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Returning to the Criterion of Falsifiability: Some Thoughts on the Article by S.Yu. Kolomiytsev

The article was written as a response to a previously published (Ideas and Ideals, 2018, No. 3) article by S.Yu. Kolomiytsev “About Unfalsifiable Scientific Statements and Ideas”. The author, agreeing with a number of positions of this article, discusses some of its ideas. Primarily, the criticism concerns the thesis that the criterion of falsifiability unjustifiably narrows the scope of knowledge identified with its help as scientific, and that there is such a type of knowledge that does not meet the criterion of falsifiability but it has a scientific status. According to the author of this article, for applying of the criterion of falsifiability, we must take into account some conditions. First, the required falsifiability of knowledge is potential, i.e. falsification does not have to be available just at this stage of the development of science. Secondly, this criterion is intended to solve the problem of demarcation of science and knowledge that lies outside of it, and may be less effective in other, even close cognitive situations. Thirdly, the qualification of a theory as non-scientific does not mean that it is certainly unacceptable or erroneous. From the point of view of the modern epistemological paradigm, not only the science but also other types of cognition may give reliable and useful knowledge. The article discusses the thesis of S. Yu. Kolomiytsev that some fundamental ideas (for example, the idea of the atom) originally were not falsified but were already scientific. The author justifies an alternative assessment: these ideas were initially true, since they corresponded to the objective reality, but at the same time they were not scientific, since they could not be developed by means of scientific knowledge. The reality of some object does not mean that all judgments about it automatically fall into the category of scientific; after all, metaphysics is also a doctrine of reality, although, as a rule, deeper than directly observable reality. Thus, arguments aimed at limiting the criterion of falsifiability actually refer to attempts to expand it to a range of problems that it is not intended to solve. One of the normative directions for the application of the criterion of falsifiability is the demarcation of science and pseudo-scientific theories; pseudo-scientific knowledge often has a “built-in” protection against falsification. The article describes some techniques of such protection.