Talk:Verisimilitude

Cleanup
Yeah...this one needs some cleanup.

agree. The first paragraph is mostly gibberish with no sourced material

"Popper was among the first to affirm that truth is the aim of scientific inquiry while acknowledging that most of the greatest scientific theories in the history of science are strictly speaking false"

There are many categories for the evolution of science but to claim that all past theories are false is ludicrous. It also shows a profound ignorance of Popper and the idea of falsification and verisimilitude. Two theories may be proposed as correct but one might have more explanatory power than another or is simpler(Occam's razor). This does not mean the other theory is false. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.43.187.251 (talk) 05:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

the link to the german article "wahrscheinlichkeit" is simply wrong! "wahrscheinlichkeit" means probability, not verisimilitude. unfortunately i have no idea which german term resembles "verisimilitude"! i don't know how to delete that link to the german article right now. if anyone knows how to do it -- please go for it ;)

Philosophical Verisimilitude
add Philosophical Verisimilitude. (check Stanford's Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Verisimilitude.) lakitu 11:25, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

In Theatre
I just added the theatre's use (or knowing disuse) of verisimilitude, but the rest of this entry needs far more citation and checking.Ndpagency 20:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion
For further improvement of the article, I'd like to suggest that someone "in the know" could include a comparative commentary between "similitude with the real world" (verisimilitude) and "being truthful to the world within the plot". I don't know how to refer to this diference, so I'd say "extensive verisimilitude" and "restricted verisimilitude", or something like that.

A widely known example: The Matrix. Nobody is supposed to stop bullets with a gesture or fly by their own means in the real world (so it's not verisimile), but, within the plot, doing this is not a stretch and it's perfectly justifiable - that means, in the plot, that people are actually supposed to do so.

On the other hand, James Bond is supposed to be a human being much like everyone else, subject to the laws of physics and all. But he usually does stuff that aren't supposed to happen in neither world (real or fantastic). This way, he's not verisimile at all - but this doesn't stop the movie from being entertaining to some.

Sometimes the very lack of verisimilitude might make the character, instead of breaking it?

Perhaps
Someone with the knowledge might like to describe how character flaws and verisimilitude are linked and how that effects the audience's emotional attatchment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.27.151 (talk) 08:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

His logical definition of Verisimilitude was independently shown inadequate
It was proposed as being inadequate. By Poppers own writings, it cannot be 'shown' to be inadequate. By Godels incompleteness theorem it cannot be proven inadequate. It is only opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.46.230.36 (talk) 22:49, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with this as well - how is it not simply an opinion to say that a philosophical theory was 'shown inadequate'? Should we have a new Wikipedia category for philosophical theories that qualify as 'not being inadequate' so that we can put them onto stone tablets?158.143.132.28 (talk) 19:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the principle of philosophical verisimilitude can be seen as a cognate of Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty. K. Kellogg-Smith (talk) 13:03, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

"I may add that I accepted the criticism of my definition within minutes of its presentation, wondering why I had not seen the mistake before; but nobody has ever shown that my theory of knowledge, which I developed at least as early as 1933 and which has been growing lustily ever since and which is much used by working scientists, is shaken in the least by this unfortunate mistaken definition, or why the idea of verisimilitude (which is not an essential part of my theory) should not be used further within my theory as an undefined concept."

Karl Popper: Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postcript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery. Edited by W. W. Bartley, III. Rowman and Littlefield Totowa, New Jersey.1983. ISBN: 0-8476-7015-5. (Karl Popper: Introduction 1982) p. xxxvif

For a comprehensive critic of Popper's concept of verisimilitude see:

Herbert Keuth: Realität und Wahrheit. Zur Kritik des kritischen Rationalismus. J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Tübingen 1978. ISBN 3-16-840692-9.

As the first citation shows, Popper himself has accepted the critic, as far as the definition is concerned.

--Meffo (talk) 17:43, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

People are mistaking a demonstration of its inadequecy at catching verisimilitude for the idea that there is a logical mistake (there is not a logical mistake). The definition Popper gave is right as far as it shows something, which is that all false theories have an equal amount of true and false consequences - it is therefore true that false theories have an equal amount of true and false consequences, given that the logical formalism is correct (which it is), but it cannot be used to measure (or define) verisimilitude. People, such as, Miller have used this formalism for other interesting insights into such things as how much disgreement there is given certain parameters — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.22.90 (talk) 21:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

in culture
I first heard this word in the TV sitcom The Dick Van Dyke show. I very vaguely remember Carl Reiner (but not as Alan Brady) discussing the word with Rob. Since it's not really a word most people hear in everyday conversation, it stuck in my mind. If I can find any info (which is often difficult for 1960's TV material) I'll see if it can be incorporated into the article Ched (talk) 21:55, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

tiny change to raining eg
I've just added a couple of prepositions so that the example is not so colloquially American. Yergnaws (talk) 06:23, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

This refers to an earlier version of the raining sentence, because it was later changed again. Sluggoster (talk) 07:50, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

The Relativity of Wrong By Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov wrote a great essay on how one wrong theory can be preferred over another wrong theory e.g. newton gravity beats aristotle gravity

I think he deserves a mention here too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.239.117.60 (talk) 12:31, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

== Replace this with Verisimilitude (literature)?]]

Seems like we could just replace this with Verisimilitude (literature). Titanium Dragon (talk) 02:35, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Wow
This takes the cake for worst article on Wikipedia. I feel like I've been out drinking with a friend who showed up for half of his Philosophy 101 classes and was rambling on at 2am.


 * Yeah, so be bold and fix it! Grayfell (talk) 07:02, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Scientists
"Popper assumed that scientists are interested in highly informative theories, in part for methodological reasons — the more informative a theory, the easier it is to test, and the greater its predictive power."

his is false, because Popper did not say anything about scientists' interests, if this was so his theory would be false, simply because not all scientists are actually interested in informative theories, ie instrumentalists; he did not assume that scientists were interested in highly informative theories, he argued that scientits in so far as they are interested in truth should conjecture highly informative theories (and criticse them). He did not really assume anything about what scientists are actually interested in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.235.250 (talk)

Very Tentatively Possible Error on Page
I could be wrong in making this comment (in which case, I will look like an idiot) BUT should "all false consequences of A are consequences of B" actually read "all false consequences of A are false consequences of B"? I'm not sure I understand all the consequences of Verisimilitude or the Mathematical Theories/Foundation surrounding it, so I could very well be wrong. ASavantDude (talk) 17:53, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary
But this article seems to be soley to define a word. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 170.215.17.61 (talk) 04:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC).
 * If you read the Karl Popper article you will see that it is a more complex concept in the philosophy of science. For some reason it is more extensively discussed there. --68.35.156.229 (talk) 12:54, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia is indeed used a bit as a dictionary in this article. For example, the two citations at the end of the first sentence make no sense: It gives the impression that the article does not focus on the concept of verisimilitude as defined by Popper, which indeed deserves an article, but covers the different meanings of verisimilitude. An encyclopedia does not have one article for all meanings of a word, but one article per subject. This point is corroborated by the fact that we already have an article for verisimilitude in plots (see verisimilitude (fiction)).

Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:06, 3 February 2020 (UTC)