Abstract

Popper's account of science is an endeavour in establishing the relationship between universality and truth. The idea is that the more an empirical law is universal, by precluding certain realities from obtaining in an evidentially falsifiable way, the more the law is supported by instances of its predictions being evidentially verified. The logical structure of this dynamic is captured by Popper's notion of 'corroboration'. However, this notion is suspect, for, depending on one's interpretation of evidential givenness, the relation between a law's degree of universality and evidential corroborability could instead invert, thereby contradicting Popper. This paper also explores how a conceptualization of universality in terms of necessary simplicity-i.e., a measure of simplicity that is also sensitive to the evidence at hand-can better recontextualize evidential givenness to be about evidential support for a theory's predictive truth conduciveness, against Popper's understanding of evidential support for a theory's veracity concerning the evidence at hand. However, it is argued that employing necessary simplicity to attain truth conduciveness in a theory's predictions must appeal to specific background assumptions concerning the state of affairs the evidence is supposed to be about. When these background assumptions are denied as being necessarily instantiated, then a relation between necessary simplicity and truth conduciveness becomes contingently uncertain.