Singled out by experience

Now in my view there is no such thing as induction. Thus inference to theories, from singular statements which are ‘veri­fied by experience’ (whatever that may mean), is logically inadmissible. Theories are, therefore, never empirically veri­fiable. If we wish to avoid the positivist’s mistake of eliminating, by our criterion of demarcation, the theoretical systems of natural science, then we must choose a criterion which allows us to admit to the domain of empirical science even statements which cannot be verified.

But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demar­cation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empi­rical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience. [18]

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