ABSTRACT
Probability plays an important part in modern science. Many hypotheses are probabilistic; that is, they assign probabilities to events, instead of predicting them absolutely. There are considerable problems both in analysing just what this means and in seeing how a probabilistic prediction is to be falsified. In addition, there is the question of the assignment of degrees of probability to theories in the light of increasing evidence. We have already seen that Popper refuses to assign probabilities to theories or to interpret degree of corroboration as a measure of probability. Here we will briefly consider how he deals with the falsification of probability statements, before examining his account of the nature of probability itself. This will lead on to Popper’s view that there is in fact objective randomness or indeterminism in the world, and to his further arguments showing that even if this were not so, and the laws of physics were deterministic, determinism in any empirically testable form would still be untenable.
