No.54 Referenced from ~ Part2 - Chapter 3 - Section 2-3

Demand to extend the scope of verification

Karl Popper's criterion for the meaningfulness of a statement, "falsifiability," might seem to serve as a distinction between theory and doctrine.

However, because the criterion of "falsifiability" relies on empirical verification, known as "observability," it cannot avoid some ambiguity due to the difficulty of determining what is within the realm of experience and what is within the transcendent realm.

For example, if someone claims that "tiny organisms called bacteria exist, even though they cannot be seen with the naked eye," this claim must be understood to include a "demand to extend the scope of verification," that is, that although they cannot be verified with the naked eye, they can be verified with a microscope. This seems to bring the question of falsifiability/non-falsifiability down to the question mentioned above, ultimately about the scope of our experience, of what is observable.