HCJ3: Karl Popper

After a rather confusing 1st lecture, the stuff I'm about to blog about focuses on one man - Karl Popper, this is much easier for me to understand than all that science business that we looked at last week.


Popper's 3 most famous books are 'Logic of Scientific Discovery' which attacks Empiricism and Logical Positivists. 'Open Society' attacks Plato and Marx. 'Poverty of Historicism' this questioned the theory that social and cultural phenomena are determined by history.

Popper and Logical Positivism?

The philosophers of the Vienna Circle wanted to clean up philosophy. They tried to distinguish between statements that said something meaningful and those that didn't, these statements couldn't be verified and were called nonsense. Descartes is rejected by Logical Positivists as they were unable to prove his theories right or wrong. Ayer re-wrote Descartes' work to say 'there are ideas' instead of the Cogito - 'I think therefore I am'. Ayer did this so that Descartes work was verifiable, unless solipsism (theory that the self is all that can be known to exist) applies.

Popper didn't see himself as a Logical Positivist and thought that scientific theories couldn't be proved to be true because of induction theory. He also said that science had a mark on it as it could be disproved. Otto Neurath (a leading figure in the Vienna Circle) even gave him the nickname 'The Official Opposition'.

Popper and Einstein

Einstein's theory of relativity was severely tested, Eddington conducted the first test of this theory in 1919 and proved that Einstein's theory was correct and at one time, was hailed as conclusive prove over Newton's theory. Einstein took the best confirmed knowledge that humanity possessed and said that most of it was wrong.

Popper realised that every theory and idea that people thought were true could actually be wrong because of Einstein's work. According to Popper, we can never know what corrections are needed to a theory as all knowledge is fallible. He also said that science worked by induction, but observations are always selective e.g. when you buy a new car you tend to see that model of car a lot more than you did when you had another car.

Popper's book 'Open Society'

In this book, Popper challenged the ideas in Plato's 'Republic' and that claims to knowledge were actually justification for the authority of rulers. He also said that power and rulers should be removable, but without violence. He said that there was a 'paradox of democracy' - it can destroy itself because the ruler has to choose between the majority decision and the consequences of that decision coupled with the moral dilemma that goes with it.

States need to minimize suffering, so instead of thinking of building a utopian state, it is best to try and solve the existing problems. Attempting to create a utopia may end up causing more problems than it solves.

Popper said that people are easily won over by conspiracy theories that explain 'everything'. Once this is the case, the world is full of verifications of that theory.

TB 2012.