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Preamble
 The agenda for today will be a brief preamble, an introduction and the body ofthe paper proper, followed by three historical illustrations of Popper’s theory.Thank you all for coming today to listen to this talk regarding Karl Popper andhis discussion of the methodology of social change. Thanks to Kim and Anik fororganizing the student colloquium series. This paper is based on Popper’s book ThePoverty of Historicism which was taught, and this paper written, for Dr Muir’sPhilosophy of Social Science class conducted last spring. This presentation is by nomeans a thorough articulation of a potentially fruitful topic, so those new to Poppershould be able to follow without too much difficulty, but also, I hope to present someideas not covered in Dr Muir’s class last year. In either case, I would refer you toPopper’s Poverty of Historicism as it is a splendid little book.When I mentioned the topic of this discussion; ‘How should we conduct socialchange?’ and the solution of piecemeal social technology to someone recently, theirimmediate response was: How is that philosophy? Which I thought was an excellentquestion. Hopefully, how this
is
philosophy will become clear shortly, but I do not believe this topic is one that is exclusively philosophical. I feel this discussion has valuein that it speaks to a problem at a confluence of disciplines including: history, politics,public policy, sociology, philosophy and more. All of these fields can have valuableinput in addressing this question, but in the end philosophy must play a vital role wherethese other fields may extend beyond their area of expertise. And it is in questions ofthis nature that affords philosophy the opportunity to assert itself at the locus of a
 
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variety of pertinent fields and apply our unique understanding to social discourse andpublic debate.Also, I tend to find myself drawn to questions at the border between philosophyand its interaction with any number of other fields, and it is the types of questionaddressed today, and the manner which I hope to illustrate them, that I would like tocontinue to investigate in the future.
Introduction
This presentation will address the question: ‘How ought we to affect socialchange?’ With specific attention to how Karl Popper has answered this question throughhis piecemeal social technology. This includes a survey outlining piecemeal socialtechnology, why it provides methodological advantages and, in conclusion, I wish toaddress some problems that piecemeal technology must answer to be successful.All projects that have endured and proved fruitful - including natural science,engineering and political systems - are those that have adopted trial and errortechniques. These techniques include evaluating the results achieved from trials as wellas estimating the value of the methods used to achieve the results. To this end Popper isa proponent of iterative debate and examination of the methodologies employed. Thisallows for fine tuning of results but also tackling problems that may result from theplanning in and of itself. This iterative evaluation of method by those internal andexternal to the project can lead to fewer negative outcomes for future iterations. Poppermaintains that
all
sciences, natural and social, have the potential to benefit from theadoption of trial and error - both in methodology and deployment. As such “’piecemeal
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