Philosophy
1902 to 1994, Vienna, Austria
Falsifiability, the open society, and the war on prophecy - science and freedom both grow through bold conjectures and fearless criticism.
Start learning Karl →Popper’s criterion of demarcation - what separates science from pseudo-science is not that a theory can be confirmed, but that it can be refuted : a scientific theory sticks its neck out, forbids certain observati…
Popper’s answer to Hume’s problem of induction: science does not build knowledge by generalizing from observations at all. It grows by conjecture and refutation - bold guesses, ruthlessly tested and weeded o…
Popper’s political philosophy: reject the ancient question ‘who should rule?’ and its dream of wise philosopher-kings, and ask instead how to build institutions that let us remove bad rulers without bl…
Popper’s refutation of ‘historicism’ - the belief that history obeys discoverable laws that let us prophesy its future course. He argues that because the course of history depends on the growth of know…
Popper’s ethic for a free society: since we are all fallible, rationality means an openness to being corrected - ‘I may be wrong and you may be right’ - and truth is approached only through free critic…
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