Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRSwas an Austrian-British philosopher and professor. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 July 1902
CountryAustria
mean law two
To give a causal explanation of an event means to deduce a statement which describes it, using as premises of the deduction one or more universal laws, together with certain singular statements, the initial conditions ... We have thus two different kinds of statement, both of which are necessary ingredients of a complete causal explanation.
men shooting rational
You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.
plato political enemy
With regards to political enemies Plato had a kill-and-banish principle. ... In interpreting it , modern-day Platonists are clearly disturbed by it, even as they make elaborate attempts to defend Plato.
freedom government office
It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.
tests alive theory
Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
science proud humans
The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.
attitude science two
The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.
mistake philosophical fundamentals
The fundamental thing about human languages is that they can and should be used to describe something; and this something is, somehow, the world. To be constantly and almost exclusively interested in the medium - in spectacle-cleaning - is a result of a philosophical mistake.
simple statements greater
Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable.
animal men long-ago
Man, some modern philosophers tell us, is alienated from his world: he is a stranger and afraid in a world he never made. Perhaps he is; yet so are animals, and even plants. They too were born, long ago, into a physico-chemical world, a world they never made.
taken atheism consideration
A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.
philosophy philosophical roots
Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay.
freedom reason plans
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.
beautiful dream attitude
Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell - that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men.