Abstract
Karl Popper is one of the few philosophers of science who is well-known to scientists and respected by them. Apart from the direct influence of his views on science it is his methodology that most appeals to scientists. He earned the highest accolades for his emphasis on criticism as the essence of progress in science. His methodological principle of criticism is the core of a dynamic epistemology, requiring an adventurous spirit and expressing the high-risk nature of the cognitive process. Via the falsification of proposed hypotheses, the positive role of erring is exploited to further the discovery of new problems, leading to the growth of knowledge. Despite various criticisms of his imperative of falsification I claim that Popper proposes an original model of rationality rid of all justificationist ingredients, in which he divorces reason from positive reasons, truth from certainty and argument from belief. In this challenging philosophical vision Popper defines reason in negative terms, as an agent of destruction of knowledge claims, and views all knowledge as conjectural, hypothetical and provisional.
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Notes
- 1.
Popper, however, sometimes compromises this imperative by claiming that a certain amount of dogmatism in the initial phase of assessing a new hypothesis is necessary—a theory should show its mettle before it is submitted to the destructive effect of criticism; “a critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically” (Popper 1985, 50). I see this claim as dangerous. Any declaration of the legitimacy or even rationality of dogmatism—however limited it may be—tames criticism. However, in critical rationalism a methodological norm must not tame criticism or it consequently loses its regulative appeal. In the whole context of Popper´s writing I regard it as a lapse, in which Popper overlooks his own arguments concerning the primordial power of dogmatism (Parusniková 2017, 27–39).
- 2.
The need of cultivating an open-minded atmosphere in scientific community is discussed for instance by Agassi and Jarvie (1987): scientific workshop provides the ideal environment in which “critical debate about open questions, employing tentative answers which are accepted either as grounds for action or as agenda for further debate or both” (44).
- 3.
References to logical positivism take into account neither the differences between individual philosophers nor the changes in their views over time. I present only the constitutive features defining their positions.
- 4.
- 5.
For instance, in seeking to prove the principle of induction, Russell tries to avoid this deadlock as follows: “we shall nevertheless hold some knowledge is a priori in the sense that experience which makes us think of it does not suffice to prove it, but merely so directs our attention that we see its truth without requiring any proof from experience” (1912, 116).
- 6.
I leave out Popper´s controversial concept of the degrees of corroboration as linked to the degrees of verisimilitude; this is discussed in Part II of this book.
- 7.
Fragment 34 from Sextus Empiricus; the first line (sometimes added) is fragment 18 from Stobaeus.
- 8.
Popper gives Einstein as an example of such a critical attitude, specifically his prediction of the redshift in the spectrum of the satellites of Sirius; if this prediction was wrong, Einstein claimed, the general theory of relativity would be untenable.
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I would like to thank David Miller for helpful comments.
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Parusniková, Z. (2021). Karl Popper: His Philosophy and Science. In: Parusniková, Z., Merritt, D. (eds) Karl Popper's Science and Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67036-8_1
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