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Thought experiment

The black swan

Popper · The Logic of Scientific Discovery · 1934

For centuries Europeans held it obvious that all swans are white: every swan they met confirmed it. Then, in Australia, black swans were found. A single encounter overturned what millions of observations had seemed to establish. How, then, does science establish a general law, "all swans are white", holding for every case to come, from observations that are always finite in number?

To ground a general law: by piling up favourable cases, by seeking the case that would disprove it, or by adjusting its probability?

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