Quotes About Refutation

Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testabilty: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

Popper espoused what became known as 'falsificationism', the doctrine that what we are interested in the sciences is the conditions under which we should reject a proposed law or theory; the proposition that 'all swans are white' is decisively refuted by one black swan, no matter how often it has been 'verified' by sightings of white swans.

Conjecture or hypothesis must come before observation or perception: we have inborn expectations; we have latent inborn knowledge, in the form of latent expectations, to be activated by a stimuli to which we react as a rule while engaged in active exploration. All learning is a modification (it may be a refutation)of some prior knowledge and thus, in the last analysis, of some inborn knowledge.

Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.

If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries.

No importa cuánto te agrade una teoría: si los resultados experimentales la refutan, habrá que arrojarla a la basura.

Criticism is not a Popperian quick kill, by refutation. Important criticism is always constructive: there is no refutation without a better theory. Kuhn is wrong in thinking that scientific revolutions are sudden, irrational changes in vision. The history of science refutes both Popper and Kuhn: on close inspection both Popperian crucial experiments and Kuhnian revolutions turn out to be myths: what normally happens is that progressive research programmes replace degenerating ones.

In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

Popper introduced the mechanism of conjectures and refutations, which works as follows: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong.

Popper expuso el mecanismo de las conjeturas y las refutaciones, que funciona como sigue: se formula una conjetura (osada) y se empieza a buscar la observación que demostraría que estamos en un error. Ésta es la alternativa a nuestra búsqueda de casos confirmatorios. Si pensamos que la tarea es fácil, quedaremos decepcionados: pocos seres humanos tienen la habilidad natural de hacerlo.

Popper introduced the mechanism of conjectures and refutations, which works as follows: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong. This is the alternative to our search for confirmatory instances.

Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out of malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavourable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.

The assertion that men are objectively equal is so absurd that it does not even merit being refuted.

His job on TV was to explain science to the general public and, as such, to act as a lightning for people who could not accept all the things that science implied about their worldview and their way of life, and who showed a kind of harebrained ingenuity in finding ways to refute it.

His job on TV was to explain science to the general public and, as such, to act as a lightning rod for people who could not accept all the things that science implied about their worldview and their way of life, and who showed a kind of harebrained ingenuity in finding ways to refute it.

I must however make it clear from the start that this refutation will not invalidate the distinctions which we all quite properly draw between voluntary and involuntary actions and between strong-willed and weak-willed persons. It will, on the contrary, make clearer what is meant by 'voluntary' and 'involuntary', by 'strong-willed' and 'weak-willed', by emancipating these ideas from bondage to an absurd hypothesis.

Contend not in wisdom with a fool, for thy sense maketh much of his conceit; And some errors never would have thriven, had it not been for learned refutation.

If we silence those who utter falsehoods, we run the risk of becoming dogmatic, of believing without understanding, or feeling passionate about the evidence supporting our beliefs. We also run the risk that such false beliefs will be given greater credence by the very fact that they are suppressed rather than openly refuted.

or refuting, with his guidance, a famous refutation of the existence of time, will be worth it.

Experience is that wherein our previous sense of reality is undone, refuted, and shows itself as needing to be reconstituted. It occurs precisely in those moments where the object 'talks back'.

The first concern must, then, not be to speak as others speak, but to conceive of the word of truth with understanding and exactitude. . . . It is not a matter of refuting the opinions of others, but of presenting one's own; not a matter of contesting some aspect of the teaching or behavior of others that seems not to be good, but of writing on behalf of truth.59

Newspaper accounts must not only be studied, but, occasionally refuted.

One cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood.

Our western philosophy has been the theater of what we may call the "battle for the Soul of the world." … Is it a matter of a battle that has finally been lost, the world having lost its soul, a defeat whose consequences weigh upon our modern visions of the world without compensation? If there has been a defeat, a defeat is still not a refutation.