Conjectures and Refutations¶
Popper, K. R. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Falsifiability
- Philosophy of science: A theory counts as scientific only if it rules out possible observations (Popper's demarcation criterion); theories that can accommodate any conceivable result — that explain everything and predict nothing — fail to engage empirical reality, a critique Popper (1963) developed against psychoanalysis and orthodox Marxism.
This sourceDevelops the demarcation critique of explain-everything theories (psychoanalysis, orthodox Marxism), reframes inquiry as bold conjecture met by directed attempts at refutation, and supplies the diagnostic for spotting self-sealing, unfalsifiable claims.
- Philosophy of science: A theory counts as scientific only if it rules out possible observations (Popper's demarcation criterion); theories that can accommodate any conceivable result — that explain everything and predict nothing — fail to engage empirical reality, a critique Popper (1963) developed against psychoanalysis and orthodox Marxism.
- Negative Case Analysis
- The prime also names the dishonest move the formal setting throws into relief: an ad hoc rescue would be appending "...except for numbers like 422481" — a content-free immunizing clause that saves the words while abandoning the claim.
This sourceNames the ad hoc / immunizing stratagem — saving a refuted theory by introducing an auxiliary assumption or re-interpreting it so it escapes refutation — as the degenerate opposite of honest refinement (the content-free rescue the prime warns against).
- The prime also names the dishonest move the formal setting throws into relief: an ad hoc rescue would be appending "...except for numbers like 422481" — a content-free immunizing clause that saves the words while abandoning the claim.
- Robustness
- If the envelope is mis-specified (missing stress types, under-sizing magnitudes), the system is not actually robust to real operating conditions and failures occur just outside the designed envelope
This sourcePopper envelope specification engineering judgment imagination.
- If the envelope is mis-specified (missing stress types, under-sizing magnitudes), the system is not actually robust to real operating conditions and failures occur just outside the designed envelope
- Unfalsifiability
- On the adaptive route the claim did once forbid something, an adverse result arrived, and the conditions of refutation were then revised — a boundary narrowed, a term redefined, an auxiliary assumption swapped out, a deadline pushed back — so that the claim emerges intact with its defeat set emptied again.
This sourceHolds that confirmations are easy to obtain for a theory compatible with every outcome, that rescuing a refuted theory by ad hoc reinterpretation is a 'conventionalist twist' that lowers its scientific status, that irrefutability is a vice rather than a virtue, and that a theory found non-scientific is not thereby meaningless or false.
- On the adaptive route the claim did once forbid something, an adverse result arrived, and the conditions of refutation were then revised — a boundary narrowed, a term redefined, an auxiliary assumption swapped out, a deadline pushed back — so that the claim emerges intact with its defeat set emptied again.
Domain-specific¶
- Special Pleading
- Karl Popper's critique of astrology and psychoanalysis (Conjectures and Refutations, 1963) is the philosophy-of-science instance.
This sourceThe opening chapter of Conjectures and Refutations, where Popper reports that 'Astrology did not pass the test' and treats astrology as 'nowadays a typical pseudo-science'.
Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source
“case of astrology, nowadays a typical pseudo-science, may illustrate this point. It was attacked”
- Karl Popper's critique of astrology and psychoanalysis (Conjectures and Refutations, 1963) is the philosophy-of-science instance.
Verification¶
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
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