Stating the Problem of Evil

Abstract

As is well known few of even the best established scientific hypotheses have been or could ever be conclusively proven to be true. While for example we firmly believe that all samples of copper expand when heated, this cannot be conclusively proven true since what we have here is a universal statement referring to an open class, not all of whose members could ever be observed. The widely accepted hypothesis ‘Some gases consist of discrete particles’, though not a universal statement, nevertheless cannot definitely be shown to be true since it asserts something unobservable. It is only that the hypothesis together with a large number of other hypotheses and assumptions logically implies some true observation statements — statements which are not implied by any other known set of hypotheses and assumptions of comparable adequacy. This confers merely what is called confirmation upon the hypothesis.