ccdan

You don't seem to be paying much attention to what I'm saying. I already told you the wiki article claims that "Some swans are not white" is what make the statement FALSIFIABLE!

It's irrelevant the so called keyword. every room in every building = all swans "there's a green unicorn in every room" = property of the room(it has an unicorn), equivalent to the color of the swan If you find a single room without unicorn, the property of the room is changed, equivalent to finding a swan of a different color That's completely nonsensical. Counting swan's eyes is the same as seeing swan's color. The number of eyes is just a property of the swan, the same way color is. By that logic, seeing the color of a swan would make the statement "all swans are white" falsifiable.

Don't put things in my mouth... here's the original text from wiki: My statement is basically identical, I just replaced color with the number of eyes. "since" = that's why it's falsifiable, otherwise it wouldn't be

It''s wrong. As is the article on "falsifiability" No one does actual science by trying to "disprove" theories, hypotheses and so on. The only problem being, that, until you find a three eyed swan, the statement "all swans have two eyes" is non-falsifiable, that is, non-scientific - according to the Popperian theory you're subscribing to.

"falsifiability" has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific method.

I have noticed that this term gets thrown around quite often when people debate what's "scientific" and what is not. What I have NOT found is a definition or explanation of "falsifiability" that is unambiguous, coherent and logical! Apparently it's an alleged "property" of a theory or hypothesis, which for some mysterious reason makes it "scientific" (whatever that might mean - I'll get back to that later) So we need a "test" which could tell us whether a theory/hypothesis is "falsifiable" or not. In the context of science any such a "test" should be rigorously and unambiguously defined. The problem is, the only things I found are ambiguous and nonsensical ramblings made by people who seem very unfamiliar with the clarity, rigor and logical soundness that actual science requires. And I haven't even touched on the issue of how such a "test" would prove that something is "scientific" and what that would really mean. Let's explore a few examples ... first, wikipedia: So we have: "basic statement" - what does it mean? how does it differ from non-"basic statements"? do you just have to "say something"? "successful or failed falsification" - a theory is falsifiabile if [something], which, in eventual successful or failed falsification [some other stuff] - what is the meaning of falsification here, as it sounds like a circular statement "must respectively correspond to a true or hypothetical observation" - what's the meaning of "hypothetical observation"? it kinda sounds like oxymoron! are imaginary things are ok? unicorns? aliens? or just scenarios that are imaginary but seem plausible due to similar actual facts that exists or perhaps laws of physics? OK, let's now explore the concrete example... from the same wikipedia: 1. what if that "basic statement" were not a "true observation" but some imaginary stuff? 2. how about this one: "all swans have two eyes" ... good luck finding a three eyed swan! OK, now let's try to falsify one popular "theory": "The earth is flat!" - well, this is contradicted by many statements and experiments that back them! So "the earth is flat" is a scientific theory according to Popper! WOW! How does it help us in separating non-scientific stuff from scientific stuff? We can even try to formulate theories related to imaginary friends: "In every room in every building on earth, there's a green unicorn!" Finding just one room without an unicorn would make the theory "scientific". You can replace unicorns with angels, gods or whatever. Then there's the nonsense that a theory can only be "disproved" and never "proved" - which is hugely wrong and nonsensical(you might get to "disprove" an infinity of things and won't be able to reach any conclusion)! Actually the whole story about "falsifiability" comes from this philosophical idea of Popper that "nothing is certain" and theories can only be shown to be false. Besides being wrong, is completely unhelpful, as that's not the way we use science to our benefit. I'll stop here for now.

because they're not fed too much irrational crap like religion as it happens in the western world, middle east, africa, etc... the same holds true for japan, south korea, ...