Concept
Testability
Overview
Testability is a primary aspect of science and the scientific method. There are two components to testability:
Falsifiability or defeasibility, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible.
The practical feasibility of observing a reproducible series of such counterexamples if they do exist.
In short, a hypothesis is testable if there is a possibility of deciding whether it is true or false based on experimentation by anyone. This allows anyone to decide whether a theory can be supported or refuted by data. However, the interpretation of experimental data may be also inconclusive or uncertain. Karl Popper introduced the concept that scientific knowledge had the property of falsifiability as published in The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It appears that such may be the relation of the positive and negative sides in case of such elaborate hypotheses as those of Kepler and Newton; but is it true where our hypotheses are more simple? It is not easy to understand why the fact that the hypothesis is more simple, and the time required for its formulation and test a good deal shorter, should materially change the state of affairs. The question remains…
John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory
States what Testability is.
Simplicity and objectivity do not have to be secured through elaborate and labored metaphysical construction. The data are simple and the hypothesis objective in so far as they accomplish the work where unto they are called--the removal of conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct and affection. In the experimental conception of inference it is clear that the principles of formal logic must play their role…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
States what Testability is.
The useful hypotheses of science are of two kinds: 1. The hypotheses which are valuable _precisely_ because they are either verifiable or else refutable through a definite appeal to the tests furnished by experience; and 2. The hypotheses which, despite the fact that experience suggests them, are valuable _despite_, or even _because_, of the fact that experience can _neither_ confirm nor refute them. The contrast…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
Close in meaning to Testability; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Falsifiability
- Counterexample
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- Karl Popper
- Hypothesis
- Science
- Scientific method
- Theory
- Reproducibility
- Experiment
Place in the tradition
Part of Verificationism.