Chapter 1 of 10All chapters
Chapter 1 of 10
The method
Guess, predict, test, revise.
The loop
Observe something, propose an explanation, work out what it predicts, test the prediction, then revise. The tidy textbook version hides how much wandering happens in practice.
- A hypothesis must forbid something, or the test cannot fail.
- Confirmations are cheap; a surviving risky prediction is what counts.
Falsifiability
A claim compatible with every possible observation says nothing about the world. That criterion is what separates testable claims from ones that only sound scientific.