whole, any attempt to solve the problem of demarcation through some sort of inductive logic is to also be rejected. Popper (1999) states that his method has an aim that needn’t be justified as representing truth or the ‘final aim of science’, but instead is concerned with analysing the logic behind it. He claims that with this method one places more value on logical strictness and freedom from dogmatism; practical applicability; and the attraction of science as an adventure, continuously looking for new and unexpected discoveries.
The criterion of demarcation of the inductivist has to be ‘conclusively decidable’, meaning that all the statements made in empirical science must be finally concluded as either true or false. If the logical possibility of their form is not both verifiable and falsifiable then the statement has no meaning, and it is this meaning that inductive logic is concerned with. Usually associated with induction is the inference from singular statements (i.e. results of observations/experiments) to universal statements (i.e. the hypothesis or theory). This method lacks any real justification, from a logical stance, to infer universal statements from singular statements (Popper, 1999). Even if your ‘evidence’ to infer is numerous, we cannot conclude in such a way, as there is always the possibility it may turn out to be false. As Popper himself put it, “no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.” (Popper, 1999:27) This thus means that theories can never be empirically verifiable.
Instead, the method of falsification is the only way a system can be deemed as empirical or scientific, where it is able to be tested by
