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
law belief natural
Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it.
experience
It must be possible for an empirical system to be refuted by experience.
science views ease
It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)
order might able
Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence-so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophecies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.
people giving democracy
It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. ... The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.
mean law two
To give a causal explanation of an event means to deduce a statement which describes it, using as premises of the deduction one or more universal laws, together with certain singular statements, the initial conditions ... We have thus two different kinds of statement, both of which are necessary ingredients of a complete causal explanation.
men shooting rational
You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.
plato political enemy
With regards to political enemies Plato had a kill-and-banish principle. ... In interpreting it , modern-day Platonists are clearly disturbed by it, even as they make elaborate attempts to defend Plato.
freedom government office
It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.
tests alive theory
Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
science proud humans
The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.
attitude science two
The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.
mistake philosophical fundamentals
The fundamental thing about human languages is that they can and should be used to describe something; and this something is, somehow, the world. To be constantly and almost exclusively interested in the medium - in spectacle-cleaning - is a result of a philosophical mistake.
simple statements greater
Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable.