Why must a hypothesis be testable and falsifiable but not proveable

Question

Why must a hypothesis be testable and falsifiable but not proveable

Answer 1

because there is no definite answer in science

and hypotheses lead to theories and experiments

Answer 2

Because we as scientist can not prove a thing to be right, but just are able to give a good amount of probability that our findings happen to not be false, and that is because we can not try and test every single variable possible within a given case, so, we can only say that with these given variables at these given conditions, our findings happen to say, with any amount of probability, that this is actually true or false.

We can only talk about what we do, and not make assumptions of how other things will turn out, and so, we are not able to actually "prove" a hypothesis, because we will never have absolute control over variables.

Hope that helps

Answer 3

It must be testable because you must be able to TEST it in order to determine if it is accurate, otherwise you can never determine how good or accurate an hypothesis it is.

It must be falsifiable, because it has no point otherwise: as an example, I could hypothesize that the universe sprang into existence 5 seconds ago, with all memories and situations intact. This might be true, but is not falsifiable, and so is pointless as an hypothesis.

And it CANNOT (not "must not") be proved, because it is always possible that some new evidence will be discovered tomorrow (or next week, or in a thousand years) which will disprove it.

Answer 4

Because you can't prove something is true you can only prove that you can't prove it is false.  You can't conduct the infinite number of experiments needed to prove that something always happens but its easy to conduct the one experiment that proves it doesn't always happen.

Answer 5

Proofs only belong with a priori reasoning, that is reasoning that doesn't need to make any observations of the world.  Mathematics and logic are all a priori reasoning and have proofs.

Science uses the logic and mathematics of a priori reasoning but it also depends upon observations, which use a posteriori reasoning and the scientific method to verify them.  Notice that I used the word "verify" and not prove.  That is important, as you cannot "prove" something in science.  You can only test it, that is, verify it.  There is always the possibility that someone else could perform your same test and find it to be false because of things you hadn't considered.  That means that all science theories are falsifiable, that is, they always have the potential of being shown to be false.  If you cannot express a scientific theory in the form of a falsifiable statement, it is NOT science.  That is why creationism and "intelligent design" can never be science.

This is actually very good as it means that science is always open to being improved upon, and thus alive, unlike religions that are incapable of being improved upon, and thus dead.

This description of the scientific process was first developed by Karl Popper in his book "The Logic of Scientific Discoveries" published in 1935, first in German and later translated into English in 1959 by Dr. Popper.  I read this book this spring and recommend it to anyone who would want to understand science and the philosophy of science.  It is a moderately difficult read.

Answer 6

This from their Wikipedia article on Karl Popper, the philosopher who developed the falsifiability test for anything that calls itself science:

"Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single counterexample is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the implication is derived, to be false."

Consider the hypothesis that all swans are white. Loads and loads of tests and confirmations, and then they went and discovered black swans in Australia.

This test only applies to hypotheses about general situations. If your hypothesis is about particular events, and you know that there will be no more events of the same kind, then of course it is proveable.