Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective not able to be proven false, but not necessarily true.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • This is what you call unfalsifiable science, Michaels said.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • In particular, Popper's grand critique of Marx's social science on the grounds that it is "unfalsifiable" just seems to miss the point; surely Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, or Tocqueville have important social science insights that can't be refuted by deriding them as "unfalsifiable".

    Revisiting Popper Daniel Little 2009

  • In particular, Popper's grand critique of Marx's social science on the grounds that it is "unfalsifiable" just seems to miss the point; surely Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, or Tocqueville have important social science insights that can't be refuted by deriding them as "unfalsifiable".

    Archive 2009-08-01 Daniel Little 2009

  • I suspect you have got a knee-jerk reaction to the word "unfalsifiable" such that whenever you see it, you assume the person is channelling Popper from the 1960s.

    Demarcation as Politics 2006

  • This is when the "unfalsifiable" (or better, untestable) accusation is leveled, and rightly so.

    Demarcation as Politics 2006

  • I think the reason that the "unfalsifiable" accusation comes up sometimes in critiques of pseudoscience is as a second stage of the debate.

    Demarcation as Politics 2006

  • I criticize the theory of recreation on pp. 263-267, stating that it "needs to be examined," is an "unfalsifiable" metaphysical research program in its present formulation, and is "intrinsically unscientific."

    Deep-Est III, W.W. Bartley 1979

  • Also, atheism is not a 'faith' in any kind of unfalsifiable philosophy.

    Planet Atheism 2010

  • They're not "unfalsifiable", unless one has some pet definition of "falsifiable" that involves constant testing of some sort, in which case they're engaged in special pleading.

    Mises Dailies 2009

  • Quite a lot of Dorries's rhetoric occupies this territory: it doesn't sound likely, but it's totally unfalsifiable.

    The Saturday interview: Nadine Dorries 2011

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