Critical rationalism

A philosophy of knowledge associated with Karl Popper that treats claims as conjectures to be tested through attempts at refutation, not verified conclusively.

Falsifiability: The property of a claim that makes possible observations or experiments capable of showing it false. Popper made potential refutation the boundary between empirical science and claims immune to testing.
Logical positivism: A philosophical movement that sought to clarify knowledge through logic, empirical verification, and analysis of language. Popper rejected verification as the defining test of empirical theories.
Karl Popper: An Austrian-British philosopher of science who made falsifiability central to his account of scientific knowledge. He formulated critical rationalism and defended it across his work on science and politics.
Fallibilism: The view that any belief or claim to knowledge may be mistaken and remains open to correction. Critical rationalism applies fallibilism by making criticism a method for improving conjectures.
Demarcation problem: The philosophical problem of distinguishing science from non-science or pseudoscience. Falsifiability was Popper's proposed criterion for drawing this boundary.
Conjecture and refutation: A method of proposing explanatory ideas and subjecting them to attempts at criticism and falsification. This is the central cycle through which critical rationalism advances knowledge.
Verificationism: The view that a statement is meaningful or acceptable only if it can be verified by experience or logic. Critical rationalism replaces verification as a criterion with susceptibility to refutation.
Vienna Circle: A group of philosophers and scientists in interwar Vienna associated with logical empiricism. Its verification-centered program formed a major intellectual background for Popper's early philosophy.
Objective knowledge: Knowledge understood as publicly assessable content, such as theories and arguments, rather than merely personal belief. Popper used this idea to explain how criticism can develop theories beyond their authors' intentions.
Duhem–Quine thesis: The thesis that evidence tests networks of assumptions rather than isolated hypotheses. It challenges the idea that a single failed prediction straightforwardly refutes one theory.

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