Karl Popper and Falsifiability

The theory of falsifiability was derived from the encounter of four theories popular in 20th-century Vienna. These theories are Marx's socio-economic theory, Freud's psychoanalysis, Adler's theory of inferiority complexes, and Einstein's theory of relativity. Popper saw that the first three of these theories did not set a measure for their falsifiability, on the contrary, these theories were claimed that explain every phenomenon. From these theories, it is almost impossible to make an inference about the truth, because it is not possible to refute the theories. However, Einstein's theory is a theory of refutation, and Einstein says that if his arguments are proved contrary, he will retract his theory. Einstein's theory is very open to the risk of refutation, and therefore the information content is a rich theory. The rich theories of this kind of information content, "by preparing the ground for their refutation, cause the human knowledge to increase rapidly, in other words, it leads to scientific development."

 Einstein's approach influenced Popper. He realized that the Marxists were not judgmental of their theories and that they were even dogmatic. In Popper's terms, Marxism included all the qualities it assigned to the church. According to Popper, science cannot be made without criticism, and a critical approach is an approach that tests its theory and subject itself to a severe examination and thus strengthening its theory.

Popper's idea which distinguishes science from non-science is the idea that the reality of theories never is proved, but that their mistakes can be proved. According to him, science is the whole set of propositions that be refuted by observations and falsifiable propositions. One of his famous propositions is as follows: "All swans are white." it is inductive that we derived based on the observations of white swans. However, constant validation of the hypothesis does not imply that we have reached reality. In his words: "the specific propositions (no matter how many) concluded that it is impossible to prove the truth, from the logical point of the universal proposition."

 Popper believes that reaching the absolute truth is only a myth for the present world, the important thing is approaching the truth. And if we can eliminate the wrong hypotheses, we are one step closer to the truth. In his own words "To be honest, we do not know anything but we solve the puzzle." The important thing is not to have irrefutable truths, but to seek critical truth. These important ideas of Popper were rapidly spreading among 20th-century intellectuals and were accepted by many scientists, especially Einstein. In today’s world, instead of reaching the absolute truth, we are attempting to approximate the truth. Also, we do it by separating incorrect information from the truth.