Hypothesis: Difference between revisions
imported>Eric Toombs (New page: A statement that, in its very nature, cannot be disproven by any amount of evidence. == Examples == "Seek and you shall find." This statement cannot be proven wrong because the seeker w...) |
imported>Eric Toombs No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
A statement that, in its very nature, cannot be disproven by any amount of evidence. | A statement that, in its very nature, cannot be disproven by any amount of evidence. This idea is important when making hypotheses that are to be tested through experiment. | ||
== Examples == | == Examples == | ||
Revision as of 22:03, 18 October 2010
A statement that, in its very nature, cannot be disproven by any amount of evidence. This idea is important when making hypotheses that are to be tested through experiment.
Examples
"Seek and you shall find."
This statement cannot be proven wrong because the seeker will either find what they are looking for or they will keep looking. The statement can be right, but it can never be wrong. Even if what the seeker is looking for does not exist, they cannot prove this with complete certainty because there is an infinite amount of places to look. To make this into a falsifiable hypothesis, one must make the test required to prove or disprove this statement possible. For example, restrict the search area to a finite one: "Seek in the physics building and you shall find." Alternatively, restrict the amount of time to a finite amount: "Seek for 50 years and you shall find."
"This vault can be broken into."
In order to prove this statement wrong, one would have to try to break into it for an infinite amount of time, which is impossible. To make this falsifiable, one can just limit the amount of time: "This vault can be broken into in 10 hours."