Sublime

The central insight of Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, is that science is not a collection of verifiable propositions; rather, it is a set of theories that, at best, can be wholly falsified.

Karl Popper wrote “A theory is part of empirical science if and only if it conflicts with possible experiences

Popper argued that seeing lots of white swans doesn’t prove the theory that all swans are white, but seeing one black swan does disprove it. So Popper’s point is that to understand a phenomenon, we’re better off focusing on falsification than on verification. But we’re not naturally inclined to falsify something.

scientific knowledge is not what we can verify directly, as positivists expected. On the contrary, it is based on theoretical constructs that can be contradicted by empirical observations. We hold valid a theory that offers predictions that are corroborated as long as it has never been contradicted (“falsified”) by reality.

This is where we use examples from the past to make definite conclusions about what is going to happen in the future. Popper considered this kind of thinking pseudoscience, or worse—a dangerous ideology that tempts wannabe state planners and utopians to control society. He did not consider such historicist doctrines falsifiable.