Talk:Falsifiability

Headings

@Valjean: Your edit summary said that a blank line after a heading is "default" in Wikipedia, but that's not true: per MOS:BLANKLINE, a blank line after a heading is optional. Please refrain from making misleading statements about Wikipedia guidelines in your edit summaries. Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about guidelines. When one adds a new section, the software automatically adds that blank line, and it helps me and others with poorer eyesight while editing. (It saves time and sometimes has prevented me from making serious editorial mistakes.) It does no harm to you or anyone else, so why make it harder for other editors? Why "do harm" by deleting the blank lines? You are literally going out of your way to make editing harder for some editors. That's not a sin of omission but of commission. That's not very collegial. If I hadn't explained it to you, it wouldn't be a big deal, but I did, yet you chose to actively act in an uncollegial manner. SMH. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:59, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Patrollers should not give lessons regarding rules of collegiality to other editors unless they have very good justifications to do so, which is not at all the case here. Such an attitude does not contribute to create a nice working environment. I dislike a bit the extra blank lines, but I am much more concerned with the negative effect of this kind of attitude than I am with the extra blank lines. The MOS:BLANKLINE rule is clear: "with one blank line just before it; a blank line just after is optional" (emphasis is mine). Dominic Mayers (talk) 04:39, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Valjean: Stop saying it is "Wikipedia's default". That is not true. The "New section" function on talk pages is coded to add a blank line after a heading, but I can choose to use or not use that button; its behavior is not "Wikipedia's default". (I don't even see that button on article pages, only on talk pages.) In fact, the blank line does cause harm because it makes less content fit within the editing window, which means one has to scroll more while editing, which makes it harder for me to edit. So there are usability issues whether one includes a blank line or omits it, so stop acting as if your position is righteous and as if I am the evil sinner (when you are the one who unilaterally decided to impose your preference on the article—I was just restoring the article's longstanding and justifiable convention). Don't go around misleading less experienced editors by falsely claiming that your personal choice is "Wikipedia's default". Biogeographist (talk) 12:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Re: lede

Hi! I would like to copy edit the lede but wanted to check in first. Falsifiability is an extremely important aspect of proper evaluation and decision-making, even just on a day-to-day basis. I think that this page in particular needs to be very accessible to the average reader because a solid understanding of falsifiability is vital for accurate critical thinking and civic participation.

To that end:

-I would like to add more citations to the lede for verification.

-I would like to use simpler language and examples in the lede. For example, I would change the first sentence of the second paragraph from "Popper emphasized the asymmetry created by the relation of a universal law with basic observation statements and contrasted falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability that was then current in logical positivism." to "Falsifiability can be contrasted with verifiability." I would keep the 'All Swans Are White' example.

-The third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs do not provide a concise and intuitive consensus statement that I believe would be most beneficial to readers. I would like to incorporate more citations and third party sources so as to provide such a statement.

-I would like to incorporate the contents of the notes into the body of the lede and use a more traditional citation style.

-I would like to simplify and expand the explanations of the Problem of Induction, the demarcation problem, and the importance of "logical criterion" as a quality of falsifiability.

-This page reads to me as implicitly based on the theories of Karl Popper.

Like I said, just wanted to check in first because I am proposing substantial changes and I really believe that this page is one of the most important pages on Wikipedia right now. I'm only kind of exaggerating. StudentOfLif (talk) 19:45, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Checking if a statement represents a natural understanding of the sources

To explain what is meant by "... found in the logical structure alone, without having to worry about methodological considerations external to this structure", I wrote the following phrase in the RI:

..., as when physicists calculate the trajectory of a rocket by worrying only about the initial conditions they have decided to take into account

I propose to put it back, because it is an explanation in simple terms of what is meant in sources, especially Popper 1983, Introduction 1982, but yet these are my own words and it could be seen as original research. The notoriety of this 1982 text of Popper is seen in Kaye 2005, Thornton 2016 and most likely elsewhere. This is a complex issue, because, as explained by Meelh 1978, Part I, Sec. 4, which explanation he attributes to Popper himself, the logical structure can be made to cover more details so that what was originally external to it can now be described within it. In other words, the formal logical structures do not in themselves avoid the methodological falsification problems. On the contrary, they can be used to formally express these problems. Already, in 1934 in the German version of The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Popper 2002, (1959)), Popper explained this issue with the analogy of a jury (responsible for providing a provisional empirical basis) and the analogy of a swamp (representing this empirical basis). In Popper 1983, Introduction 1982 when he writes that Einstein's principle of equivalence is falsifiable, he is aware that there are plenty of methodological falsification issues that prevent a rigorous falsification. He meant that, despite the fact that in practice no falsification has been found, one can theoretically describe an observation that contradicts it within a logical structure accepted by convention, ... as when physicists calculate the trajectory of a rocket by worrying only about the initial conditions they have decided to take into account. Dominic Mayers (talk) 08:09, 2 August 2025 (UTC)