Karl Popper Quotes

Austrian-British philosopher of science and social and política e falsificationism and for criticism of Plato, Hegel and Marx as totalitarian opponents of open society (1902-1994)

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Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can (and should) be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".

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Native Name: Karl Raimund Popper

Alternative Names: Karl Raimund Popper Sir • Karl Raimund, Sir Popper • Sir Karl Raimund Popper

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Never aim at more precision than... required by the problem...

The doctrine that there is as much science in a subject as... mathematics in it, or as much... measurement or 'precision' in it, rests upon... misunderstanding.

I... believe in the rationalist tradition of a commonwealth of learning, and in the urgent need to preserve this tradition.

[T]he history of mankind could... be described as a history of outbreaks of fashionable philosophical and religious maladies. These... have... one serious function... evoking criticism.

Scientific theories are distinguished from myths... in being criticizable, and... open to modifications... They can be neither verified nor probabilified.

Diversity makes critical argument fruitful. ...[P]artners in an argument must share ...the wish to know, and the readiness to learn from the other ...by severely criticizing his views... and hearing... [the] reply. ...the so-called method of science consists in this kind of criticism.

[A]rgument is a... form of the art of fighting—with words... inspired by... getting nearer to... truth...

By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting... criticism; and trying to learn from it.

I am a rationalist. ...I mean ...[I] wish... to understand the world, and to learn by arguing with others. (...I do not say a rationalist holds the mistaken theory that men are... rational.)

I assert
(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.
(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...
(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

Plato, Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes, as well... successors... [e.g.,] John Stuart Mill, believed that there existed a method of finding scientific truth. ...[L]ater ...slightly more sceptical ...methodologists ...believed that there existed a method, if not of finding a true theory, then ...of ascertaining whether ...some ...hypothesis was true; or (even more sceptical) whether some ... hypothesis was ...'probable' ...

Scientific Method... [is] even less existent than some other non-existent subjects.

[E]ven serious students are misled by the myth of the subject.

[S]ubject matters in general do not exist. There are no subject matters; no branches of learning—or, rather, of inquiry: there are only problems, and the urge to solve them.

As a rule, begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist. ...having been ...the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth.