Testability, a property applying to an
empirical hypothesis, involves two components:
- The logical property that is variously described as contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible.
- The practical feasibility of observing a reproducible series of such counterexamples if they do exist.
In short, a
hypothesis is testable if there is some real hope of deciding whether it is true or false of real experience. Upon this property of its constituent hypotheses rests the ability to decide whether a
theory can be supported or falsified by the data of actual experience. If hypotheses are tested, initial results may also be labeled inconclusive.
