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by InclinedPlane
4098 days ago
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You can call activities which work outside of the framework of science whatever you want, but they aren't science. The foundation of science is testing theories against evidence, which means falsifiability. Relativity is a perfect example because it made very specific and testable predictions such as gravitational lensing, frame dragging, gravitational redshift, and gravitational radiation. |
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That said, the philosophers of science who originally discussed falsifiability have gone on to say its inadequate, and a huge chunk of work that's published and funded as science these days isn't strictly falsifiable.
Science is a word like any other, that we all agree on to make meaning. Right now lots of practicing scientists work on a definition that includes but isn't limited to falsifiability, but of course the great thing about it is you're welcome to decide what criteria is most comfortable to you. I like to think that the work Einstein did on Special Relativity before 1915, that wasn't mathematically distinct from Lorentz or Poincare, was scientific even though it wasn't falsifiable.