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Originally Posted by Nereid
a) if something has been 'around' (in textbooks, etc) for a long time ("centuries"), that somehow makes it more immune to falsification;
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No, what I said was
"centuries old theory which pretty much everyone knows has been falsified ages ago". The emphasized part of my comment was my point, not the part about centuries old which I said only because
Korjik's example just happened to be like that.
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Originally Posted by Nereid
b) if the something is, or could be, called a "theory"*, it gets to hang on longer in the face of (good, independently verified) observations that falsify it
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I disagree with this and with your c) too.
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Originally Posted by Nereid
But what do you do on Monday, when you go to the lab? Y is dead, how do you go about formulating another falsifiable hypothesis?
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Even if Y is "dead", you still have all the observations left. Observations can guide you even if you don't have pre-existing hypothesis.
And with the thing I'm suggesting, we wouldn't concentrate so much on going from falsifiable hypothesis to falsifiable hypothesis, we would concentrate more on making observations than making theories. Falsifiability wouldn't be so important in that setting, but would only have a minor role.