View Single Post
  #84  
Old 05-12-2008, 07:45 AM
mplafleur's Avatar
mplafleur mplafleur is offline
User Friendly
 
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Lathrup Village, Michigan
Posts: 2,939
Quote:
Originally Posted by kerry View Post
Why shouldn't anyone have negative hypothesis? I wasn't looking to verify a positive hypothesis but prove a negative hypothesis by verifying it's contradiction. It's quite easy to falsify some hypotheses. All cats are white is my hypothesis. I just definitively falsified it by looking at the black cat beside me on the couch.
The premise that you can't prove a negative it this.

To take your cat example.

Hypothisis: There are no white cats.

You can't prove this hypothisis, you can only disprove it by finding a white cat.
__________________
Michael LaFleur

'05 E320 CDI - 86,000 miles
'86 300SDL - 360,000 miles
'85 300SD - 150,000 miles (sold)
'89 190D - 120,000 miles (sold)
'85 300SD - 317,000 miles (sold)
'98 ML320 - 270,000 miles (sold)
'75 300D - 170,000 miles (sold)
'83 Harley Davidson FLTC (Broken again) :-(
'61 Plymouth Valiant - 60k mikes
2004 Papillon (Oliver)
2005 Tzitzu (Griffon)
2009 Welsh Corgi (Buba)