Making a Case When Theory is Unfalsifiable

Abstract

Milton Friedman's famous methodological essay contains, along with much else, some strands that look as though they were taken from the “empirical-scientific” fabric described by Karl Popper (Popper, 1959, pp. 32, 37; see also Klant, 1984, pp. 33ff. for a very clear discussion). Think, for example, of Friedman's conviction that the way to test a (theoretically embedded) hypothesis is to compare its implications with experience (Friedman, 1953a in 1953b, pp. 9, 13, 14). Or of his more or less explicit espousal of the view that while no amount of facts can ever prove a hypothesis true, a single “fact” may refute it (ibid., p. 9). Or of his assertion that hypotheses are to be accepted only as provisionally true (ibid., p. 41), and then only after repeated efforts to refute them have failed (ibid., pp. 9, 22–23). The appearance of these Popperian ideas is not surprising.

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