Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRSwas an Austrian-British philosopher and professor. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 July 1902
CountryAustria
numbers history kind
There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.
thinking views games
I am opposed to looking upon logic as a kind of game. ... One might think that it is a matter of choice or convention which logic one adopts. I disagree with this view.
science hands demand
But it is certainly not possible to insist on one hand that the formalism is complete and to insist on the other hand that its application to 'the actual' actually demands a step which cannot be derived from it.
hate believe men
I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. ( Socrates , I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man).
white numbers swans
No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it.
mistake believe choices
Psychologism is, I believe, correct only in so far as it insists upon what may be called 'methodological individualism' as opposed to 'methodological collectivism'; it rightly insists that the 'behaviour' and the 'actions' of collectives, such as states or social groups, must be reduced to the behaviour and to the actions of human individuals. But the belief that the choice of such an individualist method implies the choice of a psychological method is mistaken.
giving-up mean science
Is the world ruled by strict laws or not? This question I regard as metaphysical. The laws we find are always hypotheses; which means that they may always be superseded, and that they may possibly be deduced from probability estimates. Yet denying causality would be the same as attempting to persuade the theorist to give up his search; and that such an attempt cannot be backed by anything like a proof...
science way scientific-method
It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.
science reality ideas
But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they clash, then we know that there is a reality; something that can inform us that our ideas are mistaken.
taken law forever
[The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality...
attitude believe successful
A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.
religious powerful war
The Conspiracy Theory of Society... [is] a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups - sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from - such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.
truth principles logical
Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .
temptation promise lure
The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.