Falsification

Full Title or Meme

• A processes to test hypothesis. If successful the hypothesis is not true.

Context

• Émilie du Châtelet, died 1749, insisted that, though no number of positive affirmations can establish a theory, one Falsification can disprove it. "A single experiment is not enough to confirm a hypothesis, but one alone is sufficient to reject it."
• Hermann von Helmholtz philosophy of science wavered between some version of empiricism and transcendentalism.[22] Despite the speculative associations of the latter, his philosophy of science is thoroughly indebted to his use of mathematical physics to supplant vitalism and articulate the general conservation of energy principle. His rejection of Euclidean geometry as the only possible science of space is central to understanding his appropriation of Kant's philosophy of space, which ostensibly requires Euclidean geometry to be that exclusive a priori science of physical space.
• JBS Haldane expressed an early version.

  If the mathematician doubts the validity of an argument which proves the convergence of an infinite series satisfying a given criterion, he constructs a series which obeys the criterion but does not converge. Such tests are conclusive, and have shown up the inaccuracy of some trains of reasoning which were at first sight very convincing.

• Popper

Literature

• The Black Swan