Biblical Keys for Discerning True and False Prophets/Considering Joseph Smith/Paradigm debate/The Limits of Falsification

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The Limits of Falsification

“The empiricists had claimed that even though a theory cannot be verified by its agreement with data, it can be falsified by disagreement with data. But critics showed that discordant data alone have seldom been taken to falsify an accepted theory in the absence of an acceptable alternative; instead auxiliary assumptions have been modified, or the discrepancies have been set aside as anomalies.” (Barbour, 7)

• “Every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint as a counterinstance, and thus, a source of crisis.” (Kuhn, 79)
• “Since no paradigm ever solves all the problems that it defines, and since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the question: Which problems are more significant to have solved?” (Kuhn, 110)