The way I learned it, when I was leaning English, is that 'an' is correct, in British English, before a word beginning with 'h', if the accent lies on any syllable other than the first. — Virgo Avalytikh

A gentleman in London, England, walks to work a boisterous day. He encounters a young woman. A sudden whiff of air lifts her skirt. The gentleman, such as he is, attempts to diffuse the potential of the otherwise embarrassing situation. He says, "A bit airy, isn't it?" The young woman answers, "Well, what did you expect, feathers?"

Needless to say, the two spake British English.

Here in Canada, I play cards with many different groups of players. One includes a British immigrant from Dorchester. It's now a constant gentle joke, jostling-like, that when someone declares Hearts to be the trump suit, we no longer pronounce the H which is otherwise customary around here, and we no longer pronounce the R either, much like the immigrant from Dorchester, who is, incidentally, a likeable, very gorgeous woman. (Married. Happily. Not to me.)

So when we declare HHHearrrrts to be the trump suit, we say now, in that group, something that "oughts" would sound if pronounced phonetically. (??)

The immigrant does not take this as an insult, as it is not meant to be one at all.

I don't get it.

Think it's hairy->airy which sounds like aerie which is a place where birds are kept. Presumably a joke about how British people are terrible at speaking English, or that standards for proper English aren't actually adhered to by some (many) British native speakers.

Where I grew up in Scotland, we'd mostly use one tense of the verb "to go", we'd say "gan". Gan could mean "I am going", "I went" or "I will go". Also "meet with", "date" and "have sex with". We have thoroughly ridiculous accents.

ta, Fdrake.

The man said "it's airy", meaning, a bit windy.

The woman, who probably was of lower classes, had been wont of pronouncing "hairy" as "airy".

So the rest you have to fill in with your power of directed imagination, I'm afraid, as it is not fit for printed words in a PG13 website.

Incomplete. It ought to specify the universe to which it applies and which of certain properties the hypothesis ought to have. In other words, some preliminary - even tentative if needs be - definitions.

1) "An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false."

Any hypothesis, taken as a concatenation of symbols, can be prefixed with the phrase, "It is not the case that."

2) 1) can then be re-expressed as the proposition 2a) that for all hypotheses H, H and not-H together constitute a real contradiction, i.e., that either H is true and not-H is false, or vice versa.

I think 2a) cannot be true for all H. There are matters of degree with some H. And Aristotle echos in my ear to the effect that there is certainly an either/or, but also there is neither/nor. But I'm not good at counter-examples. Anyone?

I agree.

In the end, so far as there is one on Wikipedia, hypothesis was changed to claim - which will end that part of the debate, at th expense of erudition.

:cool:

It works, but I don't think it would last the test of time.

Best propper answer so far, though.

I grew up with a friend who's mother would pronounce "white" as "h-wite". — Noble Dust

Which is to say, she was Catholic...

Might work with a follow on about non-falisfiable...

SO

U(x)f(x) - all swans are white - falsifiable

∃(x)f(x) - this is a white swan - verifiable

Hypothesis is falsifiable if predicts observation that will either prove it true or false. — Zelebg

But the bold bit is wrong.

Of course it is incomplete. See the context.

Your alternative?

But the bold bit is wrong.

According to what?

...reality.

I only now see you are not talking about my bold, but yours. In any case, can you articulate some explanation for your assertion?

You test a hypothesis, and you either measure what is predicted or not, therefore you either prove it true or you prove it is false.

You can't prove it to be true. But your assertion means you have not read Popper. Hence, you can be of little help here.

Don't be offended. You are not alone.

You can't prove it to be true.

You're right. I did not realize what I was saying. Then this:

A hypothesis is falsifiable if it predicts observation that can prove it false. Without explicit and viable experimental proposal I’d say it is at most ‘potentially falsifiable’.

An hyphen?

Cool. I'm thinking Falsifiable is potentially false.

I'm thinking Falsifiable is potentially false.

I would limit it to what is testable right now, otherwise you could argue something like many worlds QM hypothesis is potentially testable in the future. That is why I insist falsifiable hypothesis should come together with actual experimental setup proposal using available technology.

Of course it is incomplete. See the context.
Your alternative? — Banno

Hmm. Ok. Falsifiabiity is criteria and context dependent. Absent these, nothing is falsifiable. Eleven words, not so bad!

That does not look to me to be even a sentence. — Banno

You're right.

:razz:

Falsifiable hypotheses are about observable entities.

But that doesn't say what falsifiability is.

Yeah - but what about them...

I can't think of another way to say it that's any different from the wiki.

Yeah, me neither. Hence this thread.

The two things that stand out to me I guess are that:

(1) Any way to formulate falsifiability will need to include some kind of modal word - can, should, might, ought, must, etc. This referring to the '-ability' part of falsifi-abiliy. There must be a capacity of some kind involved.

(2) I would include a reference to falsifiability being a matter of principle (de jure) and not fact (de facto); As in, that which is falsifiable is so in principle regardless of whether one does in fact have some evidence that would make it false.

---

I still don't like "an" hypothesis because I breathe out the "h" and it sounds awful! Team "a" ftw.

U(x)f(x) - all swans are white - falsifiable
∃(x)f(x) - this is a white swan - verifiable — Banno

U(x)f(x) : $(\forall x \in D)f(x)$ or even U(x,D)f(x)
∃(x)f(x) : $(\exists x \in D)f(x)$ or even ∃(x,D)f(x)

Explicitly mentioning domain D is important, because it must be effectively enumerable, i.e. in one way or another, be traversable. Therefore, the set must be in one way or another, indexed, i.e. well-ordered.

Since the entire set of swans is in practical terms not enumerable, the use of universal quantifiers is not supported for swans.

It is safe to use universal quantifiers only with some carefully chosen Platonic collections of abstract objects, even of infinite size. In the physical universe, it may occasionally work for finite, relatively small-size collections, but in the general case, it actually doesn't.

Maybe the problem isn't with the phrasing but with other wikipedians' reading comprehension.

If I have the time and inclination I might comment on the talk page myself.

In the mean time, here's a uselessly tautological definition:
Falsifiability is the ability to be shown to be false.

Falsifiability is the ability to be shown to be false. — Pfhorrest

:up: That's true.

I might try drawing attention to the page on the philosophy project... I'm the only one editing the article at present, so the objections amount to nothing.