Hypothesis Withdrawal in Science

Abstract

In the previous chapter (section 2.5) I illustrated that contradiction is fundamental in abductive reasoning and that it has a preference for strong hypotheses which are more easily falsified than weak ones. Moreover, hard hypotheses may be more easily weakened than weak ones, which prove difficult subsequently to strengthen. Unfortunately, hypotheses may be unfalsifiable. In this case, it is impossible to find a contradiction from the empirical point of view but also from the theoretical point of view, in some area of the related conceptual systems. Notwithstanding this fact, it is sometimes necessary to construct ways of rejecting the unfalsifiable hypothesis at hand by resorting to some external forms of negation, external because we want to avoid any arbitrary and subjective elimination, which would be rationally or epistemologically unjustified.