FONTANA POCKET -READERS POPPER EDITED BY DAVID MILLERFontana Press Most controversial of living philosophers, especially for his devastating criticisms of Plato and Marx and for his uncompromising rejection of inductive reasoning, Sir Karl Popper has relentlessly challenged both the authority and the appeal to authority of the most fashionable philosophies of our time. His own philosophy of critical rationalism has been distinctive in its emphasis on the way in which we learn through the making and correcting of mistakes - on the role played by imagination in proposing new possibilities, and by reason in exposing and eliminating the errors among them. David Miller, once Popper’s research assistant and now a leading expositor and critic of his work, has chosen thirty excerpts from Popper’s non-technical writings in the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of science, metaphysics and social philosophy. Together they illustrate the breadth, profundity and originality of Sir Karl’s contribution to human learning. In his introduction Miller demonstrates the remarkable unity of Popper’s thought, emphasizing the simplicity and rigour of his ideas, and their value to many contemporary individual, intellectual and social problems.A Pocket Popper David Miller is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, where he has worked since 1969. Born in 1942, he studied at the University of Cambridge, at the London School of Economics, where he was research assistant to Sir Karl Popper, and then at Stanford University. He is the author of many learned articles on philosophical and logical subjects, and co-author of Croquet and How to Play It (1966).A Pocket Popper Edited by David Miller Jp Fontana PressFirst published in Great Britain by Fontana Paperbacks 1983 Second impression, in Fontana Press, September 1987 Fontana Press is an imprint of Fontana Paperbacks, part of the Collins Publishing Group Copyright © in the text K. R. Popper, 1934, 1935, 1944, 1945, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1983 Copyright © in the editorial material and arrangement D. W. Miller, 1983 Madeand printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow Conditions of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaserContents Editor’s Introduction Part I Theory of Knowledge 1 The Beginnings of Rationalism (1958) 2 The Defence of Rationalism (1945) 3 Knowledge without Authority (1960) 4 Knowledge: Subjective versus Objective (1967) 5 Evolutionary Epistemology (1973) 6 Two Kinds of Definitions (1945) 7 The Problem of Induction (1953, 1974) 8 The Problem of Demarcation (1974) Part II Philosophy of Science 9 Scientific Method (1934) 10 Falsificationism versus Conventionalism (1934) 11 The Empirical Basis (1934) 12 The Aim of Science (1957) 13 The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1960) 14 Truth and Approximation to Truth (1960) 15 Propensities, Probabilities, and the Quantum Theory (1957) Part III Metaphysics 16 Metaphysics and Criticizability (1958) 17 Realism (1970) 18 Cosmology and Change (1958) 133 143 152 162 171 181 199 209 220 22619 Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status (1977) 20 Indeterminism and Human Freedom (1965) 21 The Mind-Body Problem (1977) 22 The Self (1977) Part IV Social Philosophy 23 Historicism (1936) 24 Piecemeal Social Engineering (1944) 25 The Paradoxes of Sovereignty (1945) 26 Marx’s Theory of the State (1945) 27 Individualism versus Collectivism (1945) 28 The Autonomy of Sociology (1945) 29 The Rationality Principle (1967) 30 Against the Sociology of Knowledge (1945) Notes Editorial Note, Sources, and Acknowledgements Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects 239 247 265 276 289 304 319 326 338 345 357 366 379 467 471 476First thesis: We know a great deal. And we know not only many details of doubtful intellectual interest but also things which are of considerable practical significance and, what is even more important, which provide us with deep theoretical insight, and with a surprising understanding of the world. Second thesis: Our ignorance is sobering and boundless. Indeed, it is precisely the staggering progress of the natural sciences (to which my first thesis alludes) which constantly opens our eyes anew to our ignorance, even in the field of the natural sciences themselves. This gives a new twist to the Socratic idea of ignorance. With each step forward, with each problem which we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed that we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux. K.R. PopperEditor’s Introduction We all make mistakes; to err is not distinctively human. But although many other living things, animals and even plants, do have a partial ability to anticipate some of their mistakes, to recognize them and even to learn from them, only human beings, it seems, actively assert themselves in this direction. Rether than wait for errors to reveal themselves, perhaps with disastrous consequences, we consciously and deliberately seek them out: we put our ideas and inventions to the test, we probe critically, we scrap what we find to be wrong and try again. Mingled with this critical attitude there is admittedly a distinctive human weakness: the feeling that we should be ashamed of our mistakes, and should regret making them, since they must be the result of our incompetence or our lack of mature insight. Yet such qualms are out of place and need to be firmly quashed, for there is no way known of systematically avoiding error; no way known, in particular, of avoiding it in our exploration of the unknown. Thus a reluctance to make mistakes typically degenerates into a wariness of new ideas, into a distaste for any kind of bold initiative. If we are in earnest to discover what the world is like, we must be fully prepared to correct mistakes; but if we are to correct them, we must be fully prepared to commit them first. What ought to disturb us are not mistakes in general, but only those of them that we are powerless to correct. Indeed, we are plainly entitled to exclude from serious consideration proposals that we cannot criticize and therefore cannot put right. For once we embark on the venture of investigating the world and our involvement in it, we cannot shrink from scrutinizing every move we make and abandoning those that turn out to be mistaken. And if this is to work, we must from the start disallow ideas that cannot, if mistaken, be corrected. We can be indulgent towards the occurrence of errors; indeed, we must be, for whatever we do we10 POPPER SELECTIONS shall not dodge them all. But incorrigible, irrevocable, or uncontrollable errors we cannot afford to commit. It is the perpetuation of errors that interferes with our understanding; and jt is this, rather than their perpetration, that we must exert ourselves determinedly to avert. The theme of the preceding remarks, that in the realm of errors cure is more important than prevention, forms the gist of the philosophy of human knowledge known as critical rationalism. This philosophy, though foreshadowed in a few particulars by a few earlier thinkers; for example by Hume, Kant, Whewell, and Peirce, has been elaborated almost exclusively in the last half century by Sir Karl Popper and by a small number of his students and followers. Its emphasis, unlike that of previous philosophies, is on guesswork as the way knowledge grows, and on criticism as the way it is controlled. Popper himself describes it by saying that knowledge evolves through a sequence of conjectures and refu- tations, of tentative solutions to problems, checked by searching and uncompromising tests. There is little place in critical rationalism for the preoccupying worries of traditional philosophy: whether our knowledge is securely founded, and if it is, how it is. This is not only because, in the eyes of critical rationalism, our knowledge is not securely founded, being freely aired rather than staidly grounded, but because nothing on earth would be gained if it were. What matters to a critical rationalist is whether the conjectures under debate are right, not whether there are reasons to suppose that they are. If a conjecture weathers all the objections we can raise against it, then there is no reason to suppose that it is not right. Nor, says the critical rationalist, is there any reason not to suppose that it is right: we may suppose what we like if there is no reason to think that it is wrong. And being right, as Popper was perhaps the first fully to appreciate (amazing as that may sound), is quite good enough; it is good enough both for abstract speculation about the universe we live in and for the practical business of living in that universe. Rarely, of course, do we know that we are right; but we don’t need to know it if we are. Arguments, according to critical rationalism, are always nega- tive; they are always critical arguments, used only and needed only to unseat conjectures that have been earlier surmised. From thisEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 11 consideration follow several other propositions that are at the centre of Popper’s philosophy. One, noted already, is that our conjectures have to be criticizable if they are to deserve to be entertained; for critical argument is the sole control that we have over our meditations and our dreams. Moreover, if we confine our arguments to those that turn on empirical facts, then our conjectures must be further restricted to those that are empirically falsifiable: to those that can clash, if the facts fall out that way, with the facts of experience. This is Popper’s criterion of demarcation of empirical science from metaphysics (and from pseudoscience). But if our scientific conjectures, most of which say nothing about personal experience, though they do have implications for our common or shared experience, can conflict with the facts, then these facts can hardly be our personal inventions. Such is the simplicity of Popper’s commonsense realism — a doctrine, one might add, against which no recognizably sensible argument has ever been adduced. The facts do not reside in our minds. Neither can our conjectures wholly do so if we are to subject them to any criticism: for we cannot chew over what we have already swallowed, or call into question what we have made our own. It is obvious that ideas are conceived in our minds, but their eventual linguistic formulation delivers them into a wider and a hostile world. Our scientific knowledge, that is to say, is not a variety of belief, a dispositional state of the human organism, but more like a separate human organ evolving under the pressure of unremitting criticism. By no means all human knowledge is like this, for we are animals as well as being humans, but critical rationalism will not begin to work if we cannot in some such manner distance ourselves from some of our unspoken preconceptions. Nor will it get far, least of all at the scientific level, unless we have a considerable ability to meddle effectively in the working of the world: if we cannot manipulate some physical bodies at will, we shall not be able to execute the experimental tests with which we wish to challenge our conjectures. So indeterminism, as much as realism and objectivism, is a necessary condition for the proper functioning of the critical method. To conclude this select list of the fellowship of critical rationalism, we may remark the para- mount importance in the political arena of the principle of not running the risk of irrevocable and uncontrollable mistakes. It12 POPPER SELECTIONS means that democratic political institutions must be concerned primarily with the safeguarding of freedom, especially the freedom to safeguard freedom, and thus with the prevention of irremovable tyranny. Likewise our social policy should direct itself chiefly at the remedying of identifiable social ills, in a way that minimizes, as far as possible, the danger of supplanting them with less easily eradicable injustices. A piecemeal approach to social reform is thus the straightforward application of critical rationalism to the discontents of social life. Popper prescribes revolutionary thinking in science because its products, imaginative new theories, are easily relinquished if they are mistaken. It is for exactly the same reason that he proscribes revolutionary activity in society. For its consequences, which are rarely possible to foresee, are almost always altogether impossible to overcome. These simple and beautiful ideas, along with many others, are discussed, developed, and defended in the thirty selections from Popper’s abundant writings that comprise the text of this book. Though anxious to display here their admirable and thorough- going unity I am not wanting to suggest that they were all thought up, let alone thought through, at one instant. Popper was in fact exercised at first by the problem of demarcation, the problem of discriminating between the achievements of physics and the other natural sciences on the one hand and the mere pretensions to scientific standing characteristic of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and astrology on the other. In recognizing that it was the falsifiability of scientific hypotheses that mattered, and still more the devotion of scientists to the task of exposing their hypotheses to the hazard of falsification, Popper sized up shrewdly the decisive role of negative arguments within science, and the sheer dispensability of arguments and experiments that presumed to lend hypotheses anything like positive support. Thus he came to solve Hume’s problem of induction, one of the most vexatious enigmas of modern philosophy and one of the few, in my opinion, that has been unerringly untangled. These problems, of induction and demarcation, provided the subject matter of Popper’s first book, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, written in 1930-2 and still not translated into English. But at that time, as he admits, he ‘wrongly identified the limits of science with thoseEDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 13 of arguability’ (note 4 to selection 17). Several years were to elapse before this unduly modest assessment of the sovereignty of rational argument was to be strengthened and stiffened into an advocacy of the critical approach throughout. Popper’s enthusiasm for realism and for objectivism is apparent already in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, published in 1934, but these doctrines, especially the latter, have been expounded in depth only since the mid-1960s. The exploitation of his discoveries about scientific method in the analysis of social phenomena was immediate, of course, given his early unmasking of the pseudo- scientific swank of much Marxist talk; but a thorough study, culminating in the publication at the end of the war of The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies, was triggered only by the invasion of Austria in 1938. From these books grew a powerful series of arguments against determinism, against materialism, and against all similar attempts to belittle the ability of human beings to work, however hesitantly and unspectacularly, for the betterment of their individual condition in the world. It is one of the sublimest aspects of Popper’s philosophy that, austerely rigorous though it is in its invocation of logical principles, it nonetheless exudes a deep sense of understanding of human imperfection. By insisting that the answer to our ignorance and to our fallibility lies not in pretending to know more than we do, or to know it more surely, but only in our own resolute efforts to improve things, Popper succeeds in restoring to human beings some of the dignity and the self-respect of which modern philosophy has sometimes seemed all too disposed to dispossess them. An extensive and illuminating account of the path taken by Popper’s thought from early youth until about 1970, of which the above is the merest glimpse, is to be found in his intellectual autobiography, Unended Quest. Popper was born in Vienna in 1902 into a prosperous and cultivated family: his father was a successful and scholarly lawyer, his mother a talented musician; and music has indeed been a commanding influence throughout his life. For nearly ten years after the First World War he was a student at the University of Vienna, reading mathematics and physics, psycho- logy and philosophy; he received his doctorate in 1928 and in the next year qualified as a secondary school teacher in mathematics14 POPPER SELECTIONS and physics. In 1934 the publication of The Logic of Scientific Discovery launched Popper’s career as a philosopher. In December 1936 he accepted a lectureship at Canterbury College, Christ- church, New Zealand, and in January he and his wife left Austria for the antipodes. They remained there for the duration of the Second World War, returning to England after Popper’s appoint- ment in 1945 to a readership at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In the succeeding twenty three years as Professor of Logic and Scientific Method there he had a memorable impact on whole generations of students, who in his lectures and seminars were invited to share his own inextinguish- able fascination with the open universe and the unlocking of its secrets. Popper retired in 1969; and, much honoured, he and his wife have continued to live modestly and unassumingly, as hardworking as ever, at Fallowfield, their home in Buckingham- shire. ‘I do not think’, Popper writes in Unended Quest (p.125), ‘that I have had an unhappy hour as a philosopher since we returned to England.’ For few philosophers has the thirst for understanding been so refreshingly unquenched. The contents of the present book have not been arranged in a historical order. Rather, the book is divided into four parts, containing selections from Popper’s writings on respectively the theory of knowledge, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and social philosophy, and the emphasis throughout is on the critical method and the pivotal part it plays in enhancing our knowledge of the world. Undeniably the book begins and ends in this vein. The first selection traces back to the first philosophers, the Milesian school of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, the rational attitude that Popper so warmly esteems, while the second defends a critical form of rationalism both from a logical and from a moral perspective. In this selection Popper acknowledges ‘a certain priority of irrationalism’ (p.36) in the assumption of the rationalist position itself, but in the light of his later work this seems a needlessly generous concession for him to make. In opting for the critical method we are not, to be sure, merely complying with the dictates of reason; but nor are we infringing them, and it is that that really counts. Critical rationalism, as W.W. Bartley has urged, is itself amenable to critical dissection. It is thereforeEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 15 a fully self-consistent position and one that by its own standards may rationally be adopted. In selection 3 Popper strikes at the empiricist prejudice that every item of our knowledge derives from some person’s sense experience. This presumption is quite sensationally amiss, in that almost all the knowledge we acquire we acquire through guessing, and what we learn from experience is only how wayward many of our guesses unfortunately are. Here it is stated very clearly that what matters is what we do with a hypothesis after it has been formulated; what prompted it, or what its pedigree is like, has no bearing on whether it is worth persevering with. This point is taken further in the next two selections, where our knowledge and its development are set firmly in a biological context. In selection 4 Popper concentrates on the impersonal status of that portion of our knowledge that has achieved linguistic expression; much of what we know, he suggests, not only is no longer part of us, it has emigrated to a world, called neutrally world 3, with its own problems and mysteries. In selection 5 this world 3 of objective knowledge is approached in a frankly Darwinian spirit; likened not metaphorically to a population of organisms, but almost literally to an astonishingly rapidly evolved human organ; and our objective knowledge is compared to that perhaps much greater residue of knowledge that is incorporated at the genetic and behavioural levels. New hypotheses, for instance, are seen as akin to chromosomal variants, and their criticism is seen as an unnaturally savage variation on Darwinian natural selection. A somewhat contrasting topic is broached in the next extract: that of the function, if any, performed by definitions in the organization of our knowledge. Here Popper forthrightly assails the undeservedly widespread dogma that definitions, and the precision fondly imagined to spring from them, are essential to any logical articulation of our thoughts, and even to plain clear thinking. His standpoint here is once more quite close to the core of critical rationalism, through its denial that there is any one correct place from which the exploration of the world should begin. Neither sensualistic observations nor essentialistic definitions furnish a dependable base from which an expedition may be confidently set in train. The final two selections of Part I are devoted to the problems16 POPPER SELECTIONS of induction and demarcation. Whereas on other issues I have inclined to rely on Popper’s earlier writings, in these two cases I have taken excerpts from a relatively recent work, where many of the objections lodged against Popper’s solutions to these problems are examined and responded to in detail. The problems themselves and their solutions are explained in these two selections with such elemental clarity that a further elucidation of them at this point is quite uncalled for. In Part II of the book are treated a number of topics more specifically related to scientific knowledge, as well as some mildly technical matters involving truth, approximation to truth, content, and probability. The first three selections, 9-11, are from Popper’s classic work, The Logic of Scientific Discovery; here are elaborated some of the methodological principles of falsificationism, here also are raised some pertinent questions concerning this method. For example, it is asked whether falsificationism itself is empirically falsifiable; whether it might be empty, given that a looming falsification can always be sidestepped; and whether the testing procedure it recommends, if dischargeable at all, has to fall back on test statements that are themselves incontestable. The answer given to each question is negative. Scientific method is presented as a store of methodological rules that we decide to conform to in the interests of what we take as the aim of science, not a collection of theses to be tested by an inspection of scientific behaviour; although falsifications can indeed always be scotched, we decide in advance not to avail ourselves of such manoeuvres; and included among the rules of method are rules for the acceptance of test statements as the result of a calculated, but reversible, decision to stop testing. In selections 12 and 13 the aim of science is identified as one of providing increasingly deep and encompassing theoretical ex- planations, more and more adequate solutions to the problems that science itself generates. These desiderata of depth and content are shown to be starkly at odds with the pursuit of certainty or probability for our theories, and to be realizable only by something like the falsificationist programme. In the next selection truth is, innocuously enough one would think, offered as a further ingredient of what we want from science; and it is suggested that the best we can realistically hope for is to approach the truthEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 17 gradually along a chain of better and better approximations. Tarski’s theory of truth, and Popper’s own unsuccessful stab at defining how it may be approximated, are also briefly sketched. Anyone who has difficulty in understanding why the problem of truth, which now seems so simple, was once so bewildering should at least look at Popper’s notes on the liar and related paradoxes in selection 2; anyone who hopes that the problem of approximation to truth will be as magisterially resolved should consult the further literature indicated in note 11 to selection 14. The final selection of Part II is a brief and rather condensed report on Popper’s famous propensity interpretation of the singular probabilities that arise in modern physical theories, most notably in quantum mechanics. A subjectivistic reading, as measures of our ignorance, is usually imposed on these prob- abilities, but here Popper undertakes to understand them as quite objective constituents of the physical world. The selection concludes with the formulation of an unabashedly metaphysical hypothesis concerning these propensities and their operation throughout the natural order. Part III of the book places before the reader a variety of metaphysical speculations, and proceeds to illustrate how such abstruse hypotheses can be critically evaluated. The significance of criticizability itself is dwelt on in selection 16, where one or two decidedly morose results of metaphysical excogitation are included among the examples of philosophical theories that are crippled when confronted with responsible criticism. Thereafter the metaphysical doctrines whose merits are appraised are rather more reputable. First, in selection 17, there is realism, a view so irredeemably interwoven with common sense as to set perhaps a minimum philosophical qualification for sanity. This is followed, in selection 18, by a charming historical essay on the engagement of the early Greek cosmologists with the problem of change, the problem of how a thing can change and at the same time remain the thing that has changed. It is perhaps worth remarking that although the existence of everyday objects is unquestionably a component of the commonsense realism that Popper subscribes to, no kind of permanence need be imputed to these objects, or to any others. I say this because, almost from the start, solutions to the problem of change have tried to forge a distinction between18 POPPER SELECTIONS appearance, which is what changes, and reality, which is what stays the same; that this distinction would bea genuine forgery becomes all too apparent once we realize that illusions, however illusive they may be, are not for that reason not real. Appearance is a part of reality, not apart from it. The next selection, selection 19, raises the question of whether Darwin’s hypothesis of natural selection, of the survival of the fittest, properly belongs to science, or whether, being nearly tautological, it is a piece of metaphysics — albeit one that forms the kernel of a programme to guide scientific research, as Popper himself once contended. Popper acknowledges here that his previous assessment of the force of the hypothesis of natural selection was unkind, and he modifies it. Neither this hypothesis, nor evolutionary theory itself, is to be confounded with something that blatantly is without empirical content, the evolutionary philosophy of laws of progress criticized in selection 23. In selection 20 Popper tackles with some gusto the thorny problems of determinism in its various guises, in particular the problem of how to find room for human freedom between the extremes of rigid predetermination and utter chance. It is in this paper that Popper first sharply posed the problem, which he handsomely names after A.H.Compton, of how abstract world 3 entities can, without violating physical laws, have any physical influence on the physical world. Manifestly our theories do affect nature in some way; that railways and refrigerators, or copies of Conjectures and Refutations, have arrived in the world independently of the scientific and philosophical hypotheses they embody is itself a hypothesis that taxes the imagination beyond reason. Popper sees in this causal efficacy of world 3 inhabitants, an efficacy obviously mediated by human thinking, a key to the problems of the interrelation of mind and body, and of the unity of the self. The self, he tentatively suggests, emerges through interaction between the human animal and human language, and is sustained throughout its existence by those world 3 items with which it manages to remain in intellectual contact. These difficult questions are entered upon, with no pretence of providing complete or wholly satisfying answers, in selections 21 and 22. The final part of the book, Part IV, is given over exclusively to problems of social and political philosophy, especially problemsEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 19 arising from the uneasy relationship of the individual subject to the state. Although Popper is unequivocally on the side of individual citizens in their ceaseless campaign not to be intimidated into submission and subservience, the idea that they would profit from the dismantling of the state is firmly resisted. On the contrary, it may be only the state that is able to shield them from being bullied by their neighbours, which may be just about as awful as being cowed by the state itself. This shows how vital it is that the state be kept in hand, and under some direction from the people for whom it is constituted. The state, that is, exists solely in the interests of its subjects; and it is definitely in their interests that it does exist. The actuality of human society is of even profounder significance, as Marx clearly perceived, for we would not be human beings at all if the social orchestration of our lives were to be silenced. If, as suggested in selection 22, our selves come into being through the medium of language, then the social origins of our individuality and of our humanity become quite plain; for quite plainly language is a social phenomenon. So even if political institutions might be purged from human life, social institutions assuredly could not be. But this must not be misinterpreted to mean that they are activated other than through the agency of individual humans; like the denizens of world 3 they possess the capacity to intercede in the world, but its realization is in our gift. It is we who run our institutions. Regrettably, this is often done quite unskilfully, and if we have any sense we will constantly be on the alert for unforeseen pitfalls. It is one of the underused truisms of Popper’s social philosophy that our plans virtually always do slip up somewhere, not because of any satanic interference, but simply because we seldom know enough, or even very much, about how things will work out. Part IV opens with a lengthy exposition and criticism of the methodological doctrine that Popper dubs historicism. According to this doctrine it is the duty of the social sciences to study society in a historical manner, as an entity that unfurls as time glides by: to contemplate it in its entirety and to foretell its destiny. Historicists frequently liken society to an organism, or to a biological species, and its career to the evolutionary process, but as selection 23 makes evident, even in biology there is no law of evolutionary unfolding; Darwin’s hypothesis of natural selection,20 POPPER SELECTIONS in particular, must not be misrepresented as such a law. In selection 24 Popper goes on to rebut some of the practical repercussions of the historicist mythology, in particular the holistic fallacy that the management of society can be done only on the grand scale; that it is the whole of society that we must endeavour to reshape. Against this he proposes that the main business of social engineering must be the elimination of specific sources of misery. It is not only that these are relatively easily picked out; in addition, the courses of action appropriate to their clearance can quite often be monitored with some degree of success. Selection 25 shows that the question of who should rule, which Plato first marked out as fundamental for political theory, inevitably leads to paradoxical answers; it must be disregarded therefore and replaced by the question of how tyrants are to be dismissed before they do too much damage, and in particular before they make their own removal impossible without force. Once again, the accent is on setting things right, not on not getting them wrong. For one of the few lessons that we must not fail to learn from history is that few rulers decline to misuse the powers with which we entrust them. Nevertheless, it does seem to be possible to set up political institutions that offer some protection against oppression; ‘democracy’, for Popper, is just a label for such institutions. Our only hope, he makes clear in selection 26, where he combats Marx’s aspersions on the efficacy of political power in the theatre of economic forces, is in founding and fostering democratic institutions, despite the incursions they make, for the sake of individual liberty, upon individual liberty. It must be repeated that the state, and its institutions, exist for the sake of the individual; and our rulers remain trustees of our individual liberty, however much they may betray that trust. Plato’s contrary opinion, that individuals must sacrifice themselves entirely to the common interest, and his suggestion that this is true altruism or selflessness, are demolished in selection 27. The confusion of individualism with selfishness, of which Plato took full advantage, has since ancient times been an invaluable boon to totalitarian ways of thinking. In the final three selections the inextricable entwinement of the individual with society is discussed still further. Selection 28 endorses Marx’s judgement that the individual is always con-EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 21 strained by social laws, and that social transactions cannot be reduced to the laws of individual psychology. Although the individual is the one who acts, individuals interact. The laws governing these interactions cannot be spun out in psychological terms any more than the laws of gravitational interaction can be accounted for by the intrinsic or essential properties of Newtonian corpuscles (see note 3 to selection 12). Popper proposes that social and historical explanations must have recourse to what he calls situational logic. This topic is continued in selection 29, where he defends the view that the principle that agents act adequately to the situation as they see it is, though false, a principle that needs to be accommodated in every social explanation. Finally, in selection 30, we come to the social aspects of science. The objectivity of science, Popper observes, and even its rationality, are in the hands not of individual scientists alone, but of scientists in ascientific community. Criticism, especially, is irremediably social in character, since we are ordinarily as blind to our own failings as we are attentive to those of others. Social interaction is therefore as crucial to the prosperity of critical rationalism as are the individual qualities of imagination, resourcefulness, courage, determination, and willingness to learn. The flourishing of Western cosmology, philosophy, and science, as chronicled in the first selection, was the direct result of the creation of a critical tradition. There is, it need hardly be said, more in the selections in this book than I have been able to mention here; and there is far more in Popper’s writings than I have been able to pack into 440 pages. This absentee bonanza includes not only a wealth of historical commentary on Plato, on Marx, and on the mind-body problem, for instance, and of technical contributions to logic, probability theory, and quantum theory, here barely touched on; but also a great number of variations and amplifications on the dominant themes here represented, as well as on related motifs of epistemo- logy, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and social philosophy. It is therefore presumably admissible in winding up this introduc- tion to an introduction to Popper’s thought to draw explicit attention to his principal publications, listed in the bibliography on pp.467f. below, and also to several books where his ideas are22 POPPER SELECTIONS expounded and examined; to commend their further study, and to express a hope for their continued criticism and clarification. Critical rationalism may perhaps not be quite right; but neither, after all, may it be quite wrong. It would be nice to know. In conclusion I am delighted to have the opportunity to record my thanks to Bill Bartley, Jack Birner, Larry Briskman, Roger James, Bryan Magee, Anthony O’Hear, and Tom Settle, who unsparingly criticized some of my more raw outlines for the book, made concrete suggestions concerning what I could not intelligently leave out, advised me on the tricky problem of what to name it, and in other ways ensured that the book is very much better than it otherwise might have been. No one but myself is to blame for the final outcome. To Briskman I am especially grateful, since he has for several years now read drafts of almost everything I have written, and has been unfaltering in his willingness to overwhelm me with detailed and hardheaded criticism. As documented in the editorial note at the end of the book, I owe thanks also to Popper’s publishers for consenting to the republication of material of which they have custody. But most of all I am indebted to Karl and Hennie Popper, who have in a number of ways helped to lighten my editorial labours and have generously encouraged this attempt to place a book of selections before the general public. Popper also wrote the stuff, and for that I can’t thank him enough. David Miller 22 September 1982Part I Theory of Knowledge1 The Beginnings of Rationalism (1958) 1 Back to the Presocratics ‘Back to Methuselah’ was a progressive programme, compared with ‘Back to Thales’ or ‘Back to Anaximander’: what Shaw offered us was an improved expectation of life— something that was in the air, at any rate when he wrote it. I have nothing to offer you, I am afraid, that is in the air today; for what I want to return to is the simple straightforward rationality of the Presocratics. Wherein does this much discussed ‘rationality’ of the Presocratics lie? The simplicity and boldness of their questions is part of it, but my thesis is that the decisive point is the critical attitude which, as I shall try to show, was first developed in the Ionian School. The questions which the Presocratics tried to answer were primarily cosmological questions, but there were also questions of the theory of knowledge. It is my belief that philosophy must return to cosmology and to a simple theory of knowledge. There is at least one philosophical problem in which all thinking men are interested: the problem of understanding the world in which we live; and thus ourselves (who are part of that world) and our knowledge of it. All science is cosmology, I believe, and for me the interest of philosophy, no less than of science, lies solely in its bold attempt to add to our knowledge of the world, and to the theory of our knowledge of the world. I am interested in Wittgenstein, for example, not because of his linguistic philosophy, but because his Tractatus was a cosmological treatise (although a crude one), and because his theory of knowledge was closely linked with his cosmology. For me, both philosophy and science lose all their attraction when they give up that pursuit - when they become specialisms26 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE and cease to see, and to wonder at, the riddles of our world. Specialization may be a great temptation for the scientist. For the philosopher it is the mortal sin. u The Tradition of Critical Discussion The early history of Greek philosophy, especially the history from Thales to Plato, is a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth. How was this possible? Of course one cannot explain originality and genius. But one can try to throw some light on them. What was the secret of the ancients? I suggest that it was a tradition — the tradition of critical discussion. I will try to put the problem more sharply. In all or almost all civilizations we find something like religious and cosmological teaching, and in many societies we find schools. Now schools, especially primitive schools, all have, it appears, a characteristic structure and function. Far from being places of critical discussion they make it their task to impart a definite doctrine, and to preserve it, pure and unchanged. It is the task of a school to hand on the tradition, the doctrine of its founder, its first master, to the next generation, and to this end the most important thing is to keep the doctrine inviolate. A school of this kind never admits a new idea. New ideas are heresies, and lead to schisms; should a member of the school try to change the doctrine, then he is expelled as a heretic. But the heretic claims, as a rule, that his is the true doctrine of the founder. Thus not even the inventor admits that he has introduced an invention; he believes, rather, that he is returning to the true orthodoxy which has somehow been perverted. In this way all changes of doctrine — if any — are surreptitious changes. They are all presented as restatements of the true sayings of the master, of his own words, his own meaning, his own intentions. It is clear that in a school of this kind we cannot expect to find a history of ideas, or even the material for such a history. For new ideas are not admitted to be new. Everything is ascribed to the master. All we might reconstruct is a history of schisms, andTHE BEGINNINGS OF RATIONALISM 27 perhaps a history of the defence of certain doctrines against the heretics. There cannot, of course, be any rational discussion in a school of this kind. There may be arguments against dissenters and heretics, or against some competing schools. But in the main it is with assertion and dogma and condemnation rather than argument that the doctrine is defended. The great example of a school of this kind among the Greek philosophical schools is the Italian school founded by Pythagoras. Compared with the Ionian school, or with that of Elea, it had the character of a religious order, with a characteristic way of life and a secret doctrine. The story that a member, Hippasus of Metapontum, was drowned at sea because he revealed the secret of the irrationality of certain square roots, is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding the Pythagorean school, whether or not there is any truth in this story. But among Greek philosophic schools the early Pythagoreans were an exception. Leaving them aside, we could say that the character of Greek philosophy, and of the philosophical schools, is strikingly different from the dogmatic type of school here described. [In selection 18] I show this by an example: the story of the problem of change is the story of a critical debate, of a rational discussion. New ideas are propounded as such, and arise as the result of open criticism. There are few, if any, surreptitious changes. Instead of anonymity we find a history of ideas and of their originators. Here is a unique phenomenon, and it is closely connected with the astonishing freedom and creativeness of Greek philosophy. How can we explain this phenomenon? What we have to explain is the rise of a tradition. It is a tradition that allows or encourages critical discussions between various schools and, more surprisingly still, within one and the same school. For nowhere outside the Pythagorean school do we find a school devoted to the preservation of a doctrine. Instead we find changes, new ideas, modifications, and outright criticism of the master. (In Parmenides we even find, at an early date, a most remarkable Phenomenon ~ that ofa philosopher who propounds wo doctrines, one which he says is true, and one which he himself describes as false. Yet he makes the false doctrine not simply an object of28 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE condemnation or of criticism; rather he presents it as the best possible account of the delusive opinion of mortal men, and of the world of mere appearance — the best account which a mortal man can give.) How and where was this critical tradition founded? This is a problem deserving serious thought. This much is certain: Xeno- phanes who brought the Ionian tradition to Elea was fully conscious of the fact that his own teaching was purely conjectural, and that others might come who would know better. I shall come back to this point in section m1 below. If we look for the first signs of this new critical attitude, this new freedom of thought, we are led to Anaximander’s criticism of Thales. [See selection 18 below.] Here is a most striking fact: Anaximander criticizes his master and kinsman, one of the Seven Sages, the founder of the Ionian school. He was, according to tradition, only about fourteen years younger than Thales, and he must have developed his criticism and his new ideas while his master was alive. (They seem to have died within a few years of each other.) But there is no trace in the sources ofa story of dissent, of any quarrel, or of any schism. This suggests, I think, that it was Thales who founded the new tradition of freedom — based upon a new relation between master and pupil — and who thus created a new type of school, utterly different from the Pythagorean school. He seems to have been able to tolerate criticism. And what is more, he seems to have created the tradition that one ought to tolerate criticism. Yet I like to think that he did even more than this. I can hardly imagine a relationship between master and pupil in which the master merely tolerates criticism without actively encouraging it. It does not seem to me possible that a pupil who is being trained in the dogmatic attitude would ever dare to criticize the dogma (least of all that of a famous sage) and to voice his criticism. And it seems to me an easier and simpler explanation to assume that the master encouraged a critical attitude — possibly not from the outset, but only after he was struck by the pertinence of some questions asked, without any critical intention, by the pupil. However this may be, the conjecture that Thales actively encouraged criticism in his pupils would explain the fact that the critical attitude towards the master’s doctrine became part of theTHE BEGINNINGS OF RATIONALISM 29 Jonian school tradition. I like to think that Thales was the first teacher who said to his pupils: ‘This is how I see things - how I believe that things are. Try to improve upon my teaching.’ (Those who believe that it is ‘unhistorical’ to attribute this undogmatic attitude to Thales may again be reminded of the fact that only two generations later we find a similar attitude consciously and clearly formulated in the fragments of Xenophanes.) At any rate, there is the historical fact that the Ionian school was the first in which pupils criticized their masters, in one generation after the other. There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia. It was a momentous innovation. It meant a break with the dogmatic tradition which permits only one school doctrine, and the introduction in its place of a tradition that admits a plurality of doctrines which all try to approach the truth by means of critical discussion. It thus leads, almost by necessity, to the realization that our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; that our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; that it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths; and that criticism and critical discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth. It thus leads to the tradition of bold conjectures and of free criticism, the tradition which created the rational or scientific attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization which is based upon science (though of course not upon science alone). In this rationalist tradition bold changes of doctrine are not forbidden. On the contrary, innovation is encouraged, and is regarded as success, as improvement, if it is based on the result of a critical discussion of its predecessors. The very boldness of an innovation is admired; for it can be controlled by the severity of its critical examination. This is why changes of doctrine, far from being made surreptitiously, are traditionally handed down to- gether with the older doctrines and the names of the innovators. And the material for a history of ideas becomes part of the school tradition. To my knowledge the critical or rationalist tradition was invented only once. It was lost after two or three centuries, perhaps owing to the rise of the Aristotelian doctrine of epistémé, of certain30 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE and demonstrable knowledge (a development of the Eleatic and Heraclitean distinction between certain truth and mere guess- work). It was rediscovered and consciously revived in the Renaissance, especially by Galileo Galilei. m Critical Rationalism Inow come to my most central contention. It is this. The rationalist tradition, the tradition of critical discussion, represents the only practicable way of expanding our knowledge - conjectural or hypothetical knowledge, of course. There is no other way. More especially, there is no way that starts from observation or experiment. In the development of science observations and experiments play only the role of critical arguments. And they play this role alongside other, non-observational arguments. It is an important role; but the significance of observations and ex- periments depends entirely upon the question whether or not they may be used to criticize theories. According to the theory of knowledge here outlined there are in the main only two ways in which theories may be superior to others: they may explain more; and they may be better tested — that is, they may be more fully and more critically discussed, in the light of all we know, of all the objections we can think of, and especially also in the light of observational or experimental tests which were designed with the aim of criticizing the theory. There is only one element of rationality in our attempts to know the world: it is the critical examination of our theories. These theories themselves are guesswork. We do not know, we only guess. If you ask me, ‘How do you know?’ my reply would be, ‘I don’t; I only propose a guess. If you are interested in my problem, I shall be most happy if you criticize my guess, and if you offer counterproposals, I in turn will try to criticize them.’ This, I believe, is the true theory of knowledge (which I wish to submit for your criticism): the true description of a practice which arose in Ionia and which is incorporated in modern science (though there are many scientists who still believe in the Baconian myth of induction): the theory that knowledge proceeds by way of conjectures and refutations. Two of the greatest men who clearly saw that there was no suchTHE BEGINNINGS OF RATIONALISM 31 thing as an inductive procedure, and who clearly understood what I regard as the true theory of knowledge, were Galileo and Einstein. Yet the ancients also knew it. Incredible as it sounds, we find a clear recognition and formulation of this theory of rational knowledge almost immediately after the practice of critical discussion had begun. Our oldest extant fragments in this field are those of Xenophanes. I will present here five of them in an order that suggests that it was the boldness of his attack and the gravity of his problems which made him conscious of the fact that all our knowledge was guesswork, yet that we may nevertheless, by searching for that knowledge ‘which is the better’, find it in the course of time. Here are the five fragments from Xenophanes’s writings. The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods Like horses, and cattle like cattle, and each would then shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of its own. The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, All things to us; but in the course of time, Through seeking, men find that which is the better. ... These things are, we conjecture, like the truth. But as for certain truth, no man has known it, Nor will he know it; neither of the gods, Nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter The final truth, he would himself not know it: For all is but a woven web of guesses. To show that Xenophanes was not alone I may also repeat here two of Heraclitus’s sayings which I have quoted before in a different context. Both express the conjectural character of human32 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE knowledge, and the second refers to its daring, to the need to anticipate boldly what we do not know. It is not in the nature or character of man to possess true knowledge, though it is in the divine nature. ... He who does not expect the unexpected will not detect it: for him it will remain undetectable, and unapproachable. My last quotation is a very famous one from Democritus: But in fact, nothing do we know from having seen it; for the truth is hidden in the deep. This is how the critical attitude of the Presocratics foresha- dowed, and prepared for, the ethical rationalism of Socrates: his belief that the search for truth through critical discussion was a way of life — the best he knew.'2 The Defence of Rationalism (1945) The issue between rationalism and irrationalism is of long standing. Although Greek philosophy undoubtedly started off as a rationalist undertaking, there were streaks of mysticism even in its first beginnings. It is the yearning for the lost unity and shelter of tribalism which expresses itself in these mystical elements within a fundamentally rational approach.' An open conflict between rationalism and irrationalism broke out for the first time in the Middle Ages, as the opposition between scholasticism and mysticism. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth cen- turies, when the tide of rationalism, of intellectualism, and of ‘materialism’ was rising, irrationalists had to pay some attention to it, to argue against it; and by exhibiting its limitations, and exposing the immodest claims and dangers of pseudorationalism (which they did not distinguish from rationalism in our sense), some of these critics, notably Burke, have earned the gratitude of all true rationalists. But the tide has now turned, and ‘profoundly significant allusions ... and allegories’ (as Kant puts it) have become the fashion of the day. An oracular irrationalism has established (especially with Bergson and the majority of German Philosophers and intellectuals) the habit of ignoring or at best deploring the existence of such an inferior being as a rationalist. To them the rationalists — or the ‘materialists’, as they often say ~ and especially, the rationalist scientist, are the poor in spirit, Pursuing soulless and largely mechanical activities, and completely unaware of the deeper problems of human destiny and of its Philosophy. And the rationalists usually reciprocate by dismissing irrationalism as sheer nonsense. Never before has the break been34 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE so complete. And the break in the diplomatic relations of the philosophers proved its significance when it was followed by a break in the diplomatic relations of the states. In this issue, I am entirely on the side of rationalism. This is so much the case that even where I feel that rationalism has gone too far I still sympathize with it, holding as I do that an excess in this direction (as long as we exclude the intellectual immodesty of Plato’s pseudorationalism) is harmless indeed as compared with an excess in the other. In my opinion, the only way in which excessive rationalism is likely to prove harmful is that it tends to undermine its own position and thus to further an irrationalist reaction. It is only this danger which induces me to examine the claims of an excessive rationalism more closely and to advocate a modest and self-critical rationalism which recognizes certain limitations. Accordingly, I shall distinguish in what follows between two rationalist positions, which I label ‘critical rationalism’ and ‘uncritical rationalism’ or ‘comprehensive rationalism’. Uncritical or comprehensive rationalism can be described as the attitude of the person who says ‘I am not prepared to accept anything that cannot be defended by means of argument or experience’. We can express this also in the form of the principle that any assumption which cannot be supported either by argument or by experience is to be discarded.? Now it is easy to see that this principle of an uncritical rationalism is inconsistent; for since it cannot, in its turn, be supported by argument or by experience, it implies that it should itself be discarded. (It is analogous to the paradox of the liar, i.e. toa sentence which asserts its own falsity.) Uncritical rationalism is therefore logically untenable; and since a purely logical argument can show this, uncritical rationalism can be defeated by its own chosen weapon, argument. This criticism may be generalized. Since all argument must proceed from assumptions, it is plainly impossible to demand that all assumptions should be based on argument. The demand raised by many philosophers that we should start with no assumption whatever and never assume anything without ‘sufficient reason’, and even the weaker demand that we should start with a very small set of assumptions (‘categories’), are both in this form inconsistent. For they themselves rest upon the truly colossal assumption thatTHE DEFENCE OF RATIONALISM. 35 it is possible to start without, or with only a few assumptions, and still to obtain results that are worth while. (Indeed, this principle of avoiding all presuppositions is not, as some may think, a counsel of perfection, but a form of the paradox of the liar.*) Now all this is a little abstract, but it may be restated in connection with the problem of rationalism in a less formal way. The rationalist attitude is characterized by the importance it attaches to argument and experience. But neither logical argument nor experience can establish the rationalist attitude; for only those who are ready to consider argument or experience, and who have therefore adopted this attitude already, will be impressed by them. That is to say, a rationalist attitude must be first adopted if any argument or experience is to be effective, and it cannot therefore be based upon argument or experience. (And this consideration is quite independent of the question whether or not there exist any convincing rational arguments which favour the adoption of the rationalist attitude.) We have to conclude from this that no rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. Thus a comprehensive rationalism is untenable. But this means that whoever adopts the rationalist attitude does so because he has adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some proposal, or decision, or belief, or behaviour; an adoption which may be called ‘irrational’. Whether this adoption is tentative or leads to a settled habit, we may describe it as an irrational faith in reason. So rationalism is necessarily far from comprehensive or self-contained. This has frequently been overlooked by rationalists who thus exposed themselves to a beating in their own field and by their own favourite weapon whenever an irrationalist took the trouble to turn it against them. And indeed it did not escape the attention of some enemies of rationalism that one can always refuse to accept arguments, either all arguments or those ofa certain kind; and that such an attitude can be carried through without becoming logically inconsistent. This led them to see that the uncritical rationalist who believes that rationalism is self-contained and can be established by argument must be wrong. Irrationalism is logically superior to uncritical rationalism. Then why not adopt irrationalism? Many who started as Tationalists but were disillusioned by the discovery that a too36 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE comprehensive rationalism defeats itself have indeed practically capitulated to irrationalism. (This is what has happened to Whitehead,‘ if I am not quite mistaken.) But such panic action is entirely uncalled for. Although an uncritical and comprehensive rationalism is logically untenable, and although a comprehensive irrationalism is logically tenable, this is no reason why we should adopt the latter. For there are other tenable attitudes, notably that of critical rationalism which recognizes the fact that the fundamen- tal rationalist attitude results from an (at least tentative) act of faith — from faith in reason. Accordingly, our choice is open. We may choose some form of irrationalism, even some radical or compre- hensive form. But we are also free to choose a critical form of rationalism, one which frankly admits its origin in an irrational decision (and which, to that extent, admits a certain priority of irrationalism). 0 The choice before us is not simply an intellectual affair, or a matter of taste. It is a moral decision.‘ For the question whether we adopt some more or less radical form of irrationalism, or whether we adopt that minimum concession to irrationalism which I have termed ‘critical rationalism’, will deeply affect our whole attitude towards other men, and towards the problems of social life. Rationalism is closely connected with the belief in the unity of mankind. Irrationalism, which is not bound by any rules of consistency, may be combined with any kind of belief, including a belief in the brotherhood of man; but the fact that it may easily be combined with a very different belief, and especially the fact that it lends itself easily to the support of a romantic belief in the existence of an elect body, in the division of men into leaders and led, into natural masters and natural slaves, shows clearly that a moral decision is involved in the choice between it and a critical rationalism. As I have said before (in The Open Society and Its Enemies, chapter 5), and now again in my analysis of the uncritical version of rationalism, arguments cannot determine such a fundamental moral decision. But this does not imply that our choice cannot beTHE DEFENCE OF RATIONALISM 37 helped by any kind of argument whatever. On the contrary, whenever we are faced with a moral decision of a more abstract kind, it is most helpful to analyse carefully the consequences which are likely to result from the alternatives between which we have to choose. For only if we can visualize these consequences in a concrete and practical way, do we really know what our decision js about; otherwise we decide blindly. In order to illustrate this point, I may quote a passage from Shaw’s Saint Joan. The speaker js the Chaplain; he has stubbornly demanded Joan’s death; but when he sees her at the stake, he breaks down: ‘I meant no harm. J did not know what it would be like. ... I did not know what I was doing. ... If I had known, I would have torn her from their hands. You dont know: you havnt seen: it is so easy to talk when you dont know. You madden yourself with words. ... But when it is brought home to you; when you see the thing you have done; when it is blinding your eyes, stifling your nostrils, tearing your heart, then — then — O God, take away this sight from me!’ There were, of course, other figures in Shaw’s play who knew exactly what they were doing, and yet decided to do it; and who did not regret it afterwards. Some people dislike seeing their fellow men burning at the stake, and others do not. This point (which was neglected by many Victorian optimists) is important, for it shows that a rational analysis of the consequences of a decision does not make the decision rational; the consequences do not determine our decision; it is always we who decide. But an analysis of the concrete consequences, and their clear realization in what we call our ‘imagination’, makes the difference between a blind decision and a decision made with open eyes; and since we use our imagination very little,” we only too often decide blindly. This is especially so if we are intoxicated by an oracular philosophy, one of the most Powerful means of maddening ourselves with words — to use Shaw’s expression. The rational and imaginative analysis of the consequences of a moral theory has a certain analogy in scientific method. For in science, too, we do not accept an abstract theory because it is convincing in itself; we rather decide to accept or reject it after we have investigated those concrete and practical consequences which can be more directly tested by experiment. But there is a fundamental difference. In the case of a scientific theory, our38 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE decision depends upon the results of experiments. If these confirm the theory, we may accept it until we find a better one. If they contradict the theory, we reject it. But in the case of a moral theory, we can only confront its consequences with our conscience. And while the verdict of experiments does not depend upon ourselves, the verdict of our conscience does. I hope I have made it clear in which sense the analysis of consequences may influence our decision without determining it. And in presenting the consequences of the two alternatives between which we must decide, rationalism and irrationalism, I warn the reader that I shall be partial. So far, in presenting the two alternatives of the moral decision before us — it is, in many senses, the most fundamental decision in the ethical field - I have tried to be impartial, although I have not hidden my sympathies. But now I am going to present those considerations of the consequences of the two alternatives which appear to me most telling, and by which I myself have been influenced in rejecting irrationalism and accepting the faith in reason. Let us examine the consequences of irrationalism first. The irrationalist insists that emotions and passions rather than reason are the mainsprings of human action. To the rationalist’s reply that, though this may be so, we should do what we can to remedy it, and should try to make reason play as large a part as it possibly can, the irrationalist would rejoin (if he condescends to a discussion) that this attitude is hopelessly unrealistic. For it does not consider the weakness of ‘human nature’, the feeble intellec- tual endowment of most men and their obvious dependence upon emotions and passions. It is my firm conviction that this irrational emphasis upon emotion and passion leads ultimately to what I can only describe as crime. One reason for this opinion is that this attitude, which is at best one of resignation towards the irrational nature of human beings, at worst one of scorn for human reason, must lead to an appeal to violence and brute force as the ultimate arbiter in any dispute. For if a dispute arises, then this means that those more constructive emotions and passions which might in principle help to get over it, reverence, love, devotion to a common cause, etc., have shown themselves incapable of solving the problem. But if that is so, then what is left to the irrationalist except the appeal toTHE DEFENCE OF RATIONALISM 39 other and less constructive emotions and passions, to fear, hatred, envy, and ultimately, to violence? This tendency is very much strengthened by another and perhaps even more important attitude which also is in my opinion inherent in irrationalism, namely, the stress on the inequality of men. It cannot, of course, be denied that human individuals are, like all other things in our world, in very many respects very unequal. Nor can it be doubted that this inequality is of great importance and even in many respects highly desirable.* (The fear that the development of mass production and collectivization may react upon men by destroying their inequality or individuality is one of the nightmares’ of our times.) But all this simply has no bearing upon the question whether or not we should decide to treat men, especially in political issues, as equals, or as much like equals as is possible; that is to say, as possessing equal rights, and equal claims to equal treatment; and it has no bearing upon the question whether we ought to construct political institutions accordingly. ‘Equality before the law’ is not a fact but a political demand" based upon a moral decision; and it is quite independent of the theory — which is probably false — that ‘all men are born equal’. Now I do not intend to say that the adoption of this humanitarian attitude of impartiality is a direct consequence of a decision in favour of rationalism. But a tendency towards impartiality is closely related to rationalism, and can hardly be excluded from the rationalist creed. Again, I do not intend to say that an irrationalist could not consistently adopt an equalitarian or impartial attitude; and even if he could not do so consistently, he is not bound to be consistent. But I do wish to stress the fact that the irrationalist attitude can hardly avoid becoming entangled with the attitude that is opposed to equalitarianism. This fact is connected with its emphasis upon emotions and passions; for we cannot feel the same emotions towards everybody. Emotionally, we all divide men into those who are near to us, and those who are far from us. The division of mankind into friend and foe is a most obvious emotional division; and this division is even recognized in the Christian command- ment, ‘Love thy enemies!’ Even the best Christian who really lives up to this commandment (there are not many, as is shown by the attitude of the average good Christian towards ‘materialists’ and ‘atheists’), even he cannot feel equal love for all men. We cannot40 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE really love ‘in the abstract’; we can love only those whom we know. Thus the appeal even to our best emotions, love and compassion, can only tend to divide mankind into different categories. And this will be more true if the appeal is made to lesser emotions and passions. Our ‘natural’ reaction will be to divide mankind into friend and foe; into those who belong to our tribe, to our emotional community, and those who stand outside it; into believers and unbelievers; into compatriots and aliens; into class comrades and class enemies; and into leaders and led. I have mentioned before that the theory that our thoughts and opinions are dependent upon our class situation, or upon our national interests, must lead to irrationalism. I now wish to emphasize the fact that the reverse is also true. The abandonment of the rationalist attitude, of the respect for reason and argument and the other fellow’s point of view, the stress upon the ‘deeper’ layers of human nature, all this must lead to the view that thought is merely a somewhat superficial manifestation of what lies within these irrational depths. It must nearly always, I believe, produce an attitude which considers the person of the thinker instead of his thought. It must produce the belief that ‘we think with our blood’, or ‘with our national heritage’, or ‘with our class’. This view may be presented in a materialist form or in a highly spiritual fashion; the idea that we ‘think with our race’ may perhaps be replaced by the idea of elect or inspired souls who ‘think by God’s grace’. I refuse, on moral grounds, to be impressed by these differences; for the decisive similarity between all these intellectually immodest views is that they do not judge a thought on its own merits. By thus abandoning reason, they split mankind into friends and foes; into the few who share in reason with the gods, and the many who don’t (as Plato says); into the few who stand near and the many who stand far; into those who speak the untranslatable language of our own emotions and passions and those whose tongue is not our tongue. Once we have done this, political equalitarianism becomes practically impossible. Now the adoption of an anti-equalitarian attitude in political life, ie. in the field of problems concerned with the power of man over man, is just what I should call criminal. For it offers a justification of the attitude that different categories of people have different rights; that the master has the right to enslave the slave; that someTHE DEFENCE OF RATIONALISM 41 men have the right to use others as their tools. Ultimately, it will be used, as in Plato," to justify murder. J do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of this when he suggested” that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man.) Those who do not see this connection at once, who believe in a direct rule of emotional love, should consider that love as such certainly does not promote impartiality. And it cannot do away with conflict either. That love as such may be unable to settle a conflict can be shown by considering a harmless test case, which may pass as representative of more serious ones. Tom likes the theatre and Dick likes dancing. Tom lovingly insists on going to a dance while Dick wants for Tom’s sake to go to the theatre. This conflict cannot be settled by love; rather, the greater the love, the stronger will be the conflict. There are only two solutions; one is the use of emotion, and ultimately of violence, and the other is the use of reason, of impartiality, of reasonable compromise. All this is not intended to indicate that I do not appreciate the difference between love and hate, or that I think that life would be worth living without love. (And I am quite prepared to admit that the Christian idea of love is not meant in a purely emotional way.) But I insist that no emotion, not even love, can replace the rule of institutions controlled by reason. This, of course, is not the only argument against the idea of a tule of love. Loving a person means wishing to make him happy. (This, by the way, was Thomas Aquinas’s definition of love.) But of all political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams. And no doubt, there would be heaven on earth if we could all love one another. But the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell [see selection 24 below]. It leads to42 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the Inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties. It is our duty to help those who need our help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions. The political demand for piecemeal (as opposed to Utopian) methods corresponds to the decision that the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right to care for the happiness of others must be considered a privilege confined to the close circle of their friends. In their case, we may perhaps have a certain right to try to impose our scale of values — our preferences regarding music, for example. (And we may even feel it our duty to open to them a world of values which, we trust, can so much contribute to their happiness.) This right of ours exists only if, and because, they can get rid of us; because friendships can be ended. But the use of political means for imposing our scale of values upon others is a very different matter. Pain, suffering, injustice, and their prevention, these are the eternal problems of public morals, the ‘agenda’ of public policy (as Bentham would have said). The ‘higher’ values should very largely be considered as ‘non-agenda’, and should be left to the realm of laissez-faire. Thus we might say: help your enemies; assist those in distress, even if they hate you; but love only your friends. This is only part of the case against irrationalism, and of the consequences which induce me to adopt the opposite attitude, that is, a critical rationalism. This latter attitude with its emphasis upon argument and experience, with its device ‘I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort we may get nearer to the truth’, is, as mentioned before, closely akin to the scientific attitude. It is bound up with the idea that everybody is liable to make mistakes, which may be found out by himself, or by others, or by himself with the assistance of the criticism of others. It therefore suggests the idea that nobody should be his own judge, and it suggests the idea of impartiality. (This is closely related to the idea of ‘scientific objectivity’ [as analysed in selection 30 below].) Its faith in reason is a faith not only in our own reason, but also — and even more — in that of others. Thus a rationalist, even if he believes himself to be intellectually superior to others, will reject all claims toTHE DEFENCE OF RATIONALISM 43 authority since he is aware that, if his intelligence is superior to that of others (which is hard for him to judge), it is so only in so far as he is capable of learning from criticism as well as from his own and other people’s mistakes, and that one can learn in this sense only if one takes others and their arguments seriously. Rationalism is therefore bound up with the idea that the other fellow has a right to be heard, and to defend his arguments. It thus implies the recognition of the claim to tolerance, at least" of all those who are not intolerant themselves. One does not kill a man when one adopts the attitude of first listening to his arguments. (Kant was right when he based the ‘Golden Rule’ on the idea of reason. To be sure, it is impossible to prove the rightness of any ethical principle, or even to argue in its favour in just the manner in which we argue in favour of a scientific statement. Ethics is not a science. But although there is no ‘rational scientific basis’ of ethics, there is an ethical basis of science, and of rationalism.) The idea of impartiality leads also to that of responsibility; not only do we have to listen to arguments, but we have a duty to respond, to answer, where our actions affect others. Ultimately, in this way, rationalism is linked up with the recognition of the necessity of social institutions to protect freedom of criticism, freedom of thought, and thus the freedom of men. And it establishes something like a moral obligation towards the support of these institutions. This is why rationalism is closely linked up with the political demand for practical social engineering — piecemeal engineering, of course — in the humanitarian sense, with the demand for the rationalization of society, for planning for freedom, and for its control by reason; not by ‘science’, not by a Platonic, a pseudorational authority, but by that Socratic reason which is aware of its limitations, and which therefore respects the other man and does not aspire to coerce him — not even into happiness. The adoption of rationalism implies, moreover, that there is acommon medium of communication, a common language of reason; it establishes something like a moral obligation towards that language, the obligation to keep up its standards of clarity’* and to use it in such a way that it can retain its function as the vehicle of argument. That is to say, to use it plainly; to use it as an instrument of rational communication, of significant informa- tion, rather than as a means of ‘self-expression’, as the vicious44 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE romantic jargon of most of our educationalists has it. (It is characteristic of the modern romantic hysteria that it combines a Hegelian collectivism concerning ‘reason’ with an excessive individualism concerning ‘emotions’: thus the emphasis on language as a means of self-expression instead of a means of communication. Both attitudes, of course, are parts of the revolt against reason.) And it implies the recognition that mankind is united by the fact that our different mother tongues, in so far as they are rational, can be translated into one another. It recognizes the unity of human reason. A few remarks may be added concerning the relation of the rationalist attitude to the attitude of readiness to use what is usually called ‘imagination’. It is frequently assumed that imagination has a close affinity with emotion and therefore with irrationalism, and that rationalism rather tends towards an unimaginative dry scholasticism. I do not know whether such a view may have some psychological basis, and I rather doubt it. But my interests are institutional rather than psychological, and from an institutional point of view (as well as from that of method) it appears that rationalism must encourage the use of imagination because it needs it, while irrationalism must tend to discourage it. The very fact that rationalism is critical, whilst irrationalism must tend towards dogmatism (where there is no argument, nothing is left but full acceptance or flat denial), leads in this direction. Criticism always demands a certain degree of imagination, whilst dogmatism suppresses it. Similarly, scientific research and technical construc- tion and invention are inconceivable without a very considerable use of imagination; one must offer something new in these fields (as opposed to the field of oracular philosophy where an endless repetition of impressive words seems to do the trick). At least as important is the part played by imagination in the practical application of equalitarianism and of impartiality. The basic attitude of the rationalist, ‘I may be wrong and you may be right’, demands, when put into practice, and especially when human conflicts are involved, a real effort of our imagination. I admit that the emotions of love and compassion may sometimes lead to a similar effort. But I hold that it is humanly impossible for us to love, or to suffer with, a great number of people; nor does it appear to me very desirable that we should, since it would ultimatelyTHE DEFENCE OF RATIONALISM 45 destroy either our ability to help or the intensity of these very emotions. But reason, supported by imagination, enables us to understand that men who are far away, whom we shall never see, are like ourselves, and that their relations to one another are like our relations to those we love. A direct emotional attitude towards the abstract whole of mankind seems to me hardly possible. We can love mankind only in certain concrete individuals. But by the use of thought and imagination, we may become ready to help all who need our help. All these considerations show, I believe, that the link between rationalism and humanitarianism is very close, and certainly much closer than the corresponding entanglement of irrationalism with the anti-equalitarian and anti-humanitarian attitude. I believe that as far as possible this result is corroborated by experience. A rationalist attitude seems to be usually combined with a basically equalitarian and humanitarian outlook; irrationalism, on the other hand, exhibits in most cases at least some of the anti-equalitarian tendencies described, even though it may often be associated with humanitarianism also. My point is that the latter connection is anything but well founded.3 Knowledge without Authority (1960) 7 This part of my lecture might be described as an attack on empiricism, as formulated for example in the following classical statement of Hume’s: ‘If I ask why you believe any particular matter of fact ... , you must tell me some reason; and this reason will be some other fact, connected with it. But as you cannot proceed after this manner, in infinitum, you must at last terminate in some fact, which is present to your memory or senses; or must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation.”! The problem of the validity of empiricism may be roughly put as follows: is observation the ultimate source of our knowledge of nature? And if not, what are the sources of our knowledge? These questions remain, whatever I may have said about Bacon, and even if I should have managed to make those parts of his philosophy on which I have commented somewhat unattractive for Baconians and for other empiricists. The problem of the source of our knowledge has recently been restated as follows. If we make an assertion, we must justify it; but this means that we must be able to answer the following questions. ‘How do you know? What are the sources of your assertion?’ This, the empiricist holds, amounts in its turn to the question, ‘What observations (or memories of observations) underlie your assertion?” I find this string of questions quite unsatisfactory. First of all, most of our assertions are not based upon observations, but upon all kinds of other sources. ‘I read it in The Times’ or perhaps ‘I read it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica’ is aKNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY 47 more likely and a more definite answer to the question ‘How do you know?” than ‘I have observed it’ or ‘I know it from an observation I made last year’. ‘But’, the empiricist will reply, ‘how do you think that The Times or the Encyclopaedia Britannica got their information? Surely, if you only carry on your inquiry long enough, you will end up with reports of the observations of eyewitnesses (sometimes called “protocol sentences” or—by yourself— “basic statements”). Admittedly’, the empiricist will continue, ‘books are largely made from other books. Admittedly, a historian, for example, will work from documents. But ultimately, in the last analysis, these other books, or these documents, must have been based upon observations. Otherwise they would have to be described as poetry, or invention, or lies, but not as testimony. It is in this sense that we empiricists assert that observation must be the ultimate source of our knowledge.” Here we have the empiricist’s case, as it is still put by some of my positivist friends. I shall try to show that this case is as little valid as Bacon’s; that the answer to the question of the sources of knowledge goes against the empiricist; and, finally, that this whole question of ultimate sources — sources to which one may appeal, as one might toa higher court or a higher authority — must be rejected as based upon a mistake. First I want to show that if you actually went on questioning The Times and its correspondents about the sources of their knowledge, you would in fact never arrive at all those observations by eyewitnesses in the existence of which the empiricist believes. You would find, rather, that with every single step you take, the need for further steps increases in snowball-like fashion. Take as an example the sort of assertion for which reasonable people might simply accept as sufficient the answer ‘I read it in The Times’; let us say the assertion ‘The Prime Minister has decided to return to London several days ahead of schedule’. Now assume for amoment that somebody doubts this assertion, or feels the need to investigate its truth. What shall he do? If he has a friend in the Prime Minister’s office, the simplest and most direct way would be to ring him up; and if this friend corroborates the message, then that is that. In other words, the investigator will, if possible, try to check,48 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE or to examine, the asserted fact itself, rather than trace the source of the information. But according to the empiricist theory, the assertion ‘I have read it in The Times’ is merely a first step in a justification procedure consisting in tracing the ultimate source. What is the next step? There are at least two next steps. One would be to reflect that ‘I have read it in The Times’ is also an assertion, and that we might ask ‘What is the source of your knowledge that you read it in The Times and not, say, in a paper looking very similar to The Times?’ The other is to ask The Times for the sources of its knowledge. The answer to the first question may be ‘But we have only The Times on order and we always get it in the morning’, which gives rise to a host of further questions about sources which we shall not pursue. The second question may elicit from the editor of The Times the answer: ‘We had a telephone call from the Prime Minister’s office.’ Now according to the empiricist procedure, we should at this stage ask next: ‘Who is the gentleman who received the telephone call?’ and then get his observation report; but we should also have to ask that gentleman: ‘What is the source of your knowledge that the voice you heard came from an official in the Prime Minister’s office?’, and so on. There is a simple reason why this tedious sequence of questions never comes to a satisfactory conclusion. It is this. Every witness must always make ample use, in his report, of his knowledge of persons, places, things, linguistic usages, social conventions, and so on. He cannot rely merely upon his eyes or ears, especially if his report is to be of use in justifying any assertion worth justifying. But this fact must of course always raise new questions as to the sources of those elements of his knowledge which are not immediately observational. This is why the programme of tracing back all knowledge to its ultimate source in observation is logically impossible to carry through: it leads to an infinite regress. (The doctrine that truth is manifest cuts off the regress. This is interesting because it may help to explain the attractiveness of that doctrine.) I wish to mention, in parentheses, that this argument is closely related to another — that all observation involves interpretation in the light of our theoretical knowledge, or that pure observational knowledge, unadulterated by theory, would, if at all possible, beKNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY 49 utterly barren and futile. [See the last paragraph of selection 11, section 1, below.?] The most striking thing about the observationalist programme of asking for sources — apart from its tediousness — is its stark violation of common sense. For if we are doubtful about an assertion, then the normal procedure is to test it, rather than to ask for its sources; and if we find independent corroboration, then we shall often accept the assertion without bothering at all about sources. Of course there are cases in which the situation is different. Testing an historical assertion always means going back to sources; but not, as a rule, to the reports of eyewitnesses. Clearly, no historian will accept the evidence of documents uncritically. There are problems of genuineness, there are problems of bias, and there are also such problems as the reconstruction of earlier sources. There are, of course, also problems such as: was the writer present when these events happened? But this is not one of the characteristic problems of the historian. He may worry about the reliability of a report, but he will rarely worry about whether or not the writer of a document was an eyewitness of the event in question, even assuming that this event was of the nature of an observable event. A letter saying ‘I changed my mind yesterday on this question’ may be most valuable historical evidence, even though changes of mind are unobservable (and even though we may conjecture, in view of other evidence, that the writer was lying). As to eyewitnesses, they are important almost exclusively in a court of law where they can be cross-examined. As most lawyers know, eyewitnesses often err. This has been experimentally investigated, with the most striking results. Witnesses most anxious to describe an event as it happened are liable to make scores of mistakes, especially if some exciting things happen in a hurry; and if an event suggests some tempting interpretation, then this interpretation, more often than not, is allowed to distort what has actually been seen. Hume’s view of historical knowledge was different: ‘... we believe’, he writes in the Treatise, ‘that CAESAR was kill’d in the senate-house on the ides of March . . . because this fact is establish’d on the unanimous testimony of historians, who agree to assign this50 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE precise time and place to that event. Here are certain characters and letters present either to our memory or senses; which characters we likewise remember to have been us’d as the signs of certain ideas; and these ideas were either in the minds of such as were immediately present at that action, and receiv’d the ideas directly from its existence; or they were deriv’d from the testimony of others, and that again from another testimony . .. ’till we arrive at those who were eye-witnesses and spectators of the event.” It seems to me that this view must lead to the infinite regress described above. For the problem is, of course, whether ‘the unanimous testimony of historians’ is to be accepted, or whether it is, perhaps, to be rejected as the result of their reliance on a common yet spurious source. The appeal to ‘letters present either to our memory or senses’ cannot have any bearing on this or on any other relevant problem of historiography. 0 But what, then, are the sources of our knowledge? The answer, I think, is this: there are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority. We may say that The Times can be a source of knowledge, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We may say that certain papers in the Physical Review about a problem in physics have more authority, and are more of the character of a source, than an article about the same problem in The Times or the Encyclopaedia. But it would be quite wrong to say that the source of the article in the Physical Review must have been wholly, or even partly, observation. The source may well be the discovery of an inconsistency in another paper, or say, the discovery of the fact that a hypothesis proposed in another paper could be tested by such and such an experiment; all these non-observational discoveries are ‘sources’ in the sense that they all add to our knowledge. I do not, of course, deny that an experiment may also add to our knowledge, and in a most important manner. But it is not a source in any ultimate sense. It has always to be checked: as in the example of the news in The Times we do not, as a rule, question the eyewitness of an experiment, but, if we doubt the result, we may repeat the experiment, or ask somebody else to repeat it.KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY 51 The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity. Admittedly, in the case of historiography, these two questions may sometimes coincide. The question of the validity of an historical assertion may be testable only, or mainly, in the light of the origin of certain sources. But in general the two questions are different; and in general we do not test the validity of an assertion or information by tracing its sources or its origin, but we test it, much more directly, by a critical examination of what has been asserted — of the asserted facts themselves. Thus the empiricist’s questions ‘How do you know? What is the source of your assertion?’ are wrongly put. They are not formulated in an inexact or slovenly manner, but they are entirely misconceived: they are questions that beg for an authoritarian answer. m The traditional systems of epistemology may be said to result from yes-answers or no-answers to questions about the sources of our knowledge. They never challenge these questions, or dispute their legitimacy; the questions are taken as perfectly natural, and nobody seems to see any harm in them. This is quite interesting, for these questions are clearly authoritarian in spirit. They can be compared with that traditional question of political theory, ‘Who should rule?’, which begs for an authoritarian answer such as ‘the best’, or ‘the wisest’, or ‘the people’, or ‘the majority’. (It suggests, incidentally, such silly alternatives as ‘Who should be our rulers: the capitalists or the workers?’, analogous to ‘What is the ultimate source of knowledge: the intellect or the senses?”) This political question is wrongly put and the answers which it elicits are paradoxical [see selection 25 below]. It should be replaced by a completely different question such as ‘How can we organize our political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers (whom we should try not to get, but whom we so easily might get all the same) cannot do too much damage?’ I believe that only by changing our question in this way can we hope to proceed towards a reasonable theory of political institutions.52 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE The question about the sources of our knowledge can be replaced in a similar way. It has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge — the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?” I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist — no more than ideal rulers — and that all ‘sources’ are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’ The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modi- fied question, ‘How can we hope to detect error?’ may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth. This view may be said to be as old as Xenophanes. Xenophanes knew that our knowledge is guesswork, opinion — doxa rather than epistémé — as shown by his verses [quoted on p.31 above]. Yet the traditional question of the authoritative sources of knowledge is repeated even today — and very often by positivists and by other philosophers who believe themselves to be in revolt against authority. The proper answer to my question ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’ is, I believe, ‘By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and — if we can train ourselves to do so — by criticizing our own theories or guesses.’ (The latter point is highly desirable, but not indispensable; for if we fail to criticize our own theories, there may be others to do it for us.) This answer sums up a position which I propose to call ‘critical rationalism’. It is a view, an attitude, and a tradition, which we owe to the Greeks. It is very different from the ‘rationalism’ or ‘intellectualism’ of Descartes and his school, and very different even from the epistemology of Kant. Yet in the field of ethics, of moralKNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY 53 knowledge, it was approached by Kant with his principle of autonomy. This principle expresses his realization that we must not accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is for us to judge, critically, whether it is moral or immoral to obey. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But if we have the physical power of choice, then the ultimate responsibility remains with us. It is our own critical decision whether to obey acommand; whether to submit to an authority. Kant boldly carried this idea into the field of religion: ‘... in whatever way’, he writes, ‘the Deity should be made known to you, and even ... if He should reveal Himself to you: it is you... who must judge whether you are permitted to believe in Him, and to worship Him.” In view of this bold statement, it seems strange that in his philosophy of science Kant did not adopt the same attitude of critical rationalism, of the critical search for error. I feel certain that it was only his acceptance of the authority of Newton’s cosmology — a result of its almost unbelievable success in passing the most severe tests — which prevented Kant from doing so. If this interpretation of Kant is correct, then the critical rationalism (and also the critical empiricism) which I advocate merely put the finishing touch to Kant’s own critical philosophy. And this was made possible by Einstein, who taught us that Newton’s theory may well be mistaken in spite of its overwhelming success. So my answer to the questions ‘How do you know? What is the source or the basis of your assertion? What observations have led you to it?’ would be: ‘I do not know: my assertion was merely a guess. Never mind the source, or the sources, from which it may spring — there are many possible sources, and I may not be aware of half of them; and origins or pedigrees have in any case little bearing upon truth. But if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can; and if you can design some experimental test which you think might refute my assertion, I shall gladly, and to the best of my powers, help you to refute it.’ This answer applies, strictly speaking, only if the question is asked about some scientific assertion as distinct from an historical54 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE one. If my conjecture was an historical one, sources (in the non-ultimate sense) will of course come into the critical discussion of its validity. Yet fundamentally, my answer will be the same, as we have seen. Iv It is high time now, I think, to formulate the epistemological results of this discussion. I will put them in the form of nine theses. (1) There are no ultimate sources of knowledge. Every source, every suggestion, is welcome; and every source, every suggestion, is open to critical examination. Except in history, we usually examine the facts themselves rather than the sources of our information. (2) The proper epistemological question is not one about sources; rather, we ask whether the assertion made is true — that is to say, whether it agrees with the facts. (That we may operate, without getting involved in antinomies, with the idea of objective truth in the sense of correspondence to the facts, has been shown by the work of Alfred Tarski.) And we try to find this out, as well as we can, by examining or testing the assertion itself; either in a direct way, or by examining or testing its consequences. (3) In connection with this examination, all kinds of arguments may be relevant. A typical procedure is to examine whether our theories are consistent with our observations. But we may also examine, for example, whether our historical sources are mutually and internally consistent. (4) Quantitatively and qualitatively by far the most important source of our knowledge - apart from inborn knowledge - is tradition. Most things we know we have learnt by example, by being told, by reading books, by learning how to criticize, how to take and to accept criticism, how to respect truth. (5) The fact that most of the sources of our knowledge are traditional condemns anti-traditionalism as futile. But this fact must not be held to support a traditionalist attitude: every bit of our traditional knowledge (and even our inborn knowledge) is open to critical examination and may be overthrown. Neverthe- less, without tradition, knowledge would be impossible.KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY 55 (6) Knowledge cannot start from nothing — from a tabula rasa — nor yet from observation. The advance of knowledge consists, mainly, in the modification of earlier knowledge. Although we may sometimes, for example in archaeology, advance through a chance observation, the significance of the discovery will usually depend upon its power to modify our earlier theories. (7) Pessimistic and optimistic epistemologies are about equally mistaken. The pessimistic cave story of Plato is the true one, and not his optimistic story of anamnésis (even though we should admit that all men, like all other animals, and even all plants, possess inborn knowledge). But although the world of appearances is indeed a world of mere shadows on the walls of our cave, we all constantly reach out beyond it; and although, as Democritus said, the truth is hidden in the deep, we can probe into the deep. There is no criterion of truth at our disposal, and this fact supports pessimism. But we do possess criteria which, if we are lucky, may allow us to recognize error and falsity. Clarity and distinctness are not criteria of truth, but such things as obscurity or confusion may indicate error. Similarly coherence cannot establish truth, but incoherence and inconsistency do establish falsehood. And, when they are recognized, our own errors provide the dim red lights which help us in groping our way out of the darkness of our cave. (8) Neither observation nor reason is an authority. Intellectual intuition and imagination are most important, but they are not reliable: they may show us things very clearly, and yet they may mislead us. They are indispensable as the main sources of our theories; but most of our theories are false anyway. The most important function of observation and reasoning, and even of intuition and imagination, is to help us in the critical examination of those bold conjectures which are the means by which we probe into the unknown. (9) Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems; the more so the deeper the original problem and the bolder its solution. The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance56 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE — the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. We may get a glimpse of the vastness of our ignorance when we contemplate the vastness of the heavens: though the mere size of the universe is not the deepest cause of our ignorance, it is one of its causes. ‘Where I seem to differ from some of my friends’, F.P. Ramsey wrote in a charming passage, ‘is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone.’s I suspect that Ramsey’s friends would have agreed with him about the insignificance of sheer physical size; and I suspect that if they felt humble before the vastness of the heavens, this was because they saw in it a symbol of their ignorance. I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much. This state of learned ignorance might bea help in many of our troubles. It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. v There is a last question I wish to raise. If only we look for it we can often find a true idea, worthy of being preserved, in a philosophical theory which must be rejected as false. Can we find an idea like this in one of the theories of the ultimate sources of our knowledge? I believe we can; and I suggest that it is one of the two main ideas which underlie the doctrine that the source of all our knowledge is super-natural. The first of these ideas is false, I believe, while the second is true. The first, the false idea, is that we must justify our knowledge, or our theories, by positive reasons, that is, by reasons capable of establishing them, or at least of making them highly probable; at any rate, by better reasons than that they have so far withstood criticism. This idea implies, I suggest, that we must appeal to some ultimate or authoritative source of true knowledge; which stillKNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY 57 Jeaves open the character of that authority — whether it is human, like observation or reason, or super-human (and therefore super-natural). The second idea — whose vital importance has been stressed by Russell — is that no man’s authority can establish truth by decree; that we should submit to truth; that truth is above human authority. Taken together these two ideas almost immediately yield the conclusion that the sources from which our knowledge derives must be super-human; a conclusion which tends to encourage self-righteousness and the use of force against those who refuse to see the divine truth. Some who rightly reject this conclusion do not, unhappily, reject the first idea — the belief in the existence of ultimate sources of knowledge. Instead they reject the second idea — the thesis that truth is above human authority. They thereby endanger the idea of the objectivity of knowledge, and of common standards of criticism or rationality. What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all human knowledge is human: that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes: that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority. And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective standards of inquiry; No criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge.4 Knowledge: Subjective versus Objective (1967) 1 Three Theses on Epistemology and World 3 I might have challenged those who have heard of my adverse attitude towards Plato and Hegel by calling my lecture ‘A theory of the Platonic World’, or ‘A theory of the Objective Spirit’. The main topic of this lecture will be what I often call, for want of a better name, ‘world 3’. To explain this expression I will point out that, without taking the words ‘world’ or ‘universe’ too seriously, we may distinguish the following three worlds or universes: first, the world of physical objects or of physical states; secondly, the world of states of consciousness, or of mental states, or perhaps of behavioural dispositions to act; and thirdly, the world of objective contents of thought, especially of scientific and poetic thoughts and of works of art. Thus what I call ‘world 3’ has admittedly much in common with Plato’s theory of Forms or Ideas, and therefore also with Hegel’s Objective Spirit, though my theory differs radically, in some decisive respects, from Plato’s and Hegel’s. It has more in common still with Bolzano’s theory of a universe of propositions-in- themselves and of truths-in-themselves, though it differs from Bolzano’s also. My world 3 resembles most closely the universe of Frege’s objective contents of thought. It is not part of my view or of my argument that we might not enumerate our worlds in different ways, or not enumerate them at all. We might, especially, distinguish more than three worlds. My term ‘world 3’ is merely a matter of convenience. In upholding an objective third world I hope to provoke those whom I call ‘belief philosophers’: those who, like Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, or Russell, are interested in our subjectiveKNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 59 beliefs, and their basis or origin. Against these belief philosophers I urge that our problem is to find better and bolder theories; and that critical preference counts, but not belief. I wish to confess, however, at the very beginning, that I am a realist: I suggest, somewhat like a naive realist, that there are a physical world (world 1) and a world of states of consciousness (world 2), and that these two interact. And I believe that there is a third world, in a sense which I shall explain more fully. Among the inmates of my ‘world 3’ are, more especially, theoretical systems; but inmates just as important are problems and problem situations. And I will argue that the most important inmates of this world are critical arguments, and what may be called — in analogy to a physical state or to a state of consciousness — the state of a discussion or the state of a critical argument; and, of course, the contents of journals, books, and libraries. Most opponents of the ‘thesis of an objective world 3 will of course admit that there are problems, conjectures, theories, arguments, journals, and books. But they usually say that all these entities are, essentially, symbolic or linguistic expressions of subjective mental states, or perhaps of behavioural dispositions to act; further, that these entities are means of communication — that is to say, symbolic or linguistic means to evoke in others similar mental states or behavioural dispositions to act. Against this, I have often argued that one cannot relegate all these entities and their content to world 2. Let me repeat one of my standard arguments! for the (more or less) independent existence of world 3. I consider two thought experiments: Experiment (1). All our machines and tools are destroyed, and all our subjective learning, including our subjective knowledge of machines and tools, and how to use them. But libraries and our capacity to learn from them survive. Clearly, after much suffering, our world may get going again. Experiment (2). As before, machines and tools are destroyed, and our subjective learning, including our subjective knowledge of machines and tools, and how to use them. But this time, all libraries are destroyed also, so that our capacity to learn from books becomes useless. If you think about these two experiments, the reality,60 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE significance, and degree of autonomy of world 3 (as well as its effects on worlds 1 and 2) may perhaps become a little clearer to you. For in the second case there will be no re-emergence of our civilization for many millennia. I wish to defend in this lecture three main theses, all of which concern epistemology. Epistemology I take to be the theory of scientific knowledge. My first thesis is this. Traditional epistemology has studied knowledge or thought in a subjective sense — in the sense of the ordinary usage of the words ‘I know’ or ‘I am thinking’. This, I assert, has led students of epistemology into irrelevances: while intending to study scientific knowledge, they studied in fact something which is of no relevance to scientific knowledge. For scientific knowledge simply is not knowledge in the sense of the ordinary usage of the words ‘I know’. While knowledge in the sense of ‘I know’ belongs to what I call ‘world 2’, the world of subjects, scientific knowledge belongs to world 3, to the world of objective theories, objective problems, and objective arguments. Thus my first thesis is that the traditional epistemology, of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and even of Russell, is irrelevant, in a pretty strict sense of the word. It is a corollary of this thesis that a large part of contemporary epistemology is irrelevant also. My first thesis involves the existence of two different senses of knowledge or of thought: (1) knowledge or thought in the subjective sense, consisting of a state of mind or of consciousness or a disposition to behave or to react, and (2) knowledge or thought in an objective sense, consisting of problems, theories, and arguments as such. Knowledge in this objective sense is totally independent of anybody’s claim to know; it is also independent of anybody’s belief, or disposition to assent; or to assert, or to act. Knowledge in the objective sense is knowledge without a knower: it is knowledge without a knowing subject. Of thought in the objective sense Frege wrote: ‘I understand by a thought not the subjective act of thinking but its objective content... .”* The two senses of thought and their interesting interrelations can be illustrated by the following highly convincing quotation from Heyting, who says about Brouwer’s act of inventing his theory of the continuum:?KNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 61 ‘If recursive functions had been invented before, he [Brouwer] would perhaps not have formed the notion of a choice sequence which, I think, would have been unlucky.” This quotation refers on the one hand to some subjective thought processes of Brouwer’s and says that they might not have occurred (which would have been unfortunate) had the objective problem situation been different. Thus Heyting mentions certain possible influences upon Brouwer’s subjective thought processes, and he also expresses his opinion regarding the value of these subjective thought processes. Now it is interesting that influences, qua influences, must be subjective: only Brouwer’s subjective ac- quaintance with recursive functions could have had that unfor- tunate effect of preventing him from inventing free choice sequences. On the other hand, the quotation from Heyting points to a certain objective relationship between the objective contents of two thoughts or theories: Heyting does not refer to the subjective conditions or the electrochemistry of Brouwer’s brain processes, but to an objective problem situation in mathematics and its possible influences on Brouwer’s subjective acts of thought which were bent on solving these objective problems. I would describe this by saying that Heyting’s remark is about the objective or world 3 situational logic of Brouwer’s invention, and that Heyting’s remark implies that the world 3 situation may affect world 2. Similarly, Heyting’s suggestion that it would have been unfortunate if Brouwer had not invented choice sequences is a way of saying that the objective content of Brouwer’s thought was valuable and interesting; valuable and interesting, that is, in the way it changed the objective problem situation in world 3. To put the matter simply, if I say ‘Brouwer’s thought was influenced by Kant’ or even ‘Brouwer rejected Kant’s theory of space’ then I speak at least partly about acts of thought in the subjective sense: the word ‘influence’ indicates a context of thought processes or acts of thinking. If I say, however, ‘Brouwer’s thought differs vastly from Kant’s’, then it is pretty clear that I speak mainly about contents. And, ultimately, if I say ‘Brouwer’s thoughts are incompatible with Russell’s’, then, by using a logical term such as ‘incompatible’, I make it unambiguously clear that I am using the word ‘thought’ only in Frege’s objective sense, and62 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE that I am speaking only about the objective content, or the logical content, of theories. Just as ordinary language unfortunately has no separate terms for ‘thought’ in the sense of world 2 and in the sense of world 3, so it has no separate terms for the corresponding two senses of ‘I know’ and of ‘knowledge’. In order to show that both senses exist, I will first mention three subjective or world 2 examples: (1) ‘I know you are trying to provoke me, but I will not be provoked.’ (2) ‘I know that Fermat’s last theorem has not been proved, but I believe it will be proved one day.’ (3) From the entry ‘Knowledge’ in The Oxford English Dictionary: knowledge is a ‘state of being aware or informed’. Next I will mention three objective or world 3 examples: (1) From the entry ‘Knowledge’ in The Oxford English Dictionary: knowledge is a ‘branch of learning; a science; an art’. (2) ‘Taking account of the present state of metamathematical knowledge, it seems possible that Fermat’s last theorem may be undecidable.’ (3) ‘I certify that this thesis is an original and significant contribution to knowledge.’ These very trite examples have only the function of helping to clarify what I mean when I speak of ‘knowledge in the objective sense’. My quoting The Oxford English Dictionary should not be interpreted either as a concession to language analysis or as an attempt to appease its adherents. It is not quoted in an attempt to prove that ‘ordinary usage’ covers ‘knowledge’ in the objective sense of my world 3. In fact, I was surprised to find in The Oxford English Dictionary examples of objective usages of ‘knowledge’. (I was even more surprised to find some at least partly objective usages of ‘know’: ‘to distinguish . . . to be acquainted with (a thing, a place, a person); ... to understand’.) At any rate, my examples are not intended as arguments. They are intended solely as illustrations.KNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 63 My first thesis, so far not argued but only illustrated, was that traditional epistemology with its concentration on world 2, or on knowledge in the subjective sense, is irrelevant to the study of scientific knowledge. My second thesis is that what is relevant for epistemology is the study of scientific problems and problem situations, of scientific conjectures (which I take as merely another word for scientific hypotheses or theories), of scientific discussions, of critical arguments, and of the role played by evidence in arguments; and therefore of scientific journals and books, and of experiments and their evaluation in scientific arguments; or, in brief, that the study of a largely autonomous world 3 of objective knowledge is of decisive importance for epistemology. An epistemological study as described in my second thesis shows that scientists very often do not claim that their conjectures are true, or that they ‘know’ them in the subjective sense of ‘know’, or that they believe in them. Although in general they do not claim to know, in developing their research programmes they act on the basis of guesses about what is and what is not fruitful, and what line of research promises further results in world 3, the world of objective knowledge. In other words, scientists act on the basis of a guess or, if you like, of a subjective belief (for we may so call the subjective basis of an action) concerning what is promising of impending growth in world 3, the world of objective knowledge. This, I suggest, furnishes an argument in favour both of my first thesis (of the irrelevance of a subjectivist epistemology) and of my second thesis (of the relevance of an objectivist epistemology). But I have a third thesis. It is this. An objectivist epistemology which studies world 3 can help to throw an immense amount of light upon world 2, the world of subjective consciousness, especially upon the subjective thought processes of scientists; but the converse is not true. These are my three main theses. In addition to my three main theses, I offer three supporting theses. The first of these is that world 3 is a natural product of the human animal, comparable to a spider’s web. The second supporting thesis (and an almost crucial thesis, I64 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE think) is that world 3 is largely autonomous, even though we constantly act upon it and are acted upon by it: it is autonomous in spite of the fact that it is our product and that it has a strong feedback effect upon us; that is to say, upon us qua inmates of world 2 and even of world 1. The third supporting thesis is that it is through this interaction between ourselves and world 3 that objective knowledge grows, and that there is a close analogy between the growth of knowledge and biological growth; that is, the evolution of plants and animals. u A Biological Approach to World 3 In the present section I shall try to defend the existence of an autonomous world 3 by a kind of biological or evolutionary argument. A biologist may be interested in the behaviour of animals; but he may also be interested in some of the non-living structures which animals produce, such as spiders’ webs, or nests built by wasps or ants, the burrows of badgers, dams constructed by beavers, or paths made by animals in forests. I will distinguish between two main categories of problems arising from the study of these structures. The first category consists of problems concerned with the methods used by the animals, or the ways the animals behave when constructing these structures. This first category thus consists of problems concerned with the acts of production; with the behavioural dispositions of the animal; and with the relationships between the animal and the product. The second category of problems is concerned with the structures themselves. It is concerned with the chemistry of the materials used in the structure; with their geometrical and physical properties; with their evolutionary changes, depending upon special environmental conditions; and with their dependence upon or their adjustments to these environmental conditions. Very important also is the feedback relation from the properties of the structure to the behaviour of the animals. In dealing with this second category of problems - that is, with the structures themselves — we shall also have to look upon the structures from the point of view of their biological functions. Thus some problemsKNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 65 of the first category will admittedly arise when we discuss problems of the second category; for example ‘How was this nest built?’ and ‘What aspects of its structure are typical (and thus presumably traditional or inherited) and what aspects are variants adjusted to special conditions?’ As my last example of a problem shows, problems of the first category — that is, problems concerned with the production of the structure — will sometimes be suggested by problems of the second category. This must be so, since both categories of problems are dependent upon the fact that such objective structures exist, a fact which itself belongs to the second category. Thus the existence of the structures themselves may be said to create both categories of problems. We may say that the second category of problems — problems connected with the structures themselves - is more fundamental: all that it presupposes from the first category is the bare fact that the structures are somehow produced by some animals. Now these simple considerations may of course also be applied to products of human activity, such as houses, or tools, and also to works of art. Especially important for us, they apply to what we call ‘language’, and to what we call ‘science’.* The connection between these biological considerations and the topic of my present lecture can be made clear by reformulating my three main theses. My first thesis can be put by saying that in the present problem situation in philosophy, few things are as important as the awareness of the distinction between the two categories of problems — production problems on the one hand and problems connected with the produced structures themselves on the other. My second thesis is that we should realize that the second category of problems, those concerned with the products in themselves, is in almost every respect more important than the first category, the problems of production. My third thesis is that the problems of the second category are basic for understanding the production problems: contrary to first impressions, we can learn more about production behaviour by studying the products themselves than we can learn about the products by studying production behaviour. This third thesis may be described as an anti-behaviouristic and anti-psychologistic thesis.66 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE In their application to what may be called ‘knowledge’ my three theses may be formulated as follows. (1) We should constantly be aware of the distinction between problems connected with our personal contributions to the production of scientific knowledge on the one hand, and problems connected with the structure of the various products, such as scientific theories or scientific arguments, on the other. (2) We should realize that the study of the products is vastly more important than the study of the production, even for an understanding of the production and its methods. (3) We can learn more about the heuristics and the methodology and even about the psychology of research by studying theories, and the arguments offered for or against them, than by any direct behaviouristic or psychological or sociological approach. In general, we may learn a great deal about behaviour and psychology from the study of the products. In what follows I will call the approach from the side of the products — the theories and the arguments — the ‘objective’ approach or the ‘world 3’ approach. And I will call the behaviourist, the psychological, and the sociological approach to scientific knowledge the ‘subjective’ approach or the ‘world: 2’ approach. The appeal of the subjective approach is largely due to the fact that it is causal. For I admit that the objective structures for which I claim priority are caused by human behaviour. Being causal, the subjective approach may seem to be more scientific than the objective approach which, as it were, starts from effects rather than causes. Though I admit that the objective structures are products of behaviour, I hold that the argument is mistaken. In all sciences, the ordinary approach is from the effects to the causes. The effect raises the problem — the problem to be explained, the explicandum —and the scientist tries to solve it by constructing an explanatory hypothesis. My three main theses with their emphasis on the objective products are therefore neither teleological nor unscientific.KNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 67 m The Objectivity and the Autonomy of World 3 One of the main reasons for the mistaken subjective approach to knowledge is the feeling that a book is nothing without a reader: only if it is understood does it really become a book; otherwise it is just paper with black spots on it. This view is mistaken in many ways. A wasps’ nest is a wasps’ nest even after it has been deserted; even though it is never again used by wasps as a nest. A bird’s nest is a bird’s nest even if it was never lived in. Similarly a book remains a book —a certain type of product — even if it is never read (as may easily happen nowadays). Moreover, a book, or even a library, need not even have been written by anybody: a series of books of logarithms, for example, may be produced and printed by a computer. It may be the best series of books of logarithms — it may contain logarithms up to, say, fifty decimal places. It may be sent out to libraries, but it may be found too cumbersome for use; at any rate, years may elapse before anybody uses it; and many figures in it (which represent mathematical theorems) may never be looked at as long as men live on earth. Yet each of these figures contains what I call ‘objective knowledge’; and the question of whether or not I am entitled to call it by this name is of no interest. The example of these books of logarithms may seem far-fetched. But it is not. I should say that almost every book is like this: it contains objective knowledge, true or false, useful or useless; and whether anybody ever reads it and really grasps its contents is almost accidental. A man who reads a book with understanding is a rare creature. But even if he were more common, there would always be plenty of misunderstandings and misinterpretations; and it is not the actual and somewhat accidental avoidance of such misunderstandings which turns black spots on white paper into a book, or an instance of knowledge in the objective sense. Rather, it is something more abstract. It is its possibility or potentiality of being understood, its dispositional character of being understood or interpreted, or misunderstood or misinterpreted, which makes a thing a book, And this potentiality or disposition may exist without ever being actualized or realized. To see this more clearly, we may imagine that after the human68 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE race has perished, some books or libraries may be found by some civilized successors of ours (no matter whether these are terrestrial animals which have become civilized, or some visitors from outer space). These books may be deciphered. They may be those logarithm tables never read before, for argument’s sake. This makes it quite clear that neither its composition by thinking animals nor the fact that it has not actually been read or understood is essential for making a thing a book, and that it is sufficient that it might be deciphered. Thus I do admit that in order to belong to world 3, the world of objective knowledge, a book should — in principle, or virtually — be capable of being grasped (or deciphered, or understood, or ‘known’) by somebody. But I do not admit more. We can thus say that there is a kind of Platonic (or Bolzano- esque) world 3 of books-in-themselves, theories-in-themselves, problems-in-themselves, problem-situations-in-themselves, argu- ments-in-themselves, and so on. And I assert that even though this world 3 is a human product, there are many theories-in- themselves and arguments-in-themselves and problem-situations- in-themselves which have never been produced or understood and may never be produced or understood by men. The thesis of the existence of such a world of problem situations will strike many as extremely metaphysical and dubious. But it can be defended by pointing out its biological analogue. For example, it has its full analogue in the realm of birds’ nests. Some years ago I got a present for my garden — a nesting-box for birds. It was a human product, of course, not a bird’s product — just as our logarithm table was a computer’s product rather than a human product. But in the context of the bird’s world, it was part of an objective problem situation, and an objective opportunity. For some years the birds did not even seem to notice the nesting-box. But after some years, it was carefully inspected by some blue tits who even started building in it, but gave up very soon. Obviously, here was a graspable opportunity, though not, it appears, a particularly valuable one. At any rate, here was a problem situation. And the problem may be solved in another year by other birds. If it is not, another box may prove more adequate. On the other hand, a most adequate box may be removed before it is ever used. The question of the adequacy of the box is clearly anKNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 69 objective one; and whether the box is ever used is partly accidental. So it is with all ecological niches. They are potentialities and may be studied as such in an objective way, up toa point independently of the question of whether these potentialities will ever be actualized by any living organism. A bacteriologist knows how to prepare such an ecological niche for the culture of certain bacteria or moulds. It may be perfectly adequate for its purpose. Whether it will ever be used and inhabited is another question. A large part of the objective world 3 of actual and potential theories and books and arguments arises as an unintended byproduct of the actually produced books and arguments. We may also say that it is a byproduct of human language. Language itself, like a bird’s nest, is an unintended byproduct of actions which were directed at other aims. How does an animal path in the jungle arise? Some animal may break through the undergrowth in order to get toa drinking place. Other animals find it easiest to use the same track. Thus it may be widened and improved by use. It is not planned - it is an unintended consequence of the need for easy or swift movement. This is how a path is originally made — perhaps even by men — and how language and any other institutions which are useful may arise, and how they may owe their existence and development to their usefulness. They are not planned or intended, and there was perhaps no need for them before they came into existence. But they may create a new need, or a new set of aims: the aim-structure of animals or men is not ‘given’, but it develops, with the help of some kind of feedback mechanism, out of earlier aims, and out of results which were or were not aimed at.> In this way, a whole new universe of possibilities or potentialities may arise: a world which is to a large extent autonomous. A very obvious example is a garden. Even though it may have been planned with great care, it will as a rule turn out partly in unexpected ways. But even if it turns out as planned, some unexpected interrelationships between the planned objects may give rise to a whole universe of possibilities, of possible new aims, and of new problems. The world of language, of conjectures, theories, and arguments — in brief, the universe of objective knowledge — is one of the most70 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE important of these man-created, yet at the same time largely autonomous, universes. The idea of autonomy is central to my theory of world 3: although world 3 is a human product, a human creation, it creates in its turn, as do other animal products, its own domain of autonomy. There are countless examples. Perhaps the most striking ones, and at any rate those which should be kept in mind as our standard examples, may be found in the theory of natural numbers. Pace Kronecker, I agree with Brouwer that the sequence of natural numbers is a human construction. But although we create this sequence, it creates its own autonomous problems in its turn. The distinction between odd and even numbers is not created by us: it is an unintended and unavoidable consequence of our creation. Prime numbers, of course, are similarly unintended autonomous and objective facts; and in their case it is obvious that there are many facts here for us to discover: there are conjectures like Goldbach’s. And these conjectures, though they refer indirectly to objects of our creation, refer directly to problems and facts which have somehow emerged from our creation and which we cannot control or influence: they are hard facts, and the truth about them is often hard to discover. This exemplifies what I mean when I say that world 3 is largely autonomous, though created by us. But the autonomy is only partial: the new problems lead to new creations or constructions — such as recursive functions, or Brouwer’s free choice sequences — and may thus add new objects to world 3. And every such step will create new unintended facts; new unexpected problems; and often also new refutations.® There is also a most important feedback effect from our creations upon ourselves; from world 3 upon world 2. For the new emergent problems stimulate us to new creations. The process can be described by the following somewhat oversimplified schema:’ P>TT-EE-P,. That is, we start from some problem P,, proceed to a tentative solution or tentative theory TT, which may be (partly or wholly) mistaken; in any case it will be subject to error-elimination, EE,KNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 71 which may consist of critical discussion or experimental tests; at any rate, new problems P, arise from our own creative activity; and these new problems are not in general intentionally created by us, they emerge autonomously from the field of new relationships which we cannot help bringing into existence with every action, however little we intend to do so. The autonomy of world 3, and the feedback of world 3 upon world 2 and even world 1, are among the most important facts of the growth of knowledge. Following up our biological considerations, it is easy to see that they are of general importance for the theory of Darwinian evolution: they explain how we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. Or in more highbrow terminology, they help to explain ‘emergence’. w Language, Criticism, and World 3 The most important of human creations, with the most important feedback effects upon ourselves and especially upon our brains, are the higher functions of human language; more especially, the descriptive function and the argumentative function. Human languages share with animal languages the two lower functions of language: (1) self-expression and (2) signalling. The self-expressive function or symptomatic function of language is obvious: all animal language is symptomatic of the state of some organism. The signalling or release function is likewise obvious: we do not call any symptom linguistic unless we assume that it can release a response in another organism. All animal languages and all linguistic phenomena share these two lower functions. But human language has many other functions (for example, the advisory, hortative, and fictional functions). Strangely enough, the most important of the higher functions have been overlooked by almost all philosophers. The explanation of this strange fact is that the two lower functions are always present when the higher ones are present, so that it is always possible to ‘explain’ every linguistic phenomenon, in terms of the lower functions, as an ‘expression’ or a ‘communication’ . The two most important higher functions of human languages72 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE are (3) the descriptive function and (4) the argumentative func- tion.® With the descriptive function of human language, the regulative idea of truth emerges, that is, of a description which fits the facts. Further regulative or evaluative ideas are content, truth content, and verisimilitude.’ The argumentative function of human language presupposes the descriptive function: arguments are, fundamentally, about de- scriptions: they criticize descriptions from the point of view of the regulative ideas of truth; content; and verisimilitude. Now two points are all-important here: (1) Without the development of an exosomatic descriptive language — a language which, like a tool, develops outside the body — there can be no object for our critical discussion. But with the development of a descriptive language (and further, of a written language), a linguistic world 3 can emerge; and it is only in this way, and only in world 3, that the problems and standards of rational criticism can develop. (2) It is to this development of the higher functions of language that we owe our humanity, our reason. For our powers of reasoning are nothing but powers of critical argument. This second point shows the futility of all theories of human language that focus on expression and communication. As we shall see [in selections 20 and 21 below], the human organism which, it is often said, is intended to express itself, depends in its structure very largely upon the emergence of the two higher functions of language. With the evolution of the argumentative function of language, criticism becomes the main instrument of further growth. (Logic may be regarded as the organon of criticism."°) The autonomous world of the higher functions of language becomes the world of science. And the schema, originally valid for the animal world as well as for primitive man, P,>TT>EE-P, becomes the schema of the growth of knowledge through error-elimination by way of systematic rational criticism. It becomes the schema of the search for truth and content by means of rationalKNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 73 discussion. It describes the way in which we lift ourselves by our bootstraps. It gives a rational description of evolutionary emer- gence, and of our self-transcendence by means of selection and rational criticism. To sum up, although the meaning of ‘knowledge’, like that of all words, is unimportant, it is important to distinguish between different senses of the word. (1) Subjective knowledge, which consists of certain inborn dispositions to act, and of their acquired modifications. (2) Objective knowledge; for example, scientific knowledge which consists of conjectural theories, open problems, problem situations, and arguments. All work in science is work directed towards the growth of objective knowledge. We are workers who are adding to the growth of objective knowledge as masons work on a cathedral. Our work is fallible, like all human work. We constantly make mistakes, and there are objective standards of which we may fall short — standards of truth, of content, of validity, and other standards. Language, the formulation of problems, the emergence of new problem situations, competing theories, mutual criticism by way of argument: all these are indispensable means to scientific growth. The most important functions or dimensions of human language are the descriptive and the argumentative functions (which animal languages do not possess). The growth of these functions is, of course, of our making, though they are unintended consequences of our actions. It is only within a language thus enriched that critical argument and knowledge in the objective sense become possible. The repercussion, or the feedback effects, of the evolution of world 3 upon ourselves — our brains, our traditions (if anybody were to start where Adam started, he would not get further than Adam did), our dispositions to act (that is, our beliefs)," and our actions, can hardly be overrated. As opposed to all this, traditional epistemology is interested in world 2: in knowledge as a certain kind of belief— justifiable belief, such as belief based upon perception. As a consequence, this kind of belief philosophy cannot explain (and does not even try to74 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE explain) the decisive phenomenon that scientists criticize their theories and so kill them. Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer — whether animal or man — perishes with his false beliefs. v Historical Remarks (i) Plato and Neo-Platonism For all we know, Plato was the discoverer of world 3. As Whitehead remarked, all Western philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. I will make only three brief remarks on Plato, two of them critical. (1) Plato discovered not only world 3, but part of the influence or feedback of world 3 upon ourselves: he realized that we try to grasp the ideas of his world 3; also that we use them as explanations. (2) Plato’s world 3 was divine; it was unchanging and, of course, true. Thus there is a big gap between his and my world 3: my world 3 is manmade and changing. It contains not only true theories but also false ones, and especially open problems, conjectures, and refutations. And while Plato, the great master of dialectical argument, saw in it merely a way of leading to world 3, I regard arguments as among the most important inmates of world 3; not to speak of open problems. (3) Plato believed that world 3, the world of Forms or Ideas, would provide us with ultimate explanations (that is, explanation by essences [see p.165 below]). Thus he writes for example (Phaedo, 100 c): ‘I think that if anything else apart from the idea of absolute beauty is beautiful, then it is beautiful for the sole reason that it has some share in the idea of absolute beauty. And this kind of explanation applies to everything.’ This is a theory of ultimate explanation; that is to say, of an explanation whose explicans is neither capable nor in need of further explanation. And it is a theory of explanation by essences; that is, by hypostatized words. As a result, Plato envisaged the objects of world 3 as something like non-material things or, perhaps, like stars or constellations — to be gazed at, and intuited, though not liable to be touched by ourKNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 75 minds. This is why the inmates of world 3 - the Forms or Ideas — became concepts of things, or essences or natures of things, rather than theories or arguments or problems. This had the most far-reaching consequences for the history of philosophy. From Plato until today, most philosophers have either been nominalists” or else what I have called essentialists. They are more interested in the (essential) meaning of words than in the truth and falsity of theories. I often present the problem in the form of a table. IDEAS that is DESIGNATIONS or TERMS STATEMENTS or PROPOSITIONS or CONCEPTS or THEORIES may be formulated in WORDS ASSERTIONS which may be MEANINGFUL TRUE and their MEANING TRUTH may be reduced, by way of DEFINITIONS DERIVATIONS to that of UNDEFINED CONCEPTS PRIMITIVE PROPOSITIONS The attempt to establish (rather than reduce) by these means their MEANING TRUTH leads to an infinite regress My thesis is that the left side of this table is unimportant, as compared to the right side: what should interest us are theories; truth; argument. If so many philosophers and scientists still think that concepts and conceptual systems (and problems of their meaning, or the meaning of words) are comparable in importance to theories and theoretical systems (and problems of their truth, or the truth of statements), then they are still suffering from Plato’s main error." For concepts are partly means of formulating theories, partly means of summing up theories. In any case their significance is mainly instrumental; and they may always be replaced by other concepts.76 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Contents and objects of thought seem to have played an important part in Stoicism and in neo-Platonism: Plotinus preserved Plato’s separation between the empirical world and Plato’s world of Forms or Ideas. Yet, like Aristotle,'* Plotinus destroyed the transcendence of Plato’s world by placing it into the consciousness of God. Plotinus criticized Aristotle for failing to distinguish between the First Hypostasis (Oneness) and the Second Hypostasis (the divine intellect). Yet he followed Aristotle in identifying God’s acts of thought with their own contents or objects; and he elaborated this view by taking the Forms or Ideas of Plato’s intelligible world to be the immanent states of consciousness of the divine intellect.’ (ii) Hegel Hegel was a Platonist (or rather a neo-Platonist) of sorts and, like Plato, a Heraclitean of sorts. He was a Platonist whose world of Ideas was changing, evolving. Plato’s ‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’ were objective, and had nothing to do with conscious ideas in a subjective mind; they inhabited a divine, an unchanging, heavenly world (super-lunar in Aristotle’s sense). By contrast Hegel’s Ideas, like those of Plotinus, were conscious phenomena: thoughts thinking themselves and inhabiting some kind of consciousness, some kind of mind or ‘Spirit’; and together with this ‘Spirit’ they were changing or evolving. The fact that Hegel’s ‘Objective Spirit’ and ‘Absolute Spirit’ are subject to change is the only point in which his Spirits are more similar to my ‘world 3’ than is Plato’s world of Ideas (or Bolzano’s world of ‘statements-in- themselves’). The most important differences between Hegel’s ‘Objective Spirit’ and ‘Absolute Spirit’ and my ‘world 3’ are these: (1) According to Hegel, though the Objective Spirit (comprising artistic creation) and Absolute Spirit (comprising philosophy) both consist of human productions, man is not creative. It is the hypostatized Objective Spirit, it is the divine self-consciousness of the Universe, that moves man: ‘individuals . . . are instruments’, instruments of the Spirit of the Epoch, and their work, their ‘substantial business’, is ‘prepared and appointed independently of them’.’* Thus what I have called the autonomy of world 3, and itsKNOWLEDGE: SUBJECTIVE VERSUS OBJECTIVE 77 feedback effect, become with Hegel omnipotent: it is only one of the aspects of his system in which his theological background manifests itself. As against this I assert that the individual creative element, the relation of give-and-take between a manand his work, is of the greatest importance. In Hegel this degenerates into the doctrine that the great man is something like a medium in which the Spirit of the Epoch expresses itself. (2) In spite of a certain superficial similarity between Hegel’s dialectic and my evolutionary schema P,>TT->EE-P, there is a fundamental difference. My schema works through error-elimination, and on the scientific level through conscious criticism under the regulative idea of the search for truth. Criticism, of course, consists in the search for contradictions and in their elimination: the difficulty created by the demand for their elimination constitutes the new problem (P,). Thus the elimination of error leads to the objective growth of our knowledge — of knowledge in the objective sense. It leads to the growth of objective verisimilitude: it makes possible the approximation to (absolute) truth. Hegel, on the other hand, is a relativist.” He does not see our task as the search for contradictions, with the aim of eliminating them, for he thinks that contradictions are as good as (or better than) non-contradictory: theoretical systems: they provide the mechanism by which the Spirit propels itself. Thus rational criticism plays no part in the Hegelian automatism, any more than does human creativity." (3) While Plato lets his hypostatized Ideas inhabit some divine heaven, Hegel personalizes his Spirit into some divine conscious- ness: the Ideas inhabit it as human ideas inhabit some human consciousness. His doctrine is, throughout, that the Spirit is not only conscious, but a self. As against this, my world 3 has no similarity whatever to human consciousness; and though its first inmates are products of human consciousness, they are totally different from conscious ideas or from thoughts in the subjective sense.5 Evolutionary Epistemology (1973) I now turn to progress in science. I will be looking at progress in science from a biological or evolutionary point of view. I am far from suggesting that this is the most important point of view for examining progress in science. But the biological approach offers a convenient way of introducing the two leading ideas of the first half of my talk. They are the ideas of instruction and of selection. From a biological or evolutionary point of view, science, or progress in science, may be regarded as a means used by the human species to adapt itself to the environment: to invade new environmental niches, and even to invent new environmental niches.! This leads to the following problem. We can distinguish between three levels of adaptation: genetic adaptation; adaptive behavioural learning; and scientific discov- ery, which is a special case of adaptive behavioural learning. My main problem in this part of my talk will be to inquire into the similarities and dissimilarities between the strategies of progress or adaptation on the scientific level and on those two other levels: the genetic level and the behavioural level. And I will compare the three levels of adaptation by investigating the role played on each level by instruction and by selection. 0 In order not to lead you blindfolded to the result of this comparison I will anticipate at once my main thesis. It is a thesis asserting the fundamental similarity of the three levels, as follows. On all three levels — genetic adaptation, adaptive behaviour, andEVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY 79 scientific discovery — the mechanism of adaptation is fundamen- tally the same. This can be explained in some detail. Adaptation on all three levels starts from an inherited structure which is basic. On the genetic level it is the gene structure of the organism. To it corresponds, on the behavioural level, the innate repertoire of the types of behaviour which are available to the organism; and on the scientific level, the dominant scientific conjectures or theories. These structures are always transmitted by instruction, on all three levels: by the replication of the coded genetic instruction on the genetic and the behavioural levels; and by social tradition and imitation on the behavioural and the scientific levels. On all three levels, the instruction comes from within the structure. If mutations or variations or errors occur, then these are new instructions, which also arise from within the structure, rather than from without, from the environment. These inherited structures are exposed to certain pressures, or challenges, or problems: to selection pressures; to environmental challenges; to theoretical problems. In response, variations of the genetically or traditionally inherited instructions are produced,’ by methods which are at least partly random. On the genetic level, these are mutations and recombinations of the coded instruction; on the behavioural level, they are tentative variations and recombinations within the repertoire; on the scientific level, they are new and revolutionary tentative theories. On all three levels we get new tentative trial instructions; or, briefly, tentative trials. It is important that these tentative trials are changes that originate within the individual structure in a more or less random fashion — on all three levels. The view that they are not due to instruction from without, from the environment, is supported (if only weakly) by the fact that very similar organisms may sometimes respond in very different ways to the same new environmental challenge. The next stage is that of selection from the available mutations and variations: those of the new tentative trials which are badly adapted are eliminated. This is the stage of the elimination of error. Only the more or less well adapted trial instructions survive and are inherited in their turn. Thus we may speak of adaptation by ‘the method of trial and error’ or better, by ‘the method of trial and the80 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE elimination of error’. The elimination of error, or of badly adapted trial instructions, is also called ‘natural selection’: it is a kind of ‘negative feedback’. It operates on all three levels. It is to be noted that in general no equilibrium state of adaptation is reached by any one application of the method of trial and the elimination of error, or by natural selection. First, because no perfect or optimal trial solutions to the problem are likely to be offered; secondly — and this is more important — because the emergence of new structures, or of new instructions, involves a change in the environmental situation. New elements of the environment may become relevant; and in consequence, new pressures, new challenges, new problems may arise, as a result of the structural changes which have arisen from within the organism. On the genetic level the change may be a mutation ofa gene, with a consequent change of an enzyme. Now the network of enzymes forms the more intimate environment of the gene structure. Accordingly, there will be a change in this intimate environment; and with it, new relationships between the organism and the more remote environment may arise; and further, new selection pressures. The same happens on the behavioural level; for the adoption of a new kind of behaviour can be equated in most cases with the adoption of a new ecological niche. As a consequence, new selection pressures will arise, and new genetic changes. On the scientific level, the tentative adoption of a new conjecture or theory may solve one or two problems, but it invariably opens up many new problems; for a new revolutionary theory functions exactly like a new and powerful sense organ. If the progress is significant then the new problems will differ from the old problems: the new problems will be on a radically different level of depth. This happened, for example, in relativity; it happened in quantum mechanics; and it happens right now, most dramati- cally, in molecular biology. In each of these cases, new horizons of unexpected problems were opened up by the new theory. This, I suggest, is the way in which science progresses. And our progress can best be gauged by comparing our old problems with our new ones. If the progress that has been made is great, then the new problems will be of a character undreamt of before. There willEVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY 81 be deeper problems; and besides, there will be more of them. The further we progress in knowledge, the more clearly we can discern the vastness of our ignorance. (The realization of our ignorance has become pinpointed as a result, for example, of the astonishing revolution brought about by molecular biology.) I will now sum up my thesis. On all the three levels which I am considering, the genetic, the behavioural, and the scientific levels, we are operating with inherited structures which are passed on by instruction; either through the genetic code or through tradition. On all the three levels, new structures and new instructions arise by trial changes from within the structure: by tentative trials which are subject to natural selection or the elimination of error. mI So far I have stressed the similarities in the working of the adaptive mechanism on the three levels. This raises an obvious problem: what about the differences? The main difference between the genetic and the behavioural levels is this. Mutations on the genetic level are not only random but completely ‘blind’, in two senses. First, they are in no way goal-directed. Secondly, the survival of a mutation cannot influence the further mutations, not even the frequencies or probabilities of their occurrence; though admittedly, the survival of a mutation may sometimes determine what kind of mutations may possibly survive in future cases. On the behavioural level, trials are also more or less random, but they are no longer completely ‘blind’ in either of the two senses mentioned. First, they are goal-directed; and secondly, animals may learn from the outcome of a trial: they may learn to avoid the type of trial behaviour which has led to a failure. (They may even avoid it in cases in which it could have succeeded.) Similarly, they may also learn from success; and successful behaviour may be repeated, even in cases in which it is not adequate. However, a certain degree of ‘blindness’ is inherent in all trials.’ Behavioural adaptation is usually an intensely active process: the animal — especially the young animal at play — and even the plant, are actively investigating the environment.‘82 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE This activity, which is largely genetically programmed, seems to me to mark an important difference between the genetic level and the behavioural level. I may here refer to the experience which the Gestalt psychologists call ‘insight’; an experience that accom- panies many behavioural discoveries.’ However, it must not be overlooked that even a discovery accompanied by ‘insight’ may be mistaken: every trial, even one with ‘insight’, is of the nature of a conjecture or a hypothesis. Kohler’s apes, it will be remembered, sometimes hit with ‘insight’ on what turned out to be a mistaken attempt to solve their problem; and even great mathematicians are sometimes misled by intuition. Thus animals and men have to try out their hypotheses; they have to use the method of trial and of error-elimination. On the other hand I agree with Kéhler and Thorpe’ that the trials of problem-solving animals are in general not completely blind. Only in extreme cases, when the problem which confronts the animal does not yield to the making of hypotheses, will the animal resort to more or less blind and random attempts in order to get out of a disconcerting situation. Yet even in these attempts, goal-directedness is usually discernible, in sharp contrast to the blind randomness of genetic mutations and recombinations. Another difference between genetic change and adaptive behavioural change is that the former always establishes a rigid and almost invariable genetic structure. The latter, admittedly, leads sometimes also to a fairly rigid behaviour pattern which is dogmatically adhered to; radically so in the case of ‘imprinting’ (Konrad Lorenz); but in other cases it leads to a flexible pattern which allows for differentiation or modification; for example, it may lead to exploratory behaviour, or to what Pavlov called the ‘freedom reflex’.” On the scientific level, discoveries are revolutionary and creative. Indeed, a certain creativity may be attributed to all levels, even to the genetic level: new trials, leading to new environments and thus to new selection pressures, create new and revolutionary results on all levels, even though there are strong conservative tendencies built into the various mechanisms of instruction. Genetic adaptation can of course operate only within the time span of a few generations — at the very least, say, one or two generations. In organisms which replicate very quickly this mayEVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY 83 be a short time span; and there may be simply no room for behavioural adaptation. More slowly reproducing organisms are compelled to invent behavioural adaptation in order to adjust themselves to quick environmental changes. They thus need a behavioural repertoire, with types of behaviour of greater or lesser latitude or range. The repertoire, and the latitude of the available types of behaviour, can be assumed to be genetically programmed; and since, as indicated, a new type of behaviour may be said to involve the choice of a new environmental niche, new types of behaviour may indeed be genetically creative, for they may in their turn determine new selection pressures and thereby indirectly decide upon the future evolution of the genetic structure.* On the level of scientific discovery two new aspects emerge. The most important one is that scientific theories can be formulated linguistically, and that they can even be published. Thus they become objects outside ourselves: objects open to investigation. As a consequence, they are now open to criticism. Thus we can get rid of a badly fitting theory before the adoption of the theory makes us unfit to survive: by criticizing our theories we can let our theories die in our stead. This is of course immensely important. The other aspect is also connected with language. It is one of the novelties of human language that it encourages story telling, and thus creative imagination. Scientific discovery is akin to explanatory story telling, to myth making and to poetic imagination. The growth of imagination enhances of course the need for some control, such as, in science, interpersonal criticism — the friendly- hostile co-operation of scientists which is partly based on competition and partly on the common aim to get nearer to the truth. This, and the role played by instruction and tradition, seem to me to exhaust the main sociological elements inherently involved in the progress of science; though more could be said of course about the social obstacles to progress, or the social dangers inherent in progress. Iv I have suggested that progress in science, or scientific discovery, depends on instruction and selection: on a conservative or traditional or historical element, and on a revolutionary use of trial and the84 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE elimination of error by criticism, which includes severe empirical examinations or tests; that is, attempts to probe into the possible weaknesses of theories, attempts to refute them. Of course, the individual scientist may wish to establish his theory rather than to refute it. But from the point of view of progress in science, this wish can easily mislead him. Moreover, if he does not himself examine his favourite theory critically, others will do so for him. The only results which will be regarded by them as supporting the theory will be the failures of interesting attempts to refute it; failures to find counterexamples where such counterex- amples would be most expected, in the light of the best of the competing theories. Thus it need not create a great obstacle to science if the individual scientist is biased in favour of a pet theory. Yet I think that Claude Bernard was very wise when he wrote: ‘Those who have an excessive faith in their ideas are not well fitted to make discoveries.”® All this is part of the critical approach to science, as opposed to the inductivist approach; or of the Darwinian or eliminationist or selectionist approach as opposed to the Lamarckian approach which operates with the idea of instruction from without, or from the environment, while the critical or selectionist approach only allows instruction from within — from within the structure itself. In fact, I contend that there is no such thing as instruction from without the structure, or the passive reception of a flow of information which impresses itself on our sense organs. All observations are theory-impregnated: there is no pure, disinter- ested, theory-free observation. (To see this, we may try, using a little imagination, to compare human observation with that of an ant or a spider.) Francis Bacon was rightly worried about the fact that our theories may prejudice our observations. This led him to advise scientists that they should avoid prejudice by purifying their minds of all theories. Similar recipes are still given. But to attain objectivity we cannot rely on the empty mind: objectivity rests on criticism, on critical discussion, and on the critical examination of experiments. [See selection 11, section 11, and selection 30 below.] And we must recognize, particularly, that our very sense organs incorporate what amount to prejudices. I have stressed before (in section 11) that theories are like sense organs. Now I wish to stressEVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY 85 that our sense organs are like theories. They incorporate adaptive theories (as has been shown in the case of rabbits and cats). And these theories are the result of natural selection. v However, not even Darwin or Wallace, not to mention Spencer, saw that there is no instruction from without. They did not operate with purely selectionist arguments. In fact, they frequently argued on Lamarckian lines." In this they seem to have been mistaken. Yet it may be worth while to speculate about possible limits to Darwinism; for we should always be on the look-out for possible alternatives to any dominant theory. I think that two points might be made here. The first is that the argument against the genetic inheritance of acquired characteris- tics (such as mutilations) depends upon the existence of a genetic mechanism in which there is a fairly sharp distinction between the gene structure and the remaining part of the organism: the soma. But this genetic mechanism must itself be a late product of evolution, and it was undoubtedly preceded by various other mechanisms of a less sophisticated kind. Moreover, certain very special kinds of mutilations are inherited; more particularly, mutilations of the gene structure by radiation. Thus if we assume that the primeval organism was a naked gene then we can even say that every non-lethal mutilation to this organism would be inherited. What we cannot say is that this fact contributes in any way to an explanation of genetic adaptation, or of genetic learning, except indirectly, via natural selection. The second point is this. We may consider the very tentative conjecture that, as a somatic response to certain environmental pressures, some chemical mutagen is produced, increasing what is called the spontaneous mutation rate. This would be a kind of semi-Lamarckian effect, even though adaptation would still proceed only by the elimination of mutations; that is, by natural selection. Of course, there may not be much in this conjecture, as it seems that the spontaneous mutation rate suffices for adaptive evolution.” These two points are made here merely as a warning against too dogmatic an adherence to Darwinism. Of course, I do conjecture86 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE that Darwinism is right, even on the level of scientific discovery; and that it is right even beyond this level: that it is right even on the level of artistic creation. We do not discover new facts or new effects by copying them, or by inferring them inductively from observation; or by any other method of instruction by the environment. We use, rather, the method of trial and the elimination of error. As Ernst Gombrich says, ‘making comes before matching’:" the active production of a new trial structure comes before its exposure to eliminating tests. VI I suggest therefore that we conceive the way science progresses somewhat on the lines of Niels Jerne’s and Sir Macfarlane Burnet’s theories of antibody formation. Earlier theories of antibody formation assumed that the antigen works as a negative template for the formation of the antibody. This would mean that there is instruction from without, from the invading antibody. The funda- mental idea of Jerne was that the instruction or information which enables the antibody to recognize the antigen is, literally, inborn: that it is part of the gene structure, though possibly subject to a repertoire of mutational variations. It is conveyed by the genetic code, by the chromosomes of the specialized cells which produce the antibodies; and the immune reaction is a result of growth- stimulation given to these cells by the antibody/antigen complex. Thus these cells are selected with the help of the invading environment (that is, with the help of the antigen), rather than instructed. (The analogy with the selection — and the modification — of scientific theories is clearly seen by Jerne, who in this connection refers to Kierkegaard, and to Socrates in the Meno.) With this remark I conclude my discussion of the biological aspects of progress in science.6 Two Kinds of Definitions (1945) The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, ... which is treating what is vague as if it were precise... . F. P. RAMSEY! The problem of definitions and of the ‘meaning of terms’ is the most important source of Aristotle’s regrettably still prevailing intellectual influence, of all that verbal and empty scholasticism that haunts not only the Middle Ages, but our own contemporary philosophy; for even a philosophy as recent as that of L. Wittgenstein suffers, as we shall see, from this influence. The development of thought since Aristotle could, I think, be summed up by saying that every discipline, as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism, and that the degree to which the various sciences have been able to make any progress depended on the degree to which they have been able to get rid of this essentialist method. (This is why so much of our ‘social science’ still belongs to the Middle Ages.) The discussion of this method will have to be a little abstract, owing to the fact that the problem has been so thoroughly muddled by Plato and Aristotle, whose influence has given rise to such deep-rooted prejudices that the prospect of dispelling them does not seem very bright. In spite of all that, it is perhaps not without interest to analyse the source of so much confusion and verbiage. Aristotle followed Plato in distinguishing between knowledge and opinion.? Knowledge, or science, according to Aristotle, may be of two kinds — either demonstrative or intuitive. Demonstrative88 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE knowledge is also a knowledge of ‘causes’. It consists of statements that can be demonstrated — the conclusions — together with their syllogistic demonstrations (which exhibit the ‘causes’ in their ‘middle terms’). Intuitive knowledge consists in grasping the ‘indivisible form’ or essence or essential nature of a thing (if it is ‘immediate’, i.e. if its ‘cause’ is identical with its essential nature); it is the originative source of all science since it grasps the original basic premisses of all demonstrations. Undoubtedly, Aristotle was right when he insisted that we must not attempt to prove or demonstrate all our knowledge. Every proof must proceed from premisses; the proof as such, that is to say, the derivation from the premisses, can therefore never finally settle the truth of any conclusion, but only show that the conclusion must be true provided the premisses are true. If we were to demand that the premisses should be proved in their turn, the question of truth would only be shifted back by another step to a new set of premisses, and so on, to infinity. It was in order to avoid such an infinite regress (as the logicians say) that Aristotle taught that we must assume that there are premisses which are indubi- tably true, and which do not need any proof} and these he called “basic premisses’. If we take for granted the methods by which we derive conclusions from these basic premisses, then we could say that, according to Aristotle, the whole of scientific knowledge is contained in the basic premisses, and that it would all be ours if only we could obtain an encyclopaedic list of the basic premisses. But how to obtain these basic premisses? Like Plato, Aristotle believed that we obtain all knowledge ultimately by an intuitive grasp of the essences of things. ‘We can know a thing only by knowing its essence’, Aristotle writes, and ‘to know a thing is to know its essence’. A ‘basic premiss’ is, according to him, nothing but a statement describing the essence of a thing. But such a statement is just what he calls*a definition. Thus all ‘basic premisses of proofs’ are definitions. What does a definition look like? An example of a definition would be: ‘A puppy is a young dog.’ The subject of such a definition sentence, the term ‘puppy’, is called the term to be defined (or defined term); the words ‘young dog’ are called the defining formula. As a rule, the defining formula is longer and more complicated than the defined term, and sometimes very much so.TWO KINDS OF DEFINITIONS 89 Aristotle considers‘ the term to be defined as a name of the essence of a thing, and the defining formula as the description of that essence. And he insists that the defining formula must give an exhaustive description of the essence or the essential properties of the thing in question; thus a statement like ‘A puppy has four legs’, although true, is not a satisfactory definition, since it does not exhaust what may be called the essence of puppiness, but holds true of a horse also; and similarly the statement ‘A puppy is brown’, although it may be true of some, is not true of all puppies; and it describes what is not an essential but merely an accidental property of the defined term. But the most difficult question is how we can get hold of definitions or basic premisses, and make sure that they are correct ~ that we have not erred, not grasped the wrong essence. Although Aristotle is not very clear on this point, there can be little doubt that, in the main, he again follows Plato. Plato taught’ that we can grasp the Ideas with the help of some kind of unerring intellectual intuition; that is to say, we visualize or look at them with our ‘mental eye’, a process which he conceived as analogous to seeing, but dependent purely upon our intellect, and excluding any element that depends upon our senses. Aristotle’s view is less radical and less inspired than Plato’s, but in the end it amounts to the same.* For although he teaches that we arrive at the definition only after we have made many observations, he admits that sense experience does not in itself grasp the universal essence, and that it cannot, therefore, fully determine a definition. Eventually he simply postulates that we possess an intellectual intuition, a mental or intellectual faculty which enables us unerringly to grasp the essences of things, and to know them. And he further assumes that if we know anessence intuitively, we must be capable of describing it and therefore of defining it. (His arguments in the Posterior Analytics in favour of this theory are surprisingly weak. They consist merely in pointing out that our knowledge of the basic premisses cannot be demonstrative, since this would lead to an infinite regress, and that the basic premisses must be at least as true and as certain as the conclusions based upon them. ‘It follows from this’, he writes, ‘that there cannot be demonstrative knowledge of the primary premisses; and since nothing but intellectual intuition can be more true than demonstrative knowledge, it follows that it90 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE must be intellectual intuition that grasps the basic premisses.’ In the De Anima, and in the theological part of the Metaphysics, we find more of an argument; for here we have a theory of intellectual intuition — that it comes into contact with its object, the essence, and that it even becomes one with its object. ‘Actual knowledge is identical with its object.’) Summing up this brief analysis, we can give, I believe, a fair description of the Aristotelian ideal of perfect and complete knowledge if we say that he saw the ultimate aim of all inquiry in the compilation of an encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is to say, their names together with their defining formulae; and that he considered the progress of knowledge as consisting in the gradual accumulation of such an encyclopaedia, in expanding it as well as in filling up the gaps in it and, of course, in the syllogistic derivation from it of ‘the whole body of facts’ which constitute demonstrative knowledge. Now there can be little doubt that all these essentialist views stand in the strongest possible contrast to the methods of modern science. (I have the empirical sciences in mind, not perhaps pure mathematics.) First, although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it. We have learnt in the past, from many disappointments, that we must not expect finality. And we have learnt not to be disappointed any longer if our scientific theories are overthrown; for we can, in most cases, determine with great confidence which of any two theories is the better one. We can therefore know that we are making progress; and it is this knowledge that to most of us atones for the loss of the illusion of finality and certainty. In other words, we know that our scientific theories must always remain hypotheses, but that, in many important cases, we can find out whether or not a new hypothesis is superior to an old one. For if they are different, then they will lead to different predictions, which can often be tested experimen- tally; and on the basis of such a crucial experiment, we can sometimes find out that the new theory leads to satisfactory results where the old one breaks down. Thus we can say that in our search for truth, we have replaced scientific certainty by scientific progress. And this view of scientific method is corroborated by the development of science. For science does not develop by a gradualTWO KINDS OF DEFINITIONS 91 encyclopaedic accumulation of essential information, as Aristotle thought, but by a much more revolutionary method; it progresses by bold ideas, by the advancement of new and very strange theories (such as the theory that the earth is not flat, or that ‘metrical space’ is not flat), and by the overthrow of the old ones. But this view of scientific method [developed in selections 9-14 below] means that in science there is no ‘knowledge’, in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. What we usually call ‘scientific knowledge’ is, as a rule, not knowledge in this sense, but rather information regarding the various competing hypotheses and the way in which they have stood up to various tests; it is, using the language of Plato and Aristotle, information concerning the latest, and the best tested, scientific ‘opinion’. This view means, furthermore, that we have no proofs in science (excepting, of course, pure mathematics and logic). In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by ‘proof’ an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory. (What may occur, however, are refutations of scientific theories.) On the other hand, pure mathematics and logic, which permit of proofs, give us no information about the world, but only develop the means of describing it. Thus we could say (as I have pointed out elsewhere’): ‘In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.’ But although proof does not play any part in the empirical sciences, argument still does; indeed, its part is at least as important as that played by observation and experi- ment. The role of definitions in science, especially, is also very different from what Aristotle had in mind. Aristotle taught that in a definition we have first pointed to the essence — perhaps by naming it - and that we then describe it with the help of the defining formula; just as in an ordinary sentence like ‘This puppy is brown’, we first point to a certain thing by saying ‘this puppy’, and then describe it as ‘brown’. And he taught that by thus describing the essence to which the term points which is to be defined, we determine or explain the meaning* of the term also.92 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Accordingly, the definition may at one time answer two very closely related questions. The one is ‘What is it?’, for example, ‘What is a puppy?’; it asks what the essence is which is denoted by the defined term. The other is ‘What does it mean?’, for example, ‘What does “puppy” mean?’; it asks for the meaning of a term (namely, of the term that denotes the essence). In the present context, it is not necessary to distinguish between these two questions; rather, it is important to see what they have in common; and I wish, especially, to draw attention to the fact that both questions are raised by the term that stands, in the definition, on the left side and answered by the defining formula which stands on the right side. This fact characterizes the essentialist view, from which the scientific method of definition radically differs. While we may say that the essentialist interpretation reads a definition ‘normally’, that is to say, from the left to the right, we can say that a definition, as it is normally used in modern science, must be read back to front, or from the right to the left; for it starts with the defining formula, and asks for a short label for it. Thus the scientific view of the definition ‘A puppy is a young dog’ would be that it is an answer to the question ‘What shall we call a young dog?’ rather than an answer to the question ‘What is a puppy?” (Questions like ‘What is life?’ or ‘What is gravity?’ do not play any role in science.) The scientific use of definitions, characterized by the approach ‘from the right to the left’, may be called its nominalist interpretation, as opposed to its Aristotelian or essentialist inter- pretation.’ In modern science, onlynominalist definitions occur, that is to say, shorthand symbols or labels are introduced in order to cut a long story short. And we can at once see from this that definitions do not play any very important part in science. For shorthand symbols can always, of course, be replaced by the longer expressions, the defining formulae, for which they stand. In some cases this would make our scientific language very cumbersome; we should waste time and paper. But we should never lose the slightest piece of factual information. Our ‘scientific knowledge’, in the sense in which this term may be properly used, remains entirely unaffected if we eliminate all definitions; the only effect is upon our language, which would lose, not precision, but merely brevity. (This must not be taken to mean that in science there cannot be an urgent practical need for introducing definitions, forTWO KINDS OF DEFINITIONS 93 brevity’s sake.) There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between this view of the part played by definitions, and Aristotle’s view. For Aristotle’s essentialist definitions are the principles from which all our knowledge is derived; they thus contain all our knowledge; and they serve to substitute a long formula for a short one. As opposed to this, the scientific or nominalist definitions do not contain any knowledge whatever, not even any ‘opinion’; they do nothing but introduce new arbitrary shorthand labels; they cut a long story short. In practice, these labels are of the greatest usefulness. In order to see this, we only need to consider the extreme difficulties that would arise if a bacteriologist, whenever he spoke ofa certain strain of bacteria, had to repeat its whole description (including the methods of dyeing, etc., by which it is distinguished from a number of similar species), And we may also understand, by a similar consideration, why it has so often been forgotten, even by scientists, that scientific definitions must be read ‘from the right to the left’, as explained above. For most people, when first studying a science, say bacteriology, must try to find out the meanings of all these new technical terms with which they are faced. In this way, they really learn the definition ‘from the left to the right’, substituting, as if it were an essentialist definition, a very long story for a very short one. But this is merely a psychological accident, and a teacher or writer of a textbook may indeed proceed quite differently; that is to say, he may introduce a technical term only after the need for it has arisen. So far I have tried to show that the scientific or nominalist use of definitions is entirely different from Aristotle’s essentialist method of definitions. But it can also be shown that the essentialist view of definitions is simply untenable in itself. In order not to prolong this discussion unduly, I shall criticize two only of the essentialist doctrines; two doctrines which are of significance because some influential modern schools are still based upon them. One is the esoteric doctrine of intellectual intuition, and the other the very popular doctrine that ‘we must define our terms’, if we wish to be precise. Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual intuition, by which we can visualize essences and find out which definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have