Indirectly, through Lee Smolin, I finally get Peter Woit’s definition of falsifiable, which is actually nothing much more than the standard nonsensical nonsense that’s summarized by answers.com.
In Smolin on the Anthropic Principle, Woit says,
[Smolin] gives an eloquent explanation of the importance of falsifiability for a shared scientific enterprise.
I can assume, then, that Woit is satisfied with Smolin’s explanation of “falsifiable.”
In Smolin’s preprint, on page 3, Smolin writes,
According to Popper[1], a theory is falsifiable if one can derive from it unambiguous predictions for doable experiments such that, were contrary results seen, at least one premise of the theory would have been proven not to apply to nature.
This is definitely not phrased to impart knowledge, so it pays to keep reading. Smolin then clarifies by saying,
While the notion of falsifiability has been challenged and qualified by philosophers since Popper, such as Kuhn, Feyerabend and others1 , it remains the case that few philosophers of science, and few working scientists, would be able to take seriously a proposal for a fundamental theory of physics that had no possibility of being disproved by a doable experiment.
[First, I'd say that few working scientists have studied enough logic to know what a universal and existential quantifier are, which are at the core of falsifiable. And even Popper does nothing in his book to emphasize to the reader that falsifiable is meaningless once separated from the context of these quantifiers, which is what happens when people use a watered down version of falsifiable.]
I’ll rephrase Smolin’s last clause in the quote above: A proposal for a fundamental theory of physics should not be taken seriously if there is no possibility of disproving it by a doable experiment.
Immediately, to the uneducated and unsophisticated mind, such as my own, the question arises, “But what if your proposal is right, and it can’t be disproved?”
But the sophisticated and educated merely roll their eyes at such a question and know that it would be in vain to try and explain such lofty ideas as “falsifiable” to those who would ask such a question, although I remember Crazy Lubos basically making the same assertion, that something can’t be falsified if it’s true. However, although Crazy Lubos is educated, he’s rough around the corners, thus he’s unsophisticated, so we can ignore Crazy Lubos on matters involving falsifiable.
Now, I must admit that I’ve only read the first two pages of Popper’s book, but the fact is, falsifiable is meaningless if divorced from the context that science is 100% inductive by nature, and that falsifiable is 100% wrapped in the logic of the universal and existential quantifiers, the existential quantifier being the negation of the universal quantifier. And this context I’m talking about is laid down by Popper in the first 3 or 4 paragraphs of his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, although Popper doesn’t spell it out like I just did.
And on the surface, really smart, educated, and sophisticated falsifiable evangelists appear to be using the logic I just mentioned to justify why legitimate science must be falsifiable. For example, Smolin tries to convince us that the negation of a statement, rather than confirmation, is what’s of ultimate importance. He says,
…confirmation of a prediction of theory does not show that the theory is true, but falsification of a prediction can show it is false.
So in other words, because science is 100% inductive by nature, the act of dropping a rock ten-thousand times and watching it fall to the ground ten-thousand times does not prove that the rock will fall to the ground the next time you drop it. After all, only God knows the future.
Well, okay, I gave a bad example, because really smart, sophisticated, and educated people don’t speak of such simple experiments when talking about falsifiable; they don’t use such simple examples from which we can derive propositions that can never be falsified.
I’ll end on an assertion. In experimental science, confirmation rules, because confirmation is what gets practical results. Where falsification of a prediction tells you that you’re wrong, confirmation tells you that you’re on the right track, and getting on the right track is what pays the bills.
No, that can’t be the end. If you understand that it doesn’t pay to get dogmatic, then you understand that falsifiable is much to do about nothing much.
And if you understand that confirming something N times is valuable information, as opposed to never being able to prove that “every time it will happen,” then you understand that falsifiable is much to do about nothing much.
Smolin says that falsifiable is needed to keep science from grinding to a halt. Somehow, I don’t think Smolin’s needs are the same as the needs of an experimental scientist. I can imagine that the first time a scientist gets some results, his or her heart beats a little faster. And on the second or third time their prediction bears some fruit, they’re feeling good. And when they confirm that what they’re doing is the real thing, they’re not thinking about falsifiable at all.
Now, once they start trying to refine what they’re doing, then I suppose a concept similar to falsifiable comes into play. But the fact is, if a statement holds true N times under experiment, then something has been proved which can’t be unproved, something has been proved that can’t be falsified.
And once a statement has been modified, it’s not the same statement any more. So if a modified statement is falsified, then it’s not the same thing as falsifying the original statement. If you understand these kind of things, then you understand that falsifiable is much to do about nothing much.
Finally, here’s where the use of falsifiable can get absurd.
Falsifiable is supposed to be a safeguard against the situation where because an experiment has been successful N times, a dogmatic claim is made solely on that evidence. Because the N swans we’ve seen have all been white, we say dogmatically that all swans are white.
The absurdity is that certain propositions are said to be falsifiable, thus qualifying them as science, when the claims have never been verified by experiment; that is, they’ve been verified zero times by experiment. Of course, this brings up another absurdity that’s needed for science by consensus, and that’s the equivalence of “in principle” with “actual experiment.”
And from the absurdity of this equivalence, we get some absurd logic, that if a proposition A is falsifiable in principle, that is, if in principle we have a hypothetical, doable experiment, then the negation of A, not A, must also be falsifiable, which means that both A and not A are both valid scientific propositions.
For if we’ve thought of an experiment that will confirm either A or not A, but we haven’t yet conducted the experiment, then for proposition A, the possibility exists that the experiment will show not A. And for proposition not A, the possibility exists that the experiment will show A. Therefore, both A and not A are falsifiable.
Rephrased, because the experiment hasn’t yet been performed, the possibility exists that proposition A will be confirmed and not A will be falsified, and the possibility exists that proposition A will be falsified and not A will be confirmed. Therefore, if proposition A has been given the status of science because of an in-principle experiment, then not A must also be given the status of science.