Karl Popper

Notes

Karl Popper (1902–1994), philosopher of science. Argued that a theory counts as scientific only if it could in principle be falsified, and that knowledge grows by conjecture and refutation rather than by proof. Also the source of the paradox of tolerance, which I lean on in Free Speech.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

Also see

Linked from

Communism

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Volume 2, on Marx

Fallibilism

The term is most associated with Charles Sanders Peirce, and the attitude is central to Karl Popper's philosophy of science: a theory earns its keep by surviving attempts to refute it, not by being proven (Popper's Razor).

Economic calculation problem

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

Charles Sanders Peirce

Karl Popper

Friedrich Hayek

Karl Popper, his friend and ally at the LSE

G.W.F. Hegel

He appears here because Karl Marx took Hegel's dialectic, discarded the Spirit, and made the contradictions material and economic; Communism is Hegel turned, as Marx put it, the right way up. He also stands as the clearest example of the k…

Hans Albert

Hans Albert (1921–2023), German philosopher and the leading continental exponent of Karl Popper's critical rationalism. Treatise on Critical Reason (1968) named and formulated the Münchhausen trilemma: every attempt at ultimate justificati…

Popper's Razor

Popper's Razor: Inspired by the philosophy of Karl Popper, this principle states that among competing hypotheses, preference should be given to the one that is the most testable or falsifiable.