Editing Abductive reasoning (section)

===Stephen Jay Gould (1995)===
[[Stephen Jay Gould]], in answering the [[Omphalos hypothesis]], claimed that only hypotheses that can be proved incorrect lie within the domain of [[science]] and only these hypotheses are good explanations of facts worth inferring to.<ref>Stephen Jay Gould, "Adam's Navel", in idem, Adam's Navel and Other Essays (London: Penguin, 1995), p.
3.</ref> {{Blockquote|text="[W]hat is so desperately wrong with Omphalos? Only this really (and perhaps paradoxically): that we can devise no way to find out whether it is wrong—or for that matter, right. Omphalos is the classic example of an utterly untestable notion, for the world will look exactly the same in all its intricate detail whether fossils and strata are prochronic [signs of a fictitious past] or products of an
extended history. . . . Science is a procedure for testing and rejecting hypotheses, not a compendium of certain knowledge. Claims that can be proved incorrect lie within its domain. . . . But theories that cannot be tested in principle are not part of science. . . . [W]e reject Omphalos as useless, not wrong."}}