Karl Popper is considered a great living philosopher of science who influenced many experimental scientists, mathematicians, and theoretical astronomers. Logical positivists at the beginning of his career saw him as concerned with the same problems as themselves. However, Popper disagreed with many of their views, in particular their view of the nature of scientific statement and its verifiability. In the text of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, he stated that the problem of philosophy was the critical analysis of the appeal to the authority of experience. He believed that knowledge never starts from firm foundations (the critical analysis of the appeal to experience) but is found only as one progresses from uncertain starting points (O'Hear, 1980; Magee, 1973). This paper focuses on Popper's falsification theory, its influence in psychology, other theories of the day, and a critique of Popper with reference to other theorists.
For Popper the aim of science is to find a satisfactory explanation of whatever is in need of explanation. This is accomplished when we are able to formulate an explicans which has a consequence not only the explicandum but other, independently testable consequences. The explicandum and other consequences can be deduced. The demarcation criterion requires that for statements to be scientific, they must be capable of conflicting with possible observations. Falsifiability is viewed as the criterion of demarcation between science and nonscience. The point was that if all states of an affair fit in with a theory, then there is no state of affair or observation or experimental result that can be claimed as supporting evidence for it. Since there is not an observable difference between its being true or false, there is no scientific information (O'Hear, 1980; Magee, 1973).
Popper's main contribution to the philosophy of science was his rejection of the empirical science inductive method. The i...