ABSTRACT
Falsificationism is the methodological tradition established by Karl Popper, the leading spokesman of the new view of the philosophy of science, which is largely concerned with the logi cal analysis of the formal structure of scientific theories. The
two pillars of the old view of philosophy of science are in ductioni sm and verifiability . The scientific foundation of inductionism is Newtonian physics; verifiability means that both the assumptions and the predictions of theories must be tested against facts. Thus , verifiability is closely linked to the philosophy of logical positivism. Popper rejects both induction ism and verifiability. Following David Hume, Popper stresses that there is a fundamental asymmetry between induction and deduction. In the philosophy of science this asymmetry i s called the ' 'problem of induction. ' ' Hume argued that one can not provide an inductive proof to the conclusion that the sun will rise tomorrow, which is deduced from past experience. In the words of Lawrence A. Boland, ' 'This leads many of us to ask 'So how do we know that the sun will rise tomorrow? ' If it is impossible to provide a proof, then presumably we would have to admit that we do not know ! "4
