The more falsifiable a theory is, the better it is. Discuss.

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“The more falsifiable a theory is, the better it is”. Discuss.

  Falsifiability is an idea in the philosophy of science developed by Karl Popper in 1920s. It defines the ‘inherent testability of any scientific hypothesis’. That is to say, if a theory is falsifiable, it doesn’t mean this theory is false (actually if it is false, it cannot stand as a theory at all). However, it means the theory can be tested or verified to find evidence from experiments or some empiric methods, and then to say whether is valid or invalid. In another word, falsifiability is telling how potential the theory might be wrong, not how wrong the theory is. This is the most essential definition firstly we need to be clear about. For example, ‘if the modern people can go back to the history, they will be capable enough to prohibit the Second World War to happen ’. This is not a theory, which can be accepted as a scientific truth because it is not falsifiable. We don’t have a way or the other to disapprove it.

  Karl once said in his book that the problem which troubled me at the time was neither, "When is a theory true?" nor "When is a theory acceptable?" my problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science’. Pseudo-science, known as the ‘fake science’,  ‘claims the status of science while lacking its substance’. Karl thought that if a theory is falsifiable, it is scientific, and if it is not, then it is unscientific. From this point of view, we can see an advantage for a theory to be falsifiable-simply to be scientific. ‘Science’ as ‘a stamp of guarantee of quality’, sometimes it’s important for the public to realize about the falsifiability of the belief they denote.

  For example, Karl mentioned Marx, Freud and Adler in his work ‘conjectures and refutations’. He regarded them all as pseudo-science because they have apparent ‘explanatory power’. As ‘A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history’ and ‘the Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their "clinical observations’’. Also he was impressed by his own experience that he once reported a case to Adler that for him it did not suit Adler’s theory of inferiority perfectly. However, surprisingly Adler still chose to explain it with his theory confidently because of a huge mass of experience he has done before.

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  All of these three classical examples were saying one thing-a theory that can explain everything, explains nothing because it refuses the potential for the theory to be wrong, thus, not falsifiable. But why were they so unacceptable to be so sure about their theories? Because they had too many confirmation bias and ignored the problem of induction. That is, if they only intended to find the evidence that could ‘prove’ their theory to be true, they would only see the evidence that stood on their side. As for the problem of induction, it is also about ‘fallibilism’-how could they ...

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