Does falsificationism offer a non-inductive methodology for science? Falsificationism is a concept introduced by Karl Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher widely regarded as one of the most influential figures of 20th century philosophy of science, as a response to Hume’s problem of induction. This essay will outline falsificationism and cover its merits as well as shortcomings as an attempt at providing a non-inductive methodology for the construction of scientific theories, concluding that, while it is possible for falsification to be wholly non-inductive and rational, this comes at the price of effectively crippling it in terms of predictive power, therefore rendering it more or less useless as a scientific methodology on its own; requiring …show more content…
As a young man, Popper was a staunch Marxist, but grew disillusioned with the movement as he noticed the stance they took when confronted with potential falsifiers to their theory, as opposed to scientists like Einstein. When presented with counterevidence to their hypotheses, Marxists would cook up endless auxiliary hypotheses and qualifiers to accommodate for these falsifiers, essentially keeping their theories artificially alive indefinitely. Conversely, Einstein would put forward daring theories that would prima facie appear to be very easily falsifiable, but, under scrutiny, turned out to not be. This led Popper to define a ‘criterion of demarcation’- a means to distinguish between legitimate science and pseudoscience; the distinguishing feature between the two being the manner in which the proponents of the theory reacted to its possible refutation, as well as the falsifiability of the theory itself. According to sophisticated falsification, new and ground-breaking theories are, virtually by definition, very open to falsification through observation, and thus, when subject to rigorous testing and emerging unfalsified, can be used as a candidate for the replacement of an older theory. Sophisticated falsificationism puts a heavier emphasis on the advancement and evolution of scientific theory, stressing the possibility that any theory may be fallible, accepting the ones with the most explanatory power until they are superseded by theories of higher quality. As falsificationism is wholly deductive, scientists are free to be as intuitive as they please when giving birth to a hypothesis, as their inspiration for the theory has no bearing whatsoever on its validity, as long as they adhere to the aforementioned attitude of being open to (if not actively seeking out) potential falsifiers for their theory (as with August Kekulé’s ultimately correct theory that the