Philosophy of science

Can science really prove anything?

Imagine you're reading a news article claiming that drinking a special tea can prevent all diseases. How do you know it's not just a random claim?

To trust science, we need to know that its claims can be tested and possibly shown to be false. If a claim can't be tested or disproved, it's not scientific.

Example

The tea claim can't be tested because there's no way to prove it wrong if you don't drink it.

Remember this

A scientific claim must be falsifiable to be reliable.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Related concepts

Falsifiability

Popper introduced falsifiability as a criterion for scientific theories

logical positivism collapsed

Can a philosophy prove itself scientifically?

Scientific realism

Scientific realism posits unobservable entities have the same ontological status as observables

Logical positivism

Logical positivism's verification principle claims only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful

Modal realism

Possible worlds are as real as the actual world

Verificationism

Can words mean anything at all?

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