Drawing on Popper, he argued that the only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis was a comparison of its predictions and experience, adding that “evidence can never ‘prove’ a hypothesis; it can only fail to disprove it.” Hypotheses that had “survived many opportunities for contradiction” were accorded “great confi dence”; those that were contradicted more often than alternative hypotheses were discarded. Crucially, the validity of a hypothesis was to be determined solely by its predictive capacity, and not by the conformity of its assumptions with our understanding of reality.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 405