Karl Popper
He said: if a theory cannot be proved wrong, it isn't science. That one sentence changed philosophy of science forever.
Popper grew up in Vienna, was briefly a Marxist and then a Freudian, and then noticed something that changed his thinking permanently: every event seemed to confirm both theories. If it wasn't possible to imagine any evidence that would refute them, they weren't scientific, they were ideology. His criterion of falsifiability became the standard account of what distinguishes science from non-science: a good theory makes predictions that could be wrong, and stays alive only as long as they aren't. His Open Society and Its Enemies applied the same logic to politics, arguing against all theories of historical inevitability (Plato's, Hegel's, Marx's) and for the kind of piecemeal, revisable reform that allows a society to learn from its mistakes. He escaped Vienna in 1937, taught in New Zealand during the war, and spent the rest of his career at the London School of Economics. He was difficult. His ideas were not.
Places
Ideas
Words
“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
“Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths.”
Works
Life & Moments
The Logic of Scientific Discovery in Vienna
Popper published Logik der Forschung in Vienna in 1934, while the city was moving toward fascism and the Vienna Circle was at its height. His book proposed falsifiability as the criterion of scientific demarcation, against verification. It was received as a critique of the positivists he admired and opposed. The English translation appeared in 1959.
LSE professorship, center of British intellectual life
Popper joined the London School of Economics in 1946 and became Professor of Logic and Scientific Method in 1949. From there he influenced a generation of scientists, economists, and policymakers. His seminar was famous for its rigor and his combativeness. He remained the LSE's dominant philosopher until his retirement in 1969.
Influence
Influenced by
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Popper and Wittgenstein occupied opposite poles in Viennese philosophical culture. At their famous Cambridge meeting in 1946, Wittgenstein allegedly brandished a poker. Whether the story is true, they genuinely disagreed about whether philosophical problems are real.
Influenced
- Thomas Kuhn
Popper held that science advances by attempted refutation; Kuhn replied that working scientists spend most of their time not testing their framework but using it, and that change arrives as rupture rather than steady correction.
