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Obra en que KARL R. POPPER (1902-1994), uno de los filósofos más importantes del siglo xx, retrata el clima artístico, intelectual, científico y político de Viena en los años veinte y treinta, relata la gestación del conflicto entre bolchevismo y nacionalsocialismo que a la postre fue uno de los desencadenantes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y describe lo que significa y significó Inglaterra para los amantes de la libertad, BÚSQUEDA SIN TÉRMINO es más que el retrato de una época y un mundo apasionantes: es UNA AUTOBIOGRAFÍA INTELECTUAL. Junto a los hechos históricos que le sirven de secuencia narrativa, a lo largo del libro Popper va exponiendo, sintetizando y explicando su pensamiento, desde sus primeros tanteos hasta la afirmación de una filosofía madura y sumamente original, y consolida en el texto, línea a línea, su compromiso permanente con el conocimiento científico y la salvaguardia de la libertad.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
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About the author
Karl Popper
308 books1,687 followersSir Karl Raimund Popper, FRS, rose from a modest background as an assistant cabinet maker and school teacher to become one of the most influential theorists and leading philosophers. Popper commanded international audiences and conversation with him was an intellectual adventure—even if a little rough—animated by a myriad of philosophical problems. He contributed to a field of thought encompassing (among others) political theory, quantum mechanics, logic, scientific method and evolutionary theory.
Popper challenged some of the ruling orthodoxies of philosophy: logical positivism, Marxism, determinism and linguistic philosophy. He argued that there are no subject matters but only problems and our desire to solve them. He said that scientific theories cannot be verified but only tentatively refuted, and that the best philosophy is about profound problems, not word meanings. Isaiah Berlin rightly said that Popper produced one of the most devastating refutations of Marxism. Through his ideas Popper promoted a critical ethos, a world in which the give and take of debate is highly esteemed in the precept that we are all infinitely ignorant, that we differ only in the little bits of knowledge that we do have, and that with some co-operative effort we may get nearer to the truth.
Nearly every first-year philosophy student knows that Popper regarded his solutions to the problems of induction and the demarcation of science from pseudo-science as his greatest contributions. He is less known for the problems of verisimilitude, of probability (a life-long love of his), and of the relationship between the mind and body.
Popper was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy, and Membre de I'Institute de France. He was an Honorary member of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics, King's College London, and of Darwin College Cambridge. He was awarded prizes and honours throughout the world, including the Austrian Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold, the Lippincott Award of the American Political Science Association, and the Sonning Prize for merit in work which had furthered European civilization.
Karl Popper was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1965 and invested by her with the Insignia of a Companion of Honour in 1982.
(edited from http://www.tkpw.net/intro_popper/intr...)
Popper challenged some of the ruling orthodoxies of philosophy: logical positivism, Marxism, determinism and linguistic philosophy. He argued that there are no subject matters but only problems and our desire to solve them. He said that scientific theories cannot be verified but only tentatively refuted, and that the best philosophy is about profound problems, not word meanings. Isaiah Berlin rightly said that Popper produced one of the most devastating refutations of Marxism. Through his ideas Popper promoted a critical ethos, a world in which the give and take of debate is highly esteemed in the precept that we are all infinitely ignorant, that we differ only in the little bits of knowledge that we do have, and that with some co-operative effort we may get nearer to the truth.
Nearly every first-year philosophy student knows that Popper regarded his solutions to the problems of induction and the demarcation of science from pseudo-science as his greatest contributions. He is less known for the problems of verisimilitude, of probability (a life-long love of his), and of the relationship between the mind and body.
Popper was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy, and Membre de I'Institute de France. He was an Honorary member of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics, King's College London, and of Darwin College Cambridge. He was awarded prizes and honours throughout the world, including the Austrian Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold, the Lippincott Award of the American Political Science Association, and the Sonning Prize for merit in work which had furthered European civilization.
Karl Popper was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1965 and invested by her with the Insignia of a Companion of Honour in 1982.
(edited from http://www.tkpw.net/intro_popper/intr...)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
September 22, 2016
*With my unique friend, Seong-il. August, the 31st, 2016.
*I was lucky to get the chance to spend three nights in Vienna, and visiting university of Vienna was in the top of my list, and that's only to have a picture with the statue of my mentor who I've never met, Sir Karl Popper! I was searching among the statues of the great scientists at the university campus until I found my man! I sat in peace smiling and smoking then my eyes caught that guy who was doing exactly the same as I did! I immediately ran towards him asking and he confirmed me that he was there, just like me, only, for Popper!!!
....
I don't know how to review this remarkable and hard intellectual autobiography, for I'm completely biased in case of Popper! He actually got me back on track in a period of chaos and meaninglessness that pushed me to believe that science would be my only religion, as an absolute value! Though through FALSIFIABILITY and the endless process of error elimination, it can reach pretty near to be absolute!!
“The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty, and both should be abandoned.”
Popper's well known for his rejection and masterful criticism of Induction, mainly adopted and discussed with Hume, and here he sheds some light on his arguments. But I think that Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge would be way better in illustrating his whole theory!
“Conjecture or hypothesis must come before observation or perception: we have inborn expectations; we have latent inborn knowledge, in the form of latent expectations, to be activated by a stimuli to which we react as a rule while engaged in active exploration. All learning is a modification (it may be a refutation)of some prior knowledge and thus, in the last analysis, of some inborn knowledge.”
From a conversation with Einstein:
“...if God had wanted to put everything into the world from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But He seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.”
“The reality of time and change seemed to me the crux of realism.”
"Explanation is always incomplete: we can always raise another Why-questions. And the new why-questions may lead to a new theory which not only "explains" the old theory but corrects it.
This is why the evolution of Physics is likely to be an endless process of correction and better approximation. And even if one day we should reach a stage where our theories were no longer open to correction, because they are simply true, they would still not be complete - and we should know it. For Godel's famous incompleteness theorem would come into play: in view of the Mathematical background of Physics, at best an infinite sequence of such true theories would be needed in order to answer the problems which any given (formalized) theory would be undecidable.
Such considerations do not prove that the objective physical world is incomplete, or undetermined: they only show the essential incompleteness of our efforts. But they also show that it's barely possible (if possible at all) for science to reach a stage in which it can provide genuine support for the view that the physical world is deterministic. Why, the, should we not accept the verdict of common sense- at least until these arguments have been refuted?"
Popper started from his early life in Austria when he was a Marxist and had those ideas, critical ideas of the political theories he was surrounded by, but remained dormant until he had the chance with WW2 to see the light in his research The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume 1: The Spell of Plato where he considered Plato, Hegel and Marx as false prophets!
“I was shocked to have to admit to myself that not only had I accepted a complex theory somewhat uncritically, but that I had also actually noticed quite a bit of what was wrong, in the theory as well as in the practice of communism. But I had repressed this -partly out of loyalty to my friends, partly out of loyalty to "the cause", and partly because there is a mechanism of getting oneself more and more deeply involved: once one has sacrificed one's intellectual conscience over a minor point one doesn't wish to give in too easily; one wishes to justify the self-sacrifice by convincing oneself of the fundamental goodness of the cause, which is seen to outweigh any little moral or intellectual compromise that maybe required. With every such moral or intellectual sacrifice one gets more deeply involved. One becomes ready to back one's moral or intellectual investments in the cause with further investments. It's like being eager to throw good money after bad.”
“I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”
Throughout his intellectual journey, he mentioned his passion to classical music and used it to illustrate some ideas on Art theories, and unfortunately I think I didn't digest it all because I'm far far away to understand the differences and developments on compositions and these stuffs.
All the way until he mentioned some things about the theory of evolution that forms a real problem and even quarrel inside the scientific community and of course the religious one, he took a critical situation that I find myself urged to adopt, Popper considers the theory of evolution as the best available explanatory approach to the riddle of origin of life, and he stressed on the evolutionary approach in all biological problems, in the same time he pointed out that the theory is not completely scientific, in the sense of testability, and adaptation problems for example, and he insisted that the Metaphysical part is still present and even important for upgrading and improving the theory, he finally considered it as a Metaphysical research program that necessarily needs scientific evolutionary approach!
“I don't think highly of the theoretical or explanatory power of of the theory of evolution. But I think that an evolutionary approach to biological problems is inescapable, and also that in so desperate a problem situation we must clutch gratefully even at a straw. So, I propose, to start, that we regard the human mind quite naively as if it were a highly developed bodily organ, and that we ask ourselves, as we might with respect to a sense organ, what it contributes to the household of the organism.”
“And yet I believe I have taken the theory almost at its best— almost in its most testable form. One might say that it “almost predicts” a great variety of forms of life.283 In other fields, its predictive or explanatory power is still more disappointing. Take “adaptation”. At first sight natural selection appears to explain it, and in a way it does; but hardly in a scientific way. To say that a species now living is adapted to its environment is, in fact, almost tautological. Indeed we use the terms “adaptation” and “selection” in such a way that we can say that, if the species were not adapted, it would have been eliminated by natural selection. Similarly, if a species has been eliminated it must have been ill adapted to the conditions. Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival: there is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this.
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Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation; it is, therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized, and improved upon.”
And finally when he got me to the BODY-MIND problem, and his conjectures on WORLD 1, the objective world in itself, and WORLD 2, the subjective human world in itself, and WORLD 3, the world of interaction between the previous worlds! It's just fascinating and deserves all the interest and study! It's a real challenge how can we be a product of world 1, yet we have a full self-consciousness, and we have definitely WORLD 2! Where is the field of our theories and hypotheses?!
Where and when did the first problem appear?
“I suggest that the emergence of descriptive language is at the root of the human power of imagination, of human inventiveness, and therefore the emergence of world 3.”
“I conjecture that the origin of life and the origin of problems coincide.”
"The expressionist view is that our talents, our gifts, and perhaps our upbringing, and thus "our whole personality", determine what we do. The result is good or bad, according to whether or not we are gifted and interesting personalities.
In opposition to this I suggest that everything depends upon the give-and-take between ourselves and our task, our work, our problems, our world 3; upon the repercussions upon us of this world; upon the feedback, which can be amplified by our criticism of what we've done. It's through the attempt to see objectively the work we have done -that's to see it critically- and to do it better, through the interaction between our actions and their objective results, that we can transcend our talents, and ourselves.
As with our children, so with our theories, and ultimately with all the work we do: our products become independent of their makers. We may gain more knowledge from our children or from our theories than we ever imparted to them. This is how we can lift ourselves out of the morass of our ignorance; and we can all contribute to world 3.
If I am right in my conjecture that we grow, and become ourselves, only in interaction with world 3, then the fact that we can all contribute to this world, if only a little, can give comfort to everyone; and especially to one who feels that in struggling with ideas he has found more happiness than he could ever deserve."
Popper! <3
May 11, 2023
«إن اهتمامي بالعلم وبالفلسفة آتٍ من رغبتي بالتعلم والدراسة لأسرار العالم الذي نعيش فيه وأحاجيه وكذلك لأسرار المعرفة الإنسانية لهذا العالم. إن إحياء الاهتمام بهذه الأسرار هو وحده الكفيل بتحرير العلم والفلسفة، من حكم المتخصصين ومن إيمانهم الخرافي والخطير بسلطة معرفة المتخصص الشخصية. إنه هو الذي يحرر من الوهم الذي يليق جيداً، ويا للأسف، بعصرنا بعد العقلاني وبعد النقدي الذي وضع على عاتقه باعتزاز تهديم الفلسفة العقلانية ومعها تقاليد الفكر». — كارل بوبر
في عام 1934 ، نشر بوبر أول عمل رئيسي له ، "منطق الكشفّ العلمي" ، والذي قدم فيه نظريته عن القابلية للتكذيب. وفقًا لبوبر ، يجب أن تكون النظرية العلمية قابلة للدحض ، مما يعني أنه يمكن اختبارها وإثبات خطأها. كما جادل بأن المنهج العلمي يعتمد على الاستدلال الاستنباطي وأن النظريات العلمية لا يمكن إثبات صحتها أبدًا، فقط مدعومة بالأدلة.
كانت أفكار بوبر مؤثرة في فلسفة العلم وكانت ذات صلة خاصة بالنقاش بين الوضعيين المنطقيين والفلاسفة المناهضين للوضعية. في الأربعينيات والخمسينيات من القرن الماضي ، واصل بوبر تطوير أفكاره ونشر أعمالًا مثل "المجتمع المفتوح وأعداؤه" و "عقم المذهب التاريخي ".
في "المجتمع المفتوح وأعداؤه" ، انتقد بوبر الشمولية وجادل بأهمية الديمقراطية والحرية الفردية. كما طور فكرته عن العقلانية النقدية ، والتي تؤكد على أهمية اختبار الأفكار والنظريات من خلال النقد والحجج.
عملت أعمال بوبر اللاحقة ، بما في ذلك "Objective Knowledge" and "Conjectures and Refutations," ، على تطوير أفكاره حول القابلية للتكذيب والعقلانية النقدية. كما شارك في مناقشات مع فلاسفة بارزين آخرين ، بما في ذلك توماس كون وإيمري لاكاتوس ، حول طبيعة التقدم العلمي ودور النظريات في العلوم.
بشكل عام ، تتميز السيرة الفكرية لكارل بوبر بإسهاماته في فلسفة العلم ونظرية المعرفة والنظرية السياسية. لا تزال أفكاره حول القابلية للتكذيب والعقلانية النقدية مؤثرة في هذه المجالات ، ولا تزال انتقاداته للاستبداد والدفاع عن الديمقراطية ذات صلة حتى اليوم.
من المواضيع الأخرى التي تتطرق لها في سيرته الذاتية، الموسيقى وأثرها في تطوره الفكري؛ يعتقد بوبر أن الموسيقى، مثل جميع أشكال الفن، كانت وسيلة مهمة للتعبير عن الإبداع والعواطف البشرية. كان يعتقد أيضًا أن الموسيقى لديها القدرة على تحريك الناس بطرق لا تستطيع أشكال الاتصال الأخرى القيام بها. في كتابه "المجتمع المفتوح وأعداؤه" ، كتب بوبر أن "للموسيقى القدرة على اختراق أعمق فترات الراحة للروح ولمس أعمق المشاعر".
كان بوبر مهتمًا بشكل خاص بدور الموسيقى في المجتمع والسياسة. كان يعتقد أنه يمكن استخدام الموسيقى كأداة للدعاية من قبل من هم في السلطة، وانتقد استخدام الموسيقى في ألمانيا النازية كوسيلة لتعزيز الأيديولوجية الفاشية. وجادل بأن الموسيقى يجب أن تكون خالية من التلاعب السياسي وأن الفنانين يجب أن يكونوا قادرين على إنشاء وأداء أعمالهم دون خوف من الرقابة أو الاضطهاد.
كان مهتماً بالاختلاف بين موسيقى باخ و بتهوفن، أو طرقهما في التعامل مع الموسيقى، إذ جادل بأن باخ كان موضوعي، و بتهوفن ذاتي.
بشكل عام، بينما لم يدرس كارل بوبر الموسيقى بالمعنى الرسمي، فقد أدرك أهميتها كشكل فني وقدرتها على تحريك الناس وإلهامهم.
كتاب قيم، ويعطي القارئ فكرة متكاملة عن فلسفة بوبر و فكره وأعماله. استعرض في المادة العديد من الأفكار والمشكلات المختلفة التي اشتغل فيها،ومازال في ذاك الوقت، كما أبدى العديد من الملاحظات التاريخية حيثما تبدو ذات صلة .
في عام 1934 ، نشر بوبر أول عمل رئيسي له ، "منطق الكشفّ العلمي" ، والذي قدم فيه نظريته عن القابلية للتكذيب. وفقًا لبوبر ، يجب أن تكون النظرية العلمية قابلة للدحض ، مما يعني أنه يمكن اختبارها وإثبات خطأها. كما جادل بأن المنهج العلمي يعتمد على الاستدلال الاستنباطي وأن النظريات العلمية لا يمكن إثبات صحتها أبدًا، فقط مدعومة بالأدلة.
كانت أفكار بوبر مؤثرة في فلسفة العلم وكانت ذات صلة خاصة بالنقاش بين الوضعيين المنطقيين والفلاسفة المناهضين للوضعية. في الأربعينيات والخمسينيات من القرن الماضي ، واصل بوبر تطوير أفكاره ونشر أعمالًا مثل "المجتمع المفتوح وأعداؤه" و "عقم المذهب التاريخي ".
في "المجتمع المفتوح وأعداؤه" ، انتقد بوبر الشمولية وجادل بأهمية الديمقراطية والحرية الفردية. كما طور فكرته عن العقلانية النقدية ، والتي تؤكد على أهمية اختبار الأفكار والنظريات من خلال النقد والحجج.
عملت أعمال بوبر اللاحقة ، بما في ذلك "Objective Knowledge" and "Conjectures and Refutations," ، على تطوير أفكاره حول القابلية للتكذيب والعقلانية النقدية. كما شارك في مناقشات مع فلاسفة بارزين آخرين ، بما في ذلك توماس كون وإيمري لاكاتوس ، حول طبيعة التقدم العلمي ودور النظريات في العلوم.
بشكل عام ، تتميز السيرة الفكرية لكارل بوبر بإسهاماته في فلسفة العلم ونظرية المعرفة والنظرية السياسية. لا تزال أفكاره حول القابلية للتكذيب والعقلانية النقدية مؤثرة في هذه المجالات ، ولا تزال انتقاداته للاستبداد والدفاع عن الديمقراطية ذات صلة حتى اليوم.
من المواضيع الأخرى التي تتطرق لها في سيرته الذاتية، الموسيقى وأثرها في تطوره الفكري؛ يعتقد بوبر أن الموسيقى، مثل جميع أشكال الفن، كانت وسيلة مهمة للتعبير عن الإبداع والعواطف البشرية. كان يعتقد أيضًا أن الموسيقى لديها القدرة على تحريك الناس بطرق لا تستطيع أشكال الاتصال الأخرى القيام بها. في كتابه "المجتمع المفتوح وأعداؤه" ، كتب بوبر أن "للموسيقى القدرة على اختراق أعمق فترات الراحة للروح ولمس أعمق المشاعر".
كان بوبر مهتمًا بشكل خاص بدور الموسيقى في المجتمع والسياسة. كان يعتقد أنه يمكن استخدام الموسيقى كأداة للدعاية من قبل من هم في السلطة، وانتقد استخدام الموسيقى في ألمانيا النازية كوسيلة لتعزيز الأيديولوجية الفاشية. وجادل بأن الموسيقى يجب أن تكون خالية من التلاعب السياسي وأن الفنانين يجب أن يكونوا قادرين على إنشاء وأداء أعمالهم دون خوف من الرقابة أو الاضطهاد.
كان مهتماً بالاختلاف بين موسيقى باخ و بتهوفن، أو طرقهما في التعامل مع الموسيقى، إذ جادل بأن باخ كان موضوعي، و بتهوفن ذاتي.
بشكل عام، بينما لم يدرس كارل بوبر الموسيقى بالمعنى الرسمي، فقد أدرك أهميتها كشكل فني وقدرتها على تحريك الناس وإلهامهم.
كتاب قيم، ويعطي القارئ فكرة متكاملة عن فلسفة بوبر و فكره وأعماله. استعرض في المادة العديد من الأفكار والمشكلات المختلفة التي اشتغل فيها،ومازال في ذاك الوقت، كما أبدى العديد من الملاحظات التاريخية حيثما تبدو ذات صلة .
October 4, 2025
Popper is an inventive philosopher and a powerful voice for reason, but a little more modesty and generosity wouldn’t go amiss.
September 23, 2008
Required reading for school (again). Author is a philosopher of science who has an unfortunate tendency to assume that the average reader has the same knowledge base of philosophy as he has. The ideas themselves are fairly interesting, but the presentation nearly obscures them at times. A very frustrating read and a book that I would not recommend unless you have severe insomnia.
Read
October 4, 2010I feel guilty for saying this, but I find this book to be really boring and am having trouble making myself slog through it.
Certainly like the whole "reality exists" idea though.
(Later on).
Relieved to have finished the book. It sort of picks up after the bit where he talks about his ideas about music. Again a feeling of embarrassment, as though I were a kid who would only read books if they had pictures in them, I often found myself being much more interested in Popper's life story than his ideas. I feel horrible saying this, because I'm sure the ideas are quite remarkable (science as a sort of process of natural selection by falsification, darwinism not as a proper scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme, a straw at which we must gratefully grasp)
And feeling foolish for criticising somebody far smarter than me, and worse without criticising the ideas themselves, I'm not so comfortable when he ventures out into politics and into stuff like the Body-Mind problem, or starts making claims about the link between consciousness and language. Again, this isn't a proper critique of ideas, just a sort of fuzzy feeling, kind of like what happens sometimes when Really Brilliant computer scientists can get interested in some field they know nothing about (say Natural Language)... or maybe just a personal sense of dissatisfaction with trying to tackle all problems with Reason alone.
Now if anybody notices, I'm probably going to get flak (or worse, praise from the wrong sort of people) for muttering about something like the inadequacy of Reason... but that's where I'm going to have to stand until I get a bigger brain.
Certainly like the whole "reality exists" idea though.
(Later on).
Relieved to have finished the book. It sort of picks up after the bit where he talks about his ideas about music. Again a feeling of embarrassment, as though I were a kid who would only read books if they had pictures in them, I often found myself being much more interested in Popper's life story than his ideas. I feel horrible saying this, because I'm sure the ideas are quite remarkable (science as a sort of process of natural selection by falsification, darwinism not as a proper scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme, a straw at which we must gratefully grasp)
And feeling foolish for criticising somebody far smarter than me, and worse without criticising the ideas themselves, I'm not so comfortable when he ventures out into politics and into stuff like the Body-Mind problem, or starts making claims about the link between consciousness and language. Again, this isn't a proper critique of ideas, just a sort of fuzzy feeling, kind of like what happens sometimes when Really Brilliant computer scientists can get interested in some field they know nothing about (say Natural Language)... or maybe just a personal sense of dissatisfaction with trying to tackle all problems with Reason alone.
Now if anybody notices, I'm probably going to get flak (or worse, praise from the wrong sort of people) for muttering about something like the inadequacy of Reason... but that's where I'm going to have to stand until I get a bigger brain.
May 4, 2021
You leave this book with two sensations: a total awe for the incredible research spectrum of Karl Popper, and some envy for these accomplishments (Is one of the books where the word “I” is almost in every paragraph)
You may disagree with some of the falsification theory (conjectures and refutations), but that doesn’t matter, Popper is right, absolutely right. Curiously is a principle that you could find in a similar way in Hegel (Hegel was the first to explain the importance of a critical method as negative, and all scientific research as merely hypothetical, any result is negative).
You also would find some explanation of Tarski meta language principle of truth. Popper grasp thoroughly the consequences of this principle, and tries to do some practical implications.
Probability is another aspect of Popper theory that have a full range of new applications.
Maybe the mistake of Popper is that he tries to be at the center of the party in everything that he touched. Very similar to Nassim Taleb, maybe is not so original as he thought but he wants to said something, and if you are as cleaver as Popper you have the right.
Not recommended, only if you have the patience
You may disagree with some of the falsification theory (conjectures and refutations), but that doesn’t matter, Popper is right, absolutely right. Curiously is a principle that you could find in a similar way in Hegel (Hegel was the first to explain the importance of a critical method as negative, and all scientific research as merely hypothetical, any result is negative).
You also would find some explanation of Tarski meta language principle of truth. Popper grasp thoroughly the consequences of this principle, and tries to do some practical implications.
Probability is another aspect of Popper theory that have a full range of new applications.
Maybe the mistake of Popper is that he tries to be at the center of the party in everything that he touched. Very similar to Nassim Taleb, maybe is not so original as he thought but he wants to said something, and if you are as cleaver as Popper you have the right.
Not recommended, only if you have the patience
February 21, 2023
سيرة ذاتية كتبها البروفيسور نفسه، غلب عليها سيرته الفكرية من مرحلة طفولة مروراً بالحرب العالمية الأولى ثم الثانية ولاحقاً انهيار الاتحاد السوفيتي .
ناقش بصورة مستعجلة لكن مستوفيه أهم النظريات والشخصيات والأحداث في مسيرته التعليمية والتأليف، التي من الواضح كانت له المحرك الرئيسي لحياة سعيدة .
السيرة الفكرية مبسطة لكن ستكون سهلة جدا على من يملك خلفية ثقافية مفهومة في الفلسفة والفيزياء .
لن تكون سهلة الفهم لولا خبرة المترجم. شكرا لدار المدى على انتقائها للمترجمين .
ناقش بصورة مستعجلة لكن مستوفيه أهم النظريات والشخصيات والأحداث في مسيرته التعليمية والتأليف، التي من الواضح كانت له المحرك الرئيسي لحياة سعيدة .
السيرة الفكرية مبسطة لكن ستكون سهلة جدا على من يملك خلفية ثقافية مفهومة في الفلسفة والفيزياء .
لن تكون سهلة الفهم لولا خبرة المترجم. شكرا لدار المدى على انتقائها للمترجمين .
September 17, 2018
کارل یکی از برجسته ترین فیلسوفان علم و فیلسوفان سیاسی قرن بیستم است که آثارش هنوز توسط جمع کثیری از انسانها مطالعه میشود.
بررسی خط فکری ایشان و تلاشهایش و آشنایی با کلیاتی از تفکرات ایشان را می توان در کتاب عطش باقی که زندگینامه فکری ایشان به دست خودشان می باشد، پیدا کرد. کتاب بسیار روان و خوب است بجر بخش هایی که درخصوص برخی مسائل فلسفه علم می پردازد که مسلما نیاز به تفکر دارد.
بررسی خط فکری ایشان و تلاشهایش و آشنایی با کلیاتی از تفکرات ایشان را می توان در کتاب عطش باقی که زندگینامه فکری ایشان به دست خودشان می باشد، پیدا کرد. کتاب بسیار روان و خوب است بجر بخش هایی که درخصوص برخی مسائل فلسفه علم می پردازد که مسلما نیاز به تفکر دارد.
July 21, 2011
"I conjecture that the origin of life and the origin of problems coincide."
June 28, 2022
Creio que será justo dizer que desilude tanto quanto surpreende. Começa por ser uma autobiografia intelectual, com os anos formativos de Popper, as suas vivências da infância à adultez, as suas leituras e professores. Depois vai-se tornando numa apologia dos seus pontos de vista sobre quase tudo, quase sempre certos, superiores aos de gente como Wittgenstein, Einstein, Bohr ou Schrödinger. É verdade que não deixa de ser uma leitura importante (nem sempre sinónimo de interessante), mas que fastidia pela auto-promoção constante.
June 23, 2015
A good, though perhaps not excellent, introduction to Popper's thinking on issues like the problem of demarcation (and the role of falsificationism in solving it), the nature of theories, political philosophy, evolutionary theory, and the role of metaphysics in science. There is also a good amount of biographical info in here, especially on Popper's early years in Vienna (among other things, Popper almost became a professional musician).
My reservations about the book are primarily due to Popper's somewhat biased presentation of the issues; Popper tends to present debates as if his is the only possible solution, and that everyone else is obviously wrong. In some cases (especially in philosophy of physics), this seems somewhat justified (for example, I think Popper's early attacks on the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seem justified, and I think that there is at least *something* to his attack on using entropy to define the arrow of time). Even in these cases, though, I'm not convinced that Popper's positive accounts are successful. It might have helped here that Popper's opponents were (primarily) practicing physicists, and they had failed to think carefully through some of the more traditionally "philosophical" issues (i.e., in figuring out the relationship between observation and reality).
In other cases, though, I think Popper's account is misleading. In particular, Popper spent most of his professional life attacking the "inductivist" program of Carnap and the linguistic philosophy of Wittgenstein. From Popper's description, you might think that everyone had agreed that Popper "won" these debates; the real situation seems to be almost the reverse--while Popper's criticisms of certain aspects of these programs were valuable, Carnap's and Wittgenstein's positive programs have remained hugely influential among contemporary researchers (especially in areas like inductive and modal logic, formal epistemology, and linguistics/philosophy of language), Popper's influence seems to been constrained to somewhat peripheral issues (for example, in educating laypeople about the difference between "science" and "non-science").
My reservations about the book are primarily due to Popper's somewhat biased presentation of the issues; Popper tends to present debates as if his is the only possible solution, and that everyone else is obviously wrong. In some cases (especially in philosophy of physics), this seems somewhat justified (for example, I think Popper's early attacks on the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seem justified, and I think that there is at least *something* to his attack on using entropy to define the arrow of time). Even in these cases, though, I'm not convinced that Popper's positive accounts are successful. It might have helped here that Popper's opponents were (primarily) practicing physicists, and they had failed to think carefully through some of the more traditionally "philosophical" issues (i.e., in figuring out the relationship between observation and reality).
In other cases, though, I think Popper's account is misleading. In particular, Popper spent most of his professional life attacking the "inductivist" program of Carnap and the linguistic philosophy of Wittgenstein. From Popper's description, you might think that everyone had agreed that Popper "won" these debates; the real situation seems to be almost the reverse--while Popper's criticisms of certain aspects of these programs were valuable, Carnap's and Wittgenstein's positive programs have remained hugely influential among contemporary researchers (especially in areas like inductive and modal logic, formal epistemology, and linguistics/philosophy of language), Popper's influence seems to been constrained to somewhat peripheral issues (for example, in educating laypeople about the difference between "science" and "non-science").
September 20, 2014
Reading this 40-chapter “Unended Quest” by Karl Popper was enriching and stimulating since the book “recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. … Yet it is as an introduction to Popper’s philosophy that "Unended Quest" shines. …” (back cover) However, the contents from Chapter 31 (Objectivity and Criticism) towards Chapter 40 (The Place of Values in a World of Facts) seemed to focus on his philosophy gradually and theoretically in which, I think, his readers would have better understood if they had ideally, possibly cooperated in a reading project with a scholar on Popper philosophy.
March 15, 2016
This is a book worth reading and rereading, for Karl Popper is one of those thinkers like a magician, forever pulling rabbits from hats. He belongs to that school on middle European thinkers steeped in the modernist enlightenment. There is really no topic that he has not thought about and few on which he is unable to cast light.
This is the wrong forum for a long dissertation upon Popper, his work, his influence on the philosophy of science or politics, but it is a measure of the man that he can say, "Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite." Indeed.
This is the wrong forum for a long dissertation upon Popper, his work, his influence on the philosophy of science or politics, but it is a measure of the man that he can say, "Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite." Indeed.
May 29, 2012
This book is a bit of a ramble of Poppers ideas, which isn't necassarily a bad thing since he has so many good one. It's probably one of Popper's funnest books, in that it's a lighter read but still full of interesting thoughts, and if you like the idea of reading an intellectual autobigraphy it'll scratch that itch. But it's main merit is unfortunately very much the biographical element--it's fun to see where the ideas come from. As far as Popper books goes there are many deeper and more insightful pieces. Still a good read and it does cover a lot of scope.
February 23, 2019
This book is all over the place. Well, of course it's all about Popper, but it is as much about the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics as it is about political philosophy. If you want to know about a certain part of Popper's philosophy, I'd advise you to find a more themed book. However, the account of how certain episodes in Popper's life shaped his thought were quite interesting. So as an autobiography, I give it three stars.
February 12, 2017
My first time reading this ~2003 it was a frustrating experience. I did, at the time, really enjoy the chapter about his musical interests. Rereading over a decade later and found it to have subtle charms throughout
October 5, 2012
A very challenging biography of one of the greatest philosophers of science in the twentieth century. Popper is best known for overthrowing positivism and for his falsification criterion.
April 15, 2016
Karl Popper was a Jewish pupil of an old cabinet maker who knew everything. Who asked historical questions only to answer them himself.
"I believe I learned more about the theory of knowledge from my dear omniscient master Adalbert Pösch than from any other of my teachers. None did so much to turn me into a disciple of Socrates. For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance."
At the age of twenty, Popper was not only a University student and a Cabinet Maker but also a mind that continously grappled with profound questions of ontology and epistemology. And way before that, while only still a child of eight, he was pondering over the problem of infinity. A child who grew up surroudned by books and academics raising him in the middle of rampant poverty in Vienna and the eventual war and forced exile. This child was alway interested in the demarcation of real problems and puzzles, science and pseudo-science.
So when the child became a boy he started formalizing his thoughts that transpired in their maturer form later on in the following way:
"Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise."
AND...
"The relationship between a theory (or a statement) and the words used in its formulation is in several ways analogous to that between written words and the letters used in writing them down. Obviously the letters have no “meaning” in the sense in which the words have “meaning”; although we must know the letters (that is, their “meaning” in some other sense) if we are to recognize the words, and so discern their meaning. Approximately the same may be said about words and statements or theories. Letters play a merely technical or pragmatic role in the formulation of words. In my opinion, words also play a merely technical or pragmatic role in the formulation of theories. Thus both letters and words are mere means to ends (different ends)."
Okay *Mind Blown* but moving on...
"It is interesting that this apparently vague (and one might say “holistic”) idea of the significance of a theory can be analysed and clarified to a considerable extent in purely logical terms— with the help of the idea of the content of a statement or a theory. There are in use, in the main, two intuitively very different but logically almost identical ideas of content, which I have sometimes called “logical content” and “informative content”; a special case of the latter I have also called “empirical content”.
The logical content of a statement or theory may be identified with what Tarski has called its “consequence class”; that is, the class of all the (nontautological) consequences which can be derived from the statement of theory.
For the informative content (as I have called it) we must consider the intuitive idea that statements or theories tell us the more “the more they prohibit” or exclude.15 This intuitive idea leads to a definition of informative content which, to some people, has seemed absurd: the informative content of a theory is the set of statements which are incompatible with the theory."
*Bang Bang
"Early during this period I developed further my ideas about the demarcation between scientific theories (like Einstein’s) and pseudoscientific theories (like Marx’s, Freud’s, and Adler’s) [Yep! Psychology is so Pseudo bro]. It became clear to me that what made a theory, or a statement, scientific was its power to rule out, or exclude [Science as falsification], the occurrence of some possible events— to prohibit, or forbid, the occurrence of these events. Thus the more a theory forbids, the more it tells us."
*You see one certain case according to Freud was due to Eoedipus complex and according to Addler was due to Inferiority complex. well, because their so called "scientific" theories do not clearly state a way in which instead of verification, one can definitively "falsify" them. A theory must not state what is required to verify it, instead it should tell what would falsify it!!!!
*I know right...
Then Popper takes on Music (yep!) and discusses at length his tastes and some classical pieces and composers. Theories of art in general. (subjectivist VS objectivist)
"When the poet or the performer composes or recites he is deeply moved, and indeed possessed (not only by the god but also) by the message; for example, by the scenes he describes. And the work, rather than merely his emotional state, induces similar emotions in his audience."
*Even art is actually problem-solving. There is a problem that the artist is facing and he/she tries to solve it through a known and practiced medium.
*Whoooshhh
*Whooooooooooooooooosshhhh
*A lot of whooshing sounds next. Passages about pure theory of knowledge, logical positivism, realism and some implications and debates about quantum theory, jews and war, job. I read and re-read. Understood a few things, half understood a few and did not understand some at all. Realized I'm such a noob.
Then my man goes to the US and A and meets Einstein and Schrodinger. No big deal there.
Then some discussion about Induction, Deduction and Objectivity of Truth.
(Tarski):
"Once we have a metalanguage, a language like this in which we can speak about statements and facts, it becomes easy to make assertions about the correspondence between a statement and a fact."
*Hah! Meta-language!
*Then some destruction of Induction.
(But, but all Swans are white because I have seen one hundred swans earlier that were white..
Hmm so? If you see another white swan that would only mean you have seen one hundred and one swans and they happened to be white. That's all.
Oh and that goes for your lab experiments also..just saying.)
Then some very interesting, albeit, very complex theories about Entropy.
Then Enter Darwinisim. *So much win ^_^
"From this point of view the question of the scientific status of Darwinian theory—in the widest sense, the theory of trial and error-elimination—becomes an interesting one. I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme—a possible framework for testable scientific theories."
*ooooohhhhh burrrnnnnn!!!!
Continuing the arse kicking:
"And yet I believe I have taken the theory almost at its best— almost in its most testable form. One might say that it “almost predicts” a great variety of forms of life.283 In other fields, its predictive or explanatory power is still more disappointing. Take “adaptation”. At first sight natural selection appears to explain it, and in a way it does; but hardly in a scientific way. To say that a species now living is adapted to its environment is, in fact, almost tautological. Indeed we use the terms “adaptation” and “selection” in such a way that we can say that, if the species were not adapted, it would have been eliminated by natural selection. Similarly, if a species has been eliminated it must have been ill adapted to the conditions. Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival: there is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this."
"Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation; it is, therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized, and improved upon."
*Nods Nods
So, there. What a kick ass book. So much to learn from this guy. What a frikking rockstar. I must also point out here that this isn't an easy book to read. It does not flow or whatever. I will have to read it again. One reading is just not enough for a book as condensed as this. And besides, there is so much that I have to dig deep in the fields of epistemology and philosophy of science that untill I do that, this book can never, for me, sparkle in its true radiance.
Desi atheists frog-leaping out of Dawkins' and Hitchens' ponds of pseudo-definitive arguments hurra-ing the superiority of science and rejection of existence of God should read guys like Popper to get a reality check before they drown in the glittery morass of make-believe reality. Just saying.
"I believe I learned more about the theory of knowledge from my dear omniscient master Adalbert Pösch than from any other of my teachers. None did so much to turn me into a disciple of Socrates. For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance."
At the age of twenty, Popper was not only a University student and a Cabinet Maker but also a mind that continously grappled with profound questions of ontology and epistemology. And way before that, while only still a child of eight, he was pondering over the problem of infinity. A child who grew up surroudned by books and academics raising him in the middle of rampant poverty in Vienna and the eventual war and forced exile. This child was alway interested in the demarcation of real problems and puzzles, science and pseudo-science.
So when the child became a boy he started formalizing his thoughts that transpired in their maturer form later on in the following way:
"Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise."
AND...
"The relationship between a theory (or a statement) and the words used in its formulation is in several ways analogous to that between written words and the letters used in writing them down. Obviously the letters have no “meaning” in the sense in which the words have “meaning”; although we must know the letters (that is, their “meaning” in some other sense) if we are to recognize the words, and so discern their meaning. Approximately the same may be said about words and statements or theories. Letters play a merely technical or pragmatic role in the formulation of words. In my opinion, words also play a merely technical or pragmatic role in the formulation of theories. Thus both letters and words are mere means to ends (different ends)."
Okay *Mind Blown* but moving on...
"It is interesting that this apparently vague (and one might say “holistic”) idea of the significance of a theory can be analysed and clarified to a considerable extent in purely logical terms— with the help of the idea of the content of a statement or a theory. There are in use, in the main, two intuitively very different but logically almost identical ideas of content, which I have sometimes called “logical content” and “informative content”; a special case of the latter I have also called “empirical content”.
The logical content of a statement or theory may be identified with what Tarski has called its “consequence class”; that is, the class of all the (nontautological) consequences which can be derived from the statement of theory.
For the informative content (as I have called it) we must consider the intuitive idea that statements or theories tell us the more “the more they prohibit” or exclude.15 This intuitive idea leads to a definition of informative content which, to some people, has seemed absurd: the informative content of a theory is the set of statements which are incompatible with the theory."
*Bang Bang
"Early during this period I developed further my ideas about the demarcation between scientific theories (like Einstein’s) and pseudoscientific theories (like Marx’s, Freud’s, and Adler’s) [Yep! Psychology is so Pseudo bro]. It became clear to me that what made a theory, or a statement, scientific was its power to rule out, or exclude [Science as falsification], the occurrence of some possible events— to prohibit, or forbid, the occurrence of these events. Thus the more a theory forbids, the more it tells us."
*You see one certain case according to Freud was due to Eoedipus complex and according to Addler was due to Inferiority complex. well, because their so called "scientific" theories do not clearly state a way in which instead of verification, one can definitively "falsify" them. A theory must not state what is required to verify it, instead it should tell what would falsify it!!!!
*I know right...
Then Popper takes on Music (yep!) and discusses at length his tastes and some classical pieces and composers. Theories of art in general. (subjectivist VS objectivist)
"When the poet or the performer composes or recites he is deeply moved, and indeed possessed (not only by the god but also) by the message; for example, by the scenes he describes. And the work, rather than merely his emotional state, induces similar emotions in his audience."
*Even art is actually problem-solving. There is a problem that the artist is facing and he/she tries to solve it through a known and practiced medium.
*Whoooshhh
*Whooooooooooooooooosshhhh
*A lot of whooshing sounds next. Passages about pure theory of knowledge, logical positivism, realism and some implications and debates about quantum theory, jews and war, job. I read and re-read. Understood a few things, half understood a few and did not understand some at all. Realized I'm such a noob.
Then my man goes to the US and A and meets Einstein and Schrodinger. No big deal there.
Then some discussion about Induction, Deduction and Objectivity of Truth.
(Tarski):
"Once we have a metalanguage, a language like this in which we can speak about statements and facts, it becomes easy to make assertions about the correspondence between a statement and a fact."
*Hah! Meta-language!
*Then some destruction of Induction.
(But, but all Swans are white because I have seen one hundred swans earlier that were white..
Hmm so? If you see another white swan that would only mean you have seen one hundred and one swans and they happened to be white. That's all.
Oh and that goes for your lab experiments also..just saying.)
Then some very interesting, albeit, very complex theories about Entropy.
Then Enter Darwinisim. *So much win ^_^
"From this point of view the question of the scientific status of Darwinian theory—in the widest sense, the theory of trial and error-elimination—becomes an interesting one. I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme—a possible framework for testable scientific theories."
*ooooohhhhh burrrnnnnn!!!!
Continuing the arse kicking:
"And yet I believe I have taken the theory almost at its best— almost in its most testable form. One might say that it “almost predicts” a great variety of forms of life.283 In other fields, its predictive or explanatory power is still more disappointing. Take “adaptation”. At first sight natural selection appears to explain it, and in a way it does; but hardly in a scientific way. To say that a species now living is adapted to its environment is, in fact, almost tautological. Indeed we use the terms “adaptation” and “selection” in such a way that we can say that, if the species were not adapted, it would have been eliminated by natural selection. Similarly, if a species has been eliminated it must have been ill adapted to the conditions. Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival: there is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this."
"Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation; it is, therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized, and improved upon."
*Nods Nods
So, there. What a kick ass book. So much to learn from this guy. What a frikking rockstar. I must also point out here that this isn't an easy book to read. It does not flow or whatever. I will have to read it again. One reading is just not enough for a book as condensed as this. And besides, there is so much that I have to dig deep in the fields of epistemology and philosophy of science that untill I do that, this book can never, for me, sparkle in its true radiance.
Desi atheists frog-leaping out of Dawkins' and Hitchens' ponds of pseudo-definitive arguments hurra-ing the superiority of science and rejection of existence of God should read guys like Popper to get a reality check before they drown in the glittery morass of make-believe reality. Just saying.
May 28, 2019
Popper walks through the publication of his works and development of his philosophy. Why he left psychology and the quest for the meaning of words: "it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood" any attempt for more precision or clarity as ends themselves is pointless, "if greater precision is needed it is because the problem demands it... problems can only be solved with the help of new ideas" not better/more precise definitions of words.
Dogma vs critical thinking: "dogma provides us with the frame of coordinates needed for exploring the order of this new unknown and possibly even somewhat chaotic world, and also for creating order where order is missing... the use of dogma, or myth, as a man-made path along which we move into the unknown, exploring the world creating rules for probing for existing regularities. Once we have erected some landmarks, we proceed by trying new ways of ordering the world, new modes of exploration and creation, undreamt of in antiquity."
Our theories, like primitive myths, we can always stick to them if we wish, even if they are false. But through criticism, we can replace them with something better. We impose our theories on the world. A scientific or critical phase of thinking is necessarily preceded by an uncritical phase. Through these theories we create our own world (not the real world) but our own nets in which we try to catch the real world. There is no other way into the unknown.
Music: "A great work of music (like a great scientific theory) is a cosmos imposed upon chaos - in its tensions and harmonies inexhaustible even for it's creator."
Critical rationalism: commitment to reason is the willingness to be open to criticism as much as possible, while balancing the reduction of conflict. Relativism is the idea that any set of values can be defended.
Induction: the view is still widely held that we have to appeal to intuition because without circularity there can not be argument using logic. And induction relies on the belief that the future is likely to be not so very different from the past. But this isn't a basis for logic. Instead
Deductive arguments are deemed valid if no counterexample exists, and so for any proposed role of deduction we can try to construct a counterexample. This is enough. Theories which are bold guesses, and severely tested and criticized do very well for us.
The boldest guess of all: theory of evolution via natural selection. While potentially a metaphysical theory because it doesn't make testable predictions (any outcome could be explained by the theory due to our lack of information about ancestors, ei any extraterrestrial variation could be explained). Never there less the invaluable theory is the best explanation for knowledge growth we have. The theory predicts accidental mutations, or growth of knowledge, but without direction as changes are a random walk.
Theories (world 3) are developed from the ability of human language and argument (world 2) that interact with tools (world 1).
Dogma vs critical thinking: "dogma provides us with the frame of coordinates needed for exploring the order of this new unknown and possibly even somewhat chaotic world, and also for creating order where order is missing... the use of dogma, or myth, as a man-made path along which we move into the unknown, exploring the world creating rules for probing for existing regularities. Once we have erected some landmarks, we proceed by trying new ways of ordering the world, new modes of exploration and creation, undreamt of in antiquity."
Our theories, like primitive myths, we can always stick to them if we wish, even if they are false. But through criticism, we can replace them with something better. We impose our theories on the world. A scientific or critical phase of thinking is necessarily preceded by an uncritical phase. Through these theories we create our own world (not the real world) but our own nets in which we try to catch the real world. There is no other way into the unknown.
Music: "A great work of music (like a great scientific theory) is a cosmos imposed upon chaos - in its tensions and harmonies inexhaustible even for it's creator."
Critical rationalism: commitment to reason is the willingness to be open to criticism as much as possible, while balancing the reduction of conflict. Relativism is the idea that any set of values can be defended.
Induction: the view is still widely held that we have to appeal to intuition because without circularity there can not be argument using logic. And induction relies on the belief that the future is likely to be not so very different from the past. But this isn't a basis for logic. Instead
Deductive arguments are deemed valid if no counterexample exists, and so for any proposed role of deduction we can try to construct a counterexample. This is enough. Theories which are bold guesses, and severely tested and criticized do very well for us.
The boldest guess of all: theory of evolution via natural selection. While potentially a metaphysical theory because it doesn't make testable predictions (any outcome could be explained by the theory due to our lack of information about ancestors, ei any extraterrestrial variation could be explained). Never there less the invaluable theory is the best explanation for knowledge growth we have. The theory predicts accidental mutations, or growth of knowledge, but without direction as changes are a random walk.
Theories (world 3) are developed from the ability of human language and argument (world 2) that interact with tools (world 1).
May 29, 2019
What you think of this book will very much depend on where you are coming from and what you are looking for. If you are more interesting the autobiographical aspects of this book, then you will probably enjoy the first twenty five or so chapters -even as you marvel at Popper's reticence- and feel the book falls apart in the last ten chapters. It is an intellectual autobiography, which means that Popper is more interested in writing about the genesis, development, and sharpening of his ideas on the scientific method, probability, quantum physics, logic, the philosophy of language, historicism,and darwinism -a daunting and far ranging set of ideas which he appears to have tackled with immodesty and unabashed vigor against the best minds of his generation: Einstein, Mach, Boltzmann, Wittgenstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Carnap... If you are interested in the philosophy of science then many of the later chapters will be of more interest to you, since they provide valuable insights into Popper's later work, even if they seem, to me at least, to have the feel of work in progress. I must admit that many of the chapters were over my head, and that my two star rating may have much to do with what I (mistakenly) hoped to find more of in the book, which is best described in the words of the title of Popper's final chapter The place of values in a world of facts. In an earlier chapter Popper straightforwardly and very pragmatically asserts:
...we shall always have to live in an imperfect society […] there always exist irresolvable clashes of values: there are many moral problems which are insoluble because moral principles may conflict.In his last chapter he claims:
There can be no human society without conflict: such a society would be society not of friends but of ants […C]lashes of values and principles may be valuable, and indeed essential for an open society[…]
The fact that moral or principles may clash, does not invalidate them.
The innermost nucleus of world 3, as I see it, is the world of problems, theories, and criticism. Although values do not belong to this nucleus, it is dominated by values: the values of objective truth, and of its growth. In a sense we can say that throughout this human intellectual world 3 this value remains the highest value of all, though we must admit other values into our world 3. For with every value proposed arises the problem: is it true that this is a value? And, is it true that it has its proper standing in the hierarchy of values: is it true that kindness is a higher value than justice, or even comparable with justice?Neat, precise Popperian food for thought...
November 25, 2020
Very enjoyable autobiography by Karl Popper. As the subtitle implies, it's mainly about his ideas, interspersed with some very general personal history and anecdotes, which still give a good impression of who Popper was. A man who was, as he says himself, perfectly happy in struggling with ideas, and very fond of (scientific and philosophical) problems.
Because he was born and grew up in Vienna in the beginning of the 20th century many used to think he was a member of the Wiener Kreis and a positivist who had proposed an improvement on positivism. On the contrary. He didn't belong to the Wiener Kreis and opposed positivism, and even says he's the one who killed it. There's a funny anecdote in the book about an encounter with Wittgenstein at a conference in London. In his lecture Popper made the very Popperian point that the question whether real philosophical problems exist (rather than being just 'language puzzles') was itself a real philosophical problem. After a sudden interruption by Wittgenstein and a short altercation, Wittgenstein furiously left the room. Popper assures us that, contrary to subsequent myth, the altercation was purely verbal.
Surprising to me, concerning the mind-body problem he was a psycho-physical interactionist, which is a form of dualism. A very unpopular position today, but his arguments are good. And as we have absolutely no idea what consciousness is, any well-argued hypothesis on this subject is valid and useful. He also says theories and criticism, and even myth and imagination, are as real as physical objects, because they can effect them. This is facilitated by the human mind, which must be real also, as something different from the brain, which is a physical object. This interaction will only become larger and more important in the universe as human technology advances into space-technology.
The book would serve perfectly as a short introduction and overview of Popper's ideas, and an appetizer for his 'Conjectures and Refutations' and 'The Open Society and its Enemies'.
Because he was born and grew up in Vienna in the beginning of the 20th century many used to think he was a member of the Wiener Kreis and a positivist who had proposed an improvement on positivism. On the contrary. He didn't belong to the Wiener Kreis and opposed positivism, and even says he's the one who killed it. There's a funny anecdote in the book about an encounter with Wittgenstein at a conference in London. In his lecture Popper made the very Popperian point that the question whether real philosophical problems exist (rather than being just 'language puzzles') was itself a real philosophical problem. After a sudden interruption by Wittgenstein and a short altercation, Wittgenstein furiously left the room. Popper assures us that, contrary to subsequent myth, the altercation was purely verbal.
Surprising to me, concerning the mind-body problem he was a psycho-physical interactionist, which is a form of dualism. A very unpopular position today, but his arguments are good. And as we have absolutely no idea what consciousness is, any well-argued hypothesis on this subject is valid and useful. He also says theories and criticism, and even myth and imagination, are as real as physical objects, because they can effect them. This is facilitated by the human mind, which must be real also, as something different from the brain, which is a physical object. This interaction will only become larger and more important in the universe as human technology advances into space-technology.
The book would serve perfectly as a short introduction and overview of Popper's ideas, and an appetizer for his 'Conjectures and Refutations' and 'The Open Society and its Enemies'.
May 15, 2024
Popper's answer to “Chapter 17. Who Killed Logical Positivism?” is: Popper single-handed. Additionally and according to this book, it was Popper who proved Boltzmann and Schrodinger wrong and who made substantial contributions to quantum theory, statistical theory, Darwinism, and so on. Basically, Popper proved everyone to be more or less wrong (i.e., he even proved Einstein – his biggest hero - to be partially wrong) and an account of all these “victories” is kept and presented to us here. In other words, Popper acts like a bully here and takes aim at anyone important who disagreed with him during his lifetime. However, his main enemy is Wittgenstein, his theories, and his influence.
Despite the above, the book is decent in its Kantian tradition and in its survey of the modern epistemological issues. Its realist and objective ontology is rather old fashioned – along with the emphasis on critical reason. The most surprising thing to me was to notice that by the end of his life, Popper with his “third word realities” (i.e., basically entities like Plato's Ideas) turned into a Platonist and indirectly showed that Plato is much more deeper/relevant and not so easily dismissed - as he was in “The Open Society and its Enemies”.
Despite the above, the book is decent in its Kantian tradition and in its survey of the modern epistemological issues. Its realist and objective ontology is rather old fashioned – along with the emphasis on critical reason. The most surprising thing to me was to notice that by the end of his life, Popper with his “third word realities” (i.e., basically entities like Plato's Ideas) turned into a Platonist and indirectly showed that Plato is much more deeper/relevant and not so easily dismissed - as he was in “The Open Society and its Enemies”.
December 10, 2018
Autobiografija filozofa za kojeg do pred godinu dvije nisam ni znao, a onda se počeo spominjati u knjigama kako sam ih čitao. Imao je dosta širi krug interesa od same filozofije, neke čudne i nove ideje, utjecao na moderne filozofe i znanstvenike, pa zašto ne pročitati šta kaže o sebi.
Kroz tekst se povremeno osjeti dosta velik ego, to je možda jedina zamjerka. Kompleksnost nekih dijelova je prilična, naročito oko kvantne mehanike, ali to je kratko, samo navodi primjere, nije potrebno predznanje. Stare filozofske teorije i filozofe bi bilo dobro poznavati da se sve shvati, npr. kad piše kako nije bio omiljen jer je kritizirao stare ideje Platona i Aristotela, nisam se baš najbolje snašao. Morat ću malo proširiti to znanje.
Sve u svemu, dobra mi je bila knjiga, 230 stranica i nije previše. Ali sa takvim kompleksnim stvarima je uvijek komplicirano za preporučiti, dobra bude onima koje zanima što više od gore spomenutih područja, a da nisu ideolozi koji jako vole dogme.
Kroz tekst se povremeno osjeti dosta velik ego, to je možda jedina zamjerka. Kompleksnost nekih dijelova je prilična, naročito oko kvantne mehanike, ali to je kratko, samo navodi primjere, nije potrebno predznanje. Stare filozofske teorije i filozofe bi bilo dobro poznavati da se sve shvati, npr. kad piše kako nije bio omiljen jer je kritizirao stare ideje Platona i Aristotela, nisam se baš najbolje snašao. Morat ću malo proširiti to znanje.
Sve u svemu, dobra mi je bila knjiga, 230 stranica i nije previše. Ali sa takvim kompleksnim stvarima je uvijek komplicirano za preporučiti, dobra bude onima koje zanima što više od gore spomenutih područja, a da nisu ideolozi koji jako vole dogme.
August 13, 2018
Oh God did I need some Popper in my life. His rational epistemology is such a welcome balm from the antifoundationalism/humanism/dialecticalmaterialism/irrationalscientism/subjectivism we get these days. Not that I agree with everything here, but what a great introduction to the philosophy and metaphysics of Popper. As scientists cling dearer to their irrational pet beliefs (nothing wrong with that, we all do it - but a scientist should hold truth most dear (science itself being more and more controlled by lobby groups and powerful interests)) we need a return to the Objectivity (really a common language, a common set of observations) that seems so out-of-fashion in our atomized times.
Popper is always clear and enticing. Each sentence here worth reading (and the footnotes). Will be reading more Popper just as soon as I can get my hands on some.
Popper is always clear and enticing. Each sentence here worth reading (and the footnotes). Will be reading more Popper just as soon as I can get my hands on some.
July 10, 2023
I picked this up after reading “Wittgenstein’s Poker” that investigated the famous encounter between Popper and Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1946. In this autobiography, Popper briefly recounts his version of his interaction with Wittgenstein which is of questionable authenticity. This is but one small scene in the book as a whole. The first 2/3 of this book is devoted to Popper’s life and most famous philosophical beliefs and writings. The final 1/3 covers Popper’s thoughts on random topics like thermodynamics and evolution. This last part was kinda tedious and in fact, a bit dated. After this was published in 1969, Popper changed his tune on whether Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a metaphysical research program or a testable scientific theory. I learned a fair amount about Popper in this autobiography, but it was tedious and stale at times.
January 12, 2020
Fun and valuable read, but would only recommend if you have read a decent amount of Popper (which I couldn't recommend enough).
Otherwise, I'd recommend starting with David Deutsch who has explained and improved on Popper and then move onto some of Poppers classic essays in Conjectures and Refutations such as:
- On the Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance
- Science: Conjectures and Refutations
- The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science
- Back to the Presocratics
Otherwise, I'd recommend starting with David Deutsch who has explained and improved on Popper and then move onto some of Poppers classic essays in Conjectures and Refutations such as:
- On the Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance
- Science: Conjectures and Refutations
- The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science
- Back to the Presocratics
August 5, 2018
After giving my lowest rating ever in “Goodreads” I have to say I really liked the postcript of the book, even if the rest is just a compendium of loose ideas if not outright speculation (On of my favorite books is “The Open Society and its enemies” so I hold the author to a very high standards).
“I know very well that much is wrong in our Western society. But I still have no doubt that it is the best that ever existes”.
“The intellectuals are rightly progressive; but progress is not easy to achieve, and mere progressivism is dangerous since it may easily lead to mistake decisions”.
“I know very well that much is wrong in our Western society. But I still have no doubt that it is the best that ever existes”.
“The intellectuals are rightly progressive; but progress is not easy to achieve, and mere progressivism is dangerous since it may easily lead to mistake decisions”.
July 20, 2020
An autobiography foregrounding one's intellectual development is an odd thing. It works best in Popper's early years as his life and world events are shown to shape his mind, but as Popper's non-intellectual life becomes stripped away what is left is eventually a hodgepodge of ideas Popper was working on at time of writing that feel underdeveloped in their communication and so very abstract and removed from the biographical ties to the premise. Russell's autobiography fell to pieces in its last third too, so at least he's in good company.
March 4, 2023
This book is a good mix of a brief synopsis of some of Popper’s major ideas. The ideas themselves are pretty complex so without a prior knowledge of them in a more detailed form his descriptions aren’t very enlightening. However, if you are a Popper super fan this book might be right up your alley. It gives you a lot of detail about his life from a first person perspective. The only downside to that is his life was really pretty boring. Overall kind of a cool historical look at some of the lesser known contributors to philosophy and science but not really with too much detail.
July 22, 2019
Occasionally light-hearted, but always deep in philosophy.
The autobiographical parts (about one third of the book) are a great way to understand the context of Poppers' other work, but philosophical parts (the other two thirds) require extensive knowledge of Poppers' favourite subjects (physics, philosophy, epistemology and logics) to actually understand. Readers are expected to have read most of his earlier work.
The autobiographical parts (about one third of the book) are a great way to understand the context of Poppers' other work, but philosophical parts (the other two thirds) require extensive knowledge of Poppers' favourite subjects (physics, philosophy, epistemology and logics) to actually understand. Readers are expected to have read most of his earlier work.
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