Overview
- Discusses Popper’s recent critics rather than the Wittgenstein-style critics
- Refutes the critics’ exaggerations of Popper’s views
- Is born out of perennial attempts to navigate between dogmatism and relativism
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy (BRIEFSPHILOSOPH)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (16 chapters)
-
Popper and His Popular Critics
Keywords
About this book
This volume examines Popper’s philosophy by analyzing the criticism of his most popular critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. They all followed his rejection of the traditional view of science as inductive. Starting from the assumption that Hume’s criticism of induction is valid, the book explores the central criticism and objections that these three critics have raised. Their objections have met with great success, are significant and deserve paraphrase. One also may consider them reasonable protests against Popper’s high standards rather than fundamental criticisms of his philosophy. The book starts out with a preliminary discussion of some central background material and essentials of Popper’s philosophy. It ends with nutshell representations of the philosophies of Popper. Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos. The middle section of the book presents the connection between these philosophers and explains what their central ideas consists of, what the critical arguments are, how they presented them, and how valid they are. In the process, the author claims that Popper's popular critics used against him arguments that he had invented (and answered) without saying so. They differ from him mainly in that they demanded of all criticism that it should be constructive: do not stop believing a refuted theory unless there is a better alternative to it. Popper hardly ever discussed belief, delegating its study to psychology proper; he usually discussed only objective knowledge, knowledge that is public and thus open to public scrutiny.
Reviews
“Joseph Agassi has produced a useful, thought-provoking, and entertaining collection of essays on Popper’s philosophy and those of his most popular critics. … As a distinctive and provocative perspective on both the personalities and the arguments of Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, Popper and His Popular Critics is a must-read for anyone interested in the defining debates between these celebrated philosophers.” (Steven William Clarke, Science and Education, Vol. 25, 2016)
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Popper and His Popular Critics
Book Subtitle: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos
Authors: Joseph Agassi
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Philosophy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06587-8
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s) 2014
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-06586-1Published: 27 May 2014
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-06587-8Published: 14 May 2014
Series ISSN: 2211-4548
Series E-ISSN: 2211-4556
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 158
Topics: Philosophy, general, Philosophy of Science