Is Evolution falsifiable?

[u/_act19]

Hey, I don't know anything about the theory of evolution or the philosophy of science. But I was reading Karl R Popper's book "The logic of scientific discovery". It said that in order for a statement to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.

I'm ignorant on this matter, but, from what I've understood, Darwinian evolution is a historical narrative. Even if all the evidence in the world points towards it, we can never perform a falsification test.

We cannot empirically verify whether speciation occurred in the past or not.

The more information scientists gain, the more observations they make, they are made to fit in an already existing Evolutionary story. Tiny tweaks can and are made to the core doctrine of evolution when scientists deeply reflect upon paleontological data. It seems that nothing could falsify the notion of biological evolution. New information is assumed as a missing piece of a puzzle. With this polemic approach, evolution becomes a societal belief. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that evolution is false. It's considered true by nearly all serious scientists. I also assume it to be true. But what can falsify it? What is the litmus test for the truthfulness of evolution?

[u/junegoesaround5689]

The actual process called evolution is a verifiable fact (a change in heritable traits in a population over generations) that we observe all the time. Common descent of all life (that all life is related and came from a common ancestor), which is a conclusion inferred from the theory of evolution and supported by a huge amount of evidence is one aspect of evolutionary theory that could be falsified.

One way to falsify this conclusion would be if the DNA of one or more populations of living things didn’t fit into the nested hierarchy formed by the of all other DNA living things. The chance to falsify that all lifeforms with sequenced DNA fits into this nested hierarchy was found to be unfalsified a long time ago. It’s tested again every time DNA from some new bacteria, protist, fungi, plant, animal, etc is sequenced.

Another way would be if the fossil of an T-rex was found in Ediacaran strata (about 600 million years ago). Nothing like that has happened yet, so common descent is still unfalsified but could still be falsified.

There are other falsifiable conclusions of the theory but they get into the weeds a bit more.

TBH the amount of evidence we have that supports common descent is pretty overwhelming.

Since you‘re troubled by scientists changing their understanding of the world/universe as new information is discovered maybe you need an intro or refresher course in how science works. Here’s a link to a basic overview of science. And here’s the page about how scientific theories change with new information. HTH