Raven paradox
The raven paradox was invented by Carl Gustav Hempel in the 1940s. It raises the question of what should be considered evidence for the truth of a hypothesis, in particular when applied to the scientific method.
The scientific method
Scientific enquiry often starts with an observation. For example, we might see a group of ravens, and observe that they are all black.
This may then be followed by conducting some research, that might involve going out and looking for more ravens.
After observing many ravens, and seeing that they too are all black, without exception, we might form a hypothesis that all ravens are black.
We would then go ahead and test that hypothesis by conducting more experiments, which in this case would most likely be further observations of the real world.
What would we be looking for? Well, primarily we would be looking for a non-black raven. If we saw a white raven, for example, that would tell us for certain that the hypothesis was incorrect — that not every raven is black.
If we never saw a non-black raven and only saw more and more black ravens, that wouldn’t prove the hypothesis that all ravens are black, but it would certainly give us even more confidence that the hypothesis might be true.
