These principles form the main content of the philosophical concept of positivism, and later - neopositivism. The scientific principle of verification and falsification was proposed by one of the outstanding philosophers of the twentieth century, Karl Popper.
The initial motive for their development and formulation was Popper's statement that he appears in science as a "critical rationalist" who completely rejects skepticism and relativism. Being an implacable opponent of any totalitarianism, both in social life and in science. Popper made a huge contribution to the development of the philosophy and methodology of modern science, the provisions of which remain relevant today.
As already indicated, the principle of verification was formulated as part of the development of philosophical ideas of positivism. According to this doctrine, the goal of any science is to create some empirical base in which the ambiguity and impossibility of expressing these data using the scientific apparatus are unacceptable.
Popper, as such a universal scientific language, proposes to apply the methods of logical-mathematical analysis and the mathematical category apparatus, which differs from others in its sophistication, universality, and accuracy. Such a methodology in science is called logical positivism. Logical positivists argued that the empirical basis, as a rule, for any branch of science is formed on the basis of observation.
This idea was publicly announced at a meeting of the Vienna Circle, of which K. Popper was a member, in 1921. The essence of the statement was as follows: the criterion of any empirical knowledge is the principle of verification. The content of the principle was as follows: scientific facts are only those facts of science that are justified by “scientific primacy” - confirmed by scientific experiments and experiments, make sense and are isolated from various kinds of side effects that may come from the researcher. It should be noted that when the principle of verification was proposed, in the scientific methodology there were many different points of view on the problem of establishing the truth of science as such. That is why this proposal became a new word in the controversy over the adequacy of the methodology of science and secured a continuation in the following concepts of philosophical positivism (neopositivism).
However, as practice has shown, the principle of verification turned out to be imperfect and could not answer many questions of the development of science. Its limitation was manifested in the narrowness of application. So, for example, it turned out to be simply impossible to apply this method in philosophy, psychology, and some other “non-mathematical” sciences. In addition, its imperfection consisted in the fact that it was possible to use it only for those specialists who possessed scientific tools, equipment that could confirm the authenticity of a particular scientific fact. For a simple person, this method was not available. And the first to discover this limitation of the method was K. Popper himself. He noted that many scientific facts are ideal, and therefore can not be objectively verified. And therefore, in order to achieve increased reliability, Popper suggests supplementing the verification principle with another principle - the principle of falsification.
The scientist proceeded from the assertion that science, like everything in the world, is a dynamic system, so the task of science is not only to explain the phenomena that occur, but also to explain the changes. The priority role in this Popper assigned philosophy. The principle of falsification provided for the possibility of verifying a scientific fact or phenomenon by refuting them. This, according to Popper, expanded the methodological capabilities of science.