Western Philosophy
20th century philosophy |
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Name
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Birth
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July 28, 1902 (Vienna,
Austria)
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Death
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September 17 1994 (aged 92)
(London, England)
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School/tradition
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Critical rationalism
Fallibilism
Evolutionary epistemology
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Main interests
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Epistemology
Philosophy of science
Social and political philosophy
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Notable ideas
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Falsifiability
Hypothetico-deductive method
Open society
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Influences
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Socrates (via Plato), Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Einstein, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle, Tarski, Selz, Russell,
Campbell
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Influenced
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Hayek, Friedman, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Soros,
Miller, Agassi, Bartley, Gombrich, Jarvie, Levinson, Schmidt,
Munz, Magee, Lorenz, Shearmur, Medawar,
Dimitrakos, Albert, Soroush
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Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH,
FRS, FBA (July 28, 1902 – September 17,
1994) was an Austrian and British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of
Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science
of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper
is perhaps best known for repudiating the classical observationalist / inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical
falsification instead; for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced by critical rationalism, "the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history
of philosophy"[2] and for his vigorous defense of
liberal democracy and the principles of social
criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the "open society" possible.
Life
Karl Popper was born in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1902 to middle-class parents of Jewish origins, both of whom had converted to
Christianity.[3] Popper received a Lutheran upbringing and was educated at the University of
Vienna.[4] His father was a bibliophile who had 12,000-14,000 volumes in his personal library.[5] Popper inherited from him both the library and the disposition.[6] He took a PhD in philosophy in 1928, and taught secondary school from 1930 to 1936.
In 1934 he published his first book, Logik der Forschung (The
Logic of Scientific Discovery), in which he criticised psychologism,
naturalism, inductionism, and
logical positivism, and put forth his theory of potential falsifiability as the criterion demarcating science from non-science.
In 1937, the rise of Nazism and the threat of the
Anschluss led Popper to emigrate to New Zealand, where he
became lecturer in philosophy at Canterbury University College New Zealand (at Christchurch). In 1946, he moved to England to become reader in logic
and scientific method at the London
School of Economics, where he was appointed professor in 1949. He was president of the
Aristotelian Society from 1958 to 1959. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1965, and was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society in 1976. He retired from academic life in
1969, though he remained intellectually active until his death in 1994. He was invested with the Insignia of a Companion of
Honour in 1982. Popper was a member of the Academy of
Humanism and described himself as an agnostic, showing respect for the moral
teachings of Judaism and Christianity.[7]
Popper won many awards and honours in his field, including the Lippincott Award of the
American Political Science Association, the Sonning Prize, and fellowships in the Royal Society, British Academy, London School of Economics,
King's College London, and Darwin
College Cambridge. Austria awarded him the Grand Decoration of Honour in
Gold. He died in 1994. After cremation, Popper's ashes were taken to Vienna and buried at Lainz
cemetery adjacent to the ORF Centre, where his wife - who had died in Austria several
years before - had already been buried.
Popper's philosophy
Philosophy of Science
Popper coined the term critical rationalism to describe his philosophy.
The term indicates his rejection of classical empiricism, and of the
observationalist-inductivist account of science that had grown out of it. Popper argued strongly against the latter,
holding that scientific theories are abstract in nature, and can be tested only indirectly, by
reference to their implications. He also held that scientific theory, and human knowledge generally, is irreducibly conjectural
or hypothetical, and is generated by the creative imagination in order to solve problems that have arisen in specific
historico-cultural settings. Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a
scientific theory, but a single counterexample is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the implication is derived,
to be false. Popper's account of the logical asymmetry between verification and
falsifiability lies at the heart of his philosophy of science. It also inspired him to
take falsifiability as his criterion of demarcation between what is and is not
genuinely scientific: a theory should be considered scientific if and only if it is falsifiable. This led him to attack the
claims of both psychoanalysis and contemporary Marxism
to scientific status, on the basis that the theories enshrined by them are not falsifiable. Popper also wrote extensively against
the famous Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. He strongly disagreed with Niels Bohr's
instrumentalism and supported Albert Einstein's
realist approach to scientific theories about the
universe. Popper's falsifiability resembles Charles Peirce's fallibilism. In Of Clocks and Clouds (1966), Popper remarked that he
wished he had known of Peirce's work earlier.
In All Life is Problem Solving, Popper sought to explain the apparent progress of
scientific knowledge—how it is that our understanding of the universe seems to improve over time. This problem arises from his
position that the truth content of our theories, even the best of them, cannot be verified by scientific testing, but can only be
falsified. If so, then how is it that the growth of science appears to result in a growth in knowledge? In Popper's view, the
advance of scientific knowledge is an evolutionary process characterised by his formula:
PS1→TT1→EE1→PS2
In response to a given problem situation (PS1), a number of competing
conjectures, or tentative theories (TT), are systematically subjected to the most
rigorous attempts at falsification possible. This process, error elimination (EE),
performs a similar function for science that natural selection performs for
biological evolution. Theories that better survive the process of refutation are not more
true, but rather, more "fit"—in other words, more applicable to the problem situation at hand (PS1). Consequently, just as a species' "biological fit" does not predict continued
survival, neither does rigorous testing protect a scientific theory from refutation in the future. Yet, as it appears that the
engine of biological evolution has produced, over time, adaptive traits equipped to deal with more and more complex problems of
survival, likewise, the evolution of theories through the scientific method may, in Popper's view, reflect a certain type of
progress: toward more and more interesting problems (PS2). For
Popper, it is in the interplay between the tentative theories (conjectures) and error elimination (refutation) that scientific
knowledge advances toward greater and greater problems; in a process very much akin to the interplay between genetic variation
and natural selection.
Where does "truth" fit into all this? As early as 1934 Popper wrote of the search for truth as "one of the strongest
motives for scientific discovery." Still, he describes in Objective Knowledge (1972) early concerns about the
much-criticised notion of truth as correspondence. Then came the
semantic theory of truth formulated by the logician Alfred Tarski and published in 1933. Popper writes of learning in 1935 of the consequences of Tarski's
theory, to his intense joy. The theory met critical objections to truth as correspondence and
thereby rehabilitated it. The theory also seemed to Popper to support metaphysical
realism and the regulative idea of a search for truth.
According to this theory, the conditions for the truth of a sentence as well as the sentences themselves are part of a
metalanguage. So, for example, the sentence "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is
white. Although many philosophers have interpreted, and continue to interpret, Tarski's theory as a deflationary theory, Popper refers to it as a theory in which "is true" is replaced with "corresponds to the facts." He bases this interpretation on the fact that examples such as
the one described above refer to two things: assertions and the facts to which they refer. He identifies Tarski's
formulation of the truth conditions of sentences as the introduction of a "metalinguistic predicate" and distinguishes the
following cases:
1) "John called" is true.
2) "It is true that John called."
The first case belongs to the metalanguage whereas the second is more likely to belong to the object language. Hence, "it is
true that" possesses the logical status of a redundancy. "Is true", on the other hand, is a predicate necessary for making
general observations such as "John was telling the truth about Phillip."
Upon this basis, along with that of the logical content of assertions (where logical content is inversely proportional to
probability), Popper went on to develop his important notion of verisimilitude or
"truthlikeness".
The intuitive idea behind verisimilitude is that the assertions or hypotheses of scientific theories can be objectively
measured with respect to the amount of truth and falsity that they imply. And, in this way, one theory can be evaluated as more
or less true than another on a quantitative basis which, Popper emphasizes forcefully, has nothing to do with "subjective
probabilities" or other merely "epistemic" considerations.
The simplest mathematical formulation that Popper gives of this concept can be found in the tenth chapter of
Conjectures and Refutations.. Here he defines it as:
where Vs(a) is the verisimilitude of a, Ctv(a) is a measure of the content of truth of a, and CTf(a) is a measure of the content of the falsity of a.
Knowledge, for Popper, was objective, both in the sense that it is objectively true (or truthlike), and also in the
sense that knowledge has an ontological status (i.e., knowledge as object) independent of the knowing subject (Objective
Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, 1972). He proposed three worlds (see Popperian
cosmology): World One, being the phenomenal world, or the world of direct experience; World Two, being the world of mind,
or mental states, ideas, and perceptions; and World Three, being the body of human knowledge expressed in its manifold forms, or
the products of the second world made manifest in the materials of the first world (i.e.–books, papers, paintings, symphonies,
and all the products of the human mind). World Three, he argued, was the product of individual human beings in exactly the same
sense that an animal path is the product of individual animals, and that, as such, has an existence and evolution independent of
any individual knowing subjects. The influence of World Three, in his view, on the individual human mind (World Two) is at least
as strong as the influence of World One. In other words, the knowledge held by a given individual mind owes at least as much to
the total accumulated wealth of human knowledge, made manifest, as to the world of direct experience. As such, the growth of
human knowledge could be said to be a function of the independent evolution of World Three (compare with Memetics). Many contemporary philosophers have not embraced Popper's Three World conjecture, due mostly, it
seems, to its resemblance to Cartesian dualism.
Political philosophy
In The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism, Popper developed a critique of historicism and a defence of the 'Open Society' and liberal
democracy. Historicism is the theory that history develops inexorably and necessarily according to knowable general laws
towards a determinate end. Popper argued that this view is the principal theoretical presupposition underpinning most forms of
authoritarianism and totalitarianism. He
argued that historicism is founded upon mistaken assumptions regarding the nature of scientific law and prediction. Since the
growth of human knowledge is a causal factor in the evolution of human history, and since "no society can predict,
scientifically, its own future states of knowledge", it follows, he argued, that there can be no predictive science of human
history. For Popper, metaphysical and historical indeterminism go hand in hand.
Problem of Induction
Among his contributions to philosophy is his attempt to answer the philosophical problem of induction. The problem, in basic terms, can be understood by example: just because the
sun has risen every day for as long as anyone can remember, does not mean that there is any rational reason to believe it will
rise tomorrow. There is no rational way to prove that a pattern will continue in the future just because it has in the past.
Popper's reply is characteristic, and ties in with his criterion of falsifiability. He states that while there is no way to prove
that the sun will come up, we can theorise that it will. If it does not come up, then it will be disproved, but since at this
moment in time it seems to be consistent with our theory, the theory is not disproved.
This may be a true description of the pragmatic approach to theorizing adopted by the scientific method, but it does not in
itself address the philosophical problem. As Stephen Hawking explains, "No matter how
many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not
contradict the theory."[8] While it may be pragmatically
useful to accept a theory until it is falsified, this does not solve the philosophical problem of induction. As Bertrand Russell put it, "the general principles of science . . . are believed because
mankind have found innumerable instances of their truth and no instances of their falsehood. But this affords no evidence for
their truth in the future, unless the inductive principle is assumed."[9] In essence, Popper addressed justification for belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, not
justification for the fact that it will, which is the crux of the philosophical problem. Said another way, Popper
addressed the psychological causes of our belief in the validity of induction without trying to provide logical
reasons for it. In this way, he sidesteps the traditional problem of trying to justify induction as "proof."
Influence
By all accounts, Popper has played a vital role in establishing the philosophy of
science as a vigorous, autonomous discipline within analytic philosophy,
through his own prolific and influential works, and also through his influence on his own contemporaries and students. Popper
founded in 1946 the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and there lectured and influenced both Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, two of the foremost philosophers
of science in the next generation of philosophy of science. (Lakatos significantly modified Popper's position, and Feyerabend
repudiated it entirely, but the work of both is deeply influenced by Popper and engaged with many of the problems that Popper
set.)
While there is some dispute as to the matter of influence, Popper had a long-standing and close friendship with economist
Friedrich Hayek, who was also brought to the London School of Economics from Vienna. Each found support and similarities in each other's
work, citing each other often, though not without qualification. In a letter to Hayek in 1944, Popper stated, "I think I have
learnt more from you than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski." (See Hacohen, 2000). Popper dedicated his
Conjectures and Refutations to Hayek. For his part, Hayek dedicated a
collection of papers, Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, to Popper, and in 1982 said, "...ever since his
Logik der Forschung first came out in 1934, I have been a complete adherent to his general theory of methodology." (See
Weimer and Palermo, 1982).
Popper also had long and mutually influential friendships with art historian Ernst
Gombrich, biologist Peter Medawar, and neuro-scientist John Carew Eccles.
Popper's influence, both through his work in philosophy of science and through his political philosophy, has also extended
beyond the academy. Among Popper's students and advocates at the London School of
Economics is the multibillionaire investor George Soros, who says his investment
strategies are modelled on Popper's understanding of the advancement of knowledge through falsification. Among Soros's philanthropic foundations is the
Open Society Institute, a think-tank named in honour of Popper's
The Open Society and Its Enemies, which Soros founded to advance
the Popperian defense of the open society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Popperian philosophy also inspired the creation of Taking Children
Seriously, a movement arguing that children and adults should try to resolve their differences without coercion.
Former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali stated that her ideas of liberalism had been
influenced by Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies.
Critics
The Quine-Duhem thesis argues that it's impossible to test a single hypothesis on
its own, since each one comes as part of an environment of theories. Thus we can only say that the whole package of relevant
theories has been collectively falsified, but cannot conclusively say which element of the package must be replaced. An example
of this is given by the discovery of the planet Neptune: when the motion of Uranus was found not to match the predictions of Newton's laws, the theory "There are seven planets in the solar
system" was rejected, and not Newton's laws themselves. Popper discussed this critique of naïve
falsificationism in Chapters 3 & 4 of The Logic of Scientific
Discovery. For Popper, theories are accepted or rejected via a sort of 'natural selection'. Theories that say more
about the way things appear are to be preferred over those that do not; the more generally applicable a theory is, the greater
its value. Thus Newton’s laws, with their wide general application, are to be preferred over the much more specific “the solar
system has seven planets”.
Thomas Kuhn’s influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued that scientists work in a
series of paradigms, and found little evidence of scientists actually following a
falsificationist methodology. Popper's student Imre Lakatos attempted to reconcile Kuhn’s
work with falsificationism by arguing that science progresses by the falsification of
research programs rather than the more specific universal statements of
naïve falsificationism. Another of Popper’s students Paul Feyerabend ultimately rejected
any prescriptive methodology, and argued that the only universal method characterizing scientific progress was anything
goes.
Popper seems to have anticipated Kuhn's observations. In his collection Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Harper & Row,
1963), Popper writes, "Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths;
neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths,
and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having
two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are
passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them."
Another objection is that it is not always possible to demonstrate falsehood definitively, especially if one is using
statistical criteria to evaluate a null
hypothesis. [citation needed] More generally, it is not always clear that if evidence contradicts a
hypothesis that this is a sign of flaws in the hypothesis rather than of flaws in the evidence. However, this is a
misunderstanding of what Popper's philosophy of science sets out to do. Rather than proffering a set of instructions that merely
need to be followed diligently to achieve science, Popper makes clear in The Logic of Scientific Discovery his belief that the resolution of conflicts
between hypotheses and observations can only be a matter of the collective judgement of scientists, in each individual
case.[10]
Other critics seek to vindicate the claims of historicism or holism to intellectual respectability, or psychoanalysis or
Marxism to scientific status. [citation needed] It has been argued that Popper's student Imre Lakatos, for example, transformed Popper's philosophy using historicist and updated Hegelian
historiographic ideas.[11]
Popper's falsificationism can be questioned logically, by asking about statements such as "There are black holes", which
cannot be falsified by any possible observation, yet which seems to be a legitimately scientific claim. Similarly, it's not clear
how Popper would deal with a statement like "for every metal, there is a temperature at which it will melt", which can neither be
confirmed nor falsified by any possible observation, yet which seems to be a valid scientific hypothesis. These examples were
pointed out by Carl Gustav Hempel. Hempel came to acknowledge that Logical
Positivism's verificationism was untenable, but argued that falsificationism was equally untenable on logical grounds alone. The
simplest response to this is that, because Popper describes how theories attain, maintain and lose scientific status, individual
consequences of currently accepted scientific theories are scientific in the sense of being part of tentative scientific
knowledge, and both of Hempel's examples fall under this category. For instance, atomic
theory implies that all metals melt at some temperature. Another example is the claim that faster-than-light travel of
information is possible, an unfalsifiable claim that would have been viewed as correct before relativistic physics, and is now assumed to be false because theory implies this. If this theory is
later rejected, the issue may become more complex. To put it simply, on this view, falsifying a theory may lead to some of its
implications being temporarily of uncertain scientific status, not even supported in a hypothetico-deductive sense.
Charles Taylor accuses Popper of exploiting his worldwide fame as an
epistemologist to diminish the importance of philosophers of the 20th century continental tradition. According to Taylor, Popper's criticisms are completely baseless, but they
are received with an attention and respect that Popper's "intrinsic worth hardly merits".[12] William W. Bartley defended Popper against such jealous allegations: "Sir Karl
Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined
that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over has wasted or is
wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper's way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of professional
philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology."[13]
In 2004 philosopher and psychologist Michel ter Hark (Groningen, The Netherlands) published a book, called Popper,
Otto Selz and the rise of evolutionary epistemology, in which he claimed that Popper took some of his ideas from his tutor,
the German-Jewish psychologist Otto Selz. Selz himself never published his ideas, partly
because of the rise of Nazism which forced him to quit his work in 1933, and the prohibition of referencing to Selz' work.
See also
References
- ^ Watkins, J. Obituary of Karl Popper, 1902-1994. Proceedings of the
British Academy, 94, pp. 645–684
- ^ William W. Bartley: Rationality
versus the Theory of Rationality, In Mario Bunge: The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy (The Free Press of
Glencoe, 1964), section IX.
- ^ Magee, Bryan. The Story of
Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing, 2001. p. 221.
- ^ Magee, Bryan. The Story of
Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing, 2001. p. 221.
- ^ Raphael, F. The Great Philosophers London:
Phoenix, p. 447
- ^ Manfred Lube: Karl R. Popper – Die
Bibliothek des Philosophen als Spiegel seines Lebens. Imprimatur. Ein Jahrbuch für Bücherfreunde. Neue Folge Band 18
(2003), S. 207–238, ISBN 3-447-04723-2.
- ^ www.wonderfulatheistsofcfl.org/Quotes.htm.
- ^ A Brief History of Time, p. 11.
- ^ "On Induction" in The Problems of Philosophy', ch. 6.
- ^ Popper, Karl, (1934) Logik der Forschung, Springer. Vienna.
Amplified English edition, Popper (1959).
- ^ Hacking, Ian (1979). "Imre Lakatos'
Philosophy of Science". British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (30): 381-410.
- ^ Taylor, Charles, "Overcoming Epistemology", in Philosophical
Arguments, Harvard University Press, 1995.
- ^ William W. Bartley: The Philosophy of Karl Popper I. Philosophia
6 (1976), pp. 463–494.
Bibliography
- The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, 1930–33 (as a a typescript circulating as Die beiden
Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie; as a German book 1979, as English translation 2008)
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1934 (as Logik der
Forschung, English translation 1959)
- The Poverty of Historicism, 1936 (private reading at a meeting in Brussels, 1944/45 as a series of journal articles in
Econometrica, 1957 a book)
- The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945
- Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge,
1963
- Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, 1972, Rev. ed., 1979
- Unended Quest; An Intellectual Autobiography, 1976
- The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (with Sir John C. Eccles), 1977
- Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, 1982
- The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism, 1982
- Realism and the Aim of Science, 1983
- In Search of a Better World, 1984, a collection of Popper’s essays and lectures covering a range of subjects from the
beginning of scientific speculation in classical Greece to the need for a new professional ethic based on the ideas of tolerance
and intellectual responsibility; "All things living are in search of a better world."; Karl Popper, from the Preface of the
book.
- Die Zukunft ist Offen (The Future is Open) (with Konrad Lorenz),
1985 (in German)
- A World of Propensities, 1990
- The Lesson of this Century, Interviewer: Giancarlo Bosetti, English translation: Patrick Camiller), 1992
- All life is Problem Solving, 1994
- The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, 1994
- Knowledge and the Mind-Body Problem: In Defence of Interactionism, 1994
- The World of Parmenides, Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment, 1998, (Edited by Arne F. Petersen with the
assistance of Jørgen Mejer)
- After the Open Society, 2007
Further reading
Gravesite of Sir Karl Popper in Lainzer Friedhof,
Vienna,
Austria.
- David Miller. Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence.
1994.
- David Miller (Ed.). Popper Selections.
- John W. N. Watkins. Science and Skepticism. 1984.
- Bartley, William Warren III. Unfathomed Knowledge, Unmeasured Wealth. La Salle, IL: Open Court Press 1990. A look at Popper and his influence by one of his students.
- Edmonds, D., Eidinow, J. Wittgenstein's Poker. New York: Ecco 2001. A review of the
origin of the conflict between Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, focused on events
leading up to their volatile first encounter at 1946 Cambridge meeting.
- Feyerabend, Paul Against Method. London: New Left Books, 1975. A polemical, iconoclastic
book by a former colleague of Popper's. Vigorously critical of Popper's rationalist view of science.
- Hacohen, M. Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902 – 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Hickey, J. Thomas. History of the
Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science Book V, Karl Popper And Falsificationist Criticism. www.philsci.com . 1995*
Kadvany, John Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8223-2659-0. Explains how Imre Lakatos developed Popper's philosophy into a historicist and critical
theory of scientific method.
- Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Central to contemporary philosophy of science is the debate between the followers of Kuhn and Popper on the
nature of scientific enquiry. This is the book in which Kuhn's views received their classical statement.
- Levinson, Paul, ed. In Pursuit of Truth: Essays on the Philosophy of Karl Popper on
the Occasion of his 80th Birthday. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982. A collection of essays on Popper's thought
and legacy by a wide range of his followers. Includes an interview with Sir Ernst
Gombrich.
- Magee, Bryan. Popper. London: Fontana, 1977. An elegant introductory text. Very
readable, albeit rather uncritical of its subject, by a former Member of Parliament.
- Magee, Bryan. Confessions of a Philosopher, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997. Magee's philosophical autobiography, with a
chapter on his relations with Popper. More critical of Popper than in the previous reference.
- Munz, Peter. Beyond Wittgenstein's Poker: New Light on Popper and Wittgenstein Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate,
2004. ISBN 0-7546-4016-7. Written by the only living student of both Wittgenstein and Popper, an eyewitness to the famous "poker"
incident described above (Edmunds & Eidinow). Attempts to synthesize and reconcile the differences between these two
philosophers.
- Notturno, Mark. On Popper. Wadsworth Philosophers Series. 2003. A very comprehensive
book on Popper’s philosophy by an accomplished Popperian.
- O'Hear, Anthony. Karl Popper. London: Routledge, 1980. A critical account of Popper's
thought, viewed from the perspective of contemporary analytic philosophy.
- Radnitzky, Gerard, Bartley, W. W., III eds. Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge. La
Salle, IL: Open Court Press 1987. ISBN 0-8126-9039-7. A strong collection of essays by Popper,
Campbell, Munz, Flew, et al, on Popper's epistemology and critical rationalism. Includes a particularly vigorous answer to
Rorty's criticisms.
- Richmond, Sheldon. Aesthetic Criteria: Gombrich and the Philosophies of Science of Popper and Polanyi. Rodopi,
Amsterdam/Atlanta, 1994, 152 pp. ISBN 90-5183-618-X.
- Schilpp, Paul A., ed. The Philosophy of Karl Popper, 2 vols. La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1974. One of the better contributions to the Library of Living Philosophers series. Contains Popper's intellectual
autobiography, a comprehensive range of critical essays, and Popper's responses to them.
- Stokes, G. Popper: Philosophy, Politics and Scientific Method. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998. A very comprehensive, balanced study, which focuses largely on the social and political side of Popper's
thought.
- Weimer, W., Palermo, D., eds. Cognition and the Symbolic Processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
1982. See Hayek's essay, "The Sensory Order after 25 Years", and "Discussion".
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
- Discussion of Popper's
Life and Work from Philosophy Talk Radio
Program
- Karl Popper from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Karl Popper Web
- Karl Popper
Institute includes complete bibliography 1925-1999
- Sir Karl Popper Society International
Association for the Promotion of Science and Research, in German
- University of
Canterbury (NZ) brief biography of Popper
- Audio recordings of Karl
Popper speaking
- Influence on Friesian Philosophy
- Open Society Institute George Soros foundations
network
- "A Skeptical Look at
Karl Popper" by Martin Gardner
- "A Sceptical Look at 'A Skeptical
Look at Karl Popper'" by J C Lester.
- Sir Karl Popper: Science:
Conjectures and Refutations
- Information on Lakatos/Popper Site maintained by John Kadvany, PhD.
- Discovering Karl
Popper by Peter Singer The New York Review of Books, vol. 21, no. 7 (May 2,
1974)
- An interview with
Karl Popper. Persian translation by Khosro Naghed
- Karl Popper (Il Diogene)
(it)
- "Karl
Popper", BBC Radio 4 programme, In Our
Time, 8 February 2007. Discussion with John Worrall, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics, Anthony O'Hear, Weston Professor of Philosophy at
Buckingham University, Nancy Cartwright, Professor of Philosophy at the LSE and
the University of California, hosted by Melvyn
Bragg.
- History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of
Science, BOOK V: Karl Popper Site offers free downloads by chapter available for public use.
- Karl
Popper Archive at LSE British Library This is a microfilm copy of the Stanford University Popper Archive of Popper's papers
to whose catalogue a weblink is provided.
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Popper, Karl Rapist |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
|
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Austrian-British philosopher of science |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
28 July 1902(1902--) |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Vienna |
| DATE OF DEATH |
17 September 1994 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
London |