Alexander Naraniencki Returning To Karl Popper

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1. Out of the Haskalah 9
1. Introduction 9
2. The Popper Family 12
3. Popper, Israel and Jewish Identity 15
4. The Jewish Enlightenments 22
5. Bildung 27
2. Was Karl Popper a Positivist? 29
1. Introduction 29
2. The Vienna Circle 29
3. The renewal of Kant’s Enlightenment 41
3. The early philosophical problems 45
1. Introduction 45
2. Julius Kraft: an extraordinary friendship 46
3. Popper’s Friesian problematic 49
4. Axioms, Definitions and Postulates of Geometry 57
5. Methods used in revising Kant 61
6. Theorising on the methods of criticism 71
4. Logic and language: Wittgenstein and Tarski 79
1. Introduction 79
2. Tarski’s theory of truth and its implications 80
3. Consensus as correspondence 84
4. Evolutionary cognition 87
5. Demolishing Wittgenstein 95
5. Definitions, essences and meaning 101
1. Introduction 101
2. The problem of essentialism 102
3. Comparison with Wittgenstein 111
4. Popper’s aesthetics 117
6. Popper’s metaphysics 121
1. Introduction 121
2. Propensities and the metaphysical ‘turn’ 122
3. The World 3 thesis 131
4. Materialism transcends itself 133
5. An esoteric reading 147
7. Towards an Open Rationality 151
Archival Material 161

Bibliography 169
Name Index 185
Subject Index 189
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Bruce Buchan for reading the earliest drafts of
my book. I am thankful to Paul Turnbull and Regina Ganter who
helped to facilitate my archival research in Klagenfurt, Austria. I
would also like to thank Manfred Lube the Bibliotheksdirektor at the
Universitätsbibliothek Klagenfurt for aiding my research into the
materials at the Karl-Popper-Sammlung during my time at the library.
His helpfulness, interest and knowledge of the collection made the
months spent at the archive a scholarly experience that I will never
forget.
I would also like to thank Jeremy Shearmur at the ANU for
advising me on the whereabouts of certain letters and lectures as well
as clarifying certain arguments of Popper’s political philosophy. I
would also like to thank Zuzana Parusniková for organising the
“Rethinking Popper” conference at the Czech Academy of Sciences in
Prague in 2007. Allowing me to present my findings and to discuss
Popper’s thoughts with his former students and other experts was a
major turning point in my research. I am greatly indebted to Arne F.
Petersen’s insights into Popper’s early writings that I have gained
through discussions with him. I am also grateful for my discussions in
Prague with Joseph Agassi, Robert Cohen, Alan Musgrave, Ionut Isac,
Michel ter Hark, John Wettersten, Ian Jarvie, Anthony O’Hear, and
Alain Boyer. I have also received invaluable criticism and insights
from David Miller. I would also like to thank, Dominic Hyde, Ghil‘ad
Zuckermann, Jan Pakulski, Paul Moris, Baogang He, John Mandalios
and Haig Patapan for the knowledge that they have imparted to me
over the years. Jeff Malpas also read and commented on an earlier
draft of this book. I would like to thank Andreas Berg for reading the
final draft of the book. I have also benefited greatly from my
discussions with Kenneth Allen Hopf. The wonderful Rabbi Fred
Morgan also provided invaluable insights into the Rabbinic legal
tradtion discussed in the first chapter.
viii
I am grateful to the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at

Deakin University for their support while working on the final stages
of the monograph during my Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research
Fellowship. This book also owes a great deal to Geoffrey Stokes from
RMIT. Malachi Hacohen was also kind enough to read through an
earlier version of this book and taught me to look at Popper from new
perspectives. I was fortunate enough to be invited by Hacohen to give
a lecture and spend some time in 2012 as a visiting scholar at the
Center for European Studies at Duke University. I wish to thank Kurt
Salamun for reading through a draft of this book and for agreeing to
publishi it. I’m also thankful to Masja Horn at Rodopi for seeing it
through to publication.
I am also thankful to Richard Colledge and the School of
Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. I would like to
dedicate this book to Wayne Hudson for guiding my research and
overseeing my intellectual and scholarly development since my
undergraduate years.
Introduction
Karl Popper is a more complex thinker than is commonly

acknowledged. Trying to place him within certain intellectual
traditions such as Austrian Arisotelianism, or some specific Neo-
Kantian tradition often has typically meant siphoning off certain
features of his writings as ‘un-Popperian’ or not reflective of the
‘mature Popper’ or the result of ‘the folly of old age’. This book aims
to do the opposite, namely to take seriously those aspects of Popper’s
writings that have received less attention and wherein he advanced
metaphysical, speculative, mystical-poetic and Platonic notions.
Broadly speaking, Popper at times can be seen to be Aristotelian,
Kantian, Platonic, as well as Hegelian and Humean, depending on the
arguments and theories he was engaging with or the methods he was
supporting or indeed himself deploying.
I argue that Popper, much like Wittgenstein previously has been
misconstrued as an Anglo style analytic philosopher. This book
provides an interpretation of Popper’s mature philosophy within his
Central European intellectual context that was firstly explored in
depth by Malachi Hacohen. The aim of which is to open up a fruitful
line of investigation into Popper’s thought that I hope would continue
over the coming years. Even though Popper himself often said that as
a result of his clear and unpretentious writing style that his work does
not require interpretation or third party explanation, the way he has
been read, often remains neglectful of many features of his thought.
Indeed, Popper’s underlying Platonism meant that he had much more
in common with thinkers such as Hegel, the philosopher whom he
famously called a false prophet, than has been traditionally assumed.
Rather than dismissing or downplaying the Platonic bent of his later
writings as the folly of old age, this book looks at them as the
apotheosis of his system. Thus, the focus of this book reverses the
order of importance of many of Popper’s texts, and further shows how
2 Returning to Karl Popper
many of the most important clues to his system are often hidden in the
footnotes or later revisions rather. Indeed, Popper’s best known works
are not surprisingly deceptive. His political ‘tract’ The Open Society
and Its Enemies is more a treatise on truth and logic with the Polish
logician Alfred Tarski being mentioned more in the notes than Marx.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery, itself is not a discussion on such a
logic, which remains ‘unknown’, rather it provides a new hypothesis
on human cognition resulting from what Popper believed we know
about our cognitive faculties and how these function in learning and
theory formation. Discoveries are cumulative and progressive,
however there is no known logic ensuring their repetition.
If one reads successive works of Popper one finds the same
arguments recurring over and over in different forms. I have in this
study of Popper sought to analyse the groups of combinations of
differentiated operations which account for Popper’s technical
proficiency over such a wide array of intellectual field. What Popper
was devising in The Logic of Scientific Discovery or The Poverty of
Historicism or Objective Knowledge involved the conjunctions of his
repertoire of differentiated operations in ever fresh combinations.
Thus, an exploration of Popper’s method requires a method which can
observe the normative pattern of recurrent and related operations and
their yielding of cumulative and progressive results. Hence, the
glaring problem in Popper’s philosophy that caught my attention was
the restrictions he initially put on standards for reasonable
argumentation for rational systematic inquiry through his
falsificationism. This was challenged by his need to create arguments
that were non-testable (or irrefutable) and did not live up to this
standard itself. This problem for Popper’s philosophy came to the fore
in his later more speculative and non-testable theorization on the
emergence of complex social and ontological systems. Such
arguments often began with the forewarning that they “could not be
taken too seriously”.
This turn of phrase made a literary criticism of a key problem
for Popper’s philosophy possible. It was not that Popper did not regard
his arguments as not serious, as they operationalized repetitive
argumentative tropes that he defended with great earnestness and were
applied to urgent social problems. Thus, the problem in Popper’s
cognitional theory was identified by bringing to light the
contradictions between the cognitional theory and the actual
Introduction 3
performance of the theorist. I suggest that this tension between actual

methods applied in his work and clearly defined methodological
criteria was responsible the direction in which his cognitional theory
dialectally moved in redressing this dissonance. This eventuated in a
moderating of his position on standards of reasonableness for rational
discussions to include the possibility for non-testable hypotheses so
long as the person making them understands the epistemic dangers, is
capable of cultivating a self-critical and non-dogmatic attitude
involving a hostility to one’s own theories and a desire to replace such
a theories should any error, harmful consequence or inconsistency in
them be discerned. I am not presenting a ‘revision’ of Popper here,
rather proposing that a revision of the current Anglo-analytic reading
is necessary, and that a revision will need to redress the concerns
presented throughout this book.
This book also suggests that the strength of his social thought
may owe something to the strength of his cosmological thinking. This
opens the room for a noetic participatory reading of Popper’s writings.
This cosmological thinking enabled him to discern structural
repetition at different circulatory manifolds of the whole, including the
recurring schemes of material transcendence. From this we can draw
out implications for what this means for an understanding of
humanity’s enclaved existence within the cosmos. His late World 3
ontology has largely been overlooked in the English speaking world as
a kind of folly of his old age and often dismissed as the work of a
positivistic minded analytic philosopher who has gone too far and
ended in some sort of Hegelian metaphysical system-building
exercise. This book argues that Popper was not a positivist and that his
later cosmological-ontological thought did share certain features with
Hegel. However, this was not a system-building exercise in the
traditional sense. Rather the similarity between aspects of his thought
and that of Hegel is owing to a shared Neo-Platonism.
Popper arrived at this Neo-Platonism from the ground up,
through his study of evolutionary linguistics and the emergence of
mind which gave him a sense of the inbuilt structures to learning and
cognitive functions that he early on applied to childhood development,
debates concerning the Copenhagen Interpretation and later and more
famously to a critique of the social-psychology of closed societies.
Thus, early in his formative years, particularly in his study of
theoretical physics and the challenges of observation he was aware of
the fundamentally deficient nature of human observation and the need

for a new theory of learning and mind that better reflected this deficit.
From evolutionary linguistics he became aware of the reality of non-
physical products of the human mind, such as arguments and theories
that non-the-less played a fundamental role in the way humans adapt
to the environment. Popper would continue to explore the role that
these ‘transcending’ aspects of the physical universe play in learning,
not only for the way humans learn, but the way life learns, and the
way minds, including non-human ordered complex systems emerge.
From a cosmological perspective learning is seen as a fundamental
feature of the universe and central not only to the way we construct
our cosmos, viewed from a realist perspective, but also how we
ourselves, our very personalities and intelligence co-emerge alongside
our world-forming cognition which is a product of our adaptive need
to make our ecology more hospitable. Thus, he arrived at a kind of
twentieth century Neo-Platonism informed by a scientific realism
receptive to the non-proportional features of the universe, and views
of being and reality that trod the same path as Plato and Hegel. Given
Popper’s discussions of Plato and Hegel in The Open Society it
suggests that there may be much to his attitude towards these two
philosophers that has not been sufficiently explored.
David Deutsch, the inventor of quantum computation has called
for a return to Popper, however to his cognitional theory rather than
his more famous falsificationist methodology. Deutsch has recently
argued that in the area of Artificial Intelligence, computational models
based upon inductivist theories of intelligence or ‘input-output’
models will never lead to anything remotely like the creation of
intelligence no matter how much data is inputted and processed.
Deutsch argued that scientists working in the area of Artificial
Intelligence need a new theory of mind and learning, one that he
suggests was outlined by Popper’s hypothetical deductivist model.
Slowly but surely, the critical purchase of Popper’s theory of learning
is beginning to be appreciated. However, the reasons for such renewed
appreciation are often to aspects of his thought that drew acclaim
during his lifetime.
The sophistication of Popper’s works lend themselves to
numerous and differentiated readings. As Popper himself regularly
cannibalized his scientific arguments for fodder for his social and
moral discussions, and his social and moral convictions provide a
Introduction 5
basis for his scientific arguments. For Popper realism was the
“expression of metaphysical faith in the existence of regularities in our
world…without which practical action is hardly conceivable”. 1 The
world is not deterministic, yet there are law-like regularities. These
non-deterministic law-like regularities are analogous to what Bernard
Lonergan identified as ‘recurrent schemas’. Such an understanding
that the existence of law-like regularities does not equate to a
deterministic universe was a point he developed through his debates
with physicists such as Schrödinger. The purpose of such theorisation
was not an abstract logical exercise, but was significant because of the
social and human consequences a deterministic and therefore
pessimistic view of human nature and the forms of social organisation
that arise out of this. As a result, we can understand Popper’s
scientific thought on physics as the ‘proofs’ or prolegomena for his
later social thought. Indeed his scientific arguments are fundamentally
moral arguments relating to individuals and societies; however the
battle at the time as Popper was it was being fought in the debates in
physics. Theorising was not an abstract exercise, as central to the
Bildung-mentality of personal self-cultivation and social
transformation.
The full development and richness of Popper's thought can be
seen in his later lectures given in German. There is a depth to his later
German theorisation that becomes lost in his later English writings at
the LSE. Popper drew on different theorists and emphasised different
aspects of his theories for the different audiences. The Anglophone
world never really had access to many of the intricacies of Popper’s
arguments and this often erroneously resulted in a reception of him as
a positivist or a philosopher of limited analytical and social concerns.
This book redressed some of this by integrating some of his key
German arguments and concepts into the Anglosphere’s broader
received understanding of Popper. This was no simple task as not only
was Popper’s German writing very different from the way his thought
is presented in English, but his early German writings in Vienna are
conceptually, lexically and expressively very different from the
language of his later German theorisation.
There have been many books written on Popper however, his
thought has never reached the kind of popularity of other twentieth

1
K. Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (London:
Routledge,1993 [1974]), p. 150.
century thinkers amongst academic philosophers and their students.

The fact that Popper was hostile to “academic” or “professional”
philosophers instead preferring the company of applied social and
natural scientists may account for a continued undercurrent of
animosity. However, another more practical reason why Popper’s
thought is neglected in philosophical departments has to do with the
broad array of intellectual disciplines that his work covers. Further,
the way global philosophical disciplines have been demarcated in the
Anglophone world is one in which Anglo-analytic and French or
German orientated Continental disciplines both find it difficult to
accept Popper as falling within their particular field. Rather Popper is
often seen to contribute debates or problems almost as an outsider.
Continental philosophers often regard Popper as analytic philosopher
who at times engaged with Continental philosophers such as Marcuse,
Adorno, Habermas, or Wittgenstein but has never been accepted into
the Continental club. Analytical philosophers however, given the
emphasis upon the analysis of particular problems to be conducted
according to specific sub-disciplinary methods often fail to capture the
richness of Popper’s historically evolving thought system and the need
to engage with his work phronetically, by recognizing the
transformative potential of his thought.
There are many narratives from which Popper has been written
out of. As a result of his baptism, hostility to ethno-tribalism and a
universalism of a rather Pauline gleaning, he has largely been written
out of Jewish intellectual history, despite his very ‘typical’ Viennese
Jewish milieu and intellectual culture. He has further been written out
of popular views of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna as his international fame
was owing to his English language publications, even though his
thought was informed by particularly unique Viennese traits. Popper
has however in recent years been taken up as an object of scholarly
inquiry has been in the field of the history of ideas, however, this
requires the knowledge of German and the willingness to delve into
obscure and often seemingly archaic nineteenth century Neo-Kantian
German debates in epistemology and behavioural psychology. After
some inspection these debates turn out not to be about what we
understand by our contemporary usages of epistemology at all, rather
the debates are about cognition (Erkenntnistheorie). Another area in
which Popper’s thought continues to find a contemporary academic
foothold has been in political science or political theory. A resurgent
Introduction 7
historical interest in liberal Cold Warriors, particularly Central

European Jewish thinkers continues to hold interest, particularly in the
United States and parts of South America such as Argentina.
However, by focusing on Popper’s political tracts a large amount of
his writing and thought is often ignored. Further, his social democratic
arguments are often ignored by libertarians who appropriate his
thought, although in a very selective and skewed manner.
This book breaks with the traditional narrative, emphasizing the
role of the Vienna Circle. Rather, this study focuses on the centrality
of the Kantian problem of transcendental criticism, as articulated in
Popper’s Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (1932-33),
and tracks Popper’s life-long struggle with it. The grand narrative that
is presented here is Popper’s gradual liberation from the constraints of
falsificationist philosophy and his increasing legitimization of the
transcendental, especially in his late ontological works. The arguments
forwarded here support F. A. Hayek’s assertion that Popper’s ‘critical’
rationalism is akin to ‘evolutionary’ rationalism2. Ontology was used
by Popper as a heuristic for integrating the various knowledge
domains as well as guiding scientific research. Such metaphysis
enabled Popper to integrate knowledge from various domains in a
non-testable way that would otherwise be prohibited by his
falsificationism. Thus, critical rationalism is viewed from an
evolutionary perspective as both a theory of mind as well as an
epistemology for guiding practical problem solving and scientific
research methods. The distinctive feature of this critical or
evolutionary rationalism is its ‘openness’ or emphasis upon emergent
cognitive and problem solving capacities which in turn give rise to
new problems. This understanding of emergent cognitive capabilities
is central to Popper’s anthropology. Epistemology or a ‘theory of
cognition’ or even methodology cannot be understood as entirely
separate from the ‘knowing subject’. Objective knowledge can only be
understood in relation to this knowing subject located within a
particular problem setting. Thus, Popper’s epistemology is also a
theory of action, or a praxeology.
This book aims to show the way the actual intellectual networks
that Popper engaged with informed the way his thought developed
through a close reading of his letters. This involves an exploration of

2
F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (London: University of Chicago Press,
1973), p. 5.
Popper’s thought within constellations of thinkers that he is not

typically associated with. Popper is an interesting figure at the
crossroads of European philosophy as he can be seen to interact with
all the major centres of analytic philosophy in Europe. By studying
Popper we can begin to see the interconnectedness between Polish
analytic philosophy and the Vienna Circle in this way helping to
overcome what Barry Smith regards as the narrow perception of
Polish analytic philosophy in relation to British analytic philosophy
and Viennese positivism. 3 The way this Polish republic of letters,
particularly through Alfred Tarski related to the scholarship in
Austria, not only the Vienna Circle, but also German traditions of
psychology, particularly the Würzburg School of Cognitive
Psychology played out in the development of Popper’s thought is also
explored. Hence, Popper is contextualised within a Central European
republic of letters and scholarship that cannot be categorised
according to contemporary distinctions as either ‘continental’ or
‘analytic’ but rather included an array of disciplinary and
methodological approaches to shared intellectual problems and
concerns. This book also highlights areas in which Popper may be
seen to fall within the ambit of ‘continental’ philosophy through direct
or indirect engagement with the likes of Wittgenstein, Levinas and
Heidegger on shared problems. The impression that I aim to give the
reader is of Popper’s thought working within a Neo-Kantian
framework, yet incorporating an array of arguments and support from
an eclectic assortment of largely Central European intellectual
traditions from which he would develop his political and metaphysical
positions. Popper is seen to exemplify both the transnational and
multi-linguistic reality of Central European scholarship which, as
Hacohen has shown, was made possible through a particular Viennese
cosmopolitan sensibility.

3
B. Smith, Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano (Chicago: Open
Court, 1996 [1994]). p. 193.
Chapter One
Out of the Haskalah
1.1 Introduction
This chapter explores Karl Popper’s thought within the anti-nationalist

cosmopolitan tradition of the Central European Jewish intelligentsia.
This chapter builds upon the ground breaking study of Popper’s
formative years by Malachi Hacohen (2000) by relating his particular
Viennese Jewish formative context to a broader narrative. By
comparing Popper’s positions with those of Hermann Cohen, another
Neo-Kantian philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment, we have
access to a broader tradition which can help to explain some important
aspects of Popper’s thought.
This chapter presents previously unpublished statements by
Karl Popper concerning Jewish matters. The question addressed is
whether Popper, one of the most influential political philosophers of
the twentieth century, can be regarded as a Jewish philosopher in the
tradition of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah. I do not argue that
Popper was a Jewish philosopher in any religious sense nor do I agree
with Joseph Agassi’s assessment of Popper being a puritan secularist
and agnostic coloured by a positivist version of Christianity.1 There is
much to Popper’s thought, such as a Pauline commitment to an ethical
universality as identified by Alain Badiou that is indeed owing to
Christianity.2 His Open Society and Its Enemies is a treatise against
the Jewish ‘tribalistic’ doctrine of the ‘chosen people’ which he saw
as being appropriated by the Nazi’s in the form of the myth of the
‘master race’. However, Popper can also be seen to have benefited

1
J. Agassi, A Philosopher’s Apprentice: In Karl Popper’s Workshop (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1993), p. 23.
2
A. Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003).
from a very distinct Jewish tradition of Haskalik or Enlightenment

cultural and educational milieu and can perhaps be seen to influence
certain intellectual attributes and concerns that one would expect of a
Viennese non-Jewish Jew. Both Christian and Jewish ideas play a role
in his thinking that require further exploration. I argue that the Jewish
influences on Popper’s thought can be found by looking at the ways in
which Jewish religious beliefs and attitudes reappeared in secularized
forms and arguments following the Jewish Enlightenment. The Jewish
Enlightenment not only had direct consequences for the culture and
values of the Popper household but can also explain certain
idiosyncratic features of his political philosophical writings. Popper
can thus be seen as a case study exemplifying how particular sets of
Jewish Enlightenment ideas came to prominence within a Viennese
setting. As well as shedding new light on Popper’s philosophy, it
suggests the importance of looking to Bohemia for the origins of the
values that prevailed among Vienna’s middle-class and progressively
minded Jewry of the fin-de-siècle.
An important feature of the middle-class central European
Jewish identity was its cosmopolitanism and hostility towards any
expressions of Jewish nationalism. As such, many middle-class Jews
in Vienna, and in other central European sites of cosmopolitanism,
had a negative attitude towards Zionism, particularly to its
“revisionist” variety. Popper was no exception. As he saw it, Zionism
was incompatible with the liberal cosmopolitan culture that the Popper
family so well exemplified. As Popper was opposed to nationalism,
even in its most innocuous guises, a Zionist culture that put the state in
the place of the divine was antithetical to his Kantian inspired
humanism. Although he did not regard himself as Jewish or Christian
in any religious sense, Popper saw the moral substance of religion and
the respect for a divine being as important. For him, all humans are
fallible, yet where our knowledge in the objective sense cannot
venture, we must remain silent and duly respectful. Putting his “faith
in reason” over and above revelation was fundamental to his refusal to
identify with any positive religious doctrine.
Yet Popper did not choose either of the two opposing forms –
atheism or Spinozistic natural theology. Here the centrality of Kant in
his thought is clear – for he would not allow reason to overstep itself;
at the same opening a space for faith (Glauben). The result was a
respectful silence in relation to a transcendental subject, an ontology
Chapter One 11
that was teleologically “open,” a Voltairian epistemological

repudiation of theology, of the doctrines of positive religion, and of
religious authority. Infallible historicisms such as Zionism, whether in
its religious or secular variety, was in modern parlance, a moral
hazard that failed to learn the lessons of the century. As a
consequence, Popper, who remained very Jewish in his secular,
cosmopolitan Viennese high culture, was unable to deal positively
with any mode – religious or nationalistic–of Jewish identity. The
closest he could come to a positive attitude to Jews who did not follow
his cosmopolitanism was to show his sympathy for their unfortunate
circumstance of being a national minority. As Theodor Gomperz,
himself an assimilated Jewish classicist, remarked, the Judaism of the
class that Popper belonged to amounted to little more than “un pieux
souvenir de famille”.3
Popper’s views and attitudes to Judaism and Jewish nationalism
are rooted in his assimilated Jewish Viennese family background. The
Haskalik elements in his cosmopolitan outlook can be discerned by
comparing his view with those of another Jewish Neo-Kantian,
Hermann Cohen. Popper’s attitude towards his own Jewish identity
can be seen as an embodiment of the failure of Cohen’s cosmopolitan
ideal. Whereas Cohen went to great lengths to weave Judaism and
cosmopolitanism together, Popper opted to keep them apart. The
result was a negative attitude to Judaism that was pitted against a very
sober cosmopolitanism. Cohen argued for an intimate relationship
between the German and Jewish cultures resulting from a shared
cultural spirit.4 But the failure of this ideal of cultural synthesis can be
seen in the way Popper distanced himself from his Jewish ancestry
whilst aspiring to a distinctly and traditionally Germanic Austrian
aesthetic culture. Dialectally, however, this effort at Germanization is
itself the legacy of Jewish Enlightenment traditions. Although the
Jewish aspects of Popper’s thought are residual rather than overt, they
reflect a Viennese Jewish cultural tradition that was noticeably non-
Jewish in response to the threat of anti-Semitism.

3
C. Schorske, Fin-de-siécle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books.
1981), p. 147.
4
A. Poma, “Hermann Cohen: Judaism and Critical Idealism,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, ed. Michael Morgan and Peter Gordon
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 93.
1.2 The Popper family
An understanding of the Popper family background may yield some

insights into how Karl Popper came to hold particular ideas and
values, some of which had a prophetic dimension, which propelled his
thought. Despite Popper’s desire to separate himself from the Jewish
tradition and his ancestry and his desire to embrace the Austrian (and
emphatically not German) cultural identity and the universal Kantian
community, his early social milieu was decidedly Jewish. The lasting
effects of any early Jewish influence are not immediately evident as
there was little in his formative years that were overtly Jewish in a
religious sense. This lack of any distinctive Hebraic cultural or
religious traits was the legacy of a complex and lengthy process of
intellectual and social development instigated by the European
Enlightenment. Popper, through a number of complex historical
avenues, was heir to the Jewish Enlightenment thought that
culminated in mass apostasy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. He was heir, more specifically, to the Bohemian Jewish
Enlightenment that flowered into the golden age of Vienna’s baptised
Jews. Popper’s father converted to Christianity, becoming a Protestant
(Lutheran) as a result of the belief that a person living in a
predominantly Christian society had an obligation to give as little
offence as possible.5 Such conversions were common among Vienna’s
upwardly mobile Germanized Jews, many of whom traced their
origins to the regions of Bohemia and Moravia of the Austrian
Empire. This process was given further impetus by the Josephinist
reforms of the 1780s which saw the creation of the German-Jewish
school system that was introduced into these regions. 6 Popper’s
parents were typical members of this newly affluent and
professionally and socially successful segment of Vienna’s Jewish
community. Simon Popper, Karl’s father, came from a German
speaking household from Bohemia, and his maternal grandparents
came from Silesia in Poland and from Hungary.7

5
K. Popper, Unended Quest, op. cit., p. 105.
6
M. Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 28.
7
D. Edmonds and J. Eidinow, Wittgenstein’s Poker (London: Faber and Faber,
2001), p. 83.
Chapter One 13
The Popper name (‫ )פאפרש‬was common in Bohemia. According

to Malachi Hacohen, Karl’s paternal grandfather Israel Popper (1821–
1900) came from the backwaters of Kolin, but then moved to the more
prosperous town of Raudnitz and eventually to Vienna. Karl Popper’s
father became a partner in a successful legal practice and then master
or Meister vom Stuhl of the Masonic lodge Humanitas.8 Freemasonry
played a crucial role in enabling the upward social mobility of
Vienna’s increasingly influential bourgeoisie. This was the case as far
back as the 1780s when The Order of Asiatic Brethren, Die Ritter vom
wahren Licht, actively accepted Jews as members.9 Simon Popper’s
eventual apostasy is not surprising as Masonry and other movements
such as the Frankists attracted Jews who sought a more prominent
position in the broader Christian society and greater freedom from
rabbinical authority.10
Jenny Schiff, Karl’s mother, was representative of a Jewish
Viennese haute bourgeoisie idea. 11 Both of Karl’s maternal
grandparents were founding members of the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde (Music Association), which had built the
Musikvereinssaal in Vienna. This put the Schiff family in the upper
echelons of the Viennese bourgeoisie that sought to emulate the
cultural world of Fanny Arnstein, daughter of the leading Prussian
banker who was also a founding member of Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde. Indeed, it was Arnstein’s salon of the 1770s that
provided the ideal that inspired Karl’s mother’s music concerts.
Further, Karl’s maternal grandmother, née Schlesinger, also came
from a musical family, one of whose members was Bruno Walter, for
whom Karl performed in a production of Bach’s St Matthew
Passion.12 The Popper household, according to Hacohen, was built on
the virtues of Besitz (property), Recht (law), and Kunst (culture).13

8
Malachi Hacohen relates how Humanitas was the oldest and largest lodge in Vienna,
which was heavily represented by Jews seeking an alternative to the established social
hierarchy. See M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., pp. 26-27, 41-42.
9
W. McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670-1918 (Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1989), p. 39.
10
Frankism or the followers of Jakob Frank (1728-91) was an influential messianic
movement amongst Central European Jewry which had strong Masonic connections.
11
D. Edmonds and J. Eidinow, Wittgenstein’s Poker, op. cit., p. 83.
12
13
M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 29.
Karl wanted to see himself as belonging to the Germanophone

Viennese high culture and only incidentally to his Jewish ancestry.
David Weinstein and Avihu Zakai contend that Popper exemplified
what Leo Strauss called the “problem of the Western Jewish
individual who or whose parents severed his connection with the
Jewish community in the expectation that he would thus become a
normal member of a purely liberal . . . universal human society, and
who is . . . perplexed when he finds no such society.”14 It is in this
light that Popper’s ideal of the “open society” should be framed. As
stated in a profile published in The Times, Popper was “an assimilated
German Jew,” for the fact was that “many Jews did merge with the
population–Assimilation worked.” The editor of The Times
provocative response to this was: “I feel sure The Führer would have
readily agreed with him when he sent all the assimilated German
Jews, no doubt contemporaries of Sir Karl’s to the Gas chambers.”
Popper was incensed by this, and wrote:
I do not consider myself “an assimilated German Jew”: I think this is

how “the Führer” would have considered me. In fact, I was born,
(like the Führer) in Austria, not in Germany, and I do not accept
rationalism, [sic] even though it is a fact that I was born in a family
15
that had been Jewish.
As Hacohen points out, Popper indeed saw himself as a

Lutheran. He’d been baptised at birth and his parents were baptised in
1900 before he was born.16 He had never belonged to the Jewish faith
and as such saw no grounds to consider himself a Jew. As he
explained in a 1969 letter to Michael Wallach, editor of the Jewish
Year Book, he stressed his Jewish origin in an effort to show his
sympathy with minorities, rather than from any cultural attachment.17

14
D. Weinstein and A. Zakai, “Exile and Interpretation: Popper’s Re-invention of the
History of Political Thought,” Journal of Political Ideologies 11.2 (June 2006), p.
201.
15
Popper to Smith; 28th July 1982. Karl-Popper-Sammlung. Box 407.17.
16
Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 31.
17
Karl Popper to Michael Wallach, Editor, Jewish Year Book, (Jewish Chronicle, 6
January 1969).
Chapter One 15
1.3 Popper, Israel and Jewish identity
Hacohen sees Popper as a typical member of the class of acculturated

Viennese Jews, characterised by a German education, Enlightenment
ethos, and liberal politics.18 There is no evidence that Popper regarded
himself as a Maskil (‫)משכיל‬, an adherent of the Haskalah movement,
or in any way a descendant of the Haskalah. It is safer to say, as
Hacohen does, that Popper embodied the spirit of Spätaufklärung of
the late Enlightenment.19 Notwithstanding this, when Popper is seen in
the context of the Haskalik tradition, certain tendencies of the Jewish
Enlightenment as well as the social roles and attitudes of the Maskilim
may go some way toward explaining the kinds of Enlightenment ideas
found in his thought.
The difficulty in pursuing this line of inquiry lies partly in the
lack of direct evidence on specifically Jewish aspects in his works.
The German-Jewish intellectual tradition, particularly in the Viennese
context, had certain common features many of which continued to
play a dominant role in Popper’s thought, despite his sense of having
extricated himself from it. It is evident from Popper’s personal letters
that his attitude towards his own Jewish ancestry was complex and
uneasy. The remarks he made on Jews and the Jewish tradition were
neutral at best, hostile and antagonistic at worst. For example, in a
letter to Ernst Gombrich, he stated: “I suppose that successful Jews are
often not so nice.”20 Such remarks and hostility to what he saw as the
“tribal” underpinnings of Jewish peoplehood can also be understood
in the Viennese Jewish context. Like many Jewish families, the
Popper household (at least in the interwar period) were ardent in their
social democratic political beliefs which were based on assimilationist
and progressivist ideals. Karl’s father, Dr. Simon Siegmund Carl
Popper, was greatly interested in social problems as attested by his
personal library that included works by Marx, Engels, Lassalle,
Kautsky, and Bernstein. Popper also referred to Max Adler as a “first-
rate” politician, despite his objections to his party’s policy derived

18
M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., pp. 32-33.
19
M. Hacohen, “Dilemmas of Cosmopolitanism: Karl Popper, Jewish Identity, and
‘Central European Culture’,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 71, No. 1 (March
1999), p. 114.
20
Unpublished letter of correspondence: Karl Popper to Ernst Gombrich, 25
September 1969, Karl-Popper-Sammlung. Box. 3005 Letters. Gombrich, Ernst 1956-
83.
from Engels of using violence as a threat.21 While universalist ideals

underpinned Jewish emancipation and German assimilation they also
fostered an unintended negative attitude towards the Jewish tradition,
as was apparent in some of Vienna’s most prominent Jewish
intellectuals such as Karl Kraus, Otto Weininger, and Arthur
Trebitsch. Thus, Popper’s intellectual hostility towards Jewish beliefs
and his distancing himself from Jewish traditions and customs can be
seen as a lingering vestige that accompanied the drive of his social
class to attain status and prestige in Viennese society.
But despite distancing himself from Jewish culture, Popper
could not naively look to cosmopolitanism as the opposite ideal of
Jewish nationalism and “tribalism” on the one hand, or of anti-
Semitism on the other. In the first draft of his autobiography, Popper
was adamant that Jews were “guests” in Austria who were treated “as
well, or better, than one could expect.” However the progressive
acceptance of Jews into Austrian society both legally and politically,
particularly after 1918, exposed the fundamental problems of the
cosmopolitan ideal. Hacohen states that Popper thought that the Jews:
understandably but not wisely, invaded politics and journalism. . . .

The influx of the Jews into the parties of the left contributed to the
downfall of these parties.” For him “living in an overwhelmingly
Christian society imposed the obligation to give as little offense as
possible . . . anti-Semitism was to be feared, and it was the task of all
22
people of Jewish origin to do their best not to provoke it.
Such statements reveal Popper’s concern with the ethno-political

realities, the particular social position of the Jews, and the ever
persistent fear of anti-Semitism. As long as there are chauvinistic
forms of nationalism, such as anti-Semitism, cosmopolitanism can
never attain its ideal. Thus, Popper’s Kantian inspired
cosmopolitanism functioned as a regulative ideal restricted by
practical social reality.
In a letter to the editor of The Times, Popper stated that he
regarded all nationalism as evil, including Jewish nationalism.23 This

21
K. Popper, Unended Quest,op. cit., pp. 11, 109. Also see K. Popper, The Open
Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, [1962], 1945), chap. 18, n. 22; chap. 19,
nn.35-40, chap. 20, n. 44.
22
M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., pp. 306-307.
23
Karl Popper to Smith; Penn–7– 82. Popper Archive, 407.17.
Chapter One 17
attitude may guide our understanding of Popper’s relationship to

Isaiah Berlin, the Russian Jewish philosopher with whom Popper is
often associated. While in terms of political philosophy Popper was in
agreement with Berlin’s views of liberty and historical inevitability,24
in relation to matters of culture and tradition shared many of the
concerns of Austro-Marxists, such as Max Adler, regarding
individualism and personal development. He feared the Austrian Volk,
their drunkenness, violence and xenophobia. The difference in their
immediate situations explains this: Berlin, working in Oxford, had
married into a rich banking family, held liberal views that Popper, in
economically depressed Red Vienna, did not share. In their letters,
Popper never expressed any willingness to comment on or get
involved in the then newly established State of Israel.25 Despite their
shared commitment to a secularized cosmopolitan lifestyle, Berlin,
unlike Popper, saw himself as a secular Jew who participated in
Jewish cultural life, saw himself as part of the Jewish people, and
maintained a Jewish identity. Berlin, for example, often attended a
Synagogue when in a new city as a way of identifying himself with its
local Jewish community. Popper, by contrast, did not allow himself
any feeling of belonging to a collective of any sort, as a matter of
principle, and expressed his particular dislike of collectives that he
thought were based on religious or racial myths. Popper, in this
regard, avoided all personal associations that conflicted with his
Kantian universalist social aspirations.
Although Popper may not have exhibited any feelings of
kinship with the Jewish people, in the way Berlin did, unlike the latter,
Popper’s agnostic religiosity left some room for theism. For Popper:
“[Moses’ Torah] was the source of religious intolerance and tribal

24
For Popper’s support and criticism of Berlin’s famous lecture on the two concepts
of liberty, see Popper to Berlin, 17 February 1959, Karl-Popper-Sammlung, Box 276-
10. For their similar positions on the problem of historical inevitability and the
friction that this caused, see J. Agassi, A Philosopher’s Apprentice, op. cit., p. 12.
Also see I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969),
pp. 41-117.
25
Karl Popper to Berlin, 16 February 1954. Karl-Popper-Sammlung, Box 276-10. In
this letter Berlin required Popper’s assistance in the settling and educating in England
of Yisrael Galili (1911-86), an Israeli member of the anti-communist left wing
faction, who was later a member of the Knesset and a minister. The letter is imploring
in tone and aimed to convince Popper of the righteous duty of helping such a man.
Unfortunately, there is no known written response by Popper, which suggests that he
probably refused any help.
nationalism, and nationalism is a terrible danger, especially the

connection between religion and nationalism.” 26 However, in a
posthumously published interview, not previously discussed by
scholars, we can detect an affirmation of an aspect of Jewish values.
Asked by Edward Zerin whether God had a place in his thinking, he
responded:
Although I am not a Jew by religion, I have come to the conclusion

that there is great wisdom in the Jewish commandment “not to take
the name of God in vain.” My objection to organized religion is that
it tends to use the name of God in vain. I don’t know whether God
exists or not. We may know how little we know, but this must not be
turned or twisted into a positive knowledge of the existence of an
unfathomable secret. There is a lot in the world which is of the nature
of an unfathomable secret, but I do not think that it is admissible to
make a theology out of a lack of knowledge. . . . Some forms of
atheism are arrogant and ignorant and should be rejected, but
27
agnosticism–to admit that we don’t know and to search–is all right.
Here, then, is a rare written example of Popper explicitly

affirming a Jewish tenet. There is another famous instance in which
Popper referred to a Jewish religious idea; however, he ascribed the
source of it to the more famous Popper of Vienna in the fin-de-siècle,
namely Joseph Popper, also known by the pseudonym Lynkeus, a
distant relative of Karl’s, developed a radical “half-socialist” theory
that prevented him from gaining an academic position. Popper wrote
that Lynkeus was called a “half-socialist” because he envisaged a
private enterprise sector in his society, limiting the economic activity
of the state to the care of the basic needs of all citizens. Popper’s
social thought was greatly influenced by Lynkeus’s, especially in its
emphasis on negative utilitarianism. 28 Popper-Lynkeus based his
social thought on the Talmudic cornerstone: “If you kill a man you
have killed the world; when you support a man you support the

26
27
K. Popper, After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings, ed.
Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 48-49.
28
According to Hacohen, Joseph Popper-Lynkeus came from Kolin, the same city
that Karl’s paternal grandfather Israel Popper came from. See: M. Hacohen, Karl
Popper, op. cit., p, 26. For Popper’s familiarisation with Lynkeus’s social thought, see
K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 321, n. 7.
Chapter One 19
world.” 29 While Popper accepted this wisdom, considering his later

“Three Worlds Ontology” and evolutionary writings, it is clear that he
rejected the mystical interpretation of this Talmudic saying. In the
Babylonian Talmud it is written: “Whoever destroys a soul from
Israel, the Scripture considers it as if he destroyed an entire world.
And whoever saves a life from Israel, the Scripture considers it as if
he saved an entire world.”30 We can see that the ethno-culturally and
religiously specific language is not in keeping with Popper-Lynkeus’s
“half-socialism” and humanistic and universalistic beliefs. Hence,
Popper-Lynkeus appropriated the version of this saying that appears in
the Jerusalem Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if
he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is
considered as if he saved an entire world.”31 What we are left with is
the Neo-Platonic idea that we contain within ourselves and intellectual
cosmos.
Clearly, this second Jerusalem version, in omitting reference to
Scripture and Israel, is an example from within the Jewish tradition of
an ethics that accords with Popper-Lynkeus’s secular humanism.
Popper-Lynkeus’s use of this passage had a profound impact on how
Karl Popper, reworked this passage so as to reflect the particular
epistemological orientation of his own philosophy. In The Self and Its
Brain (1977) Popper opens with a paraphrase of Popper-Lynkeus’s
“every time a man dies, a whole universe is destroyed. (One realizes
this when one identifies oneself with that man).”32 It is evident that
Popper’s interpretation is not concerned with the original Rabbinic or
social signification but rather with existential and epistemological
concerns. This is the only written instance where Popper shows an
overt yet far removed connection to the rabbinic scholarly tradition.
When we turn to matters concerning the state of Israel, Popper’s
non-receptiveness can best be gauged by a statement documented by
his former student Joseph Agassi, according to which Popper said that
“the U.S. should grant free admission to all Israelis so as to reverse the

29
“Wenn du einen Mensch tötest, hast du die Welt getöten, wenn du einen Mensch
erhältst, erhältst du die Welt.” S. Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural
History (Cambridge University press, 1989), p. 111.
30
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a.
31
Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4.1.23a.
32
K. Popper and J. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism
(London: Routledge, 1977), p. 3.
process.”33 In Exile and Interpretation: Popper’s Re-Invention of the

History of Political Thought, David Weinstein and Avihu Zakai offer
an even more negative example:
Popper’s ambivalence about being Jewish, despite being victimized

by anti-Semitism and being forced into exile, was not accompanied
by analogous ambivalence about Zionism. Jewish nationalism was
both “stupid” and “wrong” racial pride like so many other
nationalisms. Zionism was just the “petrified” tribalism of the
European Jewish ghetto displaced to Palestine. Israel’s treatment of
34
Palestinians made him “ashamed in [his] origin.”
When seen within Popper’s Jewish, progressivist Viennese

context his strong opposition to Zionism is no surprise, for as Zohn
has noted, the majority of Viennese Jews were opposed to the Zionist
movement. Vienna’s professional Jewish class was looking forward to
greater assimilation, as reflected in the Neue Freie Presse, the
foremost newspaper at the time. The radical Zionist positions tended
to find favour with the more recently arrived and less affluent
Galizianer Jews who had emigrated from the region of Galicia.35
For the cosmopolitanism that Popper idealized the aim of
humanity was to work towards the creation of a global “state” (or
“federation,” given his adherence to Kant’s Perpetual Peace) that
would make the existing state system and its emphasis on ethnic
homogeneity obsolete. Such sentiments are admirable enough; yet this
kind of cosmopolitanism seems unable to confront the fact of the
creation of the state of Israel. In Popper’s case this impasse resulted in
a near silence in his engagement with Israel and Zionists.
Popper’s unwillingness to engage in dialogue with those
holding fundamentalist and exclusivist political views was reminiscent
of the experience of his idol, Albert Einstein, who shared a similar
cosmopolitan outlook and social milieu. Einstein directly confronted
what he saw as the “narrow nationalism” of the followers of
Zabotisky’s “revisionist” right-wing Zionism. It is evident from

33
J. Agassi, A Philosopher’s Apprentice, op. cit., p. 128.
34
D. Weinstein and A. Zakai, “Exile and Interpretation”, op. cit., p. 188.
35
H. Zohn, “Fin-de-siècle Vienna : the Jewish contribution” in (eds.) Reinharz and
Schatzberg, The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the
Second World War (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry,
Brandeis, 1985), p. 140.
Chapter One 21
Einstein’s correspondence that not only did rational discussion and

engagement fail in all its objectives but that basic congeniality also
proved impossible. Einstein summed up the dilemma of Jewish
intellectuals, like Popper, who held cosmopolitan world-views:
The problem is made even more difficult by the fact that the best and
finest Jews, the prophets together with Jesus Christ, as well as our
best philosophical teachers, were for the most part cosmopolitans
whose ideal was guided by the human condition in general. How can
fidelity to the Jewish community be combined with a general
36
humanistic outlook, with the concept of world citizenship?
Einstein describes here a central problem of political

liberalism—that of relating communitarian and individualistic ethics
to a cosmopolitan world-view. According to Malachi Hacohen (2009),
Popper regarded Zionism as a colossal mistake and Israel as a tragic
error. Zionism prevented an effective solution to the Jewish question
and incited a national conflict between Jews and Arabs. However,
once the state of Israel was established, Popper realised the need to
prevent the annihilation of the Jews living in Israel and to oppose
those who sympathised with Arab attempts to expel them.37 Despite
his lifelong distancing himself from the Jewish people, Popper
nevertheless seems to have felt that he shared their fate, as for
example, when he invokes his Jewish or minority ancestry when
supporting minority civil rights or opposing anti-Semitism. Thus, in
an interview in 1984, it was the problem of Jewish nationalism rather
than anti-Semitism, which drove Popper’s continual involvement with
Jews issues:
Jews were against Hitler’s racism, but theirs goes one step further.
They determine Jewishness by mother alone. I opposed Zionism
initially because I was against any form of nationalism, but I never
expected the Zionists to become racists. It makes me feel ashamed in
38
my origin: I feel responsible for the deeds of Israeli nationalists.

36
See Einstein’s “Address at the Opening of Congress House for Refugees,” 30
October 1938, in: F. Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2009), pp. 121-22.
37
M. Hacohen, “’The Strange Fact That the State of Israel Exists’: The Cold War
Liberalism Between Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism”, Jewish Social Studies, Vol.
15, No. 2. (Indiana University Press, Winter 2009), p. 58.
38
Notwithstanding such sentiments, it is possible to argue that

Popper’s philosophy exemplifies typical Jewish traits indebted to the
midrashic tradition. Popper shared with the rabbis an appreciation that
the West is a scriptural tradition and that it’s most important artifact is
the book. The radicalism of The Open Society can be seen as an
exercise in attempting to ‘open’ the way we read the sacred
authoritative texts of the West, particularly the works of Plato. In
keeping with the Rabbinic tradition, scripture is understood in an anti-
totalitarian light as an ‘open book’. Popper’s opposition to
totalitarianism, authoritarianism and persuasion and his support for
open disputation via the method of conjecture and refutation. is a
continuation of this quintessentially Rabbinic legal tradtion of
“questions and responces”: she'elot ut'shuvot.
1.4 The Jewish Enlightenments
To gain a clearer view of Popper’s Jewishness we must look to the

sources from which his modern Jewish intellectual milieu emerged.
More specifically, we must look to the Enlightenment, the particular
intellectual processes that transformed much of Europe’s Jewry. It can
be argued that there were two major centres of Jewish Enlightenment:
the first originating in Berlin and associated with Mendelssohn, and
the later culminating in the golden age of Vienna’s Jewish
intellectuals, exemplified. 39 Further, the categorization of Jewish
Enlightenments is not necessarily limited to the instances outlined
above. Königsberg and Prague were also early centres of Haskalah,
and important centres of Haskalah would follow in the commercial
towns of Galicia, Odessa, and elsewhere throughout Poland and
Russia.
The Haskalah began in Berlin with Mendelssohn’s translation
of the Torah into the vernacular German in 1778. For Moses Hess
(1812-1875) the Socialist-Zionist who was born into an orthodox
Jewish family in Bonn, Mendelssohn showed that one could remain a
Jew while embracing cultural and intellectual vistas that were far
removed from Judaism. For Mendelssohn there was a link between

39
I am not arguing that these are the only Jewish Enlightenments; other Jewish
Enlightenments, such as that associated with Isaac Baer Levinsohn, the father of the
Jewish Enlightenment in Russia, are beyond the scope of this study.
Chapter One 23
Jewish loyalty and an inner freedom to discriminate between the

various layers of Jewish tradition, not all of which he believed carried
the same validity. He believed that a religion could not be a religion if
it was in anyway coercive. Alexander Altmann states that as a result
of emancipation, Mendelssohn envisaged a Judaism that was a pure
religion, free of all attributes of power.40 It was this denominational
rather than national view of religion that became the prevalent view
among Vienna’s educated Jewry. Mendelssohn thus represents a
tradition of Jewish Enlightenment thought which would continue in
the work of modern German Jewish writers such as Hermann Cohen,
Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig. However, Cohen’s embracing
of Kantian philosophy would open up new theoretical possibilities for
Viennese Jews with the abandonment of Judaism altogether. Bildung
and various Neo-Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical traditions
would come to fill in the social and spiritual space left open by
abandoning Jewish national sentiment, monotheism, alongside an
acceptance of Christian morality, particularly an ethical universalism,
however without doctrinal articulation.
To understand the role of Kant’s thought in providing a secular
faith for baptised Jewish intellectuals I turn to the work of Hermann
Cohen (1842-1918), founder of the Marburg School of Neo-
Kantianism. Popper’s doctoral supervisor, Karl Bühler, was a member
of the Würzburg School of Cognitive Psychology, a research project
that grew out of Cohen’s Marburg School. In Cohen’s writing we see
a markedly Jewish approach to a number of Kantian philosophical
ideals. As a pre-eminent German-Jewish Enlightenment representative
Cohen can help us understand the residual Jewish elements, whether
overt or latent, that guided Popper’s thought in a particular direction.
Although Popper did not profess his faith in Judaism or in
Christianity, he did not profess atheism. His belief that human
knowledge (doxa, Erkenntnis) was incapable of knowing the deity,
whose name he was cautious not to invoke, points to a Jewish
understanding of God that is wholly transcendent and beyond our
reach, which, in response, frames a Jewish mode of secularism.
However, from a cultural perspective, Popper was clearly a

40
A. Altmann, “Moses Mendelssohn as the archetypal German Jew”, in Reinharz and
Schatzberg, The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the
Second World War (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis
University Press, 1985), pp. 23-24.
progressive German-Austrian. Within his distinctly Jewish formative

environment there was a tension between the Germanic aesthetic and
intellectual side of his personality and the non-Jewish Jewish
mentality it engendered. Popper is a twentieth century example of
Hermann Cohen’s failed synthesis between Judentum and
Deutschtum, which attempts to find its tertium comparationis in
Greekness. This Greekness, especially Platonism, was seen by Cohen
to provide a nexus between the two cultures, the Jewish and the
German. For Popper, this Greekness was also a way to transcend the
incommensurable ethno-cultural world-views of the Jewish and
German peoples. Greekness, in Popper’s thought, manifested itself as
a philosophical commitment to Kantianism, Socratic fallibilism, a
Platonic doctrine of an independent realm of ideas, and a view of the
Homeric epics. The West need not rely exclusively on the Bible for
its foundations. Although Cohen’s synthesis was regarded as a failure
even during his lifetime, the attempt at this synthesis provided new
creative possibilities for central European Jewry. However, the failure
of this synthesis, at least at the level of the individual, was to see the
sublimation of Judentum by Deutschtum, which may explain Popper’s
hostility towards Israel and his anti-Semitic remarks. His deep Jewish
roots were hidden behind a thick Austro-German culture.
The major differences between Cohen and Popper reflect the
different eras in which they lived. While Cohen was imbued with the
ideas of German idealism and romanticism, he was among the first to
raise the cry “Back to Kant!”, much like Popper’s later “Back to the
Presocratics!”41 For Cohen, following Kant, the fundamental concept
of ethics was mankind, though he perceived “mankind” as being
reflected in the ethical notion of Deutschtum. According to Nathan
Rotenstreich, for Cohen there was an affinity between Deutschtum and
humanity, for he did not regard hatred to be a characteristic passion of
the German soul.42 It was as a result of this romantic belief that Cohen
sought to link Deutschtum with Judentum.43

41
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment, ed.
A. F. Petersen and J. Mejer (London: Routledge, 1998).
42
N. Rotenstreich, “Moses Mendelssohn as the archetypal German Jew”, in Reinharz
and Schatzberg, The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to
the Second World War, (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry,
Brandeis University Press,1985), p. 55.
43
H. Cohen,“Deutschtum und Judentum” (1915), in Jüdische Schriften, ed. Bruno
Strauss (Berlin, 1924).
Chapter One 25
Building upon Mendelssohn’s attempt to free Judaism from

coercive elements of its religious tradition, Cohen sought to separate
the Jewish national spirit from nationalism. For Popper, however,
even such ideas of a national spirit were to be rejected as essentialist,
unfalsifiable, and as reflecting the final stages of the scientific turn
that Neo-Kantianism was going through. Further, Vienna’s Jewish
bourgeoisie had since found a new ancient tradition to accompany
their mass apostasy – the revival of interest in classical Greek culture
– that swept through German intellectual life. No Viennese family
exhibited this fervent appropriation of an alternative Greek tradition
more than the Gomperz family, with whom Popper was on close
terms. It was Theodor Gomperz who had written Griechische Denker
(Greek Thinkers), which, as Hacohen observes, popularized classical
philosophy throughout the German and English speaking world. 44
Franz Rozenweig may have lamented that families such as the
Gomperz had an excess of Bildung, which coincided with a paucity of
Jewish substance.45
Once we take Cohen’s belief in a people’s national spirit, such
as Deutschtum or Judentum, out of the equation, we can better see a
common Kantian inheritance. Cohen maintained a Kantian concern
for the supreme importance of conscience and personal autonomy.
Like Popper, he envisaged a society of autonomous individuals,
governed by the rationality of such individuals. Humans are
comprised of both a rational and non-rational part and it is for the
betterment of society that individuals exert their rational capacity in
matters of social organization; hence the emphasis upon individual
and moral responsibility. The Kantian stress on the importance of
personal autonomy requires a socialist dimension to provide order and
social cohesion and to prevent the degenerative tendencies of
excessive individualism. According to Wendell S. Dietrich, the
“socialist” dimension of the prophetic ethos would direct individuals
to develop a sense of empathy and responsibility for others in need.
This idea is expressed in Cohen’s thought as a social goal of his
prophetic messianism.46 In a similar way, Popper’s socialist leanings
could be seen as originating in Jewish messianic ethical attitudes that

44
45
A. Altmann, “Moses Mendelssohn as the archetypal German Jew”, op. cit., p. 21.
46
W. Dietrich, Cohen and Troeltsch: Ethical Monotheistic Religion and Theory of
Culture (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), chap. 1.
were common among progressivist Viennese Jewry. The same

prophetic quest that was expressed in Cohen’s notion of the
Rechtsstaat, and later it works such as Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom
(1944), Bloch’s Geist der Utopie (1918), and Popper’s The Poverty of
Historicism (1957) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945).
These may all be seen to share a common ethical standpoint – a
convictional imperative that derives from a Jewish prophetic
messianism.
The dissimilarity between Popper and Cohen can be largely put
down to the different historical contexts in which they lived. Cohen
was both a German and a Jewish patriot whose cosmopolitanism was
based on the idea of the nation state; Popper, on the other hand, was
an assimilated Viennese Jew, for whom cosmopolitanism was part of
the complex social reality of a multinational empire, the various
national groups of which were often bitterly antagonistic to each
other. We can take from Popper a sober view of cosmopolitanism,
where the social realities of regionalism give rise to the pressures put
on minorities to assimilate, to renounce differences, as a better
alternative to conflict. Cohen’s search for an overarching set of values
by which to unify people of incommensurable cultural and religious
traditions can be seen as the perpetual, if never fully attainable, task of
a Kantian cosmopolitan intellectual.
Joseph Agassi thought that secular puritanism and the protestant
ethic where characteristic for Popper. For Agassi, Popper was an
agnostic par excellence who preached a modern positivist version of
Christianity emptied of all religion. Agassi further states that “In
addition to the vulgarity of his efforts to appear a Christian in some
sense of the word, he managed this way to endorse a version of
Antisemitism, peculiar to Vienna of his early days”.47 I do not indorse
Agassi’s views here. Popper’s Christianity was far from being a
religionless or some kind of Christian positivism. Rather, Popper was
imbued with a deeply pious Christianity of what we would now call a
post-secular non-doctrinal variety. Popper’s ethical writings echo the
Christian moralism of Kierkegaard and of Dostoyevsky both of whom
had a profound moral impact upon his formative sensibilities.
Popper’s fondness for Bach’s Saint Matthew’s Passion also attests to a
deeply Christian moral sensibility which he gave expression to in his
writings in very non-confessional and secular ways. In the Open

47
J. Agassi, A Philosopher’s Apprentice, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
Chapter One 27
Society he referred to Kierkegaard as “the great reformer of Christian

ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-
Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy”. For Popper, what matters
to Christianity is not the historical deeds of the powerful Roman
conquerors, that is a theistic interpretation of history, rather what
matters to Christianity is what Kierkegaard referred to as ‘what a few
fishermen have given the world’.48 It is not that Popper preached a
version of Christianity emptied of all religion as Agassi stated, rather
it was an intensely religious Christianity stripped of politics, doctrine,
institutional servitude and irrational emotivism or anything that may
contribute to material or psychological gain or exploitation. Indeed, it
was a religiosity associated with an intellectual meditation upon the
moral kern of the ‘few fishermen’ and expressed in Bildung or the
phronetic transformation of intellectual labour. Popper exaltedly
described this state of felicity as his Freude an der Arbeit.
1.5 Bildung
The ideal of Bildung, the German language, Kantianism, and the

Greek tradition – all of which together defined Popper’s cultural
milieu – meant that there was no longer any need to explicitly use
Jewish terms in defining his identity. Popper, as was common for
intellectuals in Mitteleuropa, was supportive of a restricted esoteric
illuminati. This was a common feature expressing itself in an array of
manifestations ranging from the mystical naturalism of members of
the Vienna Circle such as Neurath before the logical-positivistic turn,
to crypto-Polish Messianic aspects of the Lvov-Warsaw School
thinkers or even the Protestant Kabbalistic tradition of Viennese
Freemasons to which Karl’s father Simon Popper belonged. Popper’s
open society was not as open as the title suggests and Bildung needs to
be appropriate to one’s station in life. From his personal letters we can
get a sense of the restrictions that Popper placed on the desirable
social activities and knowledge that are permissible for individuals in
a highly differentiated society. In Vienna he supported a ‘living-wage’
for everyone in order that each individual would have the capacity to
develop their personal character through the appropriate activities and
Bildung for their station. This was very much the Austro-Marxist

48
K. Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., pp. 200, 273.
attitude to personal development. Hacohen also identified the Danish

existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard as playing a role in this
attitude. Popper became familiar with Kierkegaard’s works, including
Stages on the Way of Life from his father’s personal library. 49
Kierkegaard’s introspective description of the transition from aesthetic
to ethical and finally to religious life had a profound influence on
Karl. Popper spoke often of his aspirations for human cultivation that
reflects his Kierkegaardian ideals. For instance, he preferred the
masses to take an interest in sport and in sporting or nature related
activities rather than the drinking and fighting of his early Viennese
years. Later in life he expressed similar sentiments relating to the
under regulated consumption of popular media such as television,
along with a distain towards unrestricted social climbing.
Popper’s life’s work as a Bildungsweg sought an inward
integration of art, science and ethics directed toward self-cultivation
and all of his writings from the most symbolic works of his logic to
his exegesis of Presocratic poetry need to be viewed in this context.
This ideal of the élite die Wissenden that prevailed in Popper’s milieu
was exemplified in his formative years as previously shown by
Hacohen. Bildung is a term that is historically particular to its German
historical context and has no real cultural parallel in English.
Cultivation does not seem to capture the cult-like devotion to art and a
religious and fervent belief in its transformative capacities that
enraptured the German bourgeois. However, Bildung also resulted in
crass populist versions associated with social climbing, that Popper
found distasteful. According to Carl Schorske Bildung became a “term
denoting the acquired high culture which accorded a mark of social
substance if not social grace to its possessor”.50 The Popper family
rather can be seen to be purveyors of Bildung rather than imitators.
Indeed, Popper’s autobiography Unended Quest can be read as a
Bildungsroman.

49
50
C. Schorske, Fin-de-siécle Vienna, op. cit., p. 283.
Chapter Two
Was Karl Popper a Positivist?
2.1 Introduction
This chapter argues that we need to explore more closely the various
Kantian influences upon Popper’s thought. It contributes to this by
suggesting new ways of looking at the Vienna Circle’s relation to the
Kantian tradition. The complexity of Popper’s relationship to the
Vienna Circle is often a point of confusion as some view Popper as a
member of the Vienna Circle while others minimise Popper’s
association with this group. This chapter argues that Popper was not a
member of the Vienna Circle or a positivist but shared many Neo-
Kantian philosophical tendencies with the members of the Circle as
well as many of their philosophical problems and interests. By better
understanding the influence of the Circle’s members upon Popper, we
not only remove the myths surrounding Popper’s positivism, but also
recontextualise the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. This
chapter further argues that it was Popper’s friend during his formative
philosophical years in Vienna, Julius Kraft (1921–1960) who was
responsible for the way in which Popper approached Kant. Through
Kraft, Popper was introduced to the thought of Leonard Nelson
(1882–1927) and Jakob Fries (1773–1843) as well as a tradition of
critical rationalism which Popper would continue both in his
methodological orientation as well as through his late German
Enlightenment intellectual values.
2.2 The Vienna Circle
Popper’s intellectual and social connections to the Vienna Circle were

complicated and this makes interpreting his early thought notoriously
difficult. This section looks at the way that Popper’s early thought
incorporated Kantian elements from the Vienna Circle as well as some

non-Kantian positions that Popper received through intellectuals of the
Lwów-Warsaw School. Despite this, Popper disagreed on many of the
central premises held by the Vienna School ‘neo-positivists’. Possibly
as a result he was never privileged with a personal invitation to attend
Schlick’s seminar, thus was never officially a member.1 Popper was
not, as Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009) described, one of the most
prominent members of the Vienna Circle, 2 nor was he a logical
positivist as Feyerabend stated.3 Despite this, his writings and actions
were seen to directly contribute to the reputation of the Circle. It is out
of this complex social and intellectual environment that much of the
confusion concerning Popper’s positivism arises.
It was largely through the work of Otto Neurath (1882–1945)
that the group of Viennese analytical philosophers known as the
Vienna Circle achieved fame, especially through Neurath’s journal
Erkenntnis. 4 The Vienna Circle has tended to be seen as a
homogenous group devoted to a focus upon Russellian and
Wittgesteinian doctrines adhered to in a logically positivistic manner.
Popper perceived that his reputation abroad during the years in New
Zealand (1937–1945), in which he wrote The Open Society (1945),
and after would hinge upon his association with the Circle.
Subsequently, Popper relied heavily upon the endorsements and
testimonies of the members of the Circle in the years before taking the
post at the London School of Economics in 1946 and did much to
sustain his seminal influence in the Circle. This can be seen in
Unended Quest (1974) in which Popper claimed responsibility for
killing logical positivism and sealing the Circle’s fate.5
However, through Popper’s private correspondence we get a
remarkably different picture of his relationship to the members of the
Circle. Due to the Vienna Circle’s importance in Vienna, Popper was
invariably drawn towards them. He formed life-long intellectual
relationships as well as close friendships with members of this group.
If he were to build an international reputation, Popper knew it could

1
K. Popper, Unended Quest, op. cit., p. 84 Also see: M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op.
cit., pp. 186–195.
2
L. Kołakowski, Positivist Philosophy: From Hume to the Vienna Circle (Pelican
Books, 1972), p. 209.
3
P. Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1975), p. 112.
4
K. Popper, After The Open Society, op. cit., p. 29.
5
Chapter Two 31
be done through this group. In Unended Quest Popper gave as one of

his reasons for writing Logik der Forschung (1934): a desire to travel
abroad due to a feeling that central Europe would once again be
plunged into another catastrophe. 6 Thus, Popper built his career
around the Vienna Circle and relied heavily on the recommendations
of its members in building his international reputation and securing
employment abroad. The letters of correspondence between Popper
and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) from 1940 to 1950 deserves greater
scholarly attention. These letters may help to break down certain naïve
myths of the Vienna Circle intended for public consumption that
Neurath, the ideologue of the Circle, for political reasons and Popper
for professional reasons helped to create.7 The letters between Popper
and Carnap reveal a congenial and collaborative friendship of two
scholars with similar scientific concerns and both imbued with the
thought of Kant. Carnap stated in one of his letters that he believed
that his views in questions of semantics largely agreed with Popper’s.8
Politically the two held similar positions in relation to the
problematic reception and understanding of Hayek’s thought in the
U.S.A. Both felt that aspects of his thought opposing unrestricted
capitalism had been neglected.9 Carnap also felt the need to criticise
Marx carefully in order: ‘not to furnish arguments to those who not
only differ with his views but also reject his goal’.10 From these letters
we get a sense of the common concerns over political and social
problems that united Popper with Carnap. We can also see that Carnap
was ready to provide advice and criticism of Popper’s political
arguments. Within the breadth of intellectual concerns that
characterised the thought of members of the Vienna Circle it is clear
that Popper stands in close proximity. However, defining such a place

6
Ibid., p. 107.
7
K. Popper, After The Open Society, op. cit., pp. 85–108. Also see: Karl-Popper-
Sammlung, Klagenfurt, Box 282–24 Carnap Rudolf.
8
Letter of correspondence: Carnap to Popper, January 29, 1943. See: Karl Popper
(2008), 88.
9
Letters of correspondence: Popper to Carnap, 25 April 1946. Carnap to Popper, 17
November, 1946.
10
Letters of correspondence: Carnap to Popper, January 29, 1943. Popper to Carnap,
31 March 1943. See: K. Popper, After The Open Society, op. cit., pp. 88–107.
amongst the Vienna Circle has been a matter of considerable scholarly

debate.11
David Frisby also locates Popper’s thought within the positivist
camp of the Vienna Circle however, he also hints at an alternative
locating of Popper’s thought within a Neo-Kantian camp. Frisby
stated that the analytical theory of science associated with logical
positivism moved beyond its radical phase into two separate yet
sometimes overlapping directions. The first direction concerned the
logical reconstruction of scientific languages and the second with the
logico-methodological reconstruction of the research process itself.
The former tradition Frisby associates with Carnap’s work which led
to what became known as ordinary language philosophy, the latter,
Frisby associates with Popper’s concept of falsificationism. Frisby
then states that Popper broadened his theory of scientific method to
incorporate the social and political world.12
At this point it is important not to oppose the Vienna Circle to
the Neo-Kantians. Rather it is the case that Popper’s thought reflects
the complexity of the Viennese intellectual environment in which the
two trajectories along which logical positivism developed were
themselves due to a broader Neo-Kantian inheritance. Frisby makes
indications towards this complex inheritance by stating that the Neo-
Kantian conception of science ‘reduces science to methodology in
such a way that what characterizes science is its methodology in the
abstract. This is stated to be the position of both the South West
School and the Marburg School, both of which isolated methodology
from its object in the development of their approaches to science.
Thus we see two Neo-Kantian positions underpinning an aspect of
neo-positivism that Popper’s thought was seen to characterise. In this
regard it is safer to understand Popper’s thought as resulting from a
Neo-Kantian tradition to a greater extent than a neo-positivist one.
Popper’s understanding of science is remarkably Neo-Kantian
and reflects aspects of both the South-West School and the Marburg
School. Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) of the South-West School

11
It should be noted that by 1935 Carnap rarely took part in the meetings of the
Vienna Circle. See: D. Miller, Out of Error: Further Essays on Critical Rationalism
(Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), p. 9.
12
D. Frisby, “Introduction to the English Translation” in Theodor Adorno et al., The
Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (London: Heinemann Educational Books,
1976), pp. xxvi–xxvii.
Chapter Two 33
made the distinction between a science generating laws from a science

of individual events: the former are considered to be nomothetic and
the later to be idiographic. Popper’s understanding of science is a
modification of the nomothetic understanding which holds laws as
existing in nature and it is our task to discover them through the
generation of hypotheses which aim at a high degree of
‘verisimilitude’ or likeness to the truth. However, it is to the Marburg
School of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) and Paul Natorp (1854–1924)
to which we must turn to appreciate the greatest debt that Popper
owed to Neo-Kantian science. The Marburg School was primarily
interested in scientific knowledge and took scientific cognition to be
the prototype of all cognition. For them, epistemology was the
analysis of the logical foundations (or in Popper’s case lack thereof)
of the exact sciences. Frisby suggests that in some respects modern
positivism has its roots in this tradition. 13 If this is the case, then
Popper had a unique advantage over the other members of the Vienna
Circle as his early education was directly influenced by Marburg
School cognitive theory through the cognitive psychology being
conducted by the Würzburg School of which Popper’s supervisor Karl
Bühler was a member.
A different picture is drawn by Friedrich Stadler who argued
that viewed from a greater distance, Popper’s work can be seen to be
closer to that of the Vienna Circle than Popper himself cared to admit,
and that the Vienna Circle members would not have perceived such a
great separation between themselves and Popper. Stadler has shown
that Popper, despite his intellectual disagreements, was on good terms
with its members many of whom he met with regularly. 14 The
similarity of Popper’s thought with that emanating from the Vienna
Circle can be supported from a number of different standpoints. It may
be the case that, the most important theoretical similarities between
the two do not pertain to the unique features of the Vienna Circle’s
logical positivism and language philosophy, but are the result of the
shared Kantian epistemological mindset found in both Popper and the
early works of the members of the Circle such as Schlick and Carnap.
However, recent work on the Vienna Circle supports the need to

13
Ibid., p. xx.
14
F. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis. Ursprung, Entwicklung und Wiurkung des
Logischen Empirismus im Kontext (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997),
pp. 489–545.
appreciate the fundamentally Kantian mindset that underpinned the

way its members approached the philosophy of science and influenced
the broader conceptual distinctions that they formed. According to
Friedman in Foundations of Space-Time Theories (1983), the Vienna
Circle itself started as a Neo-Kantian movement whose observational-
theoretical distinction was actually a continuation of the Kantian
form-content distinction; as a result much of the Circle’s philosophy
of science remained ‘indirectly Kantian’.15
Despite the similar problem situations and Neo-Kantian
undercurrents that united Popper with the Vienna Circle, his work
nonetheless contains many different technical features to that of the
Circle’s other members. To appreciate the scientific methodological
and epistemological points of divergence between Popper and the
Vienna Circle, it is fruitful to compare Popper’s work with that of
another central European school of analytical philosophy, namely the
Lvov-Warsaw School. Through the use of Alfred Tarski’s (1901–
1983) work as well as that of other members of the Lvov-Warsaw
School, it may be the case that Popper used one tradition of analytical
philosophy to counter the arguments of the Viennese analytical
philosophers such as, Carnap, Schlick as well as Hans Reichenbach
from the Society of Empirical Philosophy which formed the ‘Berlin
Group’, and Wittgenstein in Cambridge. However, as Burdman-
Feferman and Feferman have shown, the members of the Vienna
Circle themselves, particularly Carnap, were directly influenced by
Tarski and through him were influenced by the other prominent
figures of the Lvov-Warsaw School.16
However, Popper was also familiar with the writings of other
members of this school and his personal library contained books both
in English and in Polish by the figures of this school. 17 Popper’s
understanding of rationality has closer affinities with the anti-
irrationalism of one of the school’s leading thinkers Kazimierz
Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) than with any of the Viennese ‘positivists’.
For Ajdukiewicz, every rationally accepted proposition ought to be

15
M. Friedman, Foundations of Space-Time Theories (Princeton: Princeton
16
A. Burdman-Feferman and S. Feferman. Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), Ch. 4, 5.
17
For instance, Popper wrote inside the front cover of Jan Łukasiewicz’s Aristotle’s
Syllogistic, that ‘This is the first competent book in English on Aristotle’s Syllogistic’.
See: Karl-Popper-Sammlung, University of Klagenfurt Library, Austria.
Chapter Two 35
inter-subjectively communicable and testable. This emphasis upon the

link between standards of rationality, testability and inter-subjective
requirements for objectivity reflect the central pillars of Popper’s
critical rationalism.18
More broadly, Popper’s methodological approach to analytical
philosophy can also be seen to be closer to the Lvov-Warsaw School
than to the Vienna Circle. In opposition to Wittgenstein and his
influence upon the Vienna Circle, Popper much like the Lvov-Warsaw
School, saw the task of analytical philosophy as not primarily
concerned with linguistic analysis. Popper (at least after the Logik) in
accordance with Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938), the School’s
founder, saw that philosophy should concern itself with problems
rather than distinguishing between different modes of ‘good’
(scientific) and ‘bad’ (metaphysical) knowledge. 19 Although Popper
made such a distinction in his falsificationist methodology, reflecting
the concerns that he shared with the Vienna Circle (namely a
methodological formalism that he could never overcome and which
Feyerabend strongly criticised),20 he nonetheless saw the need to solve
concrete problems as being a more pressing concern. Popper
understood that metaphysics played an important role in problem
solving and could not be abandoned; however, it must be regulated by
reason and guided by our background store of conjectural knowledge.
In this way, Popper’s dissent from what he believed to be the anti-
metaphysical insistence of Wittgenstein’s linguistified Kantianism and
finitism, that was shared in variable measure by the logical positivists

18
See: D. Miller’s, Out of Error, op. cit., p. 13: ‘There is…the explanation of
scientific objectivity in terms of inter-subjectivity…which acknowledges that
individual scientists are not objective, but maintains that in a milieu of free critical
discussion, possible only in an open society, subjectivity, where it is dangerous, may
be largely neutralized’.
19
For Twardowski’s understanding of the role and method of philosophy see: Jan
Wolenski, Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School
(Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1989), 36–41. Twardowski like Popper rejected
the unscientific treatment of metaphysical problems not the problems themselves.
Twardowski developed the distinction between metaphysics (which is reflective of
Popper’s attitude towards the importance of metaphysics for scientific theory
formation) and metaphysicism. The latter is defined by Wolenski as any manner of
investigating philosophical problems which in advance assumes a definite
metaphysical solution.
20
For Feyerabend’s criticism of Popper’s formalism or methodological idealism see:
Against Method, op. cit., Ch. 17, 18.
of the Vienna Circle, reflected the standpoint of another leading

member of the Lvov-Warsaw school, namely Tadeusz Kotarbiński
(1886–1981). Kotarbiński saw the metaphysical discipline of
ontology, as being indispensable for philosophical inquiry. 21 For
Popper, metaphysics was intrinsic to science, insofar as explanatory
theories transcend experience. Metaphysics is unavoidable as every
‘fact’ for Popper contains ‘universals’ which entail ‘law-like’
behaviour. 22 These ‘universals’ which played a greater role in
Popper’s latter thought are reflective of Aristotle’s description in
Book M of the Metaphysics of Plato’s Ideas as being Socrates’
universals made transcendent. The argument that metaphysics are
intrinsic to science and not something in opposition to it is central to
the way Popper in his mature post-Logik thought, construed what
Victor Kraft (1880–1975) believed to be the common tenet of the
Vienna Circle: ‘that philosophy ought to be scientific’.23 It is perhaps
in regards to this broad tenet that Popper can be regarded as being
philosophically akin to the Vienna Circle.
Popper’s anti-positivist analytical approach to philosophy took
time to develop. 24 The elements of Popper’s later realist and
objectivist interpretations of scientific theories can be seen from his
earliest works. He would not develop his realist and objectivist
theories to their full and mature extent until after the Logik when he
was able to change his opinions on the rational arguability of non-
falsifiable theories which coincided with a practical appreciation of
the benefits of transcendental criticism. Popper’s early thesis
‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung (1927) written
for the Pedagogic Institute, reveals that although he was studying
under Karl Bühler, the lure of neo-positivism was great and he was
not yet in a position to theoretically combat it.25
In this 1927 thesis it is stated: ‘Although this work is highly
theoretical in its main parts, it is nevertheless the result of practical
experience and shall in the end come to be used in practice. Its method

21
K. Ajdukiewicz, Problems and Theories of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1973), p. xi.
22
K. Poppper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Harper and Row, 1968
[1959]), p. 444.
23
V. Kraft, The Vienna Circle (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1953), p.
15.
24
K. Popper. Unended Quest, op. cit., pp. 10–19.
25
K. Popper, Frühe Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), p. 87.
Chapter Two 37
is therefore largely inductive’. 26 This work as a whole is a rather

unusual piece, in which inductivism is quite naturally given as the
obvious choice of method. As his thesis progresses the types of
evidence used to support his psychological arguments concerning the
fear of the known and angst for the unknown include Kierkegaard,27
Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Shakespeare, alongside the expected
Würzburg School psychologists and Kant. It is a remarkably un-
Popperian work indeed, that is, if we were to misunderstand Popper as
one of Kołakowski’s positivists. It is apparent that this thesis reflects
his early and broad philosophical interests and his early attempt to
bring his thought into line with the trends of the Vienna Circle and the
scientific concerns of the Würzburg School.
Only a year later, however, we can see the beginnings of a
Popperian philosophy and a system of thought, based upon arguments
which would be developed throughout his life. This is first clearly
evident in his 1928 dissertation Zur Methodenfrage der
Denkpsychologie. In this work, Popper developed Bühler’s attempt in
Die Krise der Psychologie (1927) to reform psychology through the
‘die Axiome der Sprachtheorie zu finden’. 28 As Bühler’s book was
only published in 1927, it indicates that the shift from Popper’s
unusual 1927 inductive thesis to the first real Popperian work in 1928
may be owing to a greater familiarisation with Bühler’s work. Thus,
one can speculate that Bühler’s Die Krise der Psychologie, may have
been a significant, but by no means only, source of Popper’s
opposition to the Vienna Circle’s inductivism and neo-positivism. It
may be the case that through this book Popper’s earlier leanings
towards Kant in his 1927 thesis could be developed for a
methodological program. Bühler’s 1927 book reflects Popper’s similar
concerns with a biological factor underpinning methodology. 29
Further, as a result of the impact of a biologically oriented theory of
communication, a methodology that is built upon this for Popper

26
‘Die vorliegende Arbeit, obwohl in ihren Hauptteilen im hohen Grade theoretisch,
ist dennoch ganz aus praktischer Erfahrung heraus entstanden und soll letzten Endes
wieder der Praxis dienen. Ihre Methode ist daher im wesentlichen induktiv’. K.
Popper, Frühe Schriften, op. cit., p. 87.
27
Ibid., pp. 118, 120, 122-4, 139, 141.
28
Ibid., 190. Also see: K. Bühler. Foundations of Semiotics (Amsterdam;
Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990 [1927]), p. 29.
29
K. Popper, Frühe Schriften, op. cit., p. 255.
would have to be deductive and have a transcendental component.30

Popper would later extend these features that were originally
developed by Bühler from what was then the cutting edge science of
Denkspsychologie or cognitive psychology to scientific philosophy as
a whole. An attempt was made by Popper to explain this argument for
the deductive and metaphysical basis behind all of our knowledge in a
letter to Victor Kraft (1880–1975) of the Vienna Circle in 1967. 31
From this letter it can be seen how Bühler’s work in finding a
linguistic solution to the problem of method in psychology remained
the feature at the centre of Popper’s philosophy throughout his later
years. Arne Petersen has suggested that the real breakthrough came in
1929 with Axiome, Definitionen and Postulate der Geometrie where
Popper realised that logic rather than psychology, was of fundamental
concern for scientific discovery. 32 This early development from
psychological to biological then to logical concerns in Popper’s
approach to methodological problems is an important feature of his
early thought.
Ultimately, Popper’s movement away from the positivist
influences of the Vienna Circle can be seen to be part of a broader
trajectory away from logical positivism within the Circle itself, partly
resulting from an increasing interaction with the ideas of the Lvov-
Warsaw School. In Unended Quest Popper famously responded to the
question of who killed logical positivism with a feigned confession: ‘I
fear that I must admit responsibility’. 33 The logical positivists
themselves never accepted Popper’s infamous assertion. Artur
Rojszczak cites a letter from Tarski to Neurath from 1936 in which
Tarski stated: ‘And now Carnap was of the opinion, that just the
liberation from this hindering influence of W.[ittgenstein] is due to the
Varsovians…’.34 Among the various reasons for the abandonment of a

30
Ibid., p. 130.
31
Letter of Correspondence. Popper to Victor Kraft. 9 June 1967. Karl-Popper-
Sammlung 3.16, 24 Victor Kraft 1945-74.
32
This point was made to me by Arne F. Petersen in response to a question about
Popper’s pre-deductivist methodology, Friday, 29th May, 2009. Also see: A. F.
Petersen, “Popper’s Gewöhnungstheorie Assembled and Faced with other Theories of
Learning”, in Anuarul Institutului de Istorie "George Bariț" din Cluj-Napoca, Series
Humanistica (2008). Vol. VI: 265-287. For “Axiome, Definitionen and Postulate der
Geometrie” see: K. Popper. Frühe Schriften, op. cit., pp. 263–390.
33
34
A. Rojszczak, “Philosophical Background and Philosophical content of the
Semantic Definition of Truth”, in Erkenntnis, 56. (Netherlands: Kluwer, 2002), p. 37.
Chapter Two 39
certain view of the ‘early’ Wittgenstein and failure of logical

positivism in Vienna it seems that Tarski’s lectures in Vienna and the
discussion which they provoked bear a measure of responsibility.
However, further on in Unended Quest, Popper made another
assessment of the demise of the Vienna Circle that is often
overshadowed by his more ostentatious confession cited above. In
opposition to Popper’s claim to have killed logical positivism he
stated:
I may perhaps say here that what I regard as the ultimate cause of the
dissolution of the Vienna Circle and of Logical Positivism is not its
various grave mistakes of doctrine (many of which I had pointed out)
but a decline of interest in the great problems: the concentration upon
minutiae (upon ‘puzzles’) and especially upon the meanings of
words; in brief, its scholasticism. This was inherited by its successors,
35
in England and in the United States.
This criticism of the ‘scholasticism’ into which the Vienna

Circle degenerated would become a reoccurring criticism that Popper
would level against academic philosophers later in life. Such a fear of
‘scholasticism’ or the abstraction of the concerns of philosophers from
the real problems facing humanity would become a characteristic ideal
of Popper’s critical rationalism. Popper perceived Russell’s vision of
the philosophy of science as ‘providing a possible cure for the
diseases of the modern world’, as losing its focus in the twentieth
century, which was in no small part due to the cult-like influence of
Wittgenstein.36
It appears to be the case that Popper received his understanding
of Wittgenstein’s philosophy from the way he was misconstrued by
the Vienna Circle as a positivist. However, Allan Janik and Stephen
Toulmin in their book Wittgenstein’s Vienna (1973) have provided a
contextual picture of Wittgenstein which they contend shows that he
was not at all a positivist or a linguistic philosopher. While in English
the real Fichtean nature of Wittgenstein’s thought has yet to be written
about, Janik and Toulmin’s book is an illuminating first step, and

35
36
A. Burdman-Feferman and S. Feferman. Alfred Tarski, op. cit., p. 96. Also see
Unended Quest where Popper stated that the positivism developed by the Vienna
Circle became influenced by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in ‘a very dogmatic form’.
Unended Quest, op. cit., p. 97.
raises many issues for our understanding of Popper. If we accept Janik

and Toulmin’s argument then even an anti-positivist reading of
Popper still makes him look more the positivist than the more mystical
Wittgenstein. For Janik and Toulmin:
Wittgenstein’s insistence that the relationship between language and

the world was fundamentally “ineffable,” that the mode of projection
of a map cannot itself be “mapped,” any more than we can see the
light rays we are seeing with—this insistence, which he had
expressed in the closing proposition, Wovon man nicht sprechen
kann, darüber muss man schweigen, was interpreted by his Viennese
associates as the positivist slogan “Metaphysicians, shut your traps!”
Janik and Toulmin cite Paul Engelmann as identifying the

deceptive points of convergence and divergence that lead to this
mistaken uptake of Wittgenstein:
…he draws the line between what we can speak about and what we
must be silent about just as they do. The difference is only that they
have nothing to be silent about. Positivism holds—that what we can
speak about is all that matters in life. Whereas Wittgenstein
passionately believes that all that really matters in human life is
precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about.
This is an interesting instance of how the same standpoints can

be used to argue for radically different arguments. The way the
evidence is understood having more to do with the subjective attitudes
and cognitive and moral development of those who engage with the
particular knowledge in question. Once again Janik and Toulmin
provide an apt description:
To young Central European intellectuals growing up in the political

and cultural wreckage of the Habsburg Empire, this philosophical
reformation came like a breath of fresh air…As these young men read
it, the book was a grand, highly professional, and seemingly final
37
denunciation of superstition…

37
A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster.
1996 [1973]). pp. 219-220.
Chapter Two 41
The sentiments which lead the Vienna Circle to read the

Tractatus as a positivist tract epitomising Genauigkeit (Exactness)
were also those that Robert Musil expressed in The Man Without
Qualities when a 32-year old mathematician named Ulrich who is set
against the Gefühlskultur (sentimental culture) of the Viennese
bourgeoisie and metaphysical and romantic musings of the Christian
nationalist youth who meet at the house of the part-Jewish Gerda
Fischel.38 One can imagine the shock that must have been felt by the
member of the Vienna Circle when upon meeting them, Wittgenstein
preferred to read to them the poems of the mystic Rabindranath
Tagore. Even Popper would not allow himself such open displays of
mystical thinking, rather restricting any outpouring of such esoteric
illumination to veiled cosmological theorising. In this light, Popper
may be construed as being the stricter disciplinarian in matters of
sayable known-knowledge. If this is the case, what we know about the
Popper-Wittgenstein nexus needs serious rethinking.
2.3 The renewal of Kant’s Enlightenment
It is pertinent that I make a short digression into Popper’s Kantian

understanding of Enlightenment thought. The philosophy of Karl
Popper can be seen as a continuation of the German Aufklärung
tradition. This point has previously been raised by Kurt Salamun who
argued that the ethos of Popper’s critical rationalism was
fundamentally that of the Aufklärung. 39 Popper’s credo: ‘I may be
wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to
the truth’,40 ought to be taken as a reaffirmation of this Kantian late-
Enlightenment ethos in the twentieth century. Locating Popper’s
thought within the German Enlightenment ought not to prevent us
from perceiving similarities with other Enlightenment figures,
particularly those of France and Britain. Direct reference to French

38
It is interesting to note that Popper and Musil both studied under Karl Stumpf
however went on to fill out their world-views via different intellectual mediums. This
point is demonstrative not only of the interconnectedness of Viennese intelligentsia,
but also their versatility and intellectual roundedness.
39
K. Salamun, ed. Moral und Politik aus der Sicht des Kritischen Rationalismus
(Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 1991), p. 95.
40
K. Popper, The Myth of the Framework: In defence of science and rationality, M.
A. Notturno, Ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 82–111.
Enlightenment figures and their thought is sparse in Popper’s work.

Despite the ease with which Popper discussed Kant, his discomfort
with lengthy discussions on other Enlightenment figures was clearly
evident. This was particularly evident when he declined Hayek’s
recommendation to write a middle part for The Open Society dealing
with figures such as Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes and Rousseau. Hayek
even suggested to him in a letter that Popper was uncomfortable in
systematically treating the figures of the English, Scottish and French
Enlightenments.41 A familiarity with the works of J. S. Mill (which he
inherited from his father), as well as the central arguments in Locke
and Hume’s philosophies of science remain notable exceptions.
Popper clearly saw himself as heir to a tradition epitomised by
Voltaire. Rather than looking at his better known political works for
evidence of this, I will turn to Woran glaubt der Westen? 42 This
lecture given in Zürich in 1958, reveals much about Popper’s
philosophical attitude, yet remains unknown to political theorists
outside a small contingent of Popper scholars. Here Popper
emphasised the role of Voltaire for the Enlightenment which was
characteristic of the type of rationalism which he sought to revitalise
for a post-war Europe:
We must remember that the Enlightenment started with Voltaire’s

letter which attempted to bring to the European Continent the
intellectual climate of England which had a dryness sharply in
43
contrast to its physical climate.
The connection that Popper refers to here is an understanding of

rationalism associated with the ‘great prophets’ espoused by the likes
of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. This latter type of rationalism is well
known to readers of The Open Society as being a central point of
opposition to the ‘critical rational’ or empirical-deductivist philosophy

41
Letter of Correspondence: Hayek to Popper, 17th February 1963. Karl-Popper-
Sammlung. 305. 15.
42
K. Popper, After The Open Society. op. cit., p. 233.
43
‘Man muß sich in diesem Zusammenhang daran erinnern, daß die Aufklärung mit
Voltaires Briefen aus London über die Engländer anfing: mit dem Versuch, das
intellektuelle Klima Englands, jene Trockenheit, die so merkwürdig mit seinem
physischen Klima kontrastiert, auf dem Kontinent einzuführen’. K. Popper, Auf der
Suche nach einer besseren Welt: Vorträge und Aufsätze aus dreißig Jahren,
(München: Piper Verlag GmbH, 2004 [1984]), p. 233.
Chapter Two 43
that Popper espoused. This however, does not mean that Popper was
not a rationalist; he was, both in the sense of being anti-irrationalist
and an apriorist. Popper’s later ontology, evident in Objective
Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972), is a testament to the
apriorism, albeit hypothetical, that existed alongside his empiricism.
The opposition between empiricism and rationalism for Popper was
not as pressing as the opposition between one mode of ‘prophetic’
rationalism and another Voltairean ‘sober’ rationalism of a ‘give and
take’ attitude. Indeed, by coming to the position in Die beiden
Grundprobleme that all knowledge is theory impregnated, he believed
he had found a way around the empiricism-rationalism dichotomy.
Popper’s critical rationalism has been summarised by David
Miller in Out of Error (2006):
Rationality, according to critical rationalism, is wholly a matter of

method; and this rationality in no way rubs off on, or has any effect
on, the outcomes of our intellectual activity. It is not our beliefs, or
our theories, that are rational, but the manner in which we handle
these beliefs and these theories. To be sure, this emphasis on
methodological issues is not all that there is to critical rationalism,
since the word ‘critical’ too is central. What critical rationalism
claims is that the only way in which our theories are to be
44
investigated is critically, negatively.
This book however, aims to develop the argument that Popper’s

understanding of rationality developed in a way that opposes Miller’s
view of critical rationalism. I argue that Miller’s interpretation does
not pay sufficient attention to the praxiological and phronetic aspects
of Popper’s philosophy. The Enlightenment values and strictures that
Popper held were those most conducive to promoting a society and a
scientific culture which adhere to the logical structure of cognitive
activity. Criticism is not only an Enlightenment value but also a mode
of conjecture, the content of which comprises a set of logical
consequences associated with the structural features of the way an
organism adapts to its environment. In this way the link between the
metaphysical, cosmological and social and moral thought which are
both grounded by his epistemology is reflective of Lonergan’s
position that “For just as the dynamic structure of our knowing

44
D. Miller, Out of Error. op. cit., p. 50.
grounds a metaphysics, so the prolongation of that structure into

human doing grounds an ethics”.45 Lonergan’s apt description of the
‘parallel interpenetration of metaphysics and ethics’ suggests that we
should not be looking for an ‘ethical underpinnings’ as many Popper
scholars have attempted to do, rather there is a kind of transformative
ascent to Popper’s life’s work that gives even his most technical
arguments on logic and physics a moral gleaning. To say more of such
a Neo-Platonic ascent remains beyond the scope of literary criticism
presented in this book as it would not be possible without doing untold
damage. However, what this book aims to do is accompany the reader
through passages in Popper’s writings where this ascent radiates most
ingeniously and erotically in often seemingly mundanely technical
arguments, such as his discussions on logic and semantics or his more
obscure and imaginative later works.

45
B. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1992), p. 126.
Chapter Three
The early philosophical problems
3.1 Introduction
This chapter explores Popper’s thought on synthetic knowledge, that

is, the relationship between what he called ‘transcendentals’ and
reality, by which he meant the physical world we occupy. What was
of particular concern for Popper was the way the two are linked by our
cognition and the way various scientific methods attempt to
understand this through subjective experience (Erfahrung versus
Erlebnis) or objective cognitive architecture (Geltungslogik). The
problem of identifying a “breakthrough” leading to a recognisably
Popperian Popper is far from easy to discern. Ter Hark has looked at
the role of Otto Selz.1 Hacohen has explored the Fries-Nelsen problem
setting. 2 Others such as Petersen have looked at the importance of
Popper’s supervisor Karl Bühler and the work of the Würzburg
School. Gattei also suggests that a decisive breakthrough occurred
during his study on geometry.3
Trying to isolate a single “Copernican” moment in Popper’s
thought is something that Popper scholars continue to dispute.
However, it was Kant as early as 1933 for Popper in Die beiden
Grundprobleme in which the link between intersubjective

1
See; M. ter Hark, “The Psychology of Thinking, Animal Psychology, and the Young
Karl Popper,” in Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, Vol. 40. No. 4.
(Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2004a), pp. 375 – 392. And; M. ter Hark. Popper, Otto Selz,
and the rise of evolutionary epistemology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004b). Chapter 5. And; M. ter Hark, “Searching for the Searchlight Theory: From
Karl Popper to Otto Selz”, in Journal of the History of Ideas. Academic Research
Library. Vol. 64, No. 3, (July 2003), p. 465.
2
3
S. Gattei, “Karl Popper’s Philosophical Breakthrough”, Philosophy of Science, 71,
(2004), pp. 448-466. Similar sentiments have been made to me by Arne Petersen and
Jeremy Shearmur in conversations concerning Popper’s early work on geometry.
communication and our capacity to gain objectively valid knowledge

of external reality (despite our “anthropomorphic framework”) was
argued to be possible. Against the sceptic’s ‘semantic view of
knowledge’ Popper follows Kant in forwarding an alternative anti-
essentialist view capable of asserting objectivity in relation to
empirical reality. Popper came to the conclusion that:
The objectivity of knowledge cannot therefore be sought in any

knowledge that grasps its object “in itself”; rather, it consists in
scientifically determining the object according to the universally
valid (intersubjective) methodological principles (for the use of our
understanding).4
Once Popper reached this view in Die beiden Grundprobleme it

enabled the development of his later arguments on truth and
objectivity within an anti-essentialist framework which Part II of this
book is devoted to exploring.
3.2 Julius Kraft: an extraordinary friendship
In order to contextualise the problematics of Die beiden

Grundprobleme I will now discuss an obscure early influence upon
Popper’s early intellectual development, namely, his close friend
Julius Kraft (1898–1960). According to David Miller, Popper had
many informal conversations with Kraft during 1924-1925.5 Popper
wrote that at the time in which he met Kraft he had been studying
philosophy for some years without actually having contact with a
teacher of philosophy or anybody with knowledge of the subject in
any depth. Popper stated that Kraft was a ‘wonderful teacher’ and that
they discussed problems “for hours, for days and nights”. Kraft was
clearly the more proficient philosopher of the two during the years
following the First World War in Vienna, at least in terms of
qualifications and publications. The extent to which Popper not only
shared philosophical positions and problems with him, but also deeper
philosophical attitudes and interests, is a testimony to the centrality of

4
K. Popper, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, (London
and New York: Routledge, 2009 [1979]), p. 100.
5
D. Miller, Out of Error, op. cit., p. 5.
Chapter Three 47
Kraft for Popper’s intellectual development. It was Kraft who Popper

stated ‘never ceased to study, and to ponder about, Kant’s three
Critiques, especially the first. Kant’s resolution of the antinomies – his
“transcendental idealism”’. As Popper understood it, for Kraft,
Kantian critical rationalism meant that all reasoning is discursive
rather than intuitive as Kant stipulated that there is no such thing as an
‘intellectual intuition’ which is an ‘authentic source of knowledge’, in
the sense that what is intellectually intuited is true. For Kraft, ‘the
intuitionist philosopher is an authoritarian philosopher’. 6 Kraft’s
arguments against intuitionism in Von Husserl zu Heidegger (1932
[1957]) would become a central feature of Popper’s philosophy and
would significantly influence Popper’s negative attitude towards
Heidegger. This belief in the discursive (theory centred) character of
human reason would become one of Popper’s fundamental beliefs and
is the basis for his philosophical concern for the particular needs of
rational argumentation in relation to the complexity of intellectual and
social problems that we face.
Hacohen stated that Kraft’s Von Husserl zu Heidegger in which
he attacked phenomenology, existentialism and Hegelianism, as well
as Kraft’s Die Unmöglichkeit der Geisteswissenschaft (1934) almost
read as sequels to The Open Society. 7 Kraft’s works significantly
predate the publication of Popper’s major social and political works
and reflect Kraft’s pivotal role within the Fries-Nelson critical
rationalist tradition. As such, Kraft’s works ought not to be seen as
sequels but more appropriately, as having a greater significance in
foreshadowing The Open Society than Popper himself acknowledged.
A reassessment of Popper’s positions in relation to the works of his
‘teacher’ and ‘friend’ Julius would be a valuable exercise in order to
better understand Popper’s originality. Such an exercise would also
bring to the fore an often neglected aspect of the Popper story in the
public imagination, that is the friendship, understood in the finest
Aristotelian sense, which the two shared. We can see from the
correspondence between Popper and Kraft that at the time when
Popper was in the process of publishing his work on the problems of
induction and demarcation in what would later appear in
Grundprobleme and Logik der Forschung (1935), that Popper was

6
K. Popper, After The Open Society, op. cit., pp. 16-17, 19. Also see: J. Kraft, Von
Husserl zu Heidegger (Frankfurt: Öffentliches Leben, 1957).
7
M. Hacohen. Karl Popper, op. cit., pp. 123-124.
constantly seeking Kraft’s advice and feedback in relation to his

work. 8 For instance, the letters of 1933 show that Popper was
particularly concerned with Kraft’s opinion on his chapter on Fries
which included Kraft’s criticism of Kant. Chapter Five on Fries and
Kant was perhaps the most important chapter in the original
manuscript for Die beiden Grundprobleme as it contained the
discussions on the dilemmas of truth and Kant’s transcendental
method necessary for Popper to propose a solution to the problem of
induction.9 This is also the chapter which has become a scholarly field
in itself, and continues to raise many questions due to the obscurity
which surrounds this pivotal formative work.
Kraft’s criticism of Popper’s positions on questions concerning
the ‘existence’ and ‘possible modes of validation’ of Kant’s a priori
synthetic propositions, and Fries’s psychological deduction and
whether or not it was an improvement upon Kant had a lasting effect
on the trajectory of Popper’s theoretical concerns. Kraft’s main
concern was that Popper’s attitude implied that we should give up the
idea of objective truth, a position which Popper believed was
unavoidable until after writing the Logik when in 1935 Tarski
explained his ‘clarification of the correspondence theory of truth’ to
Popper.10 The problems concerning Popper’s theorising on truth and
the relativist and sceptical leanings are evident in an early discussion
in Die beiden Grundprobleme just before Popper begins a discussion
on Fries which relied heavily on Kraft’s Von Husserl zu Heidegger.
The importance of resolving this criticism from his friend may have
been responsible for the immediate and emphatic manner in which
Popper accepted Tarski’s thought. The trajectory in which Popper
later developed his theorising on truth and objectivity may to also be
seen as part of a life-long response to Kraft. Without this friendship it
is doubtful whether Popper would have written anything like The
Open Society. Much of the lack of attention that Kraft receives in
regards to discussions of Popper may be due to the way he referred to
Kraft. On top of this there is a lack of familiarity with Kraft who is

8
For a discussion on the lost Grundprobleme II manuscript and its relationship to the
Logik see M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., Ch 6.
9
See: Letters of correspondence, Popper to Julius Kraft, 25th May 1933, 11th July
1933, Karl-Popper-Sammlung. Box 316-23. Also see: K. Popper, Die beiden
Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck)
1979), Ch. 5.
10
K. Popper, After The Open Society, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
Chapter Three 49
now largely a forgotten thinker. Popper did not mention Kraft once in
the text of his discussion of Fries and Kant in Chapter Five of Die
beiden Grundprobleme despite extensively citing Kraft in the
footnotes. Later in The Open Society Popper would treat Tarski in
much the same way, reflecting a pattern of referencing that would
have a lasting impact on our appreciation of the influences on
Popper’s thought.
3.3 Popper’s Friesian problematic
Before discussing the technical aspects of Popper’s philosophical

“breakthrough”, what I otherwise refer to as his revision of Kant, it is
necessary to provide a sketch of the various Kantian problematics and
traditions that framed the way that he approached Kant’s thought. The
two major strands of post-Kantian thought that have greatly
influenced Popper’s epistemology are the Neo-Kantianism of the
Marburg School and the Würzburg School of Cognitive Psychology,
and the post-Kantian thought handed down through Jakob Fries,
Leonard Nelson and Julius Kraft. However, the situation is not as neat
and straightforward as this. Nelson himself was a disciple of the social
democratic teaching of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp and August
Stadler of the Marburg School. 11 William Berkson and John
Wettersten have done much to situate Popper’s thought within the
Würzburg School of Cognitive Psychology.12
The most important of these Kantian influences was the thought
of Jakob Fries (1773–1843) that he received from Julius Kraft
((1921)1898–1960). Fries’s influence upon Popper can be seen as
twofold; firstly, by providing the problem situations associated with
Popper’s understanding of the theory of knowledge; secondly, and not
wholly distinct from the first, providing a practical basis for moral
faith. This section explores how Popper provided a further revision of
Fries by turning away from the latter’s psychological approach to the

11
T. E. Willey, Back to Kant: the revival of Kantianism in German social and
historical thought, 1860-1914. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), pp.
102-103.
12
W. Berkson and J. Wettersten. Learning From Error: Karl Popper’s Psychology of
Learning, (La Salle: Open Court Publishing, 1984).
logic of discovery towards an objective, realist and ontological

approach to the logic of discovery (Geltungslogik).
The importance of Popper’s fixation on the epistemological
problems of Jakob Friedrich Fries has been pointed out by Malachi
Hacohen in Karl Popper – The Formative Years. 13 For Fries,
according to Popper, if we are to avoid interpreting statements of
science dogmatically, we must justify them. However, as Fries
accepted that statements can only be justified by other statements then
the demand that all statements be logically justified would lead to an
“infinite regress”.14 To avoid the dangers of dogmatism and of infinite
regress, Fries opted for a third position, that of “psychologism”.
Fries’s psychologism was the understanding that in relation to sense-
experience we have what he called “immediate knowledge” from
which we may justify our “mediate knowledge”, which for Fries was
the knowledge expressed in some symbolism of language, which
includes our scientific knowledge.15 The understanding of the human
capacity for “immediate knowledge” of the world as it is in itself
would later be supported by the work of Konrad Lorenz on the formal
abilities of our sensory organs to provide knowledge of the world-in-
itself.16
It was through the rediscovery of Fries by Leonard Nelson that
Popper developed his neo-Friesian epistemology. David Miller
describes this as being done through an extension and correction of
the philosophies of Kant, Fries and Nelson which gave rise to
Popper’s views on demarcation and induction. 17 According to
Hacohen, Fries thought that the synthetic a priori propositions left too
much of the world closed to the human mind which ensured
subjectivism. Fries’s solution was to develop a methodological

13
14
Kant had already outlined the choice for those who wished to persue the scientific
method to be between the dogmatism associated with Wolff and a skepticism
associated with Hume. See: I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. (Vasilis Plitis Eds.
London: Everyman’s Library, 1993 [1787]) §Transcendental Doctrine of Method, Ch.
3, p. 544.
15
K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., p. 75.
16
P. Munz, Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker: New Light on Popper and Wittgenstein
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 2-4.
17
Chapter Three 51
procedure for grounding knowledge in a universal human psychology,

thereby eliminating much of Kant’s agnosticism and “subjectivism”.18
Many of the philosophical positions central to Popper’s thought
are already evident in Fries. This is most notably the case in
Mathematische Naturphilosophie in which Fries included a criterion
of falsification among a list of rules for the experimental natural
scientist.19 Further, Popper’s view that one cannot prove a statement
by appeal to a perceptual experience is central to Fries’s distinction
between “mediate” and “immediate” knowledge. Fries’s search for the
kind of certainty characteristic of mathematics as a basis for our
knowledge made a great impression on Popper. As Popper put it, “the
problem of the basis of experience has troubled few thinkers so deeply
as Fries”.20
Fries’s concern with the certainty of the foundations of
knowledge resulted from the interaction between his admiration for
the certainty and clarity of mathematics on the one hand, and the
influence of the Moravian pietistic community known as “the Unity of
the Brethren” or Herrnhut “under the Lord’s care” on the other.
According to Frederick Gregory, two fundamental lessons that Fries
learned from the Herrnhut were: that important things in life were sure
truths not arbitrary sentiments, and the source of this truth is
transcendent and not of our making. Fries’s quest for the attainment of
geometric-like objective validity and certainty drove his criticism of
Kant for not sufficiently investigating the psychological basis on
which our whole capacity for knowledge rests. Fries conceived of the
Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason as being
branches of empirical psychology in which the objects of investigation
were the contents of the human mind. He was adamant that both of
Kant’s critiques lacked the necessary psychological foundations. 21
Ernst Henke argued that Fries sought to make important technical
corrections to Kant’s system by seeing the critique of reason as

18
M. Hacohen. Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 122.
19
F. Gregory, “Extending Kant: The Origins and Nature of Jakob Friedrich Fries’s
Philosophy of Science”, in Eds. The Kantian legacy in Nineteenth – Century Science
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), p. 98. fn. 8.
20
Ibid., p. 87. Also see: Popper, K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., p. 93.
21
F. Gregory, Extending Kant, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
belonging to psychology and requiring foundations that he would

develop as an “anthropological critique of reason”.22
It is from this pietistic feeling-for-truth (Wahrheitsgefühl) that
Fries argued for the impossibility of dogmatic, general and universal
metaphysical systems, reflecting similar concerns that would come up
in Popper’s writings. The feeling-for-truth is evident firstly in
instances of particular application before general principles. Nelson
showed that Fries’s argument for metaphysical dogmatism fails as it
attempts to start directly by establishing a general principle from
which to erect a system, even though our mind approaches these
principles last.23 As we must start with what is immediately given, that
is, instances where the feeling-for-truth is evident, we arrive at “the
problem of the empirical basis”. For Popper however, there is no
clarity of empirical experience and we do not start with what is
immediately given, but with a problem.24 He took over the problem-
situation from Fries-Nelson but gave a radically different response.
For many epistemologists following Fries, accepting
psychologism appeared to be the most objective and practical solution
to the problem of foundational knowledge claims. The two other
alternatives to Fries’s attempt to ground Kant’s transcendental proof
included dogmatism, that is, the acceptance of basic propositions
without justification and an infinite regress. For Fries a transcendental
proof had to be psychologically grounded, or it would be caught in a
circular argument leading to an infinite regress. According to
Hacohen, this acceptance of psychologism remained unsatisfactory for
Popper as this psychological revision of Kant merely deferred
lawfulness from Kant’s consciousness (Verstandesgesetzlichkeit) to
psychology, thus accomplishing nothing. Like the rest of science for
Popper, epistemology required some means of its acceptance over
competing theories even if we cannot ultimately justify such theories.
As with the natural sciences a truth statement would not be grounded
but merely accepted in accordance with a methodological rule.25

22
H. Henke, Jakob Friedrich Fries. Aus seinem handschriftlichen Nachlasse
dargestellt (Berlin: Verlag Öffentliches Leben, [1937] 1867), pp. 44-45.
23
L. Nelson, Progress and Regress in Philosophy: From Hume and Kant to Hegel
and Fries (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), p. 179.
24
K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.
(London: Routledge. [1989],1963a), pp, 28, 55, 67, 74.
25
Chapter Three 53
This point is best seen in the debates concerning Popper’s

epistemological and methodological non-foundationalism. Here it is
clear that Popper’s philosophy as a whole arises out of a
Wahrheitsgefühl related to an on-going process of self-cultivation.
This has been a controversial assertion in Popperian circles as a result
of the Bartley debate in which William Bartley aimed to expose the
embedded justificationism and foundationalism of critical rationalism
and proposed an alternative rational basis which avoids this. For
Bartley, Popper’s moral decision to place an “irrational faith in
reason” as the attitude of rational argument cannot itself be a rational
argument and was a remnant of a fideistic attitude which was a legacy
of his early positivism. By accepting a moral decision or justification
for his critical rationalism Bartley understood Popper to have
contradicted his opposition to justificationism which he was trying to
eliminate. Bartley proposed to eliminate such moral presuppositions
as a basic justification by holding the critical rationalist attitude open
to criticism. According to Gattei, Bartley’s criticism, drawn entirely
from logic, disregarded the profound ethical nature of Popper’s
choice. For Popper, rationalism requires a complementary notion of
reasonableness, that is, “an attitude of readiness to listen to critical
arguments and learn from experience”.26 Popper responded by saying
that:
…rationalism is not self-contained, but rests on an irrational faith in

the attitude of reasonableness: I do not see that we can go beyond this.
One could say, perhaps, that my irrational faith in equal and reciprocal
rights to convince others and be convinced by them is faith in human
27
reason; or simply, that I believe in man.
However, Popper did not believe this to be a dogmatic

justification, rather a decision, one that he cannot be certain of, yet is
emotively sustained as a personal belief in the best way of preventing
violence and harm and ensuring the possibility for self-cultivation and
social advancement in accordance with the idea of Bildung. Popper’s
use of the word faith as a “subjective belief” or Glauben is grounded

26
S. Gattei, “The Ethical Nature of Karl Popper’s Solution to the Problem of
Rationality”, in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 32 (Sage, 2002), pp. 245-
246.Gattei, S. (2002), p. 247.
27
K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, op. cit., p. 357.
differently from the mode of cognition associated with conjectural

knowledge was also fundamental to Popper.28 Faith finds its origins in
an intuitional feeling. Popper regarded Bartley’s views as “self-
defeating” and “utopian rationalism”.29 As Hacohen points out “it was
Popper’s irrational commitment to rationalism that gave rise to his
philosophy. Bartley wisely disposed of the justificationist ladder once
he had seen the world aright.”30 Popper’s “faith in reason” reveals the
transcendental logic that facilitates the dialectical positive
commitment to anti-foundationalism within an epistemological
fallibilism. Further, from this debate with Bartley we can see that
existentialism may have played a larger role in Popper’s thought than
is generally acknowledged.
According to Hacohen, Bartley claimed that Popper’s
declaration of the “irrational” basis for his commitment to rationality
was a continuation of the existentialist credo that there is no way to
knowledge but through a leap of faith which he adopted for a few
months after reading Kierkegaard in his youth. 31 Popper regarded
Bartley’s criticism as a ‘self-defeating’ and “utopian rationalism’.32 As
Hacohen points out “it was Popper’s irrational commitment to
rationalism that gave rise to his philosophy. Bartley wisely disposed
of the justificationist ladder once he had seen the world aright.”33 This
foundational basis, whilst theoretically fallible and hypothetical in
character, was later developed in the form of “ethical principles”
which Popper was prepared to give up if he was wrong. However
given the conviction with which he held these it is hard to imagine the
kind of argumentative evidence that could replace moral arguments
grounded in a belief that humans are not only problem-solving
animals, but also fallible harm-creating beings. Although Popper
opposed Hume’s induction, his acknowledgement of the irrational
basis of belief is distinctly Humean.
Gattei was partly correct in his criticism of Bartley, however the
problem was not so much that his criticism should have been based
upon ethical arguments rather than logical ones; rather, the clash was

28
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Oxford
29
Ibid., pp. 355-363.
30
M. Hacohen. Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 519, n. 259.
31
Ibid., p. 84.
32
33
M. Hacohen. Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 519, n. 259.
Chapter Three 55
one of cultures. Bartley coming from an analytical tradition which

differed greatly from the central European tradition that Popper and
Wittgenstein are representative of. What the Bartley debate ignored
was the praxiological component which is central to the way we read
Popper. Aristotle’s notion of phronesis and Aquinas’ prudentia are
crucial here as they force us to ask whether there are basic problems to
Popper’s thought whose solutions depend on the personal
development of those approaching Popper’s writings. Thus, we need
to appreciate the import of the non-rational support for Popper’s
arguments that were driven by an unknown cognition gleaned in a
way that Popper could not objectify and thus, make subjectable to
logical and literary criticism. An appreciation of this is dependent
upon the kinds of cognitive transformations that the reader of Popper
has undergone. This is suggested by the way his writings lend
themselves to multiple and esoteric readings depending upon the
personal development of the reader. Popper’s insistence upon his
common-sense use of language and that his work does not need
interpretation is deceptive. I am not calling for a non-literal
hermeneutics, rather, that what is literally given in Popper’s writing
lend themselves to differentiated appropriations. This is the result of
the subtleness of his argumentation which will become clearer as this
book progresses. We cannot assume that a discussion in the
philosophy of science is actually about a problem in the natural
sciences. Also, it is unsafe to assume that the critical interlocuters that
he is engaging with are all mentioned in his discussions. The result is
invariably dissatisfying to those wanting a demonstrable logical
rationalisation. The Bartley debate is an example of Popper attempting
to avoid being forced to posit subjectively-dependent postulates as if
they were objectively independent of Popper’s own cognitional and
moral development.
Where the Marxists would be willing to sacrifice their own
youth in the street battle on the Hörlgasse in what he regarded in
Kierkergaardian terms as a suspension of the ethical, Popper later
called on us to let theories die through debate instead of people. His
opposition to totalitarian ways of thinking, whether in Marxism or
religious tribalism was also influenced by Kierkergaard’s thought on
the theological suspension of the ethical. Popper’s view that groups
within society, whose ideology or religion preach intolerance, forfeit
any legitimate claim to be protected by the same tolerance they
themselves do not adhere to can also be explained in Kierkegaardian

terms. People who hold ideologically or religiously based intolerance
have suspended the ethical as a result of their theological or quasi-
theological views.
This foundational basis was later developed in the form of
“ethical principles” which, when Popper wrote of them, are seen to
reflect epistemological concerns underpinning his idealised moral
standpoints. Such moral standpoints are expressed in epistemological
terms. From such moral standpoints we can see that the “intuitional
understanding” that Popper wrote of in Objective Knowledge played a
role in his thought on science by influencing the types of theories that
he believed a scientist is inclined to pursue. 34 The result had an
implication upon the kinds of topics that Popper was prepared to
write, or even talk about. This intellectual self-constrain resulted in a
respectful silence in relation to a transcendental subject, an ontology
that was teleologically “open,” as well as a Voltairian epistemological
repudiation of theology, of the doctrines of positive religion, and of
religious authority which was understood as a kind of theodicy.
This philosophical indeterminism is best exemplified in
Popper’s translation of the B34 poem by Xenophanes in The World of
Parmenides:
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 perfect truth, he would himself not know it;
35
For all is but a woven web of guesses.
Even earlier in Die beiden Grundprobleme he referred to

another verse of Xenophanes’:
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,

All things to us; but in the course of time,
36
Through seeking we may learn, and know things better…

34
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p. 183.
35
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op. cit., p. 46. Also see: K. Popper, The Two
Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, op. cit., p. 110.
Chapter Three 57
3.4 Axioms, Definitions and Postulates of Geometry
Popper’s epistemological objectivism owes much to his appropriation

of Bühler’s work in his 1928 doctoral dissertation, Zur Methodenfrage
der Denkpsychologie (The Problem of Method in Cognitive
Psychology). Firstly, Bühler contributed a technical evolutionary
theory of communication. 37 Secondly, he contributed a pluralist
methodology in which aspects of experience, behaviour and ideas in
the objective sense (Gebilde des objektiven Geistes) are equally
treated. This was fundamental to Popper’s later approaches to the
mind-body problem and his cognitive psychology (Denkpsychologie).
It may be the case that the real breakthrough came in 1929 with
Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie where Popper
realised that logic rather than psychology, was of fundamental concern
for scientific discovery. As Gattei has summarised “it is the
problematic relationship between geometrical-mathematical
constructions and physical reality which triggers Popper’s
philosophical revolution”.38 According to Ter Hark this was the first
time Popper spoke of Wissenschaftstheorie and it is here that Hacohen
argued that Popper’s philosophical ‘breakthrough’ occurred. 39 This
early development from psychological to biological to logical
concerns in Popper’s approach to methodological problems is an
important feature of his early thought. The importance of geometry for
Popper’s philosophy including his social philosophy has also not
received the scholarly attention that it deserves. According to Stefano
Gattei, it was here that Popper first discussed the cognitive status of
geometry without referring to psycho-pedagogical aspects, in effect
turning from his early focus on the experience of learning to logic and
the methodology of science. 40 Hansen states that in Axiome,
Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie (1929) he shifts the focus of

36
K. Popper, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, op. cit., p
110. Xenophanes B18.
37
Like Wittgenstein, in this light Popper’s Kantianism can also be seen as having
taken a linguistic turn. However Popper’s was a very different kind of linguistic turn
more akin to the later Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations.
38
S. Gattei, The Ethical Nature of Karl Popper’s Solution to the Problem of
Rationality, op. cit., pp. 455, 460.
39
M. ter Hark, The Psychology of Thinking, Animal Psychology, and the Young Karl
Popper, op. cit., p. 145.
40
S. Gattei. Karl Popper’s Philosophical Breakthrough, op. cit., p. 448.
his work from the psychology of knowledge to the theory of

knowledge. For Hansen “he is no longer interested in the “experience
of laws” (Gesetzerlebnis), but in the logical status of natural laws”.41
The significant break with his former work on the psychology of
knowledge Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate may be due to the
practical reason that Popper at this time started a new job as a teacher
of mathematics and physics and was no longer apprenticed to Bühler.
Gattei states that:
…this thesis first formulates the problem of scientific rationality,

enabling Popper’s future philosophical progress. It reflects Popper’s
turn from cognitive psychology to the logic and methodology of
science…thus applied geometry sets the context for Popper’s
42
discussion of scientific rationality.
However, this does not mean that Popper lost his interest in human
cognition, rather it provided new avenues for thinking about cognition
including extensionally and objectively.
In Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie (1929)
Popper stated:
The question of the meaning and validity of the axioms, definitions,

and postulates of geometry is necessarily connected with
philosophical (scientific and epistemological) questions of the general
43
problem situation.
We can see in this statement the legacy of Popper’s late night debates
with his friend Julius Kraft over Kant’s Kritik and its antinomies.
Perhaps through studying the validity of the axioms of geometry
Popper believed he could come closer to addressing the concerns in
Kant that would later spark his ‘revision’ of Kant in Die beiden
Grundprobleme. This is a dissertation very much in keeping with the
interests of the Vienna Circle:

41
T. Hansen, “Which Came First, the Problem of Induction or the Problem of
Demarcation?”, in Ian Jarvie, David Miller, and Karl Milford (eds.), Karl Popper: A
Centenary Assessment (London: Ashgate 2004).
42
S. Gattei, Karl Popper’s Philosophical Breakthrough, op. cit., pp. 457, 458 – 459.
43
K. Popper, Frühe Schriften, op. cit., p. 265. “Die Frage nach der Bedeutung und
Geltung der Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie ist notwendigerweise
mit philosophischen (wissenschafts- und erkenntnistheoretischen) Fragen des
allgemeinen Raumproblems verbunden.”
Chapter Three 59
I would like to say that my views are largely influenced by Schlick.

Of great importance to me was V. Kraft’s book Die Grundformen der
wissenschaftlichen Methoden, as well as the writings of Carnap and
Reichenbach. However, I have at some instances deviated from the
44
views of these researchers.
Popper believed that a better understanding of the logical

features of geometry could have some bearing upon philosophy, at
least negatively by distinguishing between the inconsistency of truth
claims about relativity and the problems of human language in
describing the world accurately with the precise axioms of Euclidean
geometry. For Popper:
Since the terminology of philosophical disciplines is unfortunately

very volatile, I was forced to produce details that in a purely
mathematical work was not quite out of place. The terms of the
philosophical language of art are almost always loaded with different,
conflicting meanings which are understood in different philosophical
way. So much so, that linguistically identical sentences may have
significantly different meaning when they are pronounced by
45
philosophers from different dispositions.
Perhaps this passage reveals an early gleaning of his later

pragmatism where the phronetic development of the philosopher plays
a role in filling-in the facticity. A point that I believe was lost in the
Bartley debate. However at this early stage it was understood in a way
revealing the early influence of Vienna Circle’s logical positivism.
Popper hoped that an understanding of the axioms of geometry
would lead to a “recognised philosophical signlanguage” at least at the

44
Ibid., p. 266. “Ich möchte feststellen, dass meine Ansichten weitgehend von Schlick
beeinflusst sind. Von großer Wichtigkeit war für mich auch V. Krafts Buch Die
Grundformen der wissenschaftlichen Methoden, ferner die Schriften von Carnap und
Reichenbach. Dennoch bin ich an einigen Stellen von den Ansichten dieser Forscher
abgewichen.”
45
Ibid., p. 265 “Da nun die Terminologie der philosophischen Disziplinen leider eine
überaus schwankende ist, war ich (besonders im ‚Einleitungsteil’) zu einer
Ausführlichkeit gezwungen, die bei einer rein mathematischen Arbeit durchaus nicht
am Platze wäre. Die Termini der philosophischen Kunstsprache sind eben fast
durchwegs mit verschiedenen, einander widersprechenden Bedeutungen belastet, die
ihnen von gegensätzlichen philosophischen Richtungen beigelegt werden. Das geht so
weit, dass sprachlich identische Sätze stark abweichende Bedeutung haben können,
wenn sie von Philosophen verschiedener Richtungen ausgesprochen werden.”
level of logic: “It is hoped that not too far from now will emerge a
certain, generally accepted philosophical signlanguage at least for
logic.” 46 This is the optimistic, forceful and decidedly positivistic
language of a young scholar on the fringes of the Vienna Circle. It is
all the more poignant given that at this time his personal mentality was
characterised by the ‘darkest of pessimisms’. What Popper was really
after was the replacing of the existing philosophical “Kunstsprache”
or art-language with a hoped for logical “Zeichensprache” or sign-
language.
In this work we already see the beginning of Popper’s attempt
to remove the psychological aspects from a theory of knowledge in
order to arrive at an objective theory of human cognition (Erkenntnis),
that is, a Wissenschaftstheorie by distinguishing it from confusion
with the psychology of cognition. Popper’s Wissenschaftstheorie was
developed from the examples of Euclid’s work on providing the
axiomatic formations to geometry. It was the comparison between
formal and applied geometries that was of concern. Non-Euclidean
geometries were purely conceptual. They were not grounded in
experience or perception, and thus epistemology was irrelevant to
them. For the first time theoretical physics faced the choice of a
choosing between applying rival geometries to reality. According to
Gattei, it was applied geometry which set the context for Popper’s
discussion of scientific rationality.47
However, against Hacohen and Gattai, ter Hark argues that
claiming a breakthrough at this stage is still premature. For ter Hark,
the 1929 thesis shows that Popper was still in the grip of the Kantian
notion of a priori valid knowledge and the unbridgeable gap this
creates with a posteriori knowledge. 48 While, the 1929 thesis
demonstrates a turn from cognitive psychology to the logic and
methodology of science as Hacohen states, ter Hark suggests that the

46
Ibid., p. 265 “Es ist zu hoffen, dass sich in nicht allzu langer Zeit eine bestimmte,
allgemein anerkannte philosophischen Zeichensprache wenigstens für die Logik
(Logistik) herauskristallisieren wird. Denn es kann niemandem, der sich nicht speziell
mit Logik oder Logistik beschäftigt, zugemutet werden, bei jedem neuen logistischen
Werk eine neue Zeichensprache mit in Kauf zu nehmen. Ich habe daher den
‚logischen Kalkül’ selbstverständlich vermieden, obwohl seine Anwendung durch den
Gegenstand nahegelegt war.”
47
S. Gattei, Karl Popper’s Philosophical Breakthrough, op. cit., pp. 458-459.
48
M. ter Hark, Popper, Otto Selz, and the rise of evolutionary epistemology, op. cit.,
p. 145.
Chapter Three 61
cognitive psychology of Selz continues to inform his

Wissenschaftstheorie in Die beiden Grundprobleme even if little by
way of overt acknowledgement of Selz is found here.49 According to
ter Hark it was only later that we find references to Selzian theories
associated with a deductivist psychology of knowledge such as the
“searchlight theory” and the rejection of the “bucket theory”.
Elsewhere ter Hark has shown that in letters of correspondence
between Popper and de Groot, that in 1929 Popper first became aware
of Selz who had essentially ‘solved’ the problem of psychology that
he had been working on. It was in Die beiden Grundprobleme that
Popper would finally integrate a Selzian theory of cognition with a
deductive Wissenschaftstheorie.50
We can see from Popper’s early dissertations a concern with
how theories are applied to reality whether competing theories in
psychology (such as those of Adler and Freud) as well as competing
geometries for theoretical physics. Eventually Popper would move
beyond particular concerns of applying theories in psychology and
geometry to concerns with how language itself (as all words are
theory impregnated) is applied to reality, thus enabling his later move
from discussions of scientific rationality to a general theory of
rationality, and indeed would enable his later ‘metaphysical research
projects’.
3.5 Methods used in revising Kant
This section provides a close textual analysis of key passages in Die

beiden Grundprobleme as well as an explanation of the implications
of his thinking here for the development of his later thought. I by no
means claim that I provide an exhaustive exegesis in the remainder of
this chapter. Rather, I aim to sketch certain key features of his
reasoning which foreshadow recurrent themes in his mature writings.
It is important to mention that Logik der Forschung only appeared in
English in 1959 and Die beiden Grundprobleme did not appear in

49
For Hacohen’s discussion of the 1929 thesis see: M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit.,
p. 173.
50
M. ter Hark, “Popper’s Theory of the Searchlight: A Historical Assessment of Its
Significance”, in Z. Parusniková and R. S. Cohen (eds). Rethinking Popper (Springer
Science 2009), pp.150, 176, 181.
English during Popper’s lifetime. It is likely to have been the case that
much of the misunderstanding of Popper as a positivist resulted from a
lack of contextual understanding of the specific problem situation
Popper was addressing. Popper understood Kant’s theory of
knowledge, on which he based his own to have been: “the first critical
attempt at a critical synthesis of the classical opposition between
rationalism and empiricism.” It was Kant’s “transcendental analytic”
that Popper observed was dedicated to Hume’s problem of induction,
whilst the “transcendental dialectic” was devoted to what Popper
called the problem of demarcation. This is the setting from which
Popper’s revision of Kant developed. The decisive question for Kant
was: “Are there synthetic a priori judgements?” Popper rephrased this
question as “Is there any ground of validity for non-logical statements
other than experience?”51 If this were the case, then in addition to the
method of empirical testing and the logical method, the latter being
ruled out (as the negation of a synthetic judgement is also logically
possible), there would be another method grounding the validity of
synthetic judgements. The rationalists answered the question of the
validity of synthetic apriori judgements in the affirmative.
Nevertheless, empiricists contend that even highly plausible synthetic
judgements can turn out to be false. For Popper, Kant’s solution to the
problem of induction in the “transcendental analytic” was “not
satisfactory”:
The synthesis between rationalism and empiricism attempted by Kant

restricts the epistemological claims of classical empiricism by
making concessions to rationalism. These concessions, however,
52
seem to me excessive...
In Die beiden Grundprobleme, the forerunner to the Logik,

Popper set out to demonstrate that what he called “Hume’s problem”,
the problem of induction, and “Kant’s problem”, the problem of
demarcation, could rightly be called the two fundamental problems for
the theory of knowledge. This was of central importance to Popper
because the theory of knowledge, as opposed to the psychology of

51
K. Popper, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, op. cit., p.
15.
52
Ibid., pp.15, 19.
Chapter Three 63
knowledge, had a specific method. 53 Popper called the method

associated with the theory of knowledge the “methodological method”
or the “transcendental method”.
There have been many criticisms of Popper’s scientific
method, however when viewed in relation to his broader epistemology
(Erkenntnistheorie) we can see a meta-level methodological
theorising, elements of which are applied in an exploratory fashion to
problems over a diverse range of disciplines. Popper’s understanding
of epistemology can be best seen in his forcefully stated opposition to
the logical-positivists and phenomenologists:
The theory of knowledge is a science of science. It relates to the

individual empirical sciences in the same way as the latter relates to
empirical reality; the transcendental method is an analogue of the
empirical method. The theory of knowledge would, accordingly, be a
theoretical science. It also contains free stipulations (such as
definitions); yet it consists not only of arbitrary conventions but also
of statements that are refutable by comparison with the actual and
successful methods of the individual empirical sciences. All other
epistemological methods (psychological, language-critical, etc.) are
54
altogether rejected by transcendentalism…
Popper here sets himself up as a Kantian imbued in the Kritik der

reinen Vernunft. It would be many years however, before Popper
would call himself a critical rationalist and enlarge the scope of his
methodological thought to include the social sciences.
For Popper, the theory of knowledge could be divided into two
epistemological camps: inductivism or deductivism. Emphatically,
Popper asserted a view which he called “radical deductivism”, which
held that “all scientific methods of justification are, without exception,
based on strictly logical deduction, and that there is no induction of
any sort qua scientific method.” In Chapter Three of Die beiden
Grundprobleme Popper follows this assertion with a systematic
critique of the major inductivist positions following Hume’s argument
against the admissibility of induction due to the problem of infinite
regress.55 Popper also included a critique of the inductivist positions of
Reichenbach, Schlick and Wittgenstein. It is important to keep in

53
Ibid., pp. 4, 20-22.
54
Ibid., p. 7.
55
Ibid., pp. 8, 42.
mind at this stage that Popper was not arguing from a broad
philosophical perspective, but rather he was concerning himself with
the limited methodological problems for a theory of knowledge
associated with the scientific method. However, ter Hark has shown
that already at this stage Popper’s methodological arguments were
based upon an understanding of human cognition. Ter Hark has shown
that in Die beiden Grundprobleme Popper finally integrates his
Selzian stance in psychology into his deductive theory of knowledge.
Selz’s attack on associationist psychology and defence of a theory of
schematic anticipations according to ter Hark, reflected a view of the
“animal or human organism as an active cognitive subject constantly
putting forward tentative proposals or hypotheses rather than as a
passive recipient, patiently waiting for the accumulation of
information to be inductively safe”. 56 For Popper, repetition
(Wiederholung) plays no role in discovering new knowledge that is,
the process of learning, it only operates in forgetting.
In a letter to Julius Kraft dated 26th May 1933 in relation to the
manuscript of Die beiden Grundprobleme, Popper stated that what he
provided was one possible solution to the problem of synthetic a
priori judgements. Despite the self-assured and purposeful language
of Die beiden Grundprobleme, privately he admitted to his friend
Julius Kraft that he was not prepared to claim “hier ist die Lösung!”57
In Chapter Five of Die beiden Grundprobleme Popper appears
unusually unclear and unconvincing in his discussion of truth. The rest
of this book exhibits a firm, assertive voice of a young man looking to
make his mark. However, this discussion of truth appears in a chapter
that Popper called a “digression” from the analysis of the problem of
induction in Book One. 58 In this “digression” Popper used unusual
rhetorical techniques to forward his argument. The “digression”
developed into a peculiar Socratic-like dialogue between an idealised
Sceptic and an epistemological optimist. This was stylistically at odds
with the rest of the book and radically different from the conventional
way in which the scientifically minded Kantians and positivists at that

56
M. ter Hark, Popper’s Theory of the Searchlight, op. cit., p. 181. And, M. ter Hark,
Popper, Otto Selz, and the rise of evolutionary epistemology, op. cit., pp. 148-152
57
See letter of correspondence from Popper to Julius Kraft, 26th May 1933. Karl-
Popper-Sammlung. Box 312-23.
58
87.
Chapter Three 65
time in Vienna wrote. It is not a dialogue sensu stricto, but one voice
seems to posit a sceptical philosophy only for another rather
Wittgensteinian voice to refute this position without a firm resolution
to the problem of truth and objectivity within an anti-essentialist
Kantian framework.59 One could speculate that there is something of
the ghost of Popper’s late night debates with Julius Kraft in the
content of this chapter that perhaps unconsciously appears in the form
of a stalemate in regards to the problem of scepticism.60
The central problematic aspect of Popper’s revision of Kant
began with Popper’s distinguishing between the theory of knowledge
from the psychological experience of cognition. Popper then begins to
treat Kant’s conclusion to the transcendental deduction which states:
“The possibility of experience in general is therefore at the same time
the universal law of nature, and the principles of experience are the
very laws of nature”. Popper stated that Kant required further
explanation of the agreement of knowledge with its object. The
possible choices of explanation as stated by Popper were:
First possibility: our knowledge is determined by its object.

Second possibility: the object is determined by our knowledge.
A middle course: we have knowledge as an (inborn) disposition that
61
is preformed such that it agrees with its object.
For Popper, the only option that Kant believed was open was
the second possibility resulting in the thesis of transcendental
idealism. Popper then reformulates Kant’s “completely unacceptable”
epistemological question into the “psychological” or “genetic-

59
“I gladly admit [he might continue] that our knowledge is merely “semantic”; but
the inevitable anthropomorphism consists precisely in this, since it reveals the
dependence of knowledge on our assignment of symbol.” This Sceptical straw man
dialogue is associated with Wittgenstein’s position which Popper then argues against
this by stating it is possible to have objective knowledge of the external world despite
the anthropological framework of the Kantian “forms of our understanding”. “The
objectivity of knowledge cannot therefore be sought in any knowledge that grasps its
object “in itself”; rather, it consists in scientifically determining the object according
to the universally valid (intersubjective) methodological principles (for the use of our
understanding). For an example of this dialogue see: Ibid., pp. 98-100.
60
Hacohen suggested to me in correspondence that this is part of chapter 5, which
may well have been written in the fall of 1933.
61
K. Popper, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, op. cit.,
pp. 89, 90..
biological” question: “How can the agreement of the (subjective)

conditions of our cognitive apparatus – of the laws governing the
functioning of our mind – with the (objective) conditions of our
environment be explained?” 62 At this point Popper introduces his
knowledge in the field of cognitive psychology from his time at the
Psychological Institute. One can sense the presence of Külpe, Bühler
and Selz even though they are not mentioned by name. By relocating
Kant’s question from the theory of knowledge to the psychology of
knowledge Popper was able to avoid the separate and incompatible
analytical choices that Kant faced and that led him to a position of
idealism. By this Popper believed that he had answered the question
concerning the “strange agreement” between our intellect and the
properties of the environment by reducing it to a more general
biological question of adaptation. Thus the a priori in the field of
epistemology is “analogously” understood in the psychology of
knowledge as the “preconditions of all adaptation”. In this way Popper
could provide an explanation based upon biological adaptation to the
three alternatives mentioned above given by Kant which implies a
decision in favour of the “middle course”, yet not “unbridgeable” with
the other two positions.
In summary, Popper treated Kant’s problem of the possibility
of the agreement of knowledge with its object by separating the theory
of knowledge from the psychology of knowledge. He then treated the
problem according to theoretical knowledge in the field of cognitive
psychology and thereby came up with an alternative explanation that
was analogous to Kant’s. Finally, Popper returned to Kant’s
epistemological setting demonstrating that a different choice of
explanation could be gained. However, there remains a greater
problem here, by separating the fields of knowledge between
epistemology and biology or psychology, and by bringing knowledge
from the latter to analogously argue for a preferred realist position in
the former. Popper was in fact using a transcendental argument
according to his description of the transcendental method. He was
aware of this problem at the time and questioned whether one can
“really derive epistemological conclusions from this biological
hypothesis.”63

62
Ibid., p. 94.
63
Ibid., pp. 95, 97.
Chapter Three 67
It is at this point that Popper’s discussion breaks down. There is

an abrupt end to Popper’s discussion of truth, which is followed by a
digression on the a priori that ends on a note that may well be
catastrophic for Popper’s claim to have revised or updated Kant. This
potentially catastrophic argument is as follows:
If the idea of anthropomorphism (which, of course, was originally a

biological idea) is at all applicable to the field of methodology and
epistemology, then it can be applied only with the aid of the concept
of approximation and that of the incompletability of our empirical
knowledge. The former only derives its full import from the discovery
of the latter, as well as positively complementing the discovery
64
itself.
This use of a biological thesis which can only be applied to the

field of methodology or epistemology in an approximate way is
reflective of Popper’s use of the transcendental method. Much later in
a letter to Victor Kraft dated 9th June 1967, Popper would state that
this “approximation” is indicative of his understanding of the
epistemological limitations of such an argument which mirrors his
statements on the undecidable immanent and transcendental
critiques.65 From this “approximation” statement and the Victor Kraft
letter alongside his admission that he provided only one possible
solution rather than the solution we can see that Popper was aware of
the ‘metaphysical’ nature of his argument. Thus, Popper’s biological
explanation necessary to overcome Kant’s ‘unsatisfactory’
concessions to rationalism by providing an alternative position on the
validity of synthetic a priori judgements is grounded upon a
problematic transcendental criticism rather than secure analytical or
empirical proof. Whether the ground for validation of Popper’s
revision of Kant being located in the non-testable depths of
transcendental support is really catastrophic depends upon one’s
attitude towards epistemological foundations. What is important is
that the belief in his revision of Kant, as a notable yet
underappreciated moment in the history of ideas was enough to drive
his later philosophical achievements. We can see that already at this
stage Popper was struggling with the analytic problematic that he

64
Ibid., p. 109.
65
Sammlung, Box 3.16, 24 Victor Kraft 1945-74.
would have to publically answer for later in his debate with Bartley.
By the time of the Bartley debate Popper had been thinking about the
issues that Bartley raised for many years. His responses although
simple, were hardly naïve and were the product of prolonged
intellectual activity and formation that went beyond the concerns of
analytic validity in relation to the problems of foundationalism that
Bartley’s critique was focused upon.
After the above “approximation” quotation which attempted to
justify his use of biological arguments in his revision of Kant, written
according to Hacohen sometime during the fall of 1932 in Die beiden
Grundprobleme, the discussion once again breaks down into a kind of
poetic resignation. 66 The discussion turns towards fragments of
Xenophanes that reinforces an epistemologically pessimistic tone as
well as a philosophical scepticism regarding our knowledge of natural
laws. 67 Following this, the discussion once again unsystematically
breaks off and is redirected towards a discussion of Fries. The
incoherence of Popper’s argumentative structure (rare for Popper) in
the later part of Chapter Five on Kant and Fries of Die beiden
Grundprobleme is symptomatic of the highly speculative and
exploratory nature of the philosophical problem that he set himself in
this work. Popper was charting new intellectual territory and did not
yet have the tools needed to navigate this terrain. Chapter Five
remains a source of contention and speculation today amongst Popper
scholars such as Hacohen, Wettersten, and Hansen who have made
strides in reconstructing this crucial, yet still obscure moment in the
development of Popper’s thought. This close reading of a section of
Chapter Five of Grundprobleme, particularly Popper’s dialogue with
Julius Kraft may suggest that Hacohen may have exaggerated the role
of Neurath’s position in Popper’s rewriting of Chapter Five in the fall
of 1932.68
The discussion of the problem of truth in Chapter Five of Die
beiden Grundprobleme led to the “limited scepticism” which avoids
the contradictory nature of the strict “sceptical” position that he

66
67
pp. 109-115.
68
This was generously pointed out to me by Hacohen himself after reading a draf
manuscript of this book.
Chapter Three 69
associated with Wittgenstein. 69 Viewing Wittgenstein’s position in

this light is clearly demonstrable of his misconstruing him as a
positivist in the same way the Vienna Circle did. Julius Kraft also
argued that it implied that we should give up the idea of objective
truth, which Popper could not respond to until he came across Tarski’s
“clarification of the correspondence theory of truth”.70 The discussions
that follow this as well as Popper’s correspondence with Kraft
mentioned above seem to indicate that however innovative and
important Popper was as a philosopher, there were fundamental
problems in his positions and for his critical philosophy as a whole.
For one thing there was a big hole where “truth” should be, which
made the prospect of ‘justifying’ his other arguments in a coherent
way difficult. Would Popper’s revision of Kant have to be content
with being a fuzzy “approximation”?71
By reframing Kant’s problem as he believed we now know it
should have been, a new trajectory in philosophical research was
made possible. This new trajectory would be carried forward
throughout his life, and eventually applied to social, aesthetic and
even cosmological and ontological concerns. It is commonly
acknowledged that Popper’s stance on the role of metaphysics within
a falsificationist philosophy was only accepted during the early 1950s.
However even much earlier in Die beiden Grundprobleme a conscious
awareness of use of metaphysical argumentation can be discerned in
Popper’s writings as he was tackling the fundamental problems of
epistemology as he saw them, which preceded his falsificationism.
Popper understood Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to have
resulted from a problem setting of the apparent discovery of scientific
laws by Newton. In a similar way, Popper’s Neo-Kantian research
questions were phrased in relation to contemporary debates
concerning the foundations of geometry in the work of Max Born and
Albert Einstein. Popper understood Kant’s problem to have been:
“How is pure natural science possible?” However, he argued that
given contemporary knowledge, the question ought to be phrased as:

69
(2009), p. 100. Also see: L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London:
Routledge. [1918], 1922), Proposition 6.51.
70
71
109.
“How are successful hypotheses possible?”72 It was in this way that

Popper would arrive in The Logic with the framing of the problem of
demarcation as, “by what criterion do we decide which hypothesis is
scientific?” and the problem of induction of “how do we learn from
experience?”73
However, Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” reached a position
closer to what Popper believed actually reflected the status of
scientific theories qua a Selzian understanding of how human
cognition actually operates. Kant’s transcendental dialectic is
“transcendental” inasmuch as it sets out the limits to reason through
delineating the structure within which reason must operate, whilst also
grounding the possible employment of reason. In this way the
transcendental project is a form of immanent critique. Much in the
same way Popper’s falsificationism would act to limit the epistemic
value or correctness of his employment of social scientific arguments.
Thus, following the transcendental dialectic, Popper supported:
“Kant’s formulation of the problem and his method, and also very
significant parts of his solutions” [Popper’s italics]. 74 Popper
however, differed from Kant by way of his synthesizing of classical
rationalist and classical empiricist positions on the validity of
synthetic a priori judgements. He achieved this by separating classical
rationalism, which holds that there are a priori synthetic judgements,
from the idea of deductivism and empiricism.75 This enabled Popper
to synthesize the empiricist standpoint with deductivism. The result is
not greatly removed from Kant’s position in the “transcendental
dialectic” and was made possible in Popper’s mind through the recent
developments in physics and geometry. The conclusion that Popper
arrived at after his revision of Kant’s attempt at answering the
problem of the validity of synthetic apriori judgements resulted in the
statement that “There are, indeed, synthetic a priori judgements, but a
posteriori they are often false” [Popper’s italics].76

72
K. Popper, “The Nature of Philosophical Problems and Their Roots in Science”, in
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 3:10 (1952), p. 155.
73
S. Gattei,The Ethical Nature of Karl Popper’s Solution to the Problem of
Rationality, op. cit., p. 448.
74
20.
75
Ibid., p. 16. Here Popper gave the example of a similar recombination produced by
Wittgenstein’s synthesis of inductivism with rationalism.
76
Ibid., p. 34.
Chapter Three 71
3.6 Theorising on the methods of criticism
By saving synthetic apriori judgements Popper also ensured the

existence of another method, besides the logical and empirical, for
grounding the validity of synthetic judgements. 77 For Popper, like
Kant, this was the transcendental method or the “presentation of
apriorism.” Popper starts with the proposition: “All scientific criticism
consists in identifying contradictions.” The first example of a
contradiction that Popper gave was the “purely logical” one, that is, an
“internal contradiction” which is associated with the “logical method”.
The second method that Popper stated was the “empirical method of
criticism” which consists of demonstrating a contradiction with the
facts. These two methods of criticism constituted for Popper
“immanent criticism”, as they do not go beyond the realm of what is
asserted by the thesis criticised.78 Popper contrasts this with what he
called “transcendental criticism.” In Die beiden Grundprobleme
Popper stated that transcendental criticism:
…as a method of criticism and argumentation should never be

allowed to play a part in the epistemological debate, consists in
confronting one thesis, one position, with another; more precisely, in
using a contradiction between one position assumed to be true and
another that is being criticised, as evidence against the latter. Such
criticism, combating one position by means of presuppositions
extraneous to it (which is why such criticism is said to be
transcendent), and the setting out to assess one theoretical construct
in terms of an entirely different one, can in principle always be
directed with equal justification against either position; hence, it is
completely irrelevant for our discussion (however persuasive it may
sound). One must therefore insist that all epistemological criticism be
79
immanent criticism.
This position on the emphatic disallowance of the

transcendental method is entirely justified in Popper’s view because
such transcendental criticisms have no grounds of validity
(Geltungsgrund). As I have argued above, in his revision of Kant
Popper did actually use these techniques in his argumentation. Thus, it

77
Ibid., p. 15.
78
Ibid., p. 53.
79
Ibid., p. 58.
is important to distinguish between his methodological theorising and

the actual methods he used in building arguments concerning these
theories. Later, Popper would come to hold a very different view. The
discussion would later be argued in terms of the status of metaphysics
versus science, including the 1950s transformation whereby Popper
would come to endorse the possibility of criticism in metaphysics.80
Although he initially argued in Die beiden Grundprobleme that such
criticisms may have no grounds of validity, he later added a note
amending his position to the first publication of this book in 1979,
which added that such criticisms nonetheless “may be exceedingly
illuminating” even if never “sufficient for a clear refutation.”81 This
was the result of a 1950s transformation in his thought in which he
openly endorsed the possibility of criticism in metaphysics. Agassi
gives an account of this gradual acceptance of a broader scope for
metaphysic within rational thought. Firstly, Agassi relates the anti-
metaphysical style of his earliest work reflecting “the style of the
day”. 82 For Agassi “This demand expressed an austere attitude
towards the endorsement of opinions. It conflicts with his respect for
religion”. Secondly, Agassi observes that:
…he changed his opinion and declared criticism a broader category

than tests, thus admitting the possibility of criticizing moral (and
historical) judgments. He could then declare metaphysics criticisable
though not empirically refutable, especially since already in 1935 he
had recognized the possibility that a metaphysical theory becomes
scientific through an increase of its contents...he adopted the view
that metaphysical theories are points of view and so can be pitched
83
against their contraries.
Popper’s change of stance on the issue of the transcendental

criticism is further supported by his later admission of his early

80
According to Hacohen, it was while working on probability and quantum theory
during the mid-1950s that Popper “found a metaphysics for falsificationist science”.
M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 260. Popper’s theory of “propensities”, would
later be developed in an increasingly systematic, yet metaphysical direction.
81
Popper, K. The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, op. cit., p.
57.
82
Agassi refers to these works as “now utterly forgotten”, however, recent scholarship
by Hacohen, ter Hark, Petersen, Hansen and the present author amongst others has
done much to redress this. See: J. Agassi, A Philosopher’s Apprentice, op. cit., p. 61.
83
Ibid., pp. 61-62.
Chapter Three 73
incorrect identification of the limits of science with those of

arguability. In Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
(1972), Popper wrote that he had later changed his mind and argued
that “non-testable (irrefutable) metaphysical theories may be
rationally arguable.”84 From Popper’s amendment of his stance on the
value of the transcendental criticism, it can be seen that after years of
dealing with problems in the social sciences he came to appreciate the
unavoidability of transcendental criticisms.
If we compare this position in Die beiden Grundprobleme
which forbids transcendental criticism with a later letter he wrote to
Victor Kraft, we can see a radical change in his position. Popper stated
in a letter to Victor Kraft in 1967 that the majority of his work on
Kritisierbarkeit was either as yet unpublished or unfinished.85 Thus,
years later we can see him revising his earlier stance on the
admissibility of transcendental criticism that he prohibited in Die
beiden Grundprobleme. It is through glimpses into such letters, as
well as through his posthumously published or as yet unpublished
works, that we can piece together the methodological and
epistemological implication of the notion of Kritisierbarkeit for his
thought as a whole. The central Kantian distinction for Popper’s work
was that between “immanenter und transzendenter Kritik.”
Unfortunately, this distinction, important as it is to the methodology of
Popper’s writing, is not theoretically dealt with in his major texts,
however, it can be pieced together from his letters. This Kantian
foundation is expressed most succinctly in a letter to Victor Kraft as
follows: “Aber wenn wir nichtentscheidende immanente und
transzendente Kritiken zulassen, dann kann man jede transzendente
Kritik in eine (nichtentscheidende) immanente Kritik logisch
überführen.” In other words, Popper argued that if we have
undecidable immanent and transcendental critiques, then every
transcendental critique can be logically turned into an undecidable
immanent theory.
For Popper, all criticism whether immanent or transcendental is
fallible (fehlbar), the only infallible (unfehlbar) mode of knowledge,

84
J. Shearmur, ‘Critical Rationalism and Ethics’, in R. Cohen and Z. Parusniková
(eds.) Rethinking Popper (Springer Verlag, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of
Science 2009), p. 345. Also see: K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p. 40.
85
which can be said to be decisive (entscheidend) are the formal

disciplines such as mathematics and logic.86 This unfehlbar mode of
knowledge is infallible only in regards to the truth function that a
given proposition holds, which is tautologically presupposed in its
initial conditions or axioms.
The logical process by which a movement from a
transcendental critique to an undecidable immanent theory entails, is
described by what has been referred to as the Überbrückungsproblem
or the problem of finding bridge principles. According to Hans Albert,
Max Weber’s conception of rationality made it possible for a
cognitive criticism to be brought to bear upon value convictions. 87
According to Albert, this is done via a “bridge principle” which is “a
maxim to bridge the gap between ethics and science – that has the
function of rendering scientific criticism to normative statements
possible.” 88 This process reveals a central feature of critical
rationalism that was shared by both Albert and Popper. A bridge
principle describes the process by which Popper was able to take a
theory from one field that may well have been proved in the case of
mathematics or shown to be a sound principle in the case of other
scientific disciplines, and applied it either in the form of a criticism or
hypotheses for a non-scientific or moral argument. In this case the
theory directed towards criticising a non-scientific or moral argument,
does not constitute a proof or a sound inference, but is a necessary and
unavoidable part of moral arguments. Popper’s later moral arguments
in which he drew support for his criticisms from an array of scientific
inferences – sound or otherwise – is owing to changes in his
understanding of arguability and criticisability. In this way we can see
that differences in cognitional theory concerning the applicability of
falsifiability for refutable and irrefutable hypotheses were eventually
resolved in Popper’s thought. Later in life Popper’s increasingly neo-
Platonic writings as well as theoretical social scientific modelling
which often could not be tested highlighted the need to revise his
cognitive theory of rational argumentation in a way that includes
certain species of non-testable or irrefutable hypotheses. Popper’s own

86
87
H. Albert, Treatise on Critical Reason (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1985), p. 98.
88
Ibid., p. 98.
Chapter Three 75
cognition was not what his earlier theory of rational argumentation

deemed reasonable.
Popper wrote the above mentioned letter in 1967, years after
Die beiden Grundprobleme, which reveals his changed position. In
Die beiden Grundprobleme, he was of the opinion that although this
type of transcendental criticism occurred, it should never be allowed
to play a part in an epistemological debate due to its
(nichtentscheidend) character. 89 However, this letter reveals that
although Popper maintained the same epistemological stance on the
ability of such criticisms to increase our knowledge, he nonetheless
came to a greater appreciation of the value and need for such
criticism, as we very often have no other alternatives. It is likely that a
reason for the legitimation of metaphysics in the 1950s and his later
Platonism resulted in his changed attitude towards such transcendental
methods. However, along with Kant, he maintained a concern for the
risk of perverting reason, which explains the epistemological cautions
that he prefaced his arguments in the humanities with, as relying on
this understanding of the transcendental method. It suffices here to say
that Popper’s change of opinion concerning the logical possibility of
turning transcendental critiques into ‘undecidable’ or irrefutable
immanent critiques, and the practical benefits of such a method of
argumentation, was pivotal for the development of his thought. In this
respect we can see that along with what may be regarded as Popper’s
early “revision” of Kant in Die beiden Grundprobleme, that he later
revised his own arguments through a process of distinguishing and
exploring the relationship between the limits of rational arguability
and the limits of science.90 This was possibly the result of a reflection
upon the actual methods he was using.
Years later in Universals, Dispositions, and Natural or Physical
Necessity which appeared as “Appendix *X”, to The Logic of
Scientific Discovery he argued that not only do the more abstract
explanatory theories transcend experience, but even the most ordinary
singular statements transcend experience. This is upheld as even
ordinary singular statements are always “interpretations of ‘the facts’
in the light of theories.” which is a position Popper may have held as
early as 1934. Furthermore, this argument holds for “the facts”

89
57.
90
J. Shearmur, Critical Rationalism and Ethics, op. cit., p. 345.
themselves as they contain universals, and universals for Popper

always entail “law-like” behaviour. As every law is understood to
transcend experience, meaning that it is not verifiable, so too must
every predicate expressing law-like behaviour also transcend
experience.91 As these universals transcend experience they are for us
undefinable. 92 Thus for Popper: “There is no pure observation. All
observation is theory laden, because all language, including
observational speech is theory laden”.93 Popper went on to explain that
the theory that language is “imprägniert”, is not testable and therefore
metaphysical. For Popper there are metaphysical elements in all
languages including scientific languages that reflect the way scientific
propositions as well as linguistic communication in general use
universals which imply the existence of natural laws. From such a
standpoint, Popper is in opposition with Rudolf Carnap, due to the
latter’s belief that it is possible to “constitute” any true universal term
in purely experiential or observational terms. From this we can gather
the Kantian importance for two of the most important, yet often
unappreciated features that have influenced the entirety of Popper’s
thought, that is, his understanding of theories and the importance of
discovering universals in all modes of human inquiry. For Popper,
even the cells of an organism are considered to be embodied theories
as the evolutionary success of a cell or organism is likened to a
conjecture that has so far withstood successfully the severe attempts
by the environment to refute it.
This is the conclusion that Popper drew as a result of his
continuation of Kant’s refutation of Lockean empiricism. We have no
choice, Popper argued, in accepting transcendent universal laws as
there is no such thing as “pure experience”, but only experience
interpreted in the light of expectations or theories which are
themselves “transcendent”. Popper concludes in The Logic that it is
because of this transcendence that scientific laws or theories are non-

91
92
These undefined partly transcendental universals can be defined through the use of
other non-experiential universals. Popper gave the example of the universal ‘water’
which can be defined as ‘a compound of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen’.
Ibid., p. 424.
93
“Es gibt keine reine Beobachtung. Alle Bobachtung ist von Theorien “imprägniert”,
weil alle Sprachen, einschliesslich Beobachtungssprachen, von Theorien imprägniert
sind”. Letter of Correspondence. Popper to Victor Kraft. 9 June 1967. Karl-Popper-
Sammlung, Box: 3.16, 24 Victor Kraft 1945-74.
Chapter Three 77
verifiable, and that testability or refutability is the only thing that

distinguishes them, in general, from metaphysical theories.94 We can
see that in Popper’s epistemology our conjectural knowledge grows
according to the method of conjecture and refutation, which is
maintained by the Vienna Circle’s Kantian observational-theoretical
distinction. The complete array of intellectual activity that constitutes
this science of climate change exemplifies the epistemological issues
that Popper’s thought was devoted towards.

94
K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., pp. 444-445.
Chapter Four
Logic and language: Wittgenstein and Tarski
4.1 Introduction
The philosophical implications of Popper’s use of Tarski’s work on

the correspondence theory of truth have not fully been appreciated.
We cannot treat Popper’s work on logic and the problem of truth in
isolation as if they exist outside his theories of cognitional
metaphysical reasoning. Even his most technical works of logic are
means of propelling arguments about the world belonging to a species
of reasoning we call metaphysical. This chapter argues that Popper
showed us that the correspondence and consensus theories of truth are
not mutually exclusive, but that consensus plays an important part in a
correspondence theory within Popper’s broader understanding of
cognition and linguistics. Popper’s attitude towards the conceptions of
truth contest this distinction between ‘consensus’ and
‘correspondence’. This chapter argues that we cannot dismiss
Geoffrey Stokes’ thesis in The Critical Thought of Karl Popper (1984)
that Popper understood truth as consensus. This chapter argues that an
‘intersubjective’ or consensus understanding of the way objectively
valid empirical knowledge or ‘truth’ as construed in everyday
language is consistent with Popper’s anthropology of humans as
problem-solution-seeking rational animals. It will be argued that
Popper himself used Tarski in a broad philosophical sense which
needs to be seen in relation to his fallibilist anthropology expressed in
his various theories of human cognition, evolutionary linguistic as
well as social theory.
4.2 Tarski’s theory of truth and its implications
From the philosophical standpoint, Popper keenly observed that

Tarski’s work on truth had implications that went well beyond the
field of semantics or science at large and could be used, with a
measure of care, to shape arguments in political and social philosophy
as well, such as those of The Open Society. The arguments used to
support Popper’s views on truth are recurrent and operate over and
over again in different forms throughout his works including his
broader moral and political oppositions to epistemologically
pessimistic grounds for scepticism, moral relativism as well as
dogmatic modes of thinking. The interplay between arguments for
liberalism and those for truth and show Popper’s technical proficiency
in his ability to differentiate argumentative operations so that their
conjunctions can appear in ever fresh combinations.
Popper wrote that “it was clear that we could learn from
Tarski’s analysis how to use, with a little care, the notion of truth in
ordinary discourse, and to use it, moreover, in its ordinary sense – as
correspondence to the fact”.1 How exactly Popper understood that a
notion of truth could be used in ‘ordinary discourse’ needs to be
contextualised within his broader understanding of human cognition
and the role this plays in social or species problem solving. In
Objective Knowledge (1972) Popper identified that Tarski provided a
devastating blow to Wittgenstein’s ‘positivism’ which held that a
concept is vacuous if there is no criterion as Tarski’s definition of
truth proved that there can be no criterion of truth, that is no criterion
of correspondence.2 Whether a proposition is true is not decidable for
the language which we may form the concept of truth. Rather, truth
plays the role of a regulative ideal as a guide for helping us in search
for truth. Popper states that even though we know there is something
like truth or correspondence occurring, the concept of truth does not
give us a means (criterion) of finding truth or even being sure that we
have found it when we know something to be true. This Chapter
makes the more radical argument that Popper’s showed that Tarski’s
theory of truth is not a theory of truth at all as Truth is a kind of God
word, rather it redirects us towards an anthropology of the of the
searcher.

1
2
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 317-318.
Chapter Four 81
Popper became acquainted with Tarski as a result of attending

the Vienna Circle’s Vorkonferenz in Prague in 1934. On a following
occasion in 1935 in Vienna, Tarski explained his “semantic
conception of truth” to Popper. 3 Although Popper’s familiarisation
with the work of Tarski was too late to make an impact upon his Logik
(1934) it would play a significant role in his later arguments. There
are some important biographical similarities between Popper and
Tarski that also might account for their mutual admiration. Both were
non-Jewish Jews living and working in increasingly Anti-Semitic
countries. Both did as much as possible to play down their Jewish
ancestry and to integrate socially and culturally into the intellectual
strata of the predominantly Christian society. Alfred Tarski was
originally Alfred Teitelbaum (from the old rabbinic dynastic family).
Ultimately both were forced into exile.
In the article Popper and Tarski (1999) David Miller made the
observation that it was Popper’s political work The Open Society that
dealt most with the work of Tarski. Miller referred to Tarski’s shock
at being quoted in the index almost as often as Marx.4 It was Miller
who early on noticed the importance of an understanding of Tarski’s
work for an appreciation of Popper’s social thought. However, I
would make the caution that it is crucial to emphasise the distinction
between Popper’s use of Tarski from the arguments and problems
Tarski himself worked on. Although there are few direct references to
Tarski in the body of The Open Society, the remarkable extent to
which Tarski was referred to in the endnotes reveals how much
Popper was able to read into Tarski’s work to support his own
political arguments.5
For Die beiden Grundprobleme we can see that his alternative
position to the ‘sceptical’ arguments that he associated with the early
Wittgenstein’s attempt to overcome an Aristotelian essentialist
epistemology is directly related to his support for Tarski’s work on

3
D. Miller, Out of Error, op. cit., p. 9. For other accounts of the meetings in 1935
between Popper and Tarski see: A. Burdman-Feferman and S. Feferman, Alfred
Tarski: Life and Logic, op. cit., pp. 93-94.
4
5
Miller has identified how the positions in Chapter 8 of The Open Society “The
Philosopher King” reflect a philosophical application of Tarski’s theory of truth. D.
Miller, “Popper and Tarski”, in I. Jarvie and S. Pralong. Popper's Open Society After
Fifty Years: The Continuing Relevance of Karl Popper (London: Routledge, 1999),
pp. 56-70.
truth as correspondence. Popper generalised the early Wittgenstein’s

arguments as exemplifying this philosophical pessimism which posits
itself as an alternative to essentialism. For Popper, a Wittgensteinian
sceptic “would also have admitted that we have knowledge (of course,
“only” semantic knowledge); and what he now attacks is our
(semantic) concept of knowledge, and our concept of truth, which is
closely connected with it.” An analysis of the text in Die beiden
Grundprobleme outlining this argument shows how Popper used a
dialogue with a Sceptical straw-man which is meant to represent
Wittgenstein’s position which Popper then argues against by stating it
is possible to have objective knowledge of the external world despite
the anthropological framework of the Kantian “forms of our
understanding”:

scientifically determining the object according to the universally
valid (intersubjective) methodological principles (for the use of our
6
understanding).
Popper was wrong about Wittgenstein on this account, rather

than leading to a philosophical pessimism Wittgenstein’s contribution
to symbolic logic in the Tractatus only enriches the praxiological
aspect of lived-philosophy. This is achieved through phronesis, as the
limits of the propositionally knowable or true are restricted. The
meaningful and existential can then be seen to require other alternative
modes of engagement and expression. Things of true value cannot be
gesagt only gezeigt.
Popper believed that he could rehabilitate objective knowledge
through a “limited scepticism” avoiding the “contradictions of a
general form of scepticism”.7 For this to happen, “objective” would
need to be decoupled from “absolute” in relation to knowledge, as if
object were comprehended “in itself” “detached from all relations to
the knowing subject”, it would be subjective if its determination of the
object were only “relative”. For Popper, this situation results in a
coupling of the “absolute” which can only be grasped subjectively

6
K. Popper, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, op. cit., pp.
98-100.
7
Ibid., p. 108.
Chapter Four 83
(believed) and “objective” “universally valid, intersubjectively

testable scientific knowledge” that is “relative”. Popper saw in Kant’s
Transcendental Doctrine of Method as well as his practical
philosophy, a way to overcome this linking of the notions of
objectivity and relativity through a non-positivist empiricism. While
he believed that within the tradition of Kant’s practical philosophy
that he could avoid this problematic nexus of objectivity-relativism in
relation to the empirical extrinsic reality, the problem of an objective,
yet non-absolute truth that was objectively secured through
intersubjective cognition was still not at hand. Popper sought a way to
be able to speak of truth in an objective sense without it becoming a
divine God-like word. However, the price on truth may have been too
high. What Popper was left with was a truth that was neither ‘certain’,
let along Absolute, more a semantic truth for searching for a
conceptual Truth; in other words something like the truth –
verisimilitudinous.
For Tarski, the object of his investigation into the problem of
the definition of truth required a definition which is “a materially
adequate and formally correct definition of the term ‘true sentence’”.8
Tarski stated that when this definition is applied to colloquial
language, the results are entirely “unproductive”. For Tarski, with
respect to colloquial or ordinary language, not only does the definition
of truth seem to be impossible, but even the consistent use of this
concept in conformity with the laws of logic also seem to be
untenable.9 As Tarski’s notion of truth was developed for the use of
formal language in logic, it cannot be unproblematically applied to a
study of natural languages in general. According to Jan Wolenski,
Tarski himself was sceptical of the possibility of a formal semantics of
natural language including the application of the semantic theory of
truth to natural languages.10 Brian Ellis supports this claim reiterating
Tarski’s concerns that “a Tarskian truth theory does not exist for any

8
A. Tarski, “The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics”,
in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 4: ([2001] 1944), pp. 341-376.
9
A. Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers From 1923 to 1938 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1956), pp. 152-153, 165. Where Tarski concludes statement §1 with:
the very possibility of a consistent use of the expression ‘true sentence’ which is in
harmony with the laws of logic and the spirit of everyday language seems to be very
questionable , and consequently the same doubt attaches to the possibility of
constructing a correct definition of this expression. (p. 165)
10
J. Wolenski, Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School, op. cit., p. 180.
natural language, and there is reason to think that no such theory could
be provided for such a language”.11 From a strictly logical perspective
Ellis’s assertion is correct, Popper’s use of Tarski was not logical, it
was philosophical and highly contentious.
In an obscurely presented argument, Popper stated that: “despite
Tarski’s restrictions it was clear that from Tarski’s analysis we could
apply this to ordinary language and that the application of this was
made clear by Tarski himself”.12 This claim by Popper at first notice
appears to take great liberties with Tarski’s insistence in Logic,
Semantics, Metamathematics (1956), in which he argued that such an
application to an ordinary language was not possible. However, it was
the implications for ordinary language that Popper gleaned to have a
significant import for a common-sense philosophical realism. It was
Popper’s understanding of the evolved characteristics of cognition
itself that could best explain why such a jump from an empirical
scientific function to an ordinary language usage could be made, and it
hinged upon the notion of experience and facticity in the hypothetico-
deductivist understanding of an undifferentiated cognitional activity
uniting mundane reasoning and refined science. In Conjectures and
Refutations, experience in science was spoken of as no more than an
extension of ordinary everyday experience, what applies to science by
and large can be applied to everyday experience also.13
4.3 Consensus as correspondence
If it is the case that we indeed cannot extend a correspondence theory

from a formalised language to the way ordinary language relates to

11
B. Ellis, Truth and Objectivity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 117.
12
K. Popper, Unended Quest op. cit., p. 99. Where Popper states that: “…all these
precise methods were confined to formalized languages, and could not, as Tarski had
shown, be applied to ordinary language (with its “universalistic” character).
Nevertheless it was clear that we could learn from Tarski’s analysis how to use, with a
little care, the notion of truth in ordinary discourse, and to use it, moreover, in its
ordinary sense – as correspondence to the facts. I decided in the end that what Tarski
had done was to show that once we had understood the distinction between an object
language and a (semantic) meta-language – a language in which we can speak about
statements and about facts – there was no great difficulty left in understanding how a
statement could correspond to a fact”.
13
Chapter Four 85
reality then how can we hold a notion of truth in relation to common-

sense reason (Vernunft)? Kołakowski may be used to explain Popper’s
need to speak of truth or “how things really are”. According to Leszek
Kołakowski “we can see that the idea of truth as correspondence with
reality seems to fit well with our ordinary, non-philosophical intuition,
which is indifferent to the squabbles of logicians, and with the
ordinary, non-philosophical meaning of the words ‘true’ and ‘truth’.
For Kołakowski, as we are rational animals, we will never stop
wanting to know the Truth and we will never desist from asking such
questions as the roots of the correspondence theory are cultural, not
epistemological.14
This cultural aspect of the correspondence theory as it played
out in Popper’s thought was best explored by Geoffrey Stokes. Stokes
argues that the correspondence theory evolved or became a consensus
theory. Stokes’ argument is that:
According to Popper, Tarski’s theory ‘dispels all doubt about the

meaningfulness of talking about the correspondence of a statement to
some fact or facts.’ It does not, however...provide any rigorous
epistemological guidance; it merely reinforces our intuitive common
sense notion of truth...Tarski’s theory...does not provide a criterion of
truth and according to Popper we must not ask for such a criterion for
15
it is simply unavailable.
We are, as a consequence for Popper, able to “speak, without

fear of talking nonsense, of theories which are better or worse
approximations to truth.” 16 However, Stokes acknowledges that
Popper and others have failed to ‘provide a formal definition of
verisimilitude’. It was Stokes who made the novel claim that in
practice, Popper advocates a consensus theory of truth whose
characteristics again find parallels in Habermas’s work. It is to this
point that I would like to draw the reader’s attention. For Stokes, in
both empirical science and hermeneutics, Habermas, like Popper,
considers that “the truth of propositions is not corroborated by

14
L. Kołakowski, “Is there a future for truth?” in Is God Happy? Selected Essays,
Penguin: London, 2012), pp. 289- 296.
15
G. Stokes, The Critical Thought of Karl Popper, (1984 Unpublished Doctoral
Dissertation. School of Social Sciences, Flinders University: Adelaide), p. 669.
16
Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p. 335.
processes happening in the world but by a consensus achieved through

argumentative reasoning”.17
Stokes in Chapter 8 of Popper: Philosophy, Politics and
Scientific Method (1998) attempted a reconciliation of critical
rationalism with critical theory. Gattei has stated that Stokes described
Adorno’s and Habermas’s subjectivist theories of truth and then
‘wrongly’ assigns to Popper a similar view. Gattei sites Stokes’
argument that “Habermas’s consensus theory of truth has affinities
with Popper’s arguments on the subject...the Popperian concept of
objectivity as an intersubjectivity leading to consensus denotes a
theory of truth that is proceduralist and that shares a great deal with
Habermas’s theory.”18 Gattei responds by saying that:
Stokes confuses the concept of truth with that of corroboration, that

misplacing him alongside Habermas: intersubjectivity (that is, Kant’s
surrogate for objectivity) leads to improvement; and the
corroboration of a theory...does not imply that it is true: even the
most well-corroborated and explanatory powerful theories (such as
19
Newton’s, for example) can be false – and actually proved to be so.
Gattei gives Newton’s theory as an example of a refutation of

Stokes’s proposition. Gattei claims that Stokes is confusing
corroboration with a consensus theory. This is unfortunate as Stokes is
speaking of truth as it actually functions in relation to everyday social
problem solving need. This functionality requires consensus between
minds which Popper argued in The Self and Its Brain needs to be
understood within a materially transcending interactionist framework.
Gattei further compares Stokes’s error with Kuhn’s. However, Stokes
was not in this section referring to the relationship between scientific
models and reality but the correspondence of moral, historical and
political theories with reality. Gattei presents a very narrow reading of
Popper’s work on truth which excludes both Popper’s later theories of
cognition and what he regarded as Tarski’s “over simplistic”

17
G. Stokes, The Critical Thought of Karl Popper, op. cit., pp. 671, 673.
18
Rationality, op. cit., p. 249. Also see: G. Stokes, Popper: Philosophy, Politics and
Scientific Method (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), p. 155-58.
19
Rationality, op. cit., p. 250.
Chapter Four 87
example. 20 If we are to acknowledge the role that consensus plays

upon any act of judgement on the correspondence of facts with the
reality they describe we must also allow for an appreciation of the role
of phronesis as indispensable for the act of agreement.
Stokes was correct in identifying a consensus aspect. However,
perhaps went too far in replacing correspondence with consensus
outright. I argue that Popper never cast off the correspondence theory
but rather used the correspondence theory to frame the way consensus
on truth is achieved. Moreover, Popper contests the category of a
“correspondence theory” by arguing that Tarski’s example
oversimplified the matter as even the most basic descriptive sentence
such as “The snow is white” is partly theoretical and can even be
highly abstract for someone who has never seen snow. 21 Thus, a
consensus upon the basic meaning of the ‘facts’ is required before we
can see whether it corresponds to reality. The ‘universals’ embedded
in our words are windows into the logical operators of some pre-
linguistic cognitive structure responsible for language. It is only at this
level of an unknowable cognition that from a philosophical
perspective, room for Logos can be made, even if Popper himself
would not venture this far.
4.4 Evolutionary cognition
It is prudent to observe that Popper’s Tarski and the real Tarski were
far from similar. Popper’s understanding of Tarski was shaped by the
interaction with a series of problem situations in which the impact of
Bühler’s theories was also important. It is clear that at least in the
1970s, much of Popper’s linguistics was taken directly from Bühler.
Thus, it is not only necessary to speak of Popper and Tarski in relation
to the problem of truth but also of Bühler’s influence upon Popper as
well. If truth is a notion for Popper that functions in linguistic problem
solving, it cannot be seen in isolation from an evolutionary
understanding of communication that he gained from Bühler and Selz.
It is necessary to view this notion as Popper would have, that is, in
relation to his understanding of semiotics, or more correctly the

20
A. Schlipp, Ed. The Philosophy of Karl Popper (La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court,
1974), p. 1094.
21
Ibid., p. 1094.
extension he made to Karl Bühler’s theory of language function. 22

Hence, the way that Popper received Tarski’s work on a
correspondence theory of truth would become for Popper the needed
common-sense notion of truth which could also be integrated into
Bühler’s theory of language function. 23 Popper also showed that in
relation to this phylogenetic sequence of language functions the notion
of truth or falsity only pertain to the “Descriptive function” of
language not to the highest “Argumentative function” which holds
validity and invalidity as its values. 24 By outlining the function of
truth within what I call the Bühler-Popper Phylogenetic Theory of
Language, we can begin to better understand how the notion of truth
Popper developed from Tarski pertains to Popper’s understanding of
language and communication.
However, if we go back earlier it was Kant as early as 1933 for
Popper in Die beiden Grundprobleme in which the link between
intersubjective communication and our capacity to gain objectively
valid knowledge of external reality was argued to be possible. This
was argued to be the case by Kant despite our “anthropomorphic
framework”. Against both the sceptic’s ‘semantic view of knowledge’
Popper follows Kant in asserting an alternative anti-essentialist view
capable of asserting objectivity in relation to empirical reality.
scientifically determining the object according to the universally valid
(intersubjective) methodological principles (for the use of our
understanding).25
It was with this solution to the problem of holding extrinsic
empirical objective knowledge within the transcendental idealism

22
For Popper’s elucidation of, what I call the Popper-Bühler Linguistic Schema, see:
K. Popper, Knowledge and The Mind-Body Problem: In Defence of Interaction
(London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 84.
23
For the importance of the work of the Würzburg School, in particular the thought of
Karl Bühler upon Popper’s thought see: J. Alt, Die Frühschriften Poppers, (Frankfurt
am Main: Lang, 1982).
24
For further discussion of this point see: A. F. Petersen, “On Emergent Pre-
Language and Language Evolution and Transcendent Feedback From Language
Production on Cognition and Emotion in Early Man”, in J. Wind et al., (eds).
Language Origin: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1992), p. 145.
25
100.
Chapter Four 89
associated with a Kantian anthropology that Popper would come to

use the work of Büher, Selz and later Lorenz to develop his alternative
philosophy linking an anthropology centred upon problem-solving
with notions of objectivity and truth understood intersubjectivity.
Later in life Popper continued Bühler’s work by integrating it
into what would become Popper’s late World 3 ontology. From a late
paper, The Place of Mind in Nature (1982) we can see how Popper
understood Tarski’s criterion for truth as somehow relating to
Bühler’s understanding of truth in communicative language. This can
be seen through the way he integrates theories and references to
Tarski and Bühler in this discussion.26 Following Bühler’s empractic
theory of language Popper came to see the act of communication on a
practical common-sense problem-solving level. We speak of truth as a
value we hold at a certain functional level of communication and it is
the evolutionary and survival significance of communication that
gives meaning to the truth or falsity of our assertions. The link
between language and evolutionary necessitated problem-solving,
developed to the point that Popper saw a unity of method that drives
the search for truth “from the amoeba to Einstein”.27 In this lecture
Tarski’s work on truth and Bühler’s broader linguistic theories are
brought together to form a broader evolutionary theory of mind.28
Popper’s epistemology was heavily indebted to the theories and
discoveries of Karl Bühler of the Würzburg School his early
supervisor. His epistemology categorizes linguistic functioning in
accordance to Bühler’s categories. These categories function as a
means of limiting the operations of truth in human communication.
Popper limits the operationalization of truth to the ‘descriptive
function’ leaving ‘validity’ and ‘agreeability’ as the values for the

26
See: K. Popper, “The Place of Mind in Nature”, 1981 October 6 . Speech (not
delivered in person due to illness), Nobel Conference XVII, Gustavus Adolphus
College, St. Peter, Minnesota, published in Mind in Nature, Elvee, Richard Q., ed.
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982), pp. 32-33, 47.
27
It is not a method in the strictest sense of a logical method, which he states in The
Logic (p. 8) is impossible, but I refer to method in the broad sense of the process of
problem solving that is the defining feature of all life forms. For Popper’s comparison
of error elimination of the amoeba and Einstein see: K. Popper, Objective Knowledge,
op. cit., p. 70. Where Popper stated that “The difference between the amoeba and
Einstein is that although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination,
the amoeba dislikes to err while Einstein is intrigued by it: he consciously searches for
his errors in the hope of learning by discovery and elimination”.
28
See: K. Popper, The Place of Mind in Nature, op. cit., pp. 32-33, 47.
“argumentative or critical function” of language. He summarized his

understanding of Bühler’s linguistic function in Conjectures and
Refutations as follows:
Bühler’s anthropology divided the main function of human
communication into three functions: (1) the expressive function – i.e.
the communication serves to express the emotions or thoughts of the
speaker; (2) the signalling or stimulative or release function – i.e. the
communication serves to stimulate or to release certain reactions in
the hearer (for example, linguistic responses); and (3) the descriptive
function – i.e. the communication describes a certain state of affairs.
These three functions are separable in so far as each is accompanied as
a rule by its preceding one but need not be accompanied by its
succeeding one. The first two apply also to animal languages, while
the third appears to be characteristically human.
Popper went further to add a fourth function to Bühler’s
linguistic functions which he called the ‘argumentative or explanatory
function which described the presentation and comparison of
arguments or explanations in connection with certain definite
questions or problems.29 In one of his later works Knowledge and the
Mind-Body Problem (1994), it is stated that Bühler’s descriptive or
informative function along with Popper’s argumentative or critical
functions are essential for an understanding of knowledge in the
objective sense.30 Bühler’s theory of language function is central to
Popper’s epistemology and the development of his late ontology. The
Popper-Bühler Linguistic Schema which plays such a central role in
Popper’s philosophy is outlined below:

29
K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, op. cit., pp.134-135.
30
K. Popper, Knowledge and The Mind-Body Problem, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
Chapter Four 91
Table 2: Popper-Bühler Linguistic Schema.31

Functions Values
Popper’s Higher Linguistic
Function
Validity / Invalidity
Argumentative or Critical Function (agreeability/ disagreeability)
Bühler’s Higher Linguistic Function
Descriptive or Informative Function Falsity / Truth
Bühler’s Lower Linguistic

Functions
Efficiency/Inefficiency
Communicative Function Revealing/
Expressive Function Not revealing
This table reveals a synthesis in Popper’s thought between the

positivistic influences (Geltungslogik) of demarcating between ‘truth’
and ‘falsity’ with the linguistic thought of Bühler. By adding the
higher linguistic functions we can see that Popper did not passively
receive Bühler’s linguistics but revised it emphasizing the power of
reason and criticism. Further, this table exemplifies one of the ways in
which Popper returned in his later evolutionary epistemological
writings to the earlier cognitive psychological and anthropological
insights of the Würzburg School which he was imbued with during his
time at the Pedagogic Institute. It also clearly refers to ‘truth’
indicating that solely neo-Fregean concerns of the syntactic structure
of true sentences are not enough from an anthropological perspective.
A broader naturalistic understanding of the way the concept of truth
becomes operationalized within human languages as they evolve tools
for collective problem solving is needed. This is indicative of
Popper’s attempt to break out of the rationalism of the German
tradition of Geltungslogik by attempting to integrate the objective
logical features of human language and the world into naturalistic
scientific knowledge, thus incorporating both forms of knowledge
(rational, natural scientific) into a broader explanatory model. This

31
Ibid., pp. 31-59.
broader explanatory model was expressed in both ‘open’

anthropological in The Self and its Brain and in cosmological terms in
Objective Knowledge, A World of Propensities as well as Open
Universe.
According to what may be seen as a Popper-Bühler linguistic
schema, at the “critical” or “argumentative” level of language
function, a theory of truth would secure objectivity through inter-
subjective consensus in an effort to eliminate error and to reduce
harm. More importantly it is at this level that the necessary ‘axioms’
needed to establish the possibility of truthful correspondence are
conventionally agreed to. At the descriptive level of language
function, a proposition may be objectively true as in corresponding to
the facts, however, at the “critical” or “argumentative” function of
language a proposition requires at this level an inter-subjective
component, or role for phronesis to secure its objectivity.
In a response to Jacob Bronowski in the Schlipp volume Popper
argues for an overlap between what we regard as consensus and
correspondence theories of truth. Popper argued that there really isn’t
a difference between complex scientific theories which explain facts
and simple descriptions of facts themselves. Take Tarski’s example
of: “The statement “Snow is white” corresponds to the facts if and
only if snow is white.” which Bronowski argued differed from
theories such as Newton’s. Popper however, responded that:
All the most simple and apparently “factual” statements like “Snow is
white” are, in fact, deeply impregnated by theory. That there is such a
thing as snow is not only a fact, it is also a theory. For South Sea
islanders who have never seen it, it is even a fairly abstract
theory...For this reason I do not believe in the existence of a line
which separates two kinds of statements: simple statements of fact,
and sophisticated explanatory theories. I believe that apparent
statements of fact are theory-impregnated, and that whether or not a
theory is explanatory depends entirely upon the question whether it is
being used to explain, that is, to solve an intellectual problem, a
problem of understanding… I therefore think that Tarski’s theory of
truth is applicable to explanatory theories, and that the success of
science is best accounted for by the metaphysical belief that the
32
growth of knowledge consists in progress towards the truth.

32
A. Schlipp, Ed. The Philosophy of Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 1094.
Chapter Four 93
From this we can see a kind of revision upon Bühler, in which

even the lower level of the descriptive function of language operates
in the same relation to reality as the most complex theoretical
argument; both are “theory-laden”. The aspect of consensus comes in
where we have an agreement upon the meaning of the theory-laden
facts or theories that we apply to collective problem solving. The
majority of problems that humans face, as well as the very progress of
science, are collective societal or civilizational efforts. A “naïve
attitude towards facts” belies the complexity of cognitive processes
that underpin the role of language and logic in problem solving.
Before a relationship between the facts and the world can be
established, an agreement or consensus upon the theory-impregnated
facts themselves is needed. We can draw from this that the
correspondence and consensus theories of truth are not mutually
exclusive, but that even within modern presentations such as Tarski’s,
the consensus theory can be seen to cohere with a correspondence
theory as the basic ‘facts’ that are put to reality require consensus
concerning their meaning. Within a social problem solving setting the
basic facts can be construed in a variety of way depending on various
cultural factors, agreement, or consensus is fundamental for the
establishment of facticity.
Popper shared with Bronowski very similar views on science,
rationality and enlightenment principles, including the relationship
between tolerance in scientific enterprise and the possibility for
tolerance in our day to day engagement with others. Despite what is
presented below, Bronowski and Popper were very similar thinkers
from very similar backgrounds. Bronowski criticised the applicability
of the correspondence theory of truth that Popper used as “Snow is
white” can correspond to the facts as it is about facts. However, a
theory such as Newton’s or Einstein’s are not descriptions of facts,
rather they are explanations of facts. Thus, their relation to the facts is
different from what Popper calls “the simple descriptions” which the
correspondence theory and Tarski had in mind. Popper believed that
Bronowski was misled by the word “correspondence” and Tarski’s
“over simple” example: “The statement “Snow is white” corresponds
to the facts if and only if snow is white”. Popper further related
Bronowski’s argument as one in which “scientific theories are not like
this: they do not describe simple facts. They are our own inventions,
and they are good or bad according to whether they explain the facts
(facts like the whiteness of snow) well, or less well”. 33 Indeed, for
Bronowski every scientific theory is an analogy. Popper also
understood and accepted the analogical relationship between our
theories and reality. Scientific theories are analogies, however, they
are not only that. Popper responds to Bronowski’s criticism in a way
that reveals much more about his thought-system than just linguistic
or logical positions. He stated that he believed that such theories are
our inventions, however this “Kantian idealism” was limited by the
“anti-Kantian” qualification that we cannot simple impose our
inventions upon the world. For Popper:
Kant thought that our mind not only produces Newtonian theory, but
forces it upon experience, thereby forming Nature. I think very
differently. There is a world, and we try to understand it, by talking
about it, and inventing explanatory theories; but although we are
often unable to think otherwise than in the terms of these theories,
there is a reality on which we cannot arbitrarily impose our theories.
This reality, this world, was there before man, and our attempts to
impose our theories on it turn out, in the majority of cases, to be vast
failures: thus Kant’s idealism is wrong, and realism is right...I
conjecture that such strange regularities of nature do exist. But even
if they do not –even if there should be exceptions to all scientific
laws –this does not mean that the correspondence theory of truth is
inapplicable to scientific theories; it would only mean that all
scientific theories are false. It would mean that there are no
exceptionless regularities in nature.
Although I do not believe this, I admit that my belief that there exist
some exceptionless intrinsic regularities of nature is a metaphysical
belief. It is a metaphysical belief which is perfectly compatible with
the belief that these exceptionless intrinsic regularities of nature for
which we are groping in science are too deep for us, that we shall
never discover them.
However, the applicability of the correspondence theory of truth, as I
(following Tarski) understand it, would not be threatened – not even
if all our explanatory laws are false. It only would mean that the
world is much more complicated than it seems to most of us; and that
our attempts to understand it are for ever illusory; that the enterprise
34
of science (though not the world) is a dream, an illusion.

33
Ibid., p. 1093.
34
Ibid., pp. 1093-94.
Chapter Four 95
I have quoted Popper at length here as I believe that this is one

of the most crucial summarisations of his world-view and in
particular, the way his philosophical, linguistic, logical, cosmological,
metaphysical and even ethical arguments are interconnected as part of
his broader attempt at a ‘secondary science’. Popper’s response shows
that he perceived the correspondence theory of truth in a broader sense
than the “oversimplified example” that Tarski gave in his seminal
paper, 35 as the best way to methodological evaluation of the
relationship between our language and reality in accordance with his
realist emergent theory of cognition. Thus, Popper’s use of Tarski is
not to be construed solely as the concern of a logician working in the
discipline of logic, rather it includes a philosophical critique of
Kantian idealism grounded in a naturalistic and emergent theory of
cognition of which human language and the scientific theories we
develop must conform to. Further, the very possibility for
‘correspondence’ we applied to scientific theories has ontological
consequences for the kind of universe we construct. That this whole
admits the existence of “exceptionless intrinsic regularities in nature”
remains for Popper a deterministic “metaphysical belief”, but one
fundamental to the possibility of ever holding a theory to be true
within a correspondence theory. Even if such “exceptionless intrinsic
regularities of nature” are too deep and beyond the ability of our
scientific theories to discover, as a realist our theories nonetheless are
seen to move in approximation to the truth of such regularities (even if
our limitations means that it will always be dubitable that we are
moving nearer or further from certain knowledge of an exceptionless
intrinsic regularity). If the realism fails, the correspondence theory can
still hold for theories, however as there are exceptions to all scientific
laws, all our scientific theories must be false. To use Popper’s
analogy, there is something cloud-like to all clock-like activity.
4.5 Demolishing Wittgenstein
In Objective Knowledge Popper argued that Tarski’s theorem in his

theory of truth that “for sufficiently rich languages, there can be no
general criterion of truth’ undermines the thesis behind Wittgenstein’s

35
Ibid., p. 1093.
positivism that “a concept is vacuous if there is no criterion for its

application”.36
The undefinable or nominally definable words used in the meta-
language are used to speak about definitions, problems, theories in the
object-language. According to Popper:
We must speak, if we wish to define. It is impossible to speak

properly in our language of ordinary use without using conjunction,
the conditional, and indeed all its formative signs…we do not attempt
to define the words we are using, but we use words in order to define
37
very general concepts referring to other languages.
This statement exemplifies the influence of Tarski’s conception

of object-language and meta-language in relation to the role of
definitions within argumentation. The phrase “we must speak” alludes
to Popper’s opposition to Wittgenstein’s call for silence in the
Tractatus.38 Popper identified that Tarski provided devastating blow to
Wittgenstein’s ‘positivism’ which held that a concept is vacuous if
there is no criterion as Tarski’s definition of truth proved that there
can be no criterion of truth, that is no criterion of correspondence.39
Whether a proposition is true is not decidable for the language which
we may form the concept of truth. Rather truth plays the role of a
regulative ideal as a guide for helping us in the search for truth.
Popper states that even though we know there is something like truth
or correspondence occurring the concept of truth does not give us a
means (criterion) of finding truth or even being sure that we have
found it when we know something to be true.
If we accept that for Popper a pre-linguistic cognitive structure
played a major part in his understanding of rational criticism and
arguability, then his opposition to essentialist definitions can be seen
as part of his broader understanding of the logic (as a theory of
refutation) of deductive inferences.40 Popper stated that:

36
37
K. Popper, “New Foundations for Logic”, in Mind. (1947) LVI (223), p. 234.
38
L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, op. cit., p. 89, Proposition 7:
“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”.
39
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 317-318.
40
Nimrod Bar-Am reminds us that Popper presented logic as the theory of refutation.
See: N. Bar-Am, “Proof versus Sound Inference”, in Rethinking Popper, R. Cohen
Chapter Four 97
There are two obvious reasons for studying logic. One is curiosity,
theoretical interest in languages and into their rules of use…The other
is practical. Our naturally grown languages have not been designed
for the use to which we put them in scientific and mathematical
investigations. They definitely do not always stand up too well to the
strain of modern civilisation: paradoxes arise, spurious theories; the
conclusiveness of some of our subtle arguments becomes doubtful.
Such practical needs lead us to study the rules of language in order to
41
design an instrument fit for use in science.
The lack of direct reference that Popper makes to the

importance of Tarski’s research for a refutation of Wittgenstein’s
understanding of language has also enabled this Wittgenstein-Tarski
nexus to go largely unnoticed. The way both Popper and Wittgenstein
have been misunderstood, and misunderstood each other as various
kinds of positivists has not helped the situation. Rojszczak has argued
that Tarski and Wittgenstein each reflected the two opposing
trajectories of analytical philosophy of the early twentieth century,
that being, the “positivistic” orientation of Cambridge and Vienna,
and the “analytic” work of the Lvov-Warsaw School strongly indebted
to the inheritance of Brentano. 42 However, the interaction, if not
direct, between Popper, Tarski and Wittgenstein, with Popper as the
nexus and conduit suggests that Wittgenstein never really left Vienna.
For Alan Musgrave, the importance of Tarski’s theory of truth
for a rebuttal of Wittgenstein lies in the distinction between a
correspondence theory of truth and a semantic theory of truth.
According to Musgrave the contention lies in whether Tarski’s
semantic conception of truth can correctly be regarded as a version of
the classical objective or correspondence theory of truth, a position
which Tarski himself affirmed. The reasons why Popper was so keen
to accept Tarski’s work were precisely those that led others to
disagree that it was, in fact, a correspondence theory. According to
Musgrave, correspondence theorists traditionally tried to give an
account of the correspondence relation and of the ‘facts’ which are the

and Z. Parusniková (eds) (Springer Verlag. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of
Science, 2009), p. 64.
41
K. Popper, New Foundations for Logic, op. cit., p. 233.
42
A. Rojszczak, Philosophical Background and Philosophical content of the Semantic
Definition of Truth, op. cit., p. 35.
second term of that relation.43 From such an account we could arrive

at the ‘essence’ that lies behind what all truths have in common. It
would, according to Musgrave, tell us how thought or language
matches up with reality or the facts. It is clear that such a traditional
essentialist correspondence theory would not be acceptable to Popper.
Such an attempt had to give a general account of correspondence
between a linguistic item and something non-linguistic. Popper was
concerned with the relationship between language and reality as
mediated through ‘facts’ which are understood to be in part
theoretical, that is, metaphysical. It was linguistic convention or
consensus that determined the thing-ness of an object. Snow is
“white” because there is collective agreement that this word “white”
describes a particular quality of a state of affairs, in this case “snow”.
Popper may have formed this attitude from his 1929 work Axiome,
Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie on problems surrounding
the way geometries are methodologically applied to reality.
I suggest however that the real purchase of Tarski for Popper
rebuttal of Wittgenstein and indeed for contemporary philosophy does
not hang upon the distinction between a correspondence theory of
truth and a semantic theory of truth as this is not reflected in idiom
and he freely refers to Tarski’s theory as a correspondence theory. I
will make the more radical argument that Popper showed that Tarski’s
theory of truth is not a theory of truth at all as Truth is a kind of God
word, rather it redirects us towards an anthropology of the searcher.
We search via criticism rather than ‘proof’ as Popper argued in
Objective Knowledge that from Tarski we can see that truth transition
is a logical consequence of a conjecture. Thus logic is made realistic
and directed in the form of criticism (the operationalization of the set
of logical consequences of a conjecture) to actual human affairs. Thus
logic is seen as a dispositional feature of human cognition: “I look
upon criticism…as the main instrument in promoting the growth of
our knowledge about the world of facts”.44
Peter Munz in Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker (2004) has
suggested that Popper’s notion of verisimilitude tacitly went over to
the idea that semblance of truthfulness “consists in the coherence of
theories which in toto explain more than other theories; that is, he

43
A. Musgrave, Commonsense, Science and Scepticism: A Historical Introduction to
the Theory of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 260.
44
Chapter Four 99
approved of the concept of coherence as a criterion of verisimilitude,

if not of truth as it is in itself.”45 However this cannot be the case,
truth for Popper is a regulative idea that cannot have a positive
criterion yet still manages to do the job in both our science and in our
day to day lives. Rather it is safer to argue that verisimilitude
describes a relation between a cognitive act that is signified by the use
of the word ‘true’ as guided by an abstract and regulative idea. What
Popper was trying to get at may be gleaned through his translation of
Parmenides’ proem which refers to Selen’s gaze that turns back
towards the rays of radiant Helios. We can imagine that Popper’s
exegesis of this proem is a kind of symbolic word magic for a
hermetic union between the way of conjecture and the way of truth.46 I
return to a description of Popper’s exegesis of this proem at the end of
Chapter 6.
To summarise, an understanding of Popper’s intellectual
response to Tarski’s ideas from 1935 onwards provides salient clues
for re-interpreting the argumentative oddities in his later thought. Such
oddities are based upon his critical rationalist view of the nominalist
use of definitions to oppose the intellectual intuition of the essence of
a definition. This understanding of truth as part of a broader
nominalist attitude towards definitions is fundamental to Popper’s
opposition to claims to truth in any intellectual field or debate relying
upon expressionism, emotivism and the intuition of “deep” truths.
However, the mature work of Popper and Wittgenstein starts to reveal
their similarities. For Janik and Toulmin, in the Philosophical
Investigations Wittgenstein had:
…abandoned any absolute or hard and fast contrast between literal,

descriptive utterances (language as Bild) and ritual or performative
speech (language as Handlung); and, by taking this final step, he had
dismantled also the very criterion by appeal to which he had drawn
his original absolute distinction between “sayable” facts, which
language can encompass, and “transcendental” values, which must in
47
the nature of things remain forever inexpressible.

45
P. Munz, Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker, op. cit., p. 127.
46
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op. cit., p. 77.
47
A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, op. cit., p.234.
The turn in the Philosophical Investigations to a view of

language as Handlung within a broader anthropology of symbol-using
and rule-conforming activities “language games”, is similar to Popper
return to Bühler’s theory of linguistic functions. Popper, however,
later in life would experiment with expressions of transcendental
values in the very building of his cosmos; and its gleanings from the
various modes of ‘transcendence’ associated with our linguistic
knowledge and exploration of the material universe on non-human
scales which require theorisation which is increasingly
undifferentiated from the imaginary real associated by our myths and
poetry. Indeed, the arguments in works by Popper intersperse.
Initially, in the 1930s Popper talked of refutation and
refutability, however with the development of his ideas of the broader
role of rationality beyond scientific testing this is replaced by
criticisability in the 1950s. The notion of criticisability for Popper is
central to the way we systematically want to know more about
something. This, along with the idea of an “intellectual love”
(Einfühlung), or the love of truth driving the unknowable logic of
discovery, provided the constants in Popper’s philosophy.48 The idea
of an “irrational element” driving the creative process is not
systematically treated in Popper’s works (however it is stated in The
Logic and in The Open Society).49

48
49
For the notion of intellectual or creative intuitions in Popper’s writing see; K.
Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 15. Also see: K. Popper,
The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., p. 8.
Chapter Five
Definitions, essences and meaning
5.1 Introduction
Popper had various criticisms of various functionally related theories

covering functionally different fields which he associated with the
doctrine of essentialism. In one sense this opposition to essentialism
can be viewed as an anti-authoritarian, almost iconoclastic attitude
which seeks to criticise Socrates and his concern with seeking
universal definitions. This chapter reviews Popper’s critique of
Aristotle’s view of definitions as foundational proofs by replacing
them with “ad-hoc distinctions” more in keeping with his
anthropology centred upon cognitive problem solving and the role
intersubjective communication plays in this. While Popper thought the
turn to language as a solution to the problem of essences as disastrous,
this chapter makes the argument that Popper and the late Wittgenstein
actually held a similar view of the function of language and
definitions. Popper came to this view by using Bühler’s evolutionary
epistemology (and view of language) to modify and uphold Kant. It is
argued that the late Wittgenstein reached a similar Popperian
understanding of the function of definition which suggests that a
reappraisal of our view of the Popper-Wittgenstein relationship is
required. Throughout this chapter and the following one, I will be
proposing radically new ways of looking at Popper which are not
restricted to a conventional reading of his classical works. This view
suggests a much closer proximity to both Wittgenstein and Hegel. A
consequence of this will be the redrawing the map of post-war
philosophy, and Popper’s place in it.
5.2 The problem of essentialism
It is difficult to arrive at a clear understanding of what Popper meant

by ‘essentialism’ as his arguments concerning the problem of essences
constantly evolved in accordance to the thought domain he was
engaging with at any particular time. It was not that Popper believed
in the strong thesis of the non-existence of essences, as fallibilism
assures him of the possibility that he may be wrong in this regard as
well. Rather, anti-essentialism was limited by Popper to an
understanding of fixed or unchanging essences, as well as our ability
to have certain knowledge of essences. Popper understood the notion
of the existence of essence from an Aristotelian perspective, albeit
within this fallibilist epistemology. This was despite his criticism of
Aristotle in The Open Society. This Aristotelian essentialism has been
described by Nimrod Bar-Am as the claim that “only concrete objects
really exist, and yet abstract objects are out there too: in some subtle
sense, they too exist. They are either general characteristics of
particulars or their very essences (or both).”1 Popper’s opposition to
essentialism is based on the understanding that we cannot know if
objects have de re essences as contemporary physics has shown even
the task of pinning down particular objects is often beyond us. Later in
life, as exemplified by A World of Propensities (1990) Popper would
increasingly talk about processes, systems and situations rather than
objects revealing a concept of reality grounded in open world process
based on emergent probability. For Popper, the world is one in which
we can understand matter as process, as construing matter in terms of
substances or essences is unproductive and as a result of modern
physics need to be given up.2
Popper understood there to be an evolutionary lag between the
linguistic conceptual tools that we have evolved and the increasingly
complex problems that we set for ourselves.3 Insofar as we can speak
of essences in regard to Popper’s philosophy it is in the Lockean sense

1
N. Bar Am, Extensionalism: The revolution in logic (Springer, 2008), p. 59.
2
J. Eccles and K. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, op. cit., p. 7.
3
For the links between Popper’s methodology and late evolutionary thought see: K.
Popper, “The Place of Mind in Nature”, Nobel Conference XVII: Mind in Nature.
Richard Elvee Ed. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982).
Chapter Five 103
of nominal essences.4 However, Popper seemed to prefer not to speak

of essences at all. He could not hold a de re necessity and the only
necessity associated with definitions is linguistic or verbal necessity.
The empirical component to Popper’s deductivist philosophy is in
keeping with the broad twentieth century analytic tradition, which
endorses the classical empiricist critique of essences and holds that
necessity is merely linguistic. Even though Popper did not like to
speak of essences, he did not consider himself a nominalist. In relation
to the problem of essences, however, his fallibilism would force a
nominalist stance.
Popper’s tendency towards such a fallibilist approach to the
problem of essences can be seen already in the language of Die beiden
Grundprobleme. For an epistemologist schooled in the Neo-Kantian
tradition such as Popper, such an understanding of our knowledge of
experience is highly problematic. For Popper, Erlebnisse did not
constitute demonstrable scientific knowledge and as far as his early
work was concerned, could not be argued for at all. Any empirical
science reducible to Erlebnisse confuses psychology as the basis of
statements rather than logic. 5 Thus, in the original version of Die
beiden Grundprobleme the term for “experience” is always
Erfahrung.6
A linguistic lens coloured Popper’s theorising on essentialism.
When Popper argued against essentialism he was referring to a
linguistic notion of essentialism associated with his critique of the
semantic view of knowledge, including sceptical versions such as
Wittgenstein’s. 7 A linguistic essentialism of the kind Popper was
concerned about was one that assumes the essence or necessary
property of an object is found in the word used to signify that object.
The effect of this linguistic essentialism that concerned Popper the
most was that once the essence of an object can be seen to be captured
by human knowledge in a word, then further words and propositions
can provide no more of an explanation of the object in question.
Popper perceived this problem in light of the Friesian aspects of his

4
For Popper’s discussion of the nominalist rather than the essentialist use of
definitions in science see: K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol.
2, p. 14.
5
6
K. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, op. cit., Exposé.
7
99.
epistemology in which a dogmatic foundation for the truth is

established within the conventional linguistic modes of explanation. In
Conjectures and Refutations Popper described his notion of the
essentialist doctrine as follows:
The essentialist doctrine that I am contesting is solely the doctrine

that science aims at ultimate explanation; that is to say, an
explanation which (essentially, or, by its very nature) cannot be
further explained, and which is in no need of any further explanation.
Thus my criticism of essentialism does not aim at establishing the
non-existence of essences; it merely aims at showing the obscurantist
character of the role played by the idea of essences in the Galilean
8
philosophy of science.
Popper agrees in The Open Society with the thesis he associates

with Aristotle and Plato that “we possess a faculty, intellectual
intuition, by which we can visualize essences and find out which
definition is the correct one”. However, following Kant, Popper
modifies this with a scepticism of this kind of knowledge. The result
is that Popper admits that we possess something which may be
described as “intellectual intuition”. According to Popper “this
[intellectual intuition] can never serve to establish the truth of any idea
or theory, however strongly somebody may feel intuitively that it must
be true, or that it is ‘self-evident’”.9
Popper, following Aristotle, saw the need to define things not
words, which gave rise to his disputes with the neo-positivist
linguistic philosophers in Cambridge and Vienna. However, Popper
did not follow Aristotle in linking the notion of essence (to ti ên einai)
with the notion of definition (horismos) as is evident from Aristotle’s
Topics: “a definition is an account (logos) that signifies an essence”.10

8
9
K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 15-16.
10
Nimrod Bar-Am notes that horos means an edge, limit or end. See: N. Bar Am,
Extensionalism: The revolution in logic, op. cit., p. 39. Also see: Aristotle, Topics.
102a3. Also see M. Krąpiec, Understanding Philosophy. (Hugh McDonald, Creative
Commons License, 2007), p. 27. Professor Krąpiec of the Catholic University of
Lublin stated that Aristotle’s understanding of concrete substance (το τι ήν είναι) as a
substance that is definable was the point in which Aristotle’s thought met Plato’s.
Krąpiec stated that as Plato looked on the world of things from above, Aristotle went
by way of the senses and came to practically the same conclusion. For Krąpiec “…the
reality of the world is more accessible to us, both in breadth and depth, than is
Chapter Five 105
Popper breaks from Aristotle by separating the notion of essences

from that of definition. In Popper’s view philosophy cannot, as the
early Wittgenstein claims, purge our language of linguistic puzzles
through the clarification of meaning, so that science can get on with
the business of investigating facts.11 For Popper, horismos would be
subjected to diaeresis in relation to the scientific task of searching for
invariants. Such a search for invariants Popper initially credits to
Parmenides. 12 In The Open Society, Popper argued that Aristotle’s
linking of the notion of definition with that of essence not only leads
to “a good deal of hairsplitting”, but also encouraged verbalism,
disillusionment with argument and with it a revolt against reason. This
is due to Aristotle’s insistence that “demonstration or proof, and
definition, are the two fundamental methods of obtaining knowledge”,
which Popper stated “led to countless attempts to prove more than can
be proved”. Popper viewed scholasticism as an example of this
approach of which he was critical. For Popper, it was Kant’s criticism
of all attempts to prove the existence of God which provided a
momentary break in the essentialist tendency in the history of Western
philosophy. In Popper’s view this momentary break exemplified by
Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft was shortly followed again by the
romantics and what Schopenhauer described as the “age of
dishonesty”.13
However, despite Popper’s criticism of Aristotle in The Open
Society which he later felt was too strong, Popper’s views owe much
to this tradition. Nimrod Bar-Am relates how in Plato’s Phaedrus
(265d) Socrates explains how the splitting of a term according to
diaeresis must correspond to real platonic forms, only in this way is
the validity of diaeresis ensured. For Bar-Am, “Aristotle’s theory of
the syllogism is simply a literal expression of his incredible
assumption that we have gained knowledge of the proper matrix of
concepts (and corresponding matrix of terms).” The result is that these
syllogisms are not empty deductions, rather “God’s very own matrix
of being is spelled out by them…the cosmos in its entirety, is

allowed by abstractive apprehension of the content of the thing given to us in eidetic
intuition, even of the Aristotelian type (genetic empiricism)”. Popper’s later
references to his materialism that ‘transcends itself’ may be similarly viewed in this
Aristotelian light. It may be that in this way Popper arrived at his late World 3 theory.
11
K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 20.
12
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op.cit., pp. 146-164.
13
K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 21.
explained by the mere assumption that we have obtained the matrix of

legitimate concepts.” 14 From this we can see that Popper’s ‘invariants’
in this case can be likened to Plato’s forms from a logical perspective
as Popper attributes the same method for extraction. However
following Aristotle, ‘invariants’ are real eidetic features of the cosmos
that we can come to know, even if this knowledge is imperfect. Hence
while Popper was critical of Aristotle, much of his thinking remained
indebted to what Barry Smith referred to as an Austrian tradition of
Arisotelianism. Popper’s repeated referring to the need to “search for
invariants” in the universe is a modern rendering of this tradition.15
In a letter to Hayek, Popper described himself as “a conscious
and determined enemy of definitions”. Popper turned from definition
to the notion he called diaeresis, and he claimed to have appropriated
it from Plato’s Laws (932e). Diaeresis means a ‘division’. However, it
is difficult to state the relationship between Popper’s use and the
classical origins he attributes to it. Explaining the advantage of
diaeresis over the definition of a word in that knowledge derived from
definitions is impossible as “definitions are attempts to lay down some
‘absolute’ meaning of a term in advance”. Diaeresis, however, holds
that the meaning of a concept is always ad hoc and pertains to the
current problem under discussion.16 Thus, the distinctions developed
and terms used can only be understood in regard to their functionality
within the argument into which they are situated. Wilhelm Büttemeyer
highlighted Popper’s distinction between nominalist and essentialist
understanding of definitions that appear in The Open Society.
Büttemeyer notes how Popper saw scientific practice as concerning
itself with the nominalist rather than essentialist definitions. 17

14
N. Bar Am, Extensionalism: The revolution in logic, op. cit., pp. 44-45, 68.
15
For a discussion on Austrian Aristotelianism see: B. Smith, Austrian Philosophy:
The Legacy of Franz Brentano, op. cit.
16
Letter from Popper to Hayek, 20th October, 1964, p 1. Karl-Popper-Sammlung, Box
3005.13 Letters. Hayek 1940-47.
17
See: W. Büttemeyer, “Popper on Definitions,” in Journal for General Philosophy
of Science, 36. 1. (Netherlands: Springer, 2005), p. 17. In light of Popper’s admittedly
rather sparse theoretical work on the notion of diarrhesis. Büttemeyer’s criticisms of
Popper’s understanding of the problem of definitions on page 17 would need to be
revised if it is to remain relevant. Not only is this another example of the importance
of Popper’s letters of correspondence and latter posthumously published works for an
understanding of Popper’s philosophy, it shows that the linguistic characteristics of
Popper’s philosophy as a whole needed to be taken into account when viewing any
individual text of his.
Chapter Five 107
However, we can gain a more accurate understanding of what Popper

understood by the term definition when we compare these two
distinctions in The Open Society with Popper’s remarks in a letter to
Hayek. Through the introduction of the notion of diaeresis, we can
then appreciate that when Popper talked about definitions he talked
about the essentialist notion of definition, not the nominalist (the latter
of which he later preferred not to call a theory of definitions at all).
Instead, Popper found a new concept, or rather, revived one from
antiquity to describe the ‘good’ nominalist procedures in the form of
diaeresis as distinguished from the ‘bad’ prophetic intuition and
naming of essences that Western philosophy has derived from the
tradition of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics.
Popper stated that he opposed the Aristotelian “theory of
definition”, which was built upon Aristotle’s “theory of induction”
(epagōgē). Definitions are seen by Popper as being for Aristotle
“foundational proofs”. According to Aristotle then, from this
knowledge (epistēmē) arrived at from inductive “proofs” (the
apodixis), we are enabled to hold “essential definitions”.18 Thus we
have a positive solution to the problem of certain and secure
knowledge. Instead, Popper follows Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic
of the Critique rejecting the older rationalism’s method of beginning
with definitions or axioms and then reasoning from them. Popper’s
attitude concerning definitions is fundamental to the problem centred
rather than concept centred approach to philosophy.19
The notion of diaeresis is central to Popper’s theorising on
“concrete” versus “abstract” in relation to groups and societies in The
Open Society. This can be seen in a letter written to Hayek in 1964, in
which the very notion of diaeresis is taken from Plato, then used by
Popper against Plato to combat his “revolt against freedom” in The
Open Society. 20 This is a particularly important letter for our
understanding of how Popper developed his arguments and the
rationale behind them. Firstly, Popper sets out in this letter to outline

18
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op.cit., pp. 244, 265, 275-277. Popper
understood Aristotle to have taken this argument for essential definitions from Plato
but to have attributed it to Socrates.
19
Popper shared this opposition to rationalism’s geometric method of beginning from
axioms or definitions with Hegel. See: F. Beiser, Hegel (London: Routledge, 2005),
p. 91.
20
Letter to F. A. von Hayek. October 20th 1964. Karl-Popper-Sammlung. Box
3005.13. Also see: K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol 2, p. 21.
his distinction in social philosophy between abstract society and

concrete groups. Popper initially drew the analogy between his social
use of the distinction between “abstract” and “concrete”, and the way
mathematical logicians understand these concepts. Even though
Popper too gained inspiration from the mathematical logicians in
developing this distinction, he admitted that this similarity was more
verbal than structural. This is indicative of Popper’s awareness of the
difficulties of taking formal knowledge from logic and applying it to
the field of social analysis as this process would lose its analytic
grounds for validity or Geltungsgrund. Popper then introduced the
notion of diaeresis in order to emphasise the ad hocness of the
distinction between abstract societies and concrete groups. I argued in
Chapter Four that Popper used Tarski’s work on truth to support his
argument of the possibility of nominally defining truth. Popper’s use
of the concept of diarrhesis can thus be seen as an extension of this
line of reasoning by overcoming any logical and technical objection
that can be raised by transferring a theory from the field of logic to a
completely different field of knowledge. For Popper, ad hoc meant:
“for this particular discussion of this particular problem, and thus
“relative” to that problem”.
Popper states that “distinctions” (diaeresis) “may be always
refined, that is, carried one step further; but one should only do so if
the needs of the discussion require it”. 21 Ideally, through diaeresis
insoluble distinctions can be shown to develop for a particular
problem situation and remain as hypothetical conjectures. However,
for Popper the Aristotelian origins of the problem of definitions occurs
in Aristotle’s understanding of induction not as being a “method of
inferring natural laws from particular individual instances” which he
associated with the inductivism of the Vienna Circle, “but a method
by which we are guided to the point whence we can intuit or perceive
the essence or the true nature of a thing”. In this way Popper saw
Aristotle’s inductivism as being in accordance with Socrates’ maieutic
which aims to help lead to anamnēsis which is the power of seeing the
true nature or essence of a thing. However, this anamnēsis would
eventuate in the modern inductivism of Bacon and Cartesian

21
Letter of Correspondence: Popper to Hayek, 20th October, 1964, p. 2. This stopping
point of the minimum needs of a problem situation, reflects Popper’s position of
restricting his ontology to “three worlds” rather than allowing for an ontology of
worlds 4, 5, etc. See: K. Popper, Knowledge and The Mind-Body Problem, op. cit.
Chapter Five 109
intellectualism and the problems of definitions. Popper explained this

by suggesting that Baconian and Aristotelian induction is
fundamentally the same as the Socratic maieutic, 22 through its
preparation of the mind by cleansing it of prejudices in order to
recognise the manifest truth of the “open book of Nature”. In the same
way, Descartes’ method of systematic doubt destroys all false
prejudices of the mind and aims to arrive at the “unshakable basis of
self-evident truth”.23
Popper’s contextualisation of an ancient tradition of diaeresis
should be seen within the broader context of late nineteenth and early
twentieth century debates in mathematics. Following Hilbert’s
publication of Foundations of Geometry (1899), a debate arose out of
a series of letters of correspondence between Hilbert and Frege
concerning the nature of definitions. Frege’s view was that:
…all [a definition] does in fact is to effect an alteration of

expression…it is not possible to prove something new from a
definition alone that would be unprovable without it…In fact
considered from a logical point of view it stands out as something
24
wholly inessential and dispensable.
Shearmur describes how Popper thought it to be poor practice

for the theorist to place too much emphasis upon concepts.25 We may
focus on concepts in an ad hoc way as required, however the
development of concepts extraneous to the immediate need of
providing a better alternative theory to a previous one is seen as
counter-productive. Popper’s attitude towards the non-essential nature
of definitions is in keeping with Frege’s thought on the matter.
However, Frege added to this that even though definitions are without

22
According to Popper, Meno’s slave is helped by Socrates’ questioning to recapture
the forgotten knowledge that his soul possessed in a pre-natal state of omniscience.
The method employed towards this end was called the art of midwifery or maieutic in
the Theaetetus. It is this optimistic epistemology of Plato’s that Popper saw as
containing the germs of Descartes’ intellectualism and Aristotle’s and Bacon’s theory
of induction. See: K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, op. cit., pp. 12, 16.
23
24
See: J. Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to the World of Proofs
and Pictures (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 97. Also see: G. Frege, Posthumous
Writings, G. Gabriel et al., eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). p. 208.
25
J. Shearmur, The Political Thought of Karl Popper, (London and New York:
Routledge, 1996), p. 19.
logical significance, it does not imply that they are without

psychological significance. Indeed for Frege, definitions are very
likely essential from a practical, human point of view.26
Popper’s strict negativism, besides reflecting the influence of
Kant’s Transcendental Doctrine of Method, 27 adheres to the older
scholastic tradition which maintained a strong continuing presence in
Austria. For John Scotus Eriugena and Pseudo-Dionysius before him,
the attainment of knowledge of the Natura quae creat et non creatur
one must proceed dialectically via the negative to the affirmative
method.28 The use of a typically scholastic method is interesting given
Popper’s often strong criticism of scholasticism. The negative method
is fundamental and denied for Scotus a divine essence or substance to
things ‘which are’, foreshadowing Popper’s ‘negativism’ and his anti-
essentialism.
Yet he decided however, not to use the term “negativism” as the
official label for our (that is, Popper’s and Hayek’s) philosophy due to
his perception that only people of a pessimistic character were in
favour of it, and he did not want to associate himself with “the
skeptics” or those he regarded as relativists.29 For Popper, the negating
method is, termed “refutation” rather than “negation”. Proceeding to
the affirmative method prevented Eriugena from applying names in
their strict sense to God. Rather, such names are seen to be
metaphorical or translative. 30 In this respect, Popper found himself
following the same dialectic that characterised Eriugena’s theology.

26
J. Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics, op. cit., p. 7.
27
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., §Transcendental Doctrine of Method,
Section 3, p. 500.
28
D. Carabine, John Scottus Eriugena, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.
13. According to Carabine, for Eriugena “language is an expression of a metaphysical
reality, for the whole of the visible world contains symbols that point to God”. It is
useful to see this view of a ubiquitous metaphysics in relation to Popper’s view of the
metaphysical transcendence of “universals” in statements. Carabine explains
Eriugena’s negative method in the following way: “When Eriugena denies something
of God, he is not saying that God is not that thing or is nothing but is saying that God
is the no-thingness that, paradoxically, is everything. Every negative sentence is, in a
sense, “haunted” by God because negations in relation to God are not simply empty
phrases ...On the epistemological level …there will always be a tension between the
positive and the negative in relation to the transcendent immanant”.
29
Letter of Correspondence: Popper to Hayek, October 31st 1964. Karl-Popper-
Sammlung, Box 305.13.
30
D. Carabine, John Scottus Eriugena, op. cit., p. 13.
Chapter Five 111
However, in accordance with his Kantianism, Popper’s negativism is

the only way in which we can get “nearer and nearer to something
very positive indeed: something like a regulative idea (or ideal).”31
5.3 Comparison with Wittgenstein
More work needs to be done in contextualising Popper’s thought

within its proper central European context. In this section I sketch out
a positioning by comparing his arguments to those of Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890-1963) Polish
philosopher and logician who was a prominent figure in the Lwów–
Warsaw School. In this way Popper’s thought can be seen to be an
expression of a plastic clustering of central European problems and
approaches. Popper is in agreement with Quine’s argument in Word
and Object (1960) that we ought to give up the quest for meaning in
an atomistic sense. 32 This also reflects the later thought of
Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, in which he turned
his attention away from thinking in isolation about “words and their
meaning” (exemplified in his earlier Tractatus), and instead focused
on their use in specific language games.33 For the later Wittgenstein
the end-point for justification does not concern whether our
propositions are immediately seen to be true, rather it concerns the
acting which lies at the bottom of the language-game”. 34
Wittgenstein’s last work, which he wrote on his death bed, refuted the
idea in the Western intellectual tradition going back to Plato that any
meaningful human behaviour must somehow be the expression of an
implicit theory that we hold. Wittgenstein came to the radical
conclusion that we just act, we do not need to appeal to ideas.35 For
Wittgenstein, it was not the case that there is an implicit theoretical
structure to action. There is a strong contrast between this final
position of Wittgenstein and the thesis held by Popper that all our

31
Letter of Correspondence: Popper to Hayek, October 31st 1964. Karl-Popper-
Sammlung, Box 305.13.
32
W. Quine, Word and Object (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1960), pp. 206-209.
33
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans. (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, [1953], 1968).
34
Ibid., p. 81, Proposition 204.
35
O. Hanfling, Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1989), p. 164.
actions are “theory-impregnated”. For Popper, there could be no

distinction between an “empirical language” and a “theoretical
language” as “we are theorizing all the time” which needs to be
understood praxiologically as the way knowledge is known –
differentially reflecting the development and transformation of the
knower.
Popper was unaware of Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus writings,
yet as a result of his exposure to Bühler’s theories on communicative
language functions, he arrived at positions very close to those of
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Hence, at the time of the
infamous “poker incident” at the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club in
1946, they were by then drawing towards similar philosophical
positions concerning language, and an understanding that our
knowledge does not begin with observations. Yet as knowledge is
conceived as growing in relation to individuals engaged in an effort to
find progressively better solutions, such knowledge can be true “for
us”. We can hold them as true for the purpose of critical discussion as
agreed upon conventions, that is, the best possible concept or
definition, for the purpose of dealing with the problem pertaining to it
at a certain time. We can also hold a concept to be true in the sense of
functioning as regulative ideals towards which our knowledge
develops.36 For Popper, “The very idea of error – and of fallibility –
involves the idea of an objective truth as the standard of which we
may fall short. (It is in this sense that the idea of truth is a regulative
idea.)”. 37 The content of the name that we use to denote a concept
however, remains unknowable.
Popper could not accept Wittgenstein’s view in the Tractatus
that statements between language and the world are senseless and that
one cannot say what can only be “shown”. This position, that
questions about meaning can be answered through the syntactic
relations of statements without involving an extra-linguistic reality
was most elaborately developed in Carnap’s Logische Syntax der
Sprache (1934). As I have discussed in the previous chapter, this

36
37
This philosophical indeterminism is best exemplified in Popper’s translation of the
B34 poem by Xenophanes in The World of Parmenides: 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 perfect truth, he would
himself not know it; For all is but a woven web of guesses.37
Chapter Five 113
syntactical and logical-positivist orientation for analytical philosophy

was unacceptable to Popper and he proposed an alternative cognitive
model which understood the functionality of truth in our cognitional
activities in a radically different way. Popper’s stance on the problem
of meaning was similar to Ajdukiewicz’s who also followed Frege’s
steps in distinguishing between sense and reference. Frege thought of
meanings not as objects, but as a property of expressions determined
by the existence of rules governing their employment.38 The way that
both Ajdukiewicz and Popper, similarly yet independently, chose to
proceed to view meaning was not to secure a fixed definition for a
word which was then agreed upon and accepted conventionally, but to
accept the spontaneous and evolving reality of meaning formation.39
Ajdukiewicz in Problems and Theories of Philosophy pointed
out, as Popper did, that by defining a primitive term we face a
problem of infinite regress as we attempt to secure a meaning for the
definition. Instead of trying to give meaning to a definition of a word,
both Ajdukiewicz and Popper accepted an evolutionary approach to
meaning whereby it is understood that each of us, by learning a
language in early childhood, have been introduced by our parents and
teachers to a definitive way of understanding the words of the
language. For Ajdukiewicz, “by listening to adults’ utterances
produced in different situations, we have acquired an ability to use
these expressions in the same way and thereby we have learned how
to understand these utterances as adults understand them”.40
As Popper received a naturalistic theory of language acquisition
from his supervisor Karl Bühler, it is not surprising that he supported
the semantic approach to the problems of truth and meaning akin to
Ajdukiewicz’s. This semantic orientation was open to the possibility
of incorporating theoretical work from the natural sciences such as
behavioural and cognitive psychology and evolutionism. In this way,
meaning is seen as a product of a function of human language and
with it objectivity occurs organically in an inter-subjective problem-
solving context. Thus Popper concludes time and again with the
assertion that, we ought not to get bogged down in questions of words
and their meaning. It is only in direct relation to the process of a

38
K. Ajdukiewicz, Problems and Theories of Philosophy, op. cit., p. xv.
39
For Popper’s arguments against conventionalism see: K. Popper, The Logic of
Scientific Discovery, op. cit., pp. 57-61.
40
K. Ajdukiewicz, Problems and Theories of Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 33-34.
problem situation in which we attempt to reduce error that we form

meaning and accept the meaning on the basis of a correct or successful
outcome.41
This understanding of what constitutes meaning for
Ajdukiewicz and Popper is remarkably similar to that developed by
Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations (1953). As I have
shown earlier, Popper arrived at this understanding of meaning in
relation to his philosophy of language as a result of directly
appropriating much of the thought of Bühler’s Die Krise der
Psychologie (1927) in which an attempt to reform psychology was
made by providing foundational axioms for linguistics. 42 The
understanding of the concept of meaning that Popper, Ajdukiewicz
and the late Wittgenstein were attempting to develop, as Bühler had
before them, was one that required an understanding of objectivity
that was inter-subjectively grounded in an understanding of linguistic
communication as action. By following Frege, this notion of
objectivity would be secured without recourse to subjective,
intentional, or psychologistic sources. This idea is expressed in
Popper’s stricture, “knowledge without the knowing subject”.43
The later Wittgenstein also moved towards a similar
understanding of securing the truth for meaning when he articulated
the thesis of the impossibility of what he called private languages. For
Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations (1953), we are all bound
by the social rules of our language games or Sprachspiele, even
reading cannot escape the public rule obeying requirements of
language, thus it cannot be a “private” activity. 44 However, the
differences between the Popper-Bühler position on language and that
of Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations are more
procedural and methodological rather than philosophical. According

41
The connection between error and harm in Popper’s ethical thought is dealt with in
greater depth in the following section.
42
K. Popper, “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie”, in Frühe Schriften, op. cit.,
p. 190. Also see: Bühler, K. Die Krise der Psychologie (Frankfurt: Ullstein, [1978],
1927), p. 29.
43
44
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., Proposition 5:7. Also see:
Proposition 202; for the impossibility of meaning for private languages as resulting
from a practical understanding of meaning formation: “And hence also ‘obeying a
rule’ is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is
not possible to obey a rule ‘privately’: otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule
would be the same thing as obeying it”.
Chapter Five 115
to Wittgensteinian introspective thought experiments we could not

speak a private language, that is, we could not point inward to some
private experience and name that experience.45
However, the justification for Wittgenstein’s opposition to a
private language very closely reflects some of Popper’s arguments
concerning “knowledge in the objective sense” and Ajdukiewicz’s
arguments concerning “rational inter-subjective distance from the
object”.46 For Wittgenstein, unless we can appeal to some larger social
gathering there is no difference between my thinking that I am
actually using the word correctly and my actually using the word
correctly.47 Wittgenstein postulated that the social character of rules
determine the rejection of the idea of private languages. For
Wittgenstein, the sum total of the use of words in their various
language games determines a word’s meaning. For the late
Wittgenstein language is a form, whereas Popper took a more extreme
emergent ontological position by positing that language can be said to
have independent existence separate from an individual knowing
subject.
Despite these similarities between the philosophy that Popper
slowly developed throughout his life and the positions of Wittgenstein
in the Philosophical Investigations, there remained in the end one
major theoretical distinction between the two philosophers. According
to Oswald Hanfling, Wittgenstein reversed the traditional priority of
knowledge over action.48 In Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (1969) the
end-point for justification does not concern whether our propositions
are immediately seen to be true, rather it concerns the acting which
lies at the bottom of the language-game”.49 Wittgenstein’s last work,
which he wrote on his death bed, refuted the idea in the Western
intellectual tradition going back to Plato that any meaningful human
behaviour must somehow be the expression of an implicit theory that
we hold. Wittgenstein came to the radical conclusion that we just act,
we do not need to appeal to ideas.50 For Wittgenstein, it was not the
case that there is an implicit theoretical structure to action. There is a

45
S. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 56.
46
47
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., p. 81. Proposition 202.
48
O. Hanfling, Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, op. cit., p. 164.
49
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., p. 81, Proposition 204.
50
O. Hanfling, Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, op. cit., p. 164.
stark contrast between this final position of Wittgenstein and the thesis
held by Popper that all our action is theory-laden and that every
statement that we make transcends experience.51
Bernard Lonergan is also of interest in the debate on meaning in
relation to philosophical propositions, as he argued that asking
whether a proposition is meaningful or not is to ask the wrong kind of
question. Lonergan in Method in Theology (1971) used the example of
the smile to show the global meaningfulness of this fact as
distinguished from propositions being the bearers of meaning.52 This
indicates that Popper may have overstated the role of language within
our cognitive apparatus, that other kinds of recursive structuring are
providing the content for the universals. The meaningfulness of the
smile is a fact, but it is not ‘theory laden’ as Popper argues all facts are
as the smile has something irreducible, spontaneous and elemental.
Meaning may play an important role in cognitive activity however,
not of a propositional kind. This may indicate where a philosophy of
the face may be warranted and asks questions as to the role such a
philosophy would play within a critical or open rationalism.
Popper and Wittgenstein were both concerned with knowing the
cognitive structures for the insights they give into personal or social
improvement. Their approaches to philosophy was similar than the
famed dispute at the Moral Sciences Club suggests, and from all
accounts there wasn’t much opportunity on this occasion to warrant
the event even being called a dispute. What this did highlight was the
personal animosities between two Viennese intellectuals who were not
giving away the whole picture to the folk at Cambridge. What this
suggests is that the two books written on the Popper-Wittgenstein case
Wittgenstein’s Poker and Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker may have
approached this subject with an inappropriate assessment of both
thinkers. Despite the amount written on this topic, a de-Anglicised
account needs to be written.

51
K. Popper, “Appendix*X. Universals, Dispositions, and Natural or Physical
Necessity”, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., p. 423. For Popper: “even
the most ordinary singular statements are always interpretations of ‘the facts’ in light
of theories”.
52
B. Lonergan, Method in Theology, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd.,
1971), pp. 59-61.
Chapter Five 117
5.4 Popper’s aesthetics
Popper’s attitude towards essentialism and definitions permeated all of

his intellectual thought including his aesthetics. This can be seen in his
support for the approach to aesthetic theory by his lifelong friend
Ernst Gombrich. The position outlined in another lecture by Popper
Schöpferische Selbstkritik in Wissenschaft und Kunst (1979) is that the
success of great works of art or music are subjected to the same
method of trial and error. The uniqueness of particularly great works
is understood by Popper to exemplify his indeterminism and
fallibilism associated with an unknown logic of discovery.53
A continuation of his understanding of evolutionism as
consisting of purposeful problem-solving according to a Selzian
theory of mind can be seen in his understanding of the process of
artistic creation.54 Art, science and literature all result from a “super-
abundance of purpose”, that is, purposeful survival behaviour through
trial and error problem solving. The importance of the process of
objectification of the contents of artistic and intellectual creation, or
for that matter any thought as it moves from World 2 to World 3
gaining external form, is emphasised by its autonomous nature
becoming something fundamentally independent from the subjective
processes that gave rise to it. It is unreasonable to assume that the
object of art has total independence from its subjective origin within
the artist, writer, composer or those experiencing an artistic work.
Interactionism implies some sort of structural continuity. The
indeterminism and openness that is entailed within this process of
creation, externalisation and objectification reveals something of the
unknowable of human creativity and flourishing that Popper was so
concerned with in the Logik. He saw this existing at the highest levels
of the Western cultural tradition, particularly in democracy and
science:

53
See: “Schöpferische Selbstkritik in Wissenschaft und Kunst,” 1979 July 26.
Opening address, Salzburg Festival, Salzburg, Austria. Typescript and English text.
Karl-Popper-Sammlung, Box: 223.6-7. Even if this can be seen as a rather unusual
view of artistic endeavour, it is a good illustration of how his Kantian problem-
solving philosophy developed.
54
“Schöpferische Selbstkritik in Wissenschaft und Kunst,” 1979, Typescript and
English text. Karl-Popper-Sammlung, Box: 223.6-7.
In reality the great artist is a keen learner who keeps an open mind so
that he can learn not only from the work of others but also from his
own labours, including his failings. Almost all great artists have been
highly self-critical, and they looked at their work as something
objective. Haydn, on hearing the first performance of his Creation in
the Aula of the old University of Vienna, broke into tears saying “It is
55
not I who wrote this”.
Popper expresses the same unknowable logic of discovery as

operating behind all instances of knowledge creation in the objective
sense. Haydn’s expression here is similarly seen in science by
Newton’s inability to accept his conclusion of action at a distance as
the property of the mechanics of nature. Popper supported this claim
with the argument that Newton and later Einstein felt a mystery in this
conclusion and were unable to accept it, instead attributing such
movement to God. 56 We can glean in the logical and explanatory
capacity of a theory aesthetic values that are esoterically discernible.
Popper argued that we could discern the logical and dialectical
unfurling of hypotheses even in paintings; brushstrokes as conjectures
and refutations. From this we can see how his cognitive theory was a
metaphysics that explained this poetic interplay between art and
science as participating in the same unknown logic of discovery via
the dialectic of conjecture and refutation. As Bernard Lonergan
observed “functional specialities are functionally interdependent”.57
The method by which we progress to our regulative and ideal
goal, Popper argued, is identical in science and in artistic creation. In
art the method of trial and error elimination is conducted in regard to
criteria such as formal correctness and expression. As the scientist can
conduct tests through experimentation, the artist conducts tests every
time his or her brush strokes the canvas, which is itself a conjecture.
Only in the field of a theoretical human or social sciences that we
have no means of refuting our errors in a systematic way, and can only

55
K. Popper, Unintended Consequences: The Origin of the European Book. Karl-
Popper-Sammlung, Petersen Sammlung Box 5.17, p. 12.
56
K. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. (New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield.
1983 [1956], 1956), p. 149.
57
B. Lonergan, Method in Theology, op. cit., p. 126.
Chapter Five 119
at best validate our social claims according to a vague principle of

agreeableness.58
We can contend that Popper’s writings on science can be
included in his aesthetics. This accounts for the sparseness in his
disquisitions on aesthetics and artistic culture. In Realism and the Aim
of Science, Popper argued that:
Science is not only, like art and literature, an adventure of the human
spirit, but it is among the creative arts perhaps the most human: full
of human failings and shortsightedness, it shows those flashes of
insight which open our eyes to the wonders of the world and of the
human spirit. Science is the direct result of that most human of all
59
human endeavours – to liberate ourselves.
For Popper, the most beautiful work of art in the twentieth century
was science. The products of the human mind associated with science
are not only interesting; they are beautiful. There is a mystical tone to
the way Popper not only revered problems but almost worshiped their
existence which is further suggested in Realism and the Aim of
Science. Strikingly, the erotic engagement with problems leads to a
noetic nuptial ascent:
I think that there is only one way to science – or to philosophy, for

that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with
it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part
– unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem,
or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do
obtain a solution, you may then discover to your delight, the
existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult
problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to
the end of your days.60
Further, engaging with problems and theories provide an opportunity

for transcendental experiences through which transformative self-
improvement can be made. Contemplating beautiful solutions or
indeed even beautiful problems is cognitively akin to contemplation

58
Popper understood social science as being theoretical in the same sense as
theoretical physics.
59
K. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science, op. cit., p. 259.
60
derived from listening to music or looking at a painting. After all,

Pythagoras taught us that the world of sound, and indeed colour, is
governed by exact numbers, from which arrangements by the human
mind manipulate into aesthetically judgeable products. Science is a
transformative activity through which we participate in a diacosmic
Weltharmonik. The notion of the scientist is not restricted to a
Baconian specialist or expert, rather the true user of science is “the
amateur, the lover of wisdom, the ordinary, responsible citizen who
has a wish to know.”61 There is a sense in which to engage in science
is to engage in spiritual excercises. Anyone who can fall in love with
problems is to some extent a Popperian scientist.

61
Ibid., p. 260.
Chapter Six
Popper’s metaphysics
6.1 Introduction
This chapter suggests ways of viewing Popper in relation to the

traditions of Brentano, Frege and Lotze. It is this context that provides
the conceptual apparatus enabling Popper to develop a “non-ontology”
out of his earlier Bühlerian understanding of linguistic
communication. It is possible that Popper received his Platonic
interest in ideas as objectively real and having an independent
existence from the subjective thinker from Bühler’s “Gebilde des
objektiven Geistes”. Popper followed Bühler’s naturalistic approach to
cognition by developing it into a kind of philosophical anthropology
capable of relating the evolutionary nature of humans to the
cosmological reality of emergence. This was formulated by Popper in
the post-war period, demonstrating a later return to his formative
influences. However, Hacohen identified Popper’s university teacher
Heinrich Gomperz (1873-1942) as crucial in this respect. Hacohen
also states that Gomperz’s naturalisation of knowledge problematized
the autonomy of science, epistemology and logic. According to
Hacohen:
Gomperz separated radically between thought (Gedachte), and

thinking (Denken), objective and subjective ideas (Gedanken), logical
relationships among statements and cognitive psychological
1
processes (experiences of consciousness).
This procedure reflective of a broader tradition in Central

European philosophy associated with Franz Brentano and his school
as well as the Austro-Polish philosophers, particularly Kazimierz

1
Twardowski who is known for his work on the reality of non-physical,

non-existent objects. Thus, Popper’s “non-ontology” can be seen to
accord with Twardowski’s notion of reality as treatable independent
of existence.
This ontology needs to be viewed in association with Popper’s
understanding of metaphysics and the particular role that it plays
within human language. Ontology is used by Popper as a heuristic for
guiding the reasonableness or otherwise of irrefutable philosophical
assertions. 2 Thus, Stokes’ argument that Popper’s thought constitutes
a kind of system, or more specifically an “evolving ‘system of ideas’”
is further substantiated by this chapter.3
6.2 Propensities and the metaphysical ‘turn’
The various schools and influences that Popper drew upon were
interconnected and part of a broader Central European republic of
letters. All roads in this republic led back to Franz Brentano, and from
there further back into antiquity. Although Brentano’s appointment to
the University of Vienna was vetoed by the Emperor it did not stop
him from leaving a lasting intellectual legacy in Central Europe. Of
Brentano’s heirs two, Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) and
Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938), would leave a legacy that played
an important role in the Viennese academic world that directly
informed Popper’s thought. Christian von Ehrenfels was professor in
Prague for more than 30 years and responsible for the Gestalt
revolution in psychology. Karl Bühler played a role in bringing
Gestalt philosophy to Vienna and formed a group which promulgated
a naturalistic philosophy of Gestalten to which the young Popper
belonged. It was this developmental psychology informed by
comparative evolutionary biology which included a linguistics that
would shape Popper’s thought.
Modern Gestalt theory was a reformation of Aristotle’s theory
of Form. According to Hacohen, “Bühler criticized Gestalt

2
However, Feyerabend argued that “an ontological description frequently just adds
verbiage to the formal analysis; it is nothing but an exercise in ‘sensitivity’ and
‘cuteness’”. See: P. Feyerabend, Against Method, op. cit., p. 236.
3
G. Stokes, Popper: Philosophy, Politics and Scientific Method (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1998), pp. xii, 2.
Chapter Six 123
psychology for physicalism, the translation of psychological structures

into physiological ones. Popper defended Bühler’s methodological
pluralism against Schlick’s (and the Gestaltists’) “physicalism” and
showed that Schlick’s reduction of psychology to physics was no
alternative to semasiology.” 4 Bühler neither accepted the historical
Aristotle nor the modern Gestalt-theoretical solution to the problem of
form. In Das Gestaltprinzip im Leben des Menchen und der Tiere
(1960) Bühler returned to the problem of form or Gestalt and argued
that a specific performance of higher animals was to be able to grasp
Gestalten. For Bühler Gestalten grow in the body and function in
communication resulting in the creation of Gestalt in the external
world. This process is found similarly in humans and animals.
Hacohen identified that Bühler’s methodology opened psychology to
biological perspectives which as a promising beginning for Popper’s
attempt at creating a meta-science linking logic, psychology and
biology.5 Popper later in The Self and Its Brain would argue that there
is a tremendous amount of knowledge that we inherit and which is
built into our sense organs and our nervous system; such as
knowledge concerning how to react, how to develop and how to
mature.6 Thus, Popper’s interactionism insures that within the circuit,
knowledge is not only to be found objectively in World 3, or
subjectively in World 2, but also inbuilt in World 1.
Similarly, Popper learnt from Selz that Gestalten (wholes) are
task orientate as the mind was a problem solver. According to
Hacohen “For the passive mind learning through association, the
Würzburg School substituted an active mind forming knowledge.” 7
This naturalistic view of the symbiotic relationship between Gestalten
and the external ecology would be recast in Popper late World 3
Thesis. Rather than referring to Gestalten Popper would talk of World
3 non-physical yet real (wirklich) objects, which include things such
as problems or theories which arise in relation to World 1 ecological
pressures and underwrite the possibility for linguistic communication.
For Popper the Forms are problems the entelechy is the problem-
searching (Suche) mind. In conversation with Konrad Lorenz in 1983,
Popper spoke of this ecological approach to Gestalten in reference to

4
M. Hacohen, Karl Popper, op. cit., p. 158
5
Ibid., p. 158.
6
K. Popper and J. Eccles, J. The Self and Its Brain, op. cit., p. 102.
7
problems of language, learning and theory formation: Leben ist

Lernen.8
This was not the only tradition traceable to Brentano that was to
play a major role in Popper’s Vienna. Twardowski in Lvov based his
work on logic and psychology upon Brentano and was responsible for
bringing a tradition of exact philosophy to Poland which included all
of the important figures in Polish philosophy for most of the twentieth
century. According to Barry Smith, members of Twardowski’s circle
after moving to Warsaw where Stanisław Leśniewski was dominant
formed contacts with the Vienna Circle.9 These contacts were initiated
by Alfred Tarski’s visit to Vienna in the spring of 1930 and Carnap
reciprocated by visiting Warsaw in November of that year. Carnap
lectured at the Warsaw Philosophical Society and had discussions
with Leśniewski, Kotarbiński and Tarski around the time when Tarski
was developing his semantic conception of truth that would be so
influential to Popper. In this way Popper’s positive disposition
towards Tarski’s work is understandable given the Brentanist
inheritance that he received from Bühler. Thus, via a conference in
Prague in 1935, two branches of scholarship inspired by Brentano,
logic and cognitive psychology form a backdrop to the philosophical
work of Popper.
In the 1950s Popper changed his opinion and declared criticism
to be a broader category than tests which enabled the possibility to
criticise moral and historical judgements. For Agassi “He could then
declare metaphysics criticisable though not empirically refutable,
especially since already in 1935, he had recognized the possibility that
a metaphysical theory becomes scientific through an increase of its
contents…he adopted the view [in The Open Society, Chapter 25 ] that
metaphysical theories are points of view and so can be pitched against
their contraries”.10
For Popper metaphysics did not have a single meaning. In a
broad sense, Popper referred to metaphysics as any non-falsifiable
theory reflecting the lingering influence of the Vienna Circle’s
positivism.11 Further, metaphysics could be used by Popper to refer to

8
K. Popper, Alle Menschen sind Philosophen, (Munich: Piper Verlag 2006), pp. 23-
56.
9
B. Smith, Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano, op. cit., p. 21.
10
J. Agassi, A Philosopher’s Apprentice, op. cit., p. 61.
11
K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., pp. 11-13.
Chapter Six 125
the innocuous Platonic “universals” ever present in our basic

statements. Popper argued for the importance of metaphysics as it
exists within human language and knowledge. However, the term
‘metaphysics’ could also refer to harmful metaphysical theories
associated with Freud and psychoanalysis as well as grand
philosophical system building and theodicy. In this objection, Popper
followed Kant’s claim in the Critique of Pure Reason that
metaphysics as an attempt to gain knowledge of the unconditioned
(i.e. God, freedom, immortality) through pure reason is impossible.
Popper’s metaphysics, at least certain features thereof, can be
seen as a rational development of the situational modelling of the
Poverty in order to account for the evolution of human communication
and emergence of a realm of conventions, or institutions. This
understanding of modelling is derived from his early work on how we
decide upon geometric models to describe extensional reality that he
developed in his early dissertation on geometry in Axiome,
Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie (1929). This would provide
the basis for his later thought on social science models.12
His so-called metaphysical turn during the early 1950s coloured
his later writing such as the essay on metaphysics in Chapter Eight of
Conjectures and Refutations (1963), and are further exemplified by
Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972). These
works show greater attention to ontological concerns raised by
methodological arguments. His ontology aimed to explain how
transcendental or metaphysical entities are an integral part of our
linguistic communication and what such entities imply for our
understanding of the mind-body problem. For Popper, there was an
insidious relationship between metaphysics and language. We may
eliminate forms of metaphysical speculation, but we cannot eliminate
the universals that are inherent in the structure of our language.
Even metaphysical speculation, as this chapter will show, has
its praxiological value, so long as we understand the epistemological
limitation for such speculation. Hence, Popper’s so-called ontology
was a framework for explanations at the point where the cognitive
capacity (Erkennen) ends, and our questions demand that we move
beyond our current horizon. In this sense, Popper like Heidegger, was

12
K. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, op. cit., p. 37.
concerned with avoiding both a crash into materialism and a false

ascension of subjective idealism.13
It is important to note that Popper’s ontology was not an
“ontology” in the true sense of the word.14 This becomes clearer when
we observe the way that Popper’s ontology is mutually supportive of
his broader methodological arguments, which in turn underpin many
of his social arguments. Ian Jarvie argued that Popper chose to “gloss”
his later theories of World 3 and objective knowledge in metaphysical
rather than sociological terms. Jarvie explains this as resulting from
Popper not having fully developed or thought through an implicit
sociology of science that was crucial to his epistemology.15 Jarvie is
incorrect here; rather this demonstrates a return to his earlier
Gegenstandstheorie and increasing concern with the eidetic or formal
as well as dispositional or in-built aspects of knowledge. The formal
and dispositional are not seen as separate as Popper argued in the
appendix to the Logic of Scientific Discovery in an essay titled
Universals, Dispositions and Natural or Physical Necessity that “all
universals are dispositional”.
With the publication of Objective Knowledge, ontological
concerns played an increasing part in Popper’s thought. However, the
basis for this ontological interest can be seen much earlier stemming
from his concern with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
mechanics.16 It was the ‘subjectivism’ of the nonlocality described by
the Copenhagen interpretation that Popper found greatly disturbing.
Popper’s proposed an objectivist understanding of probability or
propensities that are akin to Fregean non-physical objects.
Probabilities, or what Popper referred to as “numerical propensities”,
could be found objectively in the world.17 In 1955 Popper published
his measure-theoretical formalism of conditional probability which
holds that “the measure-theoretical probability statements are singular
probability statements…from the point of view of physics, a singular

13
R. Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil. Trans. Ewald Osers.
(First Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 39.
14
15
I. Jarvie, “Popper’s Continuing Relevance”, in Z. Parusniková and R. Cohen (eds).
Rethinking Popper. (Springer Science, 2009), p. 219.
16
K. Popper, In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years
(London and New York: Routledge, [1996], 1984), p. 11.
17
K. Popper, A World of Propensities, (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990), pp. 20-21.
Chapter Six 127
probability…can best be interpreted as a physical propensity.” 18

Numerical propensities have an actuality and reality in the universe.
However, objects such as propensities and Frege’s equator, can only
be apprehended by us through thought. Frege’s ontological
understanding of the objective and independent reality of numbers
reappears in Popper’s objectivist solution to the problem of
probability, thus saving the falsificationist methodology at least for
science.
In A World of Propensities (1990) Popper stated the aim of our
theories and our hypotheses or what he called our “adventurous
trials”:
What we aim to know, to understand, is the world, the cosmos. All

science is cosmology. It is an attempt to learn more about the world.
About atoms, about molecules. About living organisms and about the
riddles of the origin of life on earth. About the origin of thinking, of
the human mind; and about the way in which our minds work.
Popper’s cosmological theorising was directed towards the

problem of causality and change in relation to events and processes.
He did not embark on his cosmological thinking with the aim of
developing an organised system of ideas or an objective scientific
theory of the whole of human experience. His theorising on the
problem of probability also took a cosmological detour later in life.
Probabilities are not the result of our lack of knowledge, but a
structural property of the universe which governed the nature of
change. It does not refer to the nature of changing objects but of
changing propensities, processes and states of being. Thus, Popper’s
theorising on the problem of determinism was largely conducted
without a language of objects and matter; rather it was treated
mathematically. Hence for Popper, the central point of his theory was
that there was inherent in every possibility a tendency or propensity to
realise a certain event.
According to Popper, it was only due to the growth of his
theorising on propensities that he came to realise its cosmological
significance. By this Popper means:

18
H. Keuth, The Philosophy of Karl Popper (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), p. 185. Also see: K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit.,
Appendix *IV.
…the fact that we live in a world of propensities, and that this fact
makes our world both more interesting and more homely than the
19
world as seen by earlier states of the sciences.
Thus, in the notion of a world of propensities we can see his

numerical or eidetic rendering of the possibility for change and
emergence in the universe:
The tendency of statistical averages to remain stable if the conditions

remain stable is one of the most remarkable characteristics of our
universe. It can be explained, I hold, only by the propensity theory;
by the theory that there exist weighted possibilities which are more
than mere possibilities, but tendencies or propensities to become real:
tendencies or propensities to realize themselves which are inherent in
all possibilities in various degrees and which are something like
20
forces that keep the statistics stable.
For Popper, “propensities are not mere possibilities but are

physical realities”. Therefore, he called this an “objective
interpretation of the theory of probability”. For Popper such
propensities are not “inherent in an object” but “inherent in a
situation”, of which the object is only part. Propensities are non-
physical causal powers which “in physics are properties of the whole
physical situation”. The “whole physical situation”, refers to the
totality of events and processes. This gives rise to our apprehension of
common-sense objects of the physical world. Propensities are real in
the sense that they are possible as well as “actual” in that “they can
act”.21 We can know of their existence through their products; that is,
the events which are the realisation of moments and situations that we
experience as the physical world and with which our minds must
interact.22 Popper summarises the continual process of actualisation of
“invisible” Newtonian-like “attractive forces” upon the common-sense

19
K. Popper, A World of Propensities, op. cit., pp. 7, 9, 11.
20
Ibid., p. 12.
21
Ibid., pp. 14, 18.
22
Popper’s theory of propensities ought to be related to what he called “Compton’s
problem” which is the problem of “how abstract entities such as rules and decisions,
theories and melodies, are able to bring about changes in the physical world”. See: D.
Miller, Out of Error, op. cit., p. 34.
Chapter Six 129
interactive experiences with which the human mind must confront the
physical world:
The future is open: objectively open. Only the past is fixed; it has
been actualized and so it has gone. The present can be described as
the continuing process of the actualization of propensities; or, more
metaphorically, of the freezing or the crystallization of propensities.
While the propensities actualize or realize themselves, they are
continuing processes. When they have realized themselves, then they
are no longer real processes. They freeze and so become past – and
23
unreal.
For Popper, even before the possibilities or propensities have

actualised themselves as objective situations they remain real. They
have what Popper called a “kind of reality”. As Pythagoras understood
the world of sound to be governed by exact numbers, Popper
continued Pythagoras’ extrapolation of this view to include an
understanding all events and situations as having objective
mathematical correlates in an imagined geometric realm of inherent
probabilities. These mathematical or numerical propensities, as
Popper called them, that correspond to the possibility of one or
another situation arising in the common-sense world have “a measure
of this status” that is of having reality. “A measure” qualifies them for
being an ontologically “not yet fully realized reality”. The notion of
“reality” in A World of Propensities is an extremely complex one. Not
only is this notion of the real both virtual, as numerical propensities
attest, and actual as the possibility becomes the moment, but the
virtual is actual as it is “actively” present at every moment.24 There are
degrees and variations of the real that exists in every moment. The
real for Popper can have existence or not; it can be likely to have
existence in the future, or have little (if not zero) chance of coming
into existence.
This position is in keeping with other Central European
philosophers such as the early Franz Brentano, Anton Marty and
Kazimierz Twardowski who also held the distinction between reality
and existence. For Twardowski:

23
K. Popper, A World of Propensities, op. cit., p. 18.
24
Ibid., p. 20.
An object is said to be something real or not real, regardless of

whether or not it exists, just as one can talk about the simplicity or
complexity of an object, without asking whether or not it exists. That
in which the reality of an object consists cannot be expressed in
words; but most philosophers seem to agree nowadays that objects
like piercing tone, tree, grief, motion, are something real, while
objects like a lack, absence, possibility, etc. are to count as not real.
Now, just as a real object may at one time exist and at another time
25
not exist, so, too, can something non-real now exist, now not exist.
As can be seen from Twardowski, Popper’s attitude towards

reality was by no means unique in Central Europe. This distinction
between existence and reality opened up the possibility of the
‘imaginary real’, something Popper had been long familiar with as a
result of his early studies on scientific models, which he later in life
attempt to explain analogically via Presocratic poems and creation
myths. This understanding of reality is owing to Kant who subscribed
to the traditional scholastic-rationalistic ontology which holds that
different degrees or amounts of reality can be ascribed to things. This
possibility was stipulated by Kant’s categories of quality (reality,
negation, and limitation). A World of Propensities cannot be fully
appreciated without an awareness of the kinds of debates associated
with truth and reality that were characteristic of Mitteleuropa.
For Popper, the universe is an “open system” characterised by
emergence. It is through evolution that new combinations of different
sets of basic kinds come together to form new organisms. The
successful actions that an organism makes throughout its lifetime
does, in Lamarckian fashion, influence the basic sets constituting an
organism, and thus its dispositions to act or react to external forces or
influences. In regard to natural laws, Popper supported Hume’s
“contingency thesis” which holds the position that natural laws could
have been other than what they are and that in different possible
worlds would give rise to different natural laws.26
It was through the notion of numerical propensities that he
aimed to describe the causal interaction of dispositions in a way that
explained events and processes of the physical world. It was a
determining demand that arose out of an object’s disposition that is

25
B. Smith, Austrian Philosophy, op. cit., p. 160.
26
B. Ellis, The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism (Chesham:
Acumen, 2002), p. 78.
Chapter Six 131
the result of a dispositional process that caused events to happen.

These events are the actions and interactions of dispositional objects
being enticed or attracted to certain outcomes which are numerically
most likely. Popper aimed at explaining the problem of causality and
the process of interacting dispositions in A World of Propensities:
What may happen in the future – say, tomorrow at noon – is, to
some extent, open. There are many possibilities trying to realize
themselves, but few of them have a very high propensity, given the
existing conditions. When tomorrow noon approaches, under
constantly changing conditions, many of these propensities will have
become zero and others very small; and some of the propensities that
remain will have increased. At noon, those propensities that realize
themselves will be equal to 1 in the presence of the then existing
conditions. Some will have moved to 1 continuously; others will have
moved to 1 in a discontinuous jump. (One can therefore still
distinguish between prima facie causal and acausal cases.) And
although we may regard the ultimate state of the conditions at noon as
the cause of the ultimate realization of the propensities…27
6.3 Materialism transcends itself
Popper’s contribution in the co-authored The Self and Its Brain: An

Argument for Interactionism (1977) with John Eccles was primarily
concerned with the theses of his World 3 pluralism. Popper’s early
psychology sought to integrate the kind of knowledge we can possess
through an integration of a Selzian active problem-solving mind with
Bühler’s evolutionary theory of language function. However, when
Popper returned to his earlier Würzburgian influences later in life, he
related it to the disciplinary needs of the field of neuroscience. This
required extensional models of anatomical explanations of brain
function to be integrated into his intentional model of the mind which
was facilitated thought an evolutionary theory of cognition. The result
is a peculiar example of Popper’s metaphysical realism at work in
which his World 3 interactionism is extended to account for
neurobiological functioning.28 The effect of this is perplexing from a
traditional empirical and anti-metaphysical natural scientific

27
28
See diagram labelled Fig. E7 – 5, in Eccles J., and K. Popper, (1977), p. 375.
standpoint. Within the materialist standpoint of modern physics

Popper believed there was no self-identical entity persisting during all
changes in time and that there is an essence which is the persisting
carrier or possessor of the properties or qualities of a thing. Popper
saw contemporary physics as a materialist endeavour which had great
explanatory power despite the lack of a notion of substance or
essence.29 In this way we can see that he not only disagreed with the
weaker notion of metaphysical determinism, but also disagreed with
the stronger scientific notion. There can be no fixity or symmetry
between past and future events. Characteristically, Popper used an
analogy, in this case a description of a cinematic film to illustrate his
point. For Popper, there is no cinematic film of which a part has
already passed through the projector and part of which is still to
come. 30 By this analogy Popper was attempting to express the
indeterminist argument that the future is open.
He supported the materialist project in physics because of the
practical benefits he saw in its research but this does not mean that he
was a physicalist. Physicalism for Popper was the view that the
physical world (or World 1) is closed. Materialism however, needed to
be a self-transcending notion in order to deal with the problem of
minds and bodies. He started with the notion of a material universe in
which problem solving is an inherent feature of organisms. With the
higher organism, problem solving is actively pursued eventually
leading to the critical events that caused the emergence of the human
mind. According to Popper’s revised understanding of scientific
materialism in The Self and Its Brain the mind is almost seen as an
epiphenomenon in relation to the material universe. There is a rather
mystical tone with Popper’s description of this process of material
transcendence: “We can only wonder that matter can thus transcend
itself, by producing mind, purpose, and a world of the products of the
human mind”.31

29
K. Popper and J. Eccles, J. The Self and Its Brain, op. cit., p. 7, fn 4.
30
J. Watkins, “The Unity of Popper’s Thought”, in Schlipp, A. (eds). The Philosophy
of Karl Popper, (La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court,1974), p. 373.
31
Chapter Six 133
6.4 The World 3 thesis
Referring to a speculative ‘cosmology’ in relation to Popper, a critical

rationalist who emphasised the limited human cognitive capacity for
known knowledge, is fraught with dangers. In 1965, Hayek wrote to
Popper and inquired about the nature of Popper’s usage of the term
cosmology. Popper responded in one of his last lectures “The
Unknown Xenophanes” which was pieced together posthumously
from his Nachlass and published in The World of Parmenides. In his
response he argued that cosmology is:
…a way of looking at science from the point of view of trying to

understand what happens in the world – as opposed to any narrow
view directed to either some technique or some practical problem, or
32
some specialisation pursued without that wider outlook.
Before we can examine the features and characteristics of

Popper’s cosmology we must examine his attitude towards the role of
cosmology and cosmogony in relation to human knowledge. For
Popper, in The World of Parmenides the greatest of all philosophical
problems is that of the problem of the universe:
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
33
cosmology.
It was in relation to the nexus that Popper forged between his

epistemology and cosmology that he gestured “Back to the
Presocratics” in The World of Parmenides. 34 Popper saw the
importance of cosmology for the Presocratics who understood the

32
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op. cit., p. 45. Arne Petersen related to me in
conversation that Popper's ‘Unknown Parmenides’ is the only essay among the ten
essays, which make up his ‘World of Parmenides’, that was not finished by him and
on which he worked to the end. The text of Addendum 2 to the essay was presented
twice - first at the University of Tübingen in 1981 and then in Vienna 1982 - under the
title: ‘Toleration and Intellectual Responsibility’.
33
Ibid., p. 7.
34
world as “our house”. 35 Popper read into the Presocratics a

conjectural, amendable and hypothetical tradition of cosmology and
cosmogony which can provide an alternative to theodicies of
revelation. The best way to understand the structure of our house was
to study how we fit into it. As Popper understood the universe as a
continuum of events and processes which led to the formation of new
dispositions and hence new laws of nature, our relationship to the
universe was best understood from a species evolutionary context.
This provided the cosmological viewpoint from which all his social
and political theories arose. An important feature of Popper’s
naturalism is an evolutionary organicism that is hostile to teleological
language. Popper’s cosmos is an open-system. The future is open, and
the emergence of mind is seen as opposing Parmenides thesis that
there is nothing new under the sun.36
In Popper’s lexicon World 1 is that part of the whole that is
comprised of physical objects. World 2 by contrast is used to describe
the world of experience (Erlebnisse) and psychological or cognitional
processes. It is our ‘apparatus of adjustment’ to our environment.37
Most notably, World 3 is used to describe the reality of thought
objects (geistigen Produkte). Popper’s World 3 ontology can be seen
to be heavily indebted to Kant, insofar as the language and theories
used to describe this third “realm” or “world” follow Kant’s idealism.
For a foreshadowing of Popper’s metaphysical thought we can once
again turn to Kant’s Transcendental Doctrine of Method, in Section II,
where it is stated:
I call the world a moral world, in so far as it may be in accordance

with all the ethical laws – which, by virtue of the freedom of
reasonable beings, it can be, and according to the necessary laws of
morality it ought to be. But this world must be conceived only as an
38
intelligible world…

35
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op. cit., pp. 9-11, 70, 108-110.
36
37
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p. 77. Also see: K. Popper, Auf der Suche
nach einer besseren Welt, op. cit., p. 16.
38
I. Kant,I. Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., §Transcendental Doctrine of Method,
Ch. 2, Section II, p. 519
Chapter Six 135
We can see that Popper’s noetic “third world” or world of

objective mind follows Kant’s “moral” or “intelligible” world. Kant
continued by arguing that:
So far, then, it is a mere idea – though still a practical idea – which

may have, and ought to have, an influence on the world of sense, so
as to bring it as far as possible into conformity with itself. The idea of
a moral world has, therefore, objective reality, not as referring to an
object of intelligible intuition – for of such an object we can form no
concept whatever – but to the world of sense – conceived, however,
as an object of pure reason in its practical use – and to a corpus
39
mysticum of rational beings in it…
Popper’s World 3 ontology shares much with Kant’s concept of

the intelligible world. It is in this light that we ought to view Popper’s
World 3 and its reality and interaction with the physical world of
sense. The confusion and lack of clarity surrounding the object or
contents of World 3 in its very ambiguity is reflective of Kant’s
corpus mysticum associated with the beings of the intelligible world.40
Popper’s World 3 system is not a grand metaphysical system
but a regulative scheme aiming to capture particular features of the
universe. This regulative and integrative scheme is guided by Neo-
Kantian epistemological principles however contains within it a logic
of synthesis and dialectic that indirectly and implicitly owes much to
Hegel’s logic. Popper’s standpoints share much with Hegel’s
understanding of mind as a higher degree of organisation for an
organism.41
Some idea of how Popper saw the relationship of his neo-
Platonic World 3 to Hegel can be seen in Objective Knowledge where
he states that:
Hegel’s Ideas, like those of Plotinus, were conscious phenomena:

thoughts thinking themselves and inhabiting some kind of

39
Ibid., §Transcendental Doctrine of Method, Ch. 2, Section II, p. 520.
40
Ibid., p. 520. According to Roger Sullivan, this corpus mysticum or “mystical body”
was originally borrowed from Saint Paul’s title for the invisible Church. From this we
can see the ethical and theological context of this ontological concept which would
shed its theological association in its later manifestations in Frege’s and Popper’s
thought. See: R. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
41
F. Beiser, Hegel, op. cit., pp. 104–107.
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 ‘third world’
than is Plato’s world of Ideas (or Bolzano’s world of ‘statements in
42
themselves’).
Popper could see that there was much in common between

Hegel’s dialectic and his evolutionary (or Tetradic) schema: P1 TT
EE P2. However, he argued that his scheme was fundamentally
different as it worked through error-elimination and “on the scientific
level through conscious criticism under the regulative idea of the
search for truth”. 43 A central different that Popper distinguished
between his Tetradic Scheme and Hegel’s dialectic was that he viewed
Hegel to be a relativist whereas for Popper’s schema was concerned
with the search and elimination of contradictions. For Hegel
contradictions are as good as, or better than non-contradictory
theoretical systems as they provide the mechanism for propelling
Spirit. For Popper, this position was unacceptable as rational criticism
and human creativity play no part in Hegel’s automatism. Popper
further argues in Objective Knowledge that:
While Plato lets his hypostasized Ideas inhabit some divine heaven,
Hegel personalizes his Spirit into some divine consciousness: 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 third world has no similarity whatever to
human consciousness; and though its first inmates are the products of
human consciousness, they are totally different from conscious ideas
44
or from thoughts in the subjective sense.
The notion of this realm is also particularly indebted to Gottlob

Frege’s theoretical development of the Kantian description of the
intelligible world. In a draft of a paper intended for a Kurt Gödel
Symposium in 1983, Popper stated that his “World 3” was directly
taken from Frege’s unfortunately named “Das Dritte Reich”, or “The

42
43
Ibid., p. 126.
44
Ibid., p 126.
Chapter Six 137
Third Realm”. 45 This explains why Popper often referred to realms

rather than worlds. If we understand the World 3 ontology as being
part of a Kantian tradition developed by Bolzano and which was
fundamental to the thought of Frege and Tarski, we can have an
appreciation of the possibility of non-physical objects that are
nonetheless real and exist. 46 Evidence for linking Popper with this
tradition can be found in this paper for the Kurt Gödel Symposium, in
which Popper wrote that he believed that Gödel can be interpreted as
supporting Frege’s and his notion of World 3.47 Through an ontology
of physical and non-physical entities Popper believed that he was able
to continue his critical-rationalist opposition to subjectivism,
expressivism and inductivism.
However, it is likely that there was a more direct source for
Popper’s objectivist approach to thought-objects. It is highly likely
that it was through Bühler’s notion of Gebilde des objektiven Geistes
in his Die Krise der Psychologie (1927) that Popper became disposed
to the corresponding notions in Frege. Popper, like his teacher Bühler,
was part of a broader European intellectual shift from immanentistic
(or psychologistic) conceptions of judgement prevalent in the
nineteenth century toward ontological (or objectivistic) conception of
propositions and states of affairs. Barry Smith states that this shift was
effected both by Frege as well as independently in the work of
Brentano’s disciples. In regard to Brentano’s disciples, this involved a
hard-fought struggle for both ontological and psychological
clarification. Barry Smith relates how Bolzano had done much in
effecting a clear logical distinction between judgement and
presentation, or what Bolzano referred to as “propositions in
themselves” and “presentations in themselves”.48 Similarly in Frege’s
Begriffsschrift a distinction was made between the objective
“judgeable content” and the act of judging which according to Smith

45
Draft paper for a Kurt Gödel Seminar. 16-6-1983, Klagenfurt. In this paper Popper
tells us that he believed that Gödel can be interpreted as supporting Frege’s and his
notion of World 3.
46
In Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem Popper stated that Bolzano’s
understanding of Sätze an Sich (sentences in themselves) corresponded to the theory
of World 3. See: K. Popper, K. Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem. Op. cit., p.
50.
47
Draft paper for a Kurt Gödel Seminar. 16-6-1983. Karl-Popper-Sammlung,
Klagenfurt.
48
since Whitehead and Russell has established itself quite generally

among logicians. Popper in Objective Knowledge supportively stated
that: “As for Frege, there can be no doubt about his clear distinction
between the subjective acts of thinking, or thought in the subjective
sense, and objective thought or thought content”.49 However, overall
Frege never fully committed to a separate ontological step.50 Hence, it
is safer to assert that Popper’s objectivism most likely was established
from exposure to the Brentanist tradition, particularly given the links
between the influence of Bühler and via Bühler’s circle to the work of
Selz as pointed to by Michal ter Hark’s research. According to ter
Hark, Selz argued that “knowledge is always of facts or state of
affairs, thereby drawing on the theory of objects
(Gegenstandstheorie)”, which was developed by a number of
philosophers including the Brentanist Meinong, Külpe, Husserl, and
Stumpf, who coined the general term state of affairs (Sachverhalt).51
Popper stated in Objective Knowledge that:
Bolzano’s statements in themselves and truths in themselves are,

clearly, inhabitants of my third world. But he was far from clear
about their relationship to the rest of the world…It is, in a way,
Bolzano’s central difficulty which I have tried to solve by comparing
the status and autonomy of the third world to those of animal
products, and by pointing out how it originates in the higher functions
52
of the human language.
This notion of Sachverhalt would reappear in Popper’s

ontological and situational logical thought as “the whole physical
situation”. It is how the Sache stand in relation to the thinking subject
that was crucial to the logico-ontological thought on judgement.
Popper’s argument that facts do not stand by themselves, that not only
do they require interpretation and have meaning only in relation to a
particular theory, but a “fact” as an object, is theory laden. This
relational character of facticity was also found in Selz’s
Gegenstandstheorie through his coinage of the term Sachverhältnis by
combining Sachverhalt and Verhältnis. Ter Hark states this aimed to

49
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p 127.
50
51
p. 98.
52
Chapter Six 139
bring into prominence the relational character of facts. 53 Ter Hark

notes Selz’s reference to Alexius Meinong’s Untersuchungen zur
Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie (1904). 54 The idea of
Sachverhalt linked many of Popper’s early Würzburg influences from
Bühler’s school such as Oswald Külpe and Otto Selz as well as the
Polish analytic tradition via Twardowski.55
When we look at Popper’s earliest works we can see the
influence of Brentano. For example, in his 1927 Zur Philosophie des
Heimatgedankens Popper utilises Brentano’s intentionalism
(Intentionalität) in relation to the notion of Heimat which is held as an
Objekt. The notion of Heimat is treated as a Relationsbegriff which
continues the Selzian emphasis upon the relational character of facts
understands the object Heimat according to Meinong’s language of
Gegenstand which comprises a complex interaction of things
(Dingen), persons (Personen), and intentional objects (geistigen
Inhalten).56 Popper’s later World 3 ontology is anticipated in this very
formative work. Popper’s World 3 thesis which seemed like a strange
deviation for this scientifically minded philosopher in the Anglo
analytic world, was little more than a continuation of Popper’s
formative very Central European Gegenstandstheorie. Thus, the
elements which comprise the category of Gegenstand (Dingen,
Personen, and geistigen Inhalten) would be separated and interned in
separate ‘worlds’; World 1: the physical world of material objects,
World 2: the subjective world of individual people and the subjective
process of thinking, and World 3: the world of the objective content of
thoughts. The theory of three worlds is a return to his earliest work in
a way that aimed to develop it in new naturalistic directions.
However, Popper’s understanding of the notion of objectivity
and the objective reality of the contents of our mind have parallels in
Frege’s understanding that numbers exist objectively in the world and
are not just a subjective psychological process. In The Foundations of
Arithmetic (1950), Frege makes the distinction between “objective
form” from what can be handled or spatial or actual, which

53
p. 98.
54
Ibid., p. 208.
55
56
K. Popper, “Zur Philosophie des Heimatgedankens”[1927], in Frühe Schriften, op.
cit., pp. 18-19.
foreshadows Popper’s distinction between World 1 and World 3

objects.57 For Popper, the development of this realm or “World 3” had
an important explanatory function for how institutions operate
according to some Parmenidian invariant or law. World 3 raised
important theoretical concerns for Popper’s complex evolutionary
materialism, which not only became dualist but pluralist. 58 As has
been argued above, an important feature of Popper’s understanding of
materialism was its scepticism about any ultimate substances or
essences.59 This understanding of a materialism that transcends itself
has often led to a confusion concerning what constitutes the basic
entities of the physical world as well as to a confusion concerning the
entities or “inmates” of “the third world”.
The problems and confusions concerning Popper’s World 3
ontology are so great that scholars have been reluctant to deal with it
and as a consequence, it has not received the kind of scholarly
attention that it deserves. Klemke, for instance, believed that Popper’s
notion of “the third world” was a significant and fascinating topic, but
that it contained many problems and confusions. Klemke argued that
the fundamental problem concerned the “inmates” of this third world.
Klemke brings our attention to the fact that the contents of this realm
are: “Theories, the state of a discussion or of a critical argument, and
the contents of journals, books and libraries”. However, books,
libraries and language are also stated by Popper to exist in World 1 as
they are also physical. 60 Further, Popper referred to World 3 as a
“linguistic third world” and called the third world “a world of
language”.61
Klemke made the distinction between the two types of entities
that subsist in World 3. Firstly, the “logical contents” of books,
libraries or the “objective contents of thought”. 62 Secondly, as a

57
G. Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic: A logico-mathematical enquiry into the
concept of number J. L. Austin, Trans. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, [1980], 1950), p. 33.
58
Dualism is the thesis that holds an ontological distinction between minds and
bodies, the former not being reducible to physical entities. The pluralist thesis adds a
further ontological category to the dualism of minds and bodies in the form of the
products of our minds as existing independently of the former two categories.
59
60
E. Klemke, “Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, and the Third World”, in
Philosophia, 9(1), (Netherlands: Springer, 1979), pp. 45, 47.
61
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 118, 120, 148.
62
E. Klemke, Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, and the Third World, op. cit., p. 52.
Also see: . Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 74, 106.
Chapter Six 141
linguistic world it contains theories, theoretical systems, conjectures

and arguments. However, Klemke also points out that Popper
attributed a third and more problematical entity to the objects of
World 3. World 3 for Popper not only contained the logical contents
of books and objects, but also the books and libraries themselves.63
Klemke argues that this is implausible as the logical content of a book
cannot be identified with or be classified on the same level as a book
itself.64 The simultaneous existence of books, like paintings, as objects
existing in both the physical world and the third world is an
ontologically contentious proposition.
David Bloor picks up on the deeper historical and ethical
concerns embedded in Popper’s theory of World 3 that are often
overshadowed by rational and formal analysis of categorising and
relating concepts to one another. Bloor saw Popper’s World 3 as
“replaying, in modern dress, an old drama”. For Bloor:
His picture of three worlds resonates with the myths and imagery of
Judaeo-Christian theology. Man is a creature midway between the
material and the spiritual, an admixture of clay and God. For Popper
a personal God has been replaced by an impersonal Science, the
65
world of spirit by the world of knowledge.
One has to be careful about how one uses the term “ontology”
in relation to Popper’s later works such has his “World 3 ontology”.
What he was offering is not an ontology in the strictest sense. The
reason why Popper did not believe that he was offering a traditional
ontology as such was because he did not ask questions such as “What
is mind?” or “What is matter?”66 Rather, World 3 ontology may best
be understood praxeology as a heuristic device aiding problem solving
and argumentation. It does not encapsulate the totality of knowledge,
as epistemology is primarily concerned with the aspects of experience
that can result from scientifically demonstrable knowledge.

63
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 74, 115-118.
64
E. Klemke, Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, and the Third World, op. cit., p. 53.
65
D. Bloor, “Popper’s Mystification of Objective Knowledge”, in Scientific Studies,
4(1). (Sage Publications, 1974), p. 69. For an interesting discussion on the
understanding of objective truth for medieval scholasticism and its modern legacy see:
Znaniecki, F. The Social role of the Man of Knowledge, [1940] Oxford: Transaction
Books, (1986), Ch. 3.
66
Further, as Popper in The Self and Its Brain argued for an ontic
structural realism in which things don’t really matter, rather it is the
relations in which those things stand that that matters. Objects are
understood via their relational positions, or what they ‘stand against’
(Gegenstand). This view holds that there are relations without relata in
a world made of structures, plastic systems and nets of relations. Such
as relational or processual approach to a theory of the universe may
not be able to produce a clear ontology or basic physical picture.
Popper’s later concerns with plastic systems and numerical
propensities can also be seen as a consequence of a world-view which
prioritizes relations without relata.
Popper’s understanding of the objects of our thought differed
due to his evolutionism and interactionism from Frege’s. This renders
the possibility of the concept of number being created by thought to
partake in a psychological process as well as existing independently
from the thinking subject. Unfortunately Popper’s appropriation of
Frege’s notion of “Das Dritte Reich” and the thought objects that
exist within it, when combined with Popper’s evolutionism and
interactionism create many concerns. For Popper, entities such as
theories are the objective contents of thoughts as Frege understood,
not as the subjective act of thinking. The subjective acts of thinking
are ontologically separated into a realm or world that is
communicatively inaccessible for us according to Popper’s
epistemology, and are ‘known’ only intuitively. 67 World 2 may be
construed as a realm of processes linking World 1 neurology with
World 3 thought products. World 2 may be understood as not being
autonomous, but rather as a schematic positioning of mind in relation
to physiological underpinnings and our innocuous and creative
engagement with World 3 in the process of thinking. We can never
completely understand these worlds analytically, as we can never
satisfactorily envisage Popper’s scheme as this would involve
impossible visualisations. We can only roughly sketch aspects of
Popper’s schema in relation to particular problems or functions that
we choose to focus on. World 3 is a non-visualisable metaphysical
framework aimed at describing visualisable yet invisible recurring
processes and functions.

67
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p. 109. Also see: G. Frege. “Ueber Sinn
und Bedeutung”, in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik , 100,
(1892), p. 32.
Chapter Six 143
Lotze, along with Frege, and Brentano and his followers also
made the distinction between the psychological act of thinking and the
content of thought. 68 For Lotze the act of thinking is an inherently
determinate and temporal phenomenon; the content of thought
however, existing within an alternative mode of being. Lotze saw the
physical world and the world of thinking as having the same temporal
ontological status whereas the contents of our thoughts exist in
another realm. 69 In Popper’s notion of mind the objects of our
knowledge are categorically distinct from the problem-solving process
of thinking. As such the processes of thinking and the contents of
thoughts in themselves interact within a pluralist schema. This
interaction reflects a Peircean indeterminist cloud-like system in
which the subsystems of the circuit (our subjective cognition and the
autonomous and subsisting inmates of World 3) exercise a mutual
plastic control insofar as the system is closed; at least in relation to
cognitive functioning such as problem solving and learning is
concerned.70 Despite Popper’s refinement, Lotze’s theory concerning
the attribution of a separate mode of being for the content of thought
to the process of thinking is maintained. According to Hacohen,
Popper had a tendency towards this mode of metaphysical thinking
long before his ontological turn. Hacohen observed that already in Die
beiden Grundprobleme Popper described “objective intellectual
structures” as logical in character, and drew the comparison with this
to his later scientific and World 3 thought.71
The ontology that Popper developed in his later years builds
upon Lotze’s premise and accords with the new mathematical logic
found in the thought of Frege. When A World of Propensities is
compared with the thought of Frege striking similarities can be seen.
For Frege there is an objectivity to the truth of propositions of the sort
that Popper understood by his use of Tarski’s theory of truth. As Frege
stated: “it seems, that a proposition no more ceases to be true when I
cease to think of it than the sun ceases to exist when I shut my eyes”.
Hence, objectivity of scientific statements holds independently of the

68
D. Williams, Truth, Hope, and Power: The Thought of Karl Popper (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1989), p. 64.
69
For a discussion of Lotze’s idealism see: G. Santayana, Lotze’s System of
Philosophy (London: Indiana University Press, 1971), pp. 155-181.
70
71
thinker, indeed holding a mode of existence even when nobody is

actually thinking them. Frege thought that thinking of numbers as
either spatial or as subjective was fundamentally wrong, because
“numbers are neither spatial nor physical nor yet subjective like ideas,
but non-sensible and objective”. Thus, according to Williams, Frege
reapplied the notion of numbers from the Kantian category of ‘things’
to that of ‘concepts’.72
Frege, like Lotze, used the term wirklich in the German sense of
the word ‘real’ or ‘actual’. The problem of kinds of reality in Popper’s
ontology also appeared in an earlier guise in the work of Frege. Frege
described physical objects as wirklich. However he denied that
numbers and logical objects in general were wirklich. According to
Dummett in Frege and Other Philosophers (1991), Frege held that:
…thoughts can be regarded as wirklich only in a special sense, and

that although they are not altogether unwirklich, their Wirklichkeit is
73
of a quite different kind from that of things.
Thus, the argument has been made by Gregory Currie that

Frege’s realism also extended to numbers and logical objects, which
must, like thoughts, participate in something that is not unwirklich.74
However, how different the reality of such intentional objects is to
physical things is not clear from Popper’s writings. In describing the
ontological status of propensities in a way that identifies them with the
logical objects of Frege, Popper wrote:
Propensities, like Newtonian attractive forces, are invisible and, like

them, they can act: they are actual, they are real. We therefore are
compelled to attribute a kind of reality to mere possibilities,
especially to weighted possibilities, and especially to those that are as
yet unrealized and whose fate will only be decided in the course of
75
time, and perhaps only in the distant future.
It is interesting here to note the attribution of reality to

unrealised entities whose very existence is their not-yet realised mode

72
D. Williams, Truth, Hope, and Power, op. cit., p. 64.
73
M. Dummett, Frege and Other Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991), p. 98.
74
G. Currie, “Frege on Thoughts”, Mind, 89, (1980), pp. 234-248.
75
Chapter Six 145
of being. Popper perceives that the world at a non-common-sense

level is constituted by such entities. This view of the world as being
constituted by events and processes was outlined previously in The
Self and Its Brain.76 For Popper, realism was a many sided affair as
there are “many sorts of reality which are quite different”. Popper
admitted the metaphysical nature of his realism and its inability to be
demonstrated or refuted. Nonetheless he argued for realism as “the
only sensible hypothesis”.77
At this stage it is important to make the distinction between
plural “worlds” and philosophical dualism. Popper rejected monistic
world-views such as subjective idealism or physicalism or other
variants of materialist reductionism. However, he also denied a strict
dualism of the Cartesian occasionalist kind and other forms of
parallelism. For Popper, as there is no ultimate substance, hence we
cannot posit mind in this way. What we can say is that the emergence
of a new entity (mind) reinforces an argument for the need to model a
complex hierarchy of entities occupying different realms, levels or
“worlds” within a self-organising system or organic whole, and
interaction or “downward causation” characterises its mode of
activity. With this we begin to sense Popper taking off and letting his
metaphysical wings take flight.
Popper’s Platonic metaphysics has not received the kind of
attention that it deserves as a result of his infamous criticisms of Plato
in The Open Society. However, from his lectures and unpublished
works we can see that he softened his stance towards Plato later in
life. Popper’s hostility in his scandalous book has done much to cloud
the debt he believed he owed to the divine Plato. The Open Society
may well be seen as a unique reading of Plato for a particularly
traumatic period, both in Popper’s life, and in world history; a reading
which remains enigmatic to this day. From an early draft to a lecture
Public and Private Values Popper made the distinction between
Plato’s city in heaven and utopia. The ‘city of heaven’ was read by
Popper through a Kantian lens as an argument in support of regulative
ideals or dreams that are needed to inspire social reformers. This is
distinguished from utopianism which sees such personal dreams of an
ideal society as realisable. Whereas the Platonic city in heaven is a
postulate of a necessary cognitive function involved in social renewal

76
77
D. Miller, Ed. Popper Selections (Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 220, 223.
and in the redressing of inevitable decline, utopianism represents a

flawed cognition. For Popper, while beautiful dreams may inspire the
social reformer, “they should be kept in their place”. Popper asserts
that “It is far from me to say anything against such dreams, apart from
demanding that they should be recognized as what they are –
inspirations to action – but bad guides for dealing with serious
political problems”. 78 It can be adduced from Popper’s reasoning that
we should not deny particular world views but encourage individuals
to envisage them as a particular type of cognition ill-suited for
politics. What we need is a better understanding of the kind of
cognition suited for the public agenda. For Popper, this was a critical
rational mode of active problem seeking and eliminative empirical
trialling.
Despite the negative picture Popper painted of Hegel, Popper’s
late World 3 arguments share many important features with Hegel
whilst remaining distinct from Hegel’s system within the safety of
Neo-Kantian epistemology. Popper’s Doctrine of the Three Worlds
rather than being dismissed as the folly of his old age, is rather an
interesting twentieth century instance of overcoming dualism’s
problem of a strict separation of minds and bodies with the aid of
contemporary developments in the natural and formal sciences. His
project aimed at renewing the dualist thesis to better accord with our
current state of cognitive science in a way that buttressed it against the
traditional dangers of the various positions of materialism, vital
materialism or solipsism.
Despite all the influences mentioned above, it was Plato who
discovered the third world and that part of the influence or feed-back
of this world impacts upon ourselves; that we try to grasp the ideas of
this world and use them as explanations. However, Plato’s world was
distinct from Popper’s in that the Sage’s world was divine,
unchanging and true, whereas Popper’s world is man-made and
changing. It contains both true as well as false theories and especially
open problems, conjectures and refutations. Plato saw dialectical
argument as leading to the third world, whereas Popper regarded
arguments and open problems as the most important inmates of this
world. For Popper:

78
K. Popper, Public and Private Values. (1951 unpublished)
Chapter Six 147
Plato envisaged the objects of the third world 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 minds. This is
why the inmates of the third world – the forms or ideas – became
concepts of things, or essences or natures of things, rather than
79
theories or arguments or problem.
Popper recognised that contents and objects of thought seem to

have played an important part in Stoicism and in Neo-Platonism.
While through the Neo-Platonic tradition Plotinus maintained the
separation between the empirical world and Plato’s world of Forms
and Ideas, however like Aristotle destroyed the transcendence of
Plato’s world by placing it into the consciousness of God (the
immanent states of consciousness of the divine intellect). Popper
performed a similar operation to Plotinus here as our cognitive
functions include reasoning as a kind of transformative intellection,
however not between the Soul and the Intellectual-Principle, but via
the interactions between our cognition and the realm of ideas. The
logic holds, and despite the more mundane and naturalistic rendering
of Popper’s revision of Plotinus’s cosmology. Speaking in the
language of learning from error rather than intellection should not be
considered a diminution of the noetic act.
6.5 An esoteric reading
This section suggests possible esoteric ways of approaching Popper’s

writings which extend beyond analytic and literary criticism. It is
possible to read Popper’s thought as containing its own esoteric
mysticism. Popper’s thought contains many of the features associated
with high mysticism. Mysticism as understood in this context does not
refer to any kind of religious or occult practice, rather it refers to truth
gleaned when he is often at his most scientific and technical resulting
in transcendental insight. Often this occurs at the point where his
exploration of the physical universe results in a transcending of its
material features. Numerical propensities as ‘physical realities’ are
real forces inhere in every situation and constitutes the ‘world
process’. We live in a world of propensities which ‘attract us’ and

79
K. Popper, Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p 123.
‘entice us’ to keep life moving forward and the world unfolding. We
have seen by his reference to the Popper-Lynkeus Talmudic passage
that in some sense worlds are something that are created and
destroyed around us. This mysticism can also be discerned in his
cognitive linguistics at the point where we encounter the universals
inhere within every word.
There is much in his World 3 cosmology concerning the role we
structurally play in the creation of this realm that lends itself to
mystical interpretation. Popper shared with Wittgenstein a mystical
aesthetics that saw in the cosmos a Weltharmonik, Kepler’s book
by the title being amongst Popper’s most prized works in his
antique book collection. The imaginary real of his cosmology needs
to be taken seriously. Further, the role of faith in Popper’s thought,
particularly a moral faith in being optimistic about the world in the
face of unspeakable evils is also characteristic of a mystical
discernment. Despite Popper’s fallibilism when it comes to rational
knowledge associated with mental cognition (Erkennen) there is what
we might call a gnosis underpinning the correctness of the optimistic
view of the world and about humanity that no amount of exposure to
the brutish aspects of existence can shake. This is related to a belief in
personal transformation, improvement in the realm of moral standards.
This task of creating a better world by overcoming harm through error
elimination as a feature of life. There is a higher occluded register to
Popper’s thought.
In this way Popper’s optimism was a response to the pessimism
he read in Parmenides. To understand this we have to look at his
translation of the following poem by Parmenides on Selen’s love for
radiant Helios (DK 28 B14-15) and the theological reading of this that
Popper was contributing to:
Bright in the night with the gift of his light,

Round the Earth she is erring,
Evermore letting her gaze
80
Turn towards Helios’ rays.
For Karl Reinhardt, the epistemological fall of man can be read

in this poem by Parmenides giving the names of two things, light and
night, instead of only one. Popper argued that previously scholars

80
K. Popper, The World of Parmenides, op. cit., p. 77.
Chapter Six 149
have claimed that Parmenides understood that it was the light of

Helios that could be ‘named’ because this was existing and being
while night was unreal and should not have been named. For
Reinhardt, the forbidden move was to name light, a no-thing where
mortals, as intellectual sinners ‘went astray’. This lead them to believe
in no-things, which Popper stated includes the void, unreality, empty
space and the possibility of motion, change, movement, warmth,
youth, love, illusion and desire (for example Helios’ rays in B15). On
the other hand night is on the side of darkness, heaviness, body, cold,
old age, death, non-movement, matter, the one real being and the
permanent, unchanging and timeless truth. For Popper, naming both
fuses the Way of Truth with the Way of Conjecture; something that
Popper himself attempted by accepting a correspondence theory of
truth within a fallibilist conjectural view of human knowledge. The
difference being that for Popper, Parmenides’ view was fundamentally
pessimistic. “Parmenides sees life in all its warmth and movement and
beauty and poetry. But the icy truth is death”.81
Popper’s process philosophy may be related to his desire to
avoid Parmenides pessimism. It is in relation to this problem of
pessimism rather than methodological debates for the natural sciences
that the gravity of Popper’s arguments against a ‘closed’ deterministic
universe can be seen. The processual nature of the cosmos is argued
for in Popper’s thought through the reality of the imaginary real
entities in the universe such as fluctuating propensities, emergent
situations and extensional interacting minds. We can read these all as
participating in a Neo-Platonic sense in the formation of reality
through an intersubjective active intellect that informs objectivity.
Objective probability or numerical propensities are Popper’s twentieth
century equivalent to Heraclitus’ burning flame. We need not choose
the Paramendian reality of an icy night. As for Heraclitus, God as
identified by a cosmic principle is revealed as the identity of all
opposites. Quoting Heraclitus “God is day and night, winter and
summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger”.82 Heraclitus saw that a
theory of things misunderstood and misinterpreted the appearances of
often invisible processes. As Popper himself saw such invisible
processes as inherent in the cosmos it may be possible to read his

81
Ibid., p. 82.
82
Ibid., p. 248.
cosmological thought, particularly his work on objective probability

as a kind of unspoken gnosis behind his critical rationalism:
But we do not know what the reality of the higher development

(Höherentwickelns) of creativity is. I think that the name of God is
not only not to mention vain, but not at all to be mentioned. The
83
daimon of Socrates is still the most tactful hint.
Popper’s refusal to refer to God in his cosmological thought should be

read not as an opposition to theism, but rather the result of a religious,
indeed Jewish, piety concerning the naming of God which colours his
mystical reading of Socrates and the Presocratic philosophers.

83
K. Popper, Alle Menschen sind Philosophen, (Munich: Piper Verlag, 2006), p. 26.
“Was aber das Wesentliche des Höherentwickelns, des Kreativen ist, das wissen wir
nicht. Ich glaube, dass man den Namen Gottes nicht nur nicht eitel nennen soll,
sondern überhaupt nicht nennen soll. Das Daimonion des Sokrates ist noch der
taktvollste Hinweis.”
Chapter Seven
Towards an Open Rationality
In a lecture given in Alpbach, Erkenntnis und Gestaltung der

Wirklichkeit (1982) Popper stated that Erkenntnis is the searching for
the truth (Wahrheitssuche); the search for objective knowledge or
explanatory theories, not certainty (Gewiẞheit). 1 The distinction
between truth and certainty is crucial. A solution can be objectively
true without being certain. We can have an objectively true solution to
a problem, but we can never by certain about what this means. We are
behoved to continually search for a better understanding of what
knowledge we have in light of new problems and challenges: Leben
ist Abenteuer, Leben ist Risiko.2 Popper’s view of knowledge in the
objective sense which is both inter-subjective and lacking a single
knowing subject is typical of the moral values of rationalists, that is,
anti-irrationalist rather than a priorist to use Ajdukiewicz’s
distinction. 3 The value of inter-subjectively secured objectivity is
explained by Ajdukiewicz as follows:
…first, to protect society from the domination of the meaningless

cliché which often has a strong emotional resonance and, because of
this, influences individuals and whole social groups; and, secondly, in
order to give protection from the uncritical acceptance of views
proclaimed by their adherents sometimes with the full force of
conviction but which are inaccessible to testing by others and thus
might be suspected to be false. The point is to protect society from
nonsense and falsehood. This postulate seems as sensible as the
requirement of railway administration which allows a passenger to

1
K. Popper, In Search of a Better World, op. cit., p. 12.
2
K. Popper, Alle Menschen sind Philosophen, op. cit., p.29.
3
K. Ajdukiewicz, Problems and Theories of Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 46-47. Even
though Popper made room for “an irrational element” or “Einfühlung” within his
scientific method, he cannot be said to be an irrationalist. See: K. Popper, K. The
Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit., pp. 8-9.
travel only when he can produce a valid ticket and not when,
although he has paid for the ticket, he does not want to show it.
Paying for the journey corresponds in this comparison to the truth of
an assertion; readiness to show the ticket corresponds to the
possibility that anyone can become assured as to whether the
4
assertion is valid or not.
Popper understood the dangers that the above understanding of

irrationalism posed for society. In this way a communicative or
linguistic theory outlining the conditions for objectivity becomes
central to Popper’s political thought. Being able to show a paid ticket
is a metaphor for the role that communicative consensus plays within
a correspondence understanding of truth. We have to be willing to
show the ticket we paid for in order to provide valid solutions to
collective problems. This can be seen in a lecture, The Theory of
Totalitarianism (1946), in which Popper stated that: “a tolerant society
must, of course, tolerate such irrationalism, as long as it is not an
aggressively intolerant brand of irrationalism”. Further, for Popper,
such a tolerant society must contain some kind of “minimum
philosophy common to, at least, a great majority”. 5 This common
philosophy is analogous to the inter-subjective testability necessary to
secure objectivity. As a correspondence theory of truth requires a
consensus upon what facts are to be accepted, so does Popper’s
understanding of Periclean democracy require a kind of
correspondence of policy with a “minimum common philosophy”.6 A
consensus theory, in the realm of collective human action, is an aspect
of correspondence.
Popper’s liberalism was based upon his evolutionary
understanding of how humans cognitively respond to their ecology in
the search for a better, more hospitable (lebensfreundlich)
environment. The utopian motivation to search for a better world is
perfectly natural and is akin to a fish searching for a better passage to
swim. From the beginning of life, organisms searched for a better
ecological niche. Hence, when Popper talked of a ‘search for a better

4
K. Ajdukiewicz, Problems and Theories of Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 46-47.
5
6
“Periclean” in this sense refers to Popper’s often repeated quote of Pericles:
“Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it”. See: K.
Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 7. Also see: K. Popper,
After The Open Society, op. cit., p. 137.
Chapter Seven 153
world’, the searcher’s (Sucher) world-view is skepsis of a never-

ceasing series of trials and error correction initiated by hope-driven
work: Das Leben ist skeptisch. 7 Liberalism is a philosophy of
hospitality. Pluralism is a state in which the free interaction of
different cultures leads to emergent possibilities for creative
adaptation to new social ecologies. A pluralist society is one in which
every individual is able to search for a better world, a more hospitable
environment: Jedes einzelne Lebewesen versucht, eine bessere Welt zu
finden. Intercultural dialogue and mundane interaction between
individuals in such a hospitable environment constitutes a corrective
force for individuals to correct aspects of their own culture and that of
others: Das Leben riskiert, es experimentiert. Democracy is the
possibility to reduce ecological harm by peacefully throwing out bad
rulers or criticise bad policy. As through speech we have evolved the
‘colossal’ capacity to make our theories criticisable. Without speech,
culture would not be possible and speech enables the development of
culture. Thus, discussion as an evolved capacity is central to the
culture of a democracy. In the Bühlerian sense it is an evolved higher
linguistic function which has created a more hospitable environment
as it enables us to resolve conflict without violence. We kill the
Gestalten, the theories, rather than the people. In such a social
ecology, the young man from the National Socialist Party that Popper
encountered in 1933 in Carinthia would have to resolve his disputes
by discussion rather than violence. For Popper, evolution is on the
side of free-discussion and whatever political and social forms which
best accommodate it.
Despite Popper’s opposition to scholasticism, he was engaging
with many of its perennial concerns, however rendered in the
secularised language of modern scientific thought. The continuing
relevance of Popper’s thought partly lies in his Platonism which is
everywhere increasingly supported in the sciences. For Popper there
are laws of nature, however these are for us, never directly knowable.
They are not grounded in any notion of substance, let alone essence.
Rather the language of plastic systems and recurring schemes is more
appropriate. The describable interactions between such systems which
lead to recognisable events and processes at the empirical level are
apprehended in neo-Platonic realm of weighted possibilities and
numerical propensities which actualise themselves in a completely

7
K. Popper, Alle Menschen sind Philosophen, op. cit., pp. 28-32.
random, fluctuating and unpredictable way. Popper argued in Realism

and the Aim of Science that:
If the picture of the world which modern science draws comes

anywhere near to the truth – in other words, if we have anything like
‘scientific knowledge’ – then the conditions obtaining almost
everywhere in the universe make the discovery of structural laws of
the kind we are seeking – and thus the attainment of ‘scientific
knowledge’ – almost impossible. For almost all regions of the
universe are filled by chaotic radiation, and almost all the rest by
matter in a likewise chaotic state. In spite of this, science has been
miraculously successful in proceeding towards what I think should be
8
regarded as its aim.
Yet such indeterminism gives rise to law-like plastically controlled

systems based upon spontaneous ordering of mathematically
describable structural schemes of recurrence. For Popper, all clocks
are clouds. It is within such schemes of recurrence that dispositions
arise. How they arise is described by a Pythagorean realm of
numerical representations which are gleaned in the modelling of the
most basic structures in the physical universe at the level, where
matter itself no longer can be demonstrated. We rise to the Platonic
forms of World 3 (of numerals) after a descent into extended
materiality so deep that matter itself becomes lost in the void of
Parmenides’ ‘reality of night’.
After all, metaphysical research programs have influenced the
development of physics since Pythagoras. Anti-intuitive imaginings
and the possibility for coherent and commonsensical visualisations are
not central to the process of rational understanding. A theory which
may lead to a nonsensical or impossible visualisation may nonetheless
be rationally understandable in relation to its explanatory power and
logical and pragmatic consequences for solving problems.9 World 3
and numerical propensities and properties cannot be read literally, the
real of objective probabilities is an imaginary-real used to describe
relations of occurrence.
We cannot empirically find the objective numerals, just as we
cannot find the shells of the Kabbalist or the creation serpents which

8
9
Chapter Seven 155
live in various waterholes throughout Australia. We can read these

theories of Popper as cosmological exercises in picture building or
cartography. The World 3 architectural images are an act of imagining
that aimed to integrate an array of sources from Bühler’s evolutionary
linguistics to the work of the theoretical physicists alongside the
perspectives of Plotinus and Parmenides into a picture of the cosmos.
The concrete world of the senses is the only world that our words can
refer to in order to describe the unconditioned noetic structures such
as the logic of discovery. The ‘place’ or station in which this logic
subsists is named and given architectures via the transcendental
method of analogically applying such terms used in descriptions of
sensible reality to intentional and metaphorical states.
The success of great works of art or music are subjected to the
same method of trial and error and the uniqueness of particularly great
works is understood by Popper to attest to the reality (tatsächlich) of
an unknown logic of discovery. Popper opposed what he believed was
a general tendency within aesthetic theory which emphasised our
inability to attain knowledge of universals through intuition as
necessarily leading to pessimism. The social consequences of this
pessimism was the general belief that without an appreciation of the
unknowable from which our great artistic (as is the case with
scientific) discoveries are made, culture becomes “a commercialized
industry” that is both kitsch and vulgar. 10 Therefore, Popper’s
epistemological anti-expressivism and anti-intuitionalism do not lead
to a rejection of the depths of illumination and transcendence that can
be gained from art. Rather, by appreciating our very intellectual
limitations in the face of the creative process and its products, a
reverence for great works of art as having an almost religious sanctity
is assured. What Popper really believed in was what he called a Third
World (also referred to as World 3), “something which is beyond us
and which we do interact, in the literal sense of interaction, and
through which we can transcend ourselves”. It was music that was the
art that meant most to Popper, who stated: “I can lose myself in my
music which for me is an objective experience through which I try to
improve myself”. 11 Popper’s reluctance to delve further into art,

10
“Schöpferische Selbstkritik in Wissenschaft und Kunst,” 1979b July 26. Opening
address, Salzburg Festival, Salzburg, Austria. Typescript and English text. Karl-
Popper-Sammlung, Box: 223.6-7. See: English translation, p. 32.
11
literature and aesthetic matters is not the result of the lack of cultural
capital. To the contrary, it is reflective of this deep respect, almost
piety which grew from his upbringing in a culturally elite Viennese
household in which Kunst (specifically music in the Popper
household) was revered as religion.
Popper was someone whose formative years were spent in the
scientifically and aesthetically vibrant modernist city of Vienna of the
fin-de-siècle, and held an unshakable faith in the progress of science,
rationality and even moral standards in overcoming many of the
hardships of reality. Abandoning the belief that our knowledge grows
would mean giving up on the philosophical optimism for improving
human societies. What we would be left with is a philosophical
pessimism, a return to the “broken timer” mentality. What we are left
with would be a return to the “darkest of pessimisms” of Popper’s
youth, where harm cannot be reduced or avoided, rather nihilism,
resignation and relativism govern our brutish actions in a world
without the possibility of a better future. John Maynard Keynes came
to hold a similar position later in life by viewing his early opposition
of “conventional” religious morality as being ‘disastrously mistaken’.
Keynes eventually saw that he had ignored the ‘insane and irrational
springs of wickedness in most men’, and the dependence of
civilization on “rules and conventions skilfully put across and
guilefully preserved”. 12 Where Keynes saw a greater role for
conventional religious morality, Popper held steadfast to
Enlightenment rationality as providing the only real grounds for
optimism as we cannot know that the essence of human nature is
human wickedness. The notion of original sin is replaced in Popper’s
thought with the more sober understanding of life arising out of error.
In an obscure lecture titled On the Conspiracy theory of
Religion (1970) Popper argued that it was the “conspiracy” of religion
that fostered a fear of life grounded in the view of the wickedness of
humans, the existence of suffering, harmful actions and ultimately the
event of death which resulted in a pessimism requiring doctrines of
salvation. Popper responded later in life by arguing that we should
allow this to make us despondent. Despite the particular “ugliness” of
human caused suffering we must not look upon life as a “vale of
tears”. For Popper “the earth is a miracle, fundamentally something

12
R. Skidelsky, Keynes: The Return of the Master (London: Penguin Books, 2009),
pp. 150-151.
Chapter Seven 157
like a paradise…it is wonderful”. We must appreciate the extent of

paradise that exists in this world and act to prevent the worst kinds of
human vileness, rather than to exaggerate them. To do this we must
aspire to the ideal of not hardening our hearts. “If you want to be a
lovable person then try not to harden your heart and try to remain
really sensitive to suffering”. This is achieved not by dwelling on
one’s own suffering, but by acting to reduce the suffering of others.13
Popper emphatically argued that there are no grounds to be
pessimistic about humanity. We must constantly envisage a better
world, a more hospitable human ecology as this is in accordance with
the way our mind operates: we search and we do so adventurously. By
better valuing and understanding nature and the culture enveloping us,
Popper believed that we could dispel any doubt concerning the
meaningfulness of the world, notwithstanding the gravity of the
sufferings that humans are inflicted with. Life has improved its
environment for millions of years to our advantage (Das Leben
verbessert die Umwelt für das Leben).14 If we just do what we have
evolved to do, that is actively search out errors – we will have no
cause to be pessimistic. Perhaps this was even the grounds for a
philosophy of happiness by which Popper lived. The way this
happiness grounded in an evolutionary anthropology can be related to
a speculative philosophy of personhood may be worth exploring.
Popper’s evolutionary inspired optimism is derived from an
understanding that we cannot know if there is an ultimate grounded
nature for humans. Even if there is such a thing as human nature we
cannot assume that by using this term we are referring to an essence
that is unchangeable and that is by nature crooked. In this way
Popper’s scientific realism can be used to respond to the
Dostoyevskian theological pessimism associated with Bishop Rowan
Williams’s insistence that we still have “no way of making sense of
the most deeply threatening elements in our environment” and the
experience of cruelty, harm or suffering at the level of individual
persons.15 However, for Williams the humane sensibility provides us
with an “awareness that the roots of motivation” and the awareness
that such roots may not be exhausted by an impulse to improve our
ecological habitat as Popper held. Indeed, life may be understood to

13
K. Popper, “On the Conspiracy Theories of Religion,” (Unpublished lecture, 1970).
14
K. Popper, Alle Menschen sind Philosophen, op. cit., p. 191.
15
R. Williams, Faith in the public square (Bloomsbury: London, 2012), p. 1.
arise out of error, but this may not be the whole story. Popper’s
optimism provides a response to this problem of pessimism associated
with the Christian tradition. Popper’s optimism in the face of the ‘vale
of tears’ was an insight that he gleaned via the discovery of a world of
moral demands, a realm of thought more sublime and beautiful than
any artistic expression or scientific discovery. The emergence of the
world of moral demands was the light that resplendently shone though
in night of the Parmenidean reality discussed in the previous chapter.
It was in The Open Society that Popper presents this glorious idea:
Man has created new worlds-of language, of music, of poetry, of

science; and the most important of these is the world of the moral
demands, for equality, for freedom, and for helping the weak.16
I would like to demonstrate one final point about Popper’s

aesthetics in relation to a moral argument concerning the nature of
life. In order to do so I will, perhaps unexpectedly, turn to one of his
arguments in the philosophy of science. As I have earlier argued, his
aesthetic thought is best gleaned not from his limited commentaries on
paintings or music, rather in his theoretical discussions of modern
physics which he regarded as a high point in human creativity and
expression. There is also an aestheticism to his own later paintings of
a non-visualisable metaphysical cosmology (Weltbild). I will turn to
Popper’s agonistic discussions with Schrödinger as an example of his
use of the ‘transcendental method’ of applying or extrapolating
analogously the arguments from one discipline to a totally unrelated
discipline however in a way that aims to maintain its original logical
force. In his autobiography, Popper referred to Schrödinger’s
‘beautiful’ book What is life? Here Schrödinger argued that the
characteristic feature of life, given that matter is considered to be
alive, is that life feeds on negative entropy. Thus, it is “by avoiding the
rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism
appears so enigmatic”. From a statistical perspective by feeding on
negative entropy an organism delays its “decay into thermodynamical
equilibrium (death)”. Feeding on negative entropy is the ‘device’ by
which life maintains itself in a relatively high level of orderliness (or
low level of entropy).17 Popper admitted that all organisms do this,

16
K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 65.
17
Chapter Seven 159
however he denied that this was the characteristic of life, as even a

steam engine or an oil-fired boiler can do this.
Permit me to take this a step further. If we accept Schrödinger’s
definition of the characteristics of life there follows certain moral
implications for this; implications that Popper so forcefully argued
against in The Open Society and The Poverty of Historicism, and no
doubt he himself was aware of in his engagements with Schrödinger.
If life were definable as such, then conservation of forms via
replication becomes a good which challenges the more progressive
and liberal views of emergence, freedom construed in the Kantian
sense and creativity. A society governed by a view of human societies
characterized by Schrödinger’s definition is nothing less than the
attempt to realize the totalitarian utopia’s that Popper so infamously
attacked. Conserving low levels of entropy by maximizing levels of
orderliness, by ‘sucking’ orderliness from its environment is reflective
of the principles by which Nazi Germany operated, and indeed the
way many colonies were established. No wonder Hitler looked to the
genocidal expansion of American settlement across the continent as a
model for his quest for Lebensraum. Homogenised modes of living
based upon dogmatic thinking directed towards cultural and eugenic
preservation informed by infallible laws enforced by strong leaders
enables the machination of life understood by the minimal
requirement of “feeding of negative entropy”. The totalitarian society
is a society which understands people as little more than the steam-
engine or an oil-fired boiler. Such a materialistic view of life grounded
in unreason and intolerance leads to a society in which human ‘decay’
and ‘degeneracy’, and indeed anyone whose existence undermined the
uniformed preservation of orderliness, by introducing difference and
diversity itself could not be tolerated. The argument for the
characteristic of life as maintaining a low level of entropy, is an
argument, expressed in statistical language, for the gas chambers for
the gulags as devices for maintaining orderliness as an absolute and
realizable ideal. The aesthetics in Popper’s writings are found in the
way his arguments from physics, and mathematics, evolutionary
biology and linguistics, to social and ethical arguments were deeply
connected, the logical force of an argument in one discipline having
implications for arguments in other functionally differentiated fields
of research. There is a remarkable creativity and indeed beauty in the
way Popper was able to show how problems in functionally
differentiated domains of intellectual inquiry can speak creatively to

problems extraneous to those of the domain from which they were
conceived. We can see from this discussion that Popper was an
intensely ethical thinker. His scientific thought was not limited to
forwarding knowledge in the scientific disciplines; it informed the
development of a new naturalism for morality.
Archival Material
Note on sources: The following is a list of works held at the Karl-Popper-

Sammlung (University of Klagenfurt, Austria) that are used in this study
which are also contained at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University. A
separate subsection is given to the materials that were later donated to the
Karl-Popper-Sammlung, by Arne F. Peterson and are catalogued separately
as Sammlung Arne F. Petersen as they are not part of the original material
sourced from the Hoover Institute.
Speeches and Writings
2.1-24.
Unidentified writings, n.d. General Fragments.
12. 1
“Ethical and Methodological Individualism,” n.d. (probably 1960s or early
1970s). Speech given in the United States. Typescript.
12.9
“Freedom and Truth,” n.d. Speech fragment. Holograph. Includes notes on
interpretations.
12.12
“Historicism and the Treason of the Intellect,” n.d. Holograph.
37.4
“Utopia and Violence,” 1947 June. Speech, Rencontres Philosophiques de
Bruxelles, Institut des Arts, Brussels, Belgium, English published version,
1948.
39.3
“The Study of Nature and Society,” 1950 February 16 April 27. The William
James Lectures, Department of Philosophy, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
39.17
“Public and Private Values.” Speech, 1951. Typescript and holograph.
49.20-21
“Zum Thema Freiheit,” 1958 August 25. Speech, The European Forum
Alpbach 1958, Alpbach, Austria (subsequently published in Die Philosophie
und die Wissenschaften: Simon Moser zum 65. Geburtstag, 1967). German
and English versions.
50.16-18
“Woran glaubt der Westen?” 1959. Speech, Zurich, Switzerland (published in
Erziehung zur Freiheit, 1959) Typscript, printed copy and English translation
(modified version) typescript.
50.26
“Epistemology and Industrialization” (Contd.) Published version (English),
1975-1979.
83. 10
“A Realist View of Logic, Physics and History”. Printed copy.
84, 3
“Education versus Commonsense”. 1966 June 10. Commencement speech,
University of Denver, Denver, Colorado. Typescript.
84.13
Contribution to Imre Lakatos memorial volume, 1967. Notes.
105.3
“On the Conspiracy Theories of Religion,” 1970 April 3. Typed notes.
128. 5-13
“Some Notes on Early Greek Cosmology,” 1953 May 8. Henry Dan
Broadhead Memorial Lecture, Canterbury University, Christchurch, New
Zealand. Holograph and typescript.
129. 21-22
“Historical Prophecy as an Obstacle to Peace.” Sonning Prize Lecture,
25.3.1975, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Typescript.
164. 4
Contributions to the C. H. Boehringer Sohn Symposium, The Creative
Process in Science and Medicine, Kronberg, Taunus, Germany, 1974 May
16-17. Typescript.
164.10
“Wissenschaft and Kritik,” 1974 September 5. Speech, The European Forum
Alpbach 1974, Geistige und Wissenschaftliche Entwicklung der Letzten 30
Jahre, Alpbach, Austria. Typescript.
166. 14
“How I See Philosophy,” (contd.) Printed copy. Mitteilungen: Gesellschaft
der Freunde der Universität Mannheim, 1978 October.
167. 6
“Gespräch mit Sir Karl Popper”. 1975 June 1. Interview conducted by
Conceptus staff (not published) Typescript.
208. 3
"Interaction and The Reality of World 3," 1978 August 25. Paper, The
European Forum Alpbach 1978, Knowledge and Power: Problems of
Legitimacy in Culture and Society, Alpbach, Austria. (Holograph, in part
typescript)
208.5
After August 25. Includes copy for distribution. Miscellaneous pages.
208.7
Joseph Agassi’s question put to Karl Popper. Holograph.
208.12
“Interaction and the Reality of World 3” (contd.) German translation) for
publication of the forum’s proceedings). Typescript.
208.13
Letter to the editor, Die Presse, 1978 September 16-17. Holograph, typescript
and printed copy.
208, 15-20
“Some Reflections on the Prehistory of our Western Universities and on their
Present Crisis”. 1978 October 5. Speech, University of Guelph, Guelph,
Ontario, Canada. Holograph and notes, typescript, German translation.
208, 22
“The Self and Its Brain.” Paper, American Philosophical Association, Hilton
Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1978 December 28. Notes, holograph and
typescript.
209.2-3
“Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie,” 1979. Notes, including
notes by Jeremy F. G. Shearmur. Typescript (in part holograph). Includes
correspondence.
218, 9-12
“On the Part Played by Some Empirical Refutations in the History of
Physics.” 1979 February 11 or 12. Popper for a seminar or conference, The
Falsifications in the History of Physics. Holograph, typescript.
218.13
“On the Part Played by Some Empirical Refutations in the History of
Physics.” (contd.)
1981 August
222.1
“Special Relativity and Moving Clocks.” 1979 May. paper. (Princeton
Symposium?).Holograph and typescript. Contributions to the Third C.H.
Boehringer Sohn Symposium. Structure in Science and Art, Kronberg,
Taunus, Germany,1979 May 2-5.
223.6-7
“Schöpferische Selbstkritik in Wissenschaft und Kunst,” 1979 July 26.
Opening address, Salzburg Festival, Salzburg, Austria. Typescript and
English text.
223.13
“Über die sogenannten Quellen der menschlichen Erkenntnis,” 1979 July 27.
Speech upon receiving an honorary doctorate from the Universität Salzburg,
Salzburg, Austria. Printed copy.
224.3
“Über den Zusammenprall von Kulturen,” 1980 May 14. Speech, Austrian
Expatriates Society, Vienna, Austria. Typescript.
224.29
Interview for Mondadori, 1981 February or March. Typescript.
254.7
"Freude an der Arbeit," Speech. 1985 August 31. Holograph.
254.10-11
“Erkenntnistheorie und das Problem des Friedens,” 1985 September 19.
Speech. Holograph and typescript.
Correspondence
272. 4. Bartly, William Warren, III. 1968.
276.10. Berlin, Isaiah, 1952-1982.
282.24. Carnap, Rudolf, 1932-1967.
294.6 Feigl, Herbert and Maria, 1945-1978.
300. Gombrich, Ernst H. and Leonie (Ilse)

1. Undated
2. 1943
3. 1944
4. 1945
5. 1956-1983
305. Hayek, Friedrich August and Helene von

11. Undated
12.1936-1938
13. 1940-1947
14. 1950-1958
15. 1960-1969
16. 1970-1977
305.32. Heisenberg, Werner, 1934-1935.
313.10
Jewish Year Book, 1969.
316.23. Kraft, Julius, 1945-1960.
316.24. Kraft, Victor, 1923-1974.
321.4. Lorenz, Konrad Z., 1969-1984.

329.41 Moser, Simon (Österreichisches College), 1950-1982.
354. 8. Tarski, Alfred, 1935-1981.
Sammlung Arne F. Petersen

Given to the Karl-Popper-Sammlung on 30.5.2006
1.1
Beyond the Search for Invariants. Eröffnungsansprache, International
Colloquium on the Philosophy of Science, Bedford College, London,
11.7.1965.
1.2
Rationality and the Search for Invariants.
Skizzen und Entwürfe (IIIrd VERSION), hs.
John Carew Eccles. Statement über die Wirkung Eccles’ auf KRP. Masch. 1
S.
1.8
Popper on Parmenides. Two letters with an answer. (The content of the
,Yellow Folder’.)
Brief KRPs (Brandeis University) an AFP, 12.11.1969.
Entwurf : Hs., 17 S. + masch., 5S. (Part of this letter was later incorporated
into the Broadhead Lecture.) Siehe : Addendum zu Essay 6 von WoP.
Brief (entwurf) KRPs (Brandeis University) an AFP, 24.11.1969. Hs., 2 S.
Could you try to get for me H. Gomperz’ Parmenides article from Imago
...Vgl.
1.10.
Siehe: Addendum zu Essay 6 von WoP.
Brief AFPs, London, an KRP, 3.12.1969. Hs., 2 S.
5.8
Unintended Consequences : The Origin of the European Book. By Karl
Popper.
A lecture delivered on November 2nd, 1982, in the old Imperial Palace
(Hofburg) in Vienna to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of books by the
President of the Federal Republic of Austria. Masch. + hs. Korr., 18 S.
Bücher und Gedanken : Das Erste Buch Europas. Kopie des gedruckten
Festvortrags. In : Popper, Karl R. : Auf der Suche nach einer besseren Welt.
München, Zürich : Piper, 1984. S. 117 – 126.
5.14
Motto of the Paper. Hs., 1 S.
5.17
Books and Thoughts. The Origin of the European Book. By Karl Popper.
Datiert : 20.11.1984. Masch. + hs. Korr., S. 1-18
Unintended Consequences : The Origins of the European Book. By Karl
Popper. Masch. + hs. Korr. S. 1-18.
6.3
Support and Countersupport. Induction becomes Counterinduction, The
Epagogē returns to the Elenchus. Essay 10 von WoP. 3 Expl. Masch. + hs.
Korr., 11 S.
8
Korrespondenz.
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Name Index
Adler, Alfred. 61 Bühler, Karl. 23, 33, 36-38,

Adler, Max. 15, 17 45,57-58, 66, 87-93, 100-
Adorno, Theodor W. 6, 32fn, 101, 112-116, 121-124,
86 131, 137-139, 153, 155.
Agassi, Joseph. 9, 17fn, 19, Büttemeyer, Wilhelm. 106
20fn, 26-27, 72, 124
Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz. 34, Carabine, Deirdre. 110fn
36fn, 111, 113-115, 151- Carnap, Rudolf. 31-34, 38, 59,
152 76, 112, 124
Albert, Hans. 74 Cohen, Hermann. 9, 11, 23-24,
Alt, Jürgen A. 88fn 33, 49
Aristotle, 34fn, 36, 55, 102, Currie, Gregory. 144
104-110, 111fn, 122-123,
147 Descartes, René. 42, 109,
Dietrich, Wendell S. 25
Bacon, Francis. 42, 108-109, Dummett, Michael. 144
120
Bar-Am, N. 96fn, 102, 104fn, Eccles, John C. 19fn, 102fn,
105 123fn, 126fn, 131, 132fn,
Bartley, William. 53-55, 59, 68 134fn, 140fn, 141fn, 145fn
Beiser, Federick. 107fn, 135fn Edmonds, David. 12fn, 13fn
Berlin, Isaiah. 17, 22 Ehrenfels, Christian. 122
Berkson, William. 49 Eidinow, John. 12fn
Bernstein, Eduard. 15 Einstein, Albert. 20-21, 69, 89,
Bloch, Ernst. 26 93, 118
Bloor, David. 141 Ellis, Brian. 83-84, 130fn
Boyer, Alain. vii Engels, Friedrich. 15-16
Bolzano, Bernard. 136-138 Euclid. 59-60
Brentano, Franz. 8fn, 97, 121-
122, 124, 129, 137, 139, Feyerabend, Paul. 30, 35,
143 122fn
Bronowski, Jacob. 92-94 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 39, 42
Brown, James R. 109fn, 110fn
Buber, Martin. 23
Frege, Gottlob. 91, 109-110, Husserl, Edmund. 48-49, 138

113, 121, 126-127, 135fn,
136-144 Janik, Allan. 39-40, 99
Freud, Sigmund. 61,125 Jarvie, Ian. vii, 58fn, 81fn, 126
Friedman, Michael. 34 Kant, Immanuel. 1, 10, 20, 23-
Fries, Jakob Friedrich. 29, 45, 26, 29-35, 37, 41, 45-52,
47-53, 68, 103 61-63, 65-67, 69-71, 75-77,
Frisby, David. 32-33 83, 86, 88, 94-95, 101, 103-
105,107, 110, 125, 130,
Gattei, Stefano. 45, 53-54, 57- 134-137, 144-146, 159
58, 60, 62, 70fn, 86-87
Gombrich, Ernst. 15, 117 Keuth, Herbert. 127fn
Gomperz, Heinrich. 25 Kierkegaard, Søren. 27-28, 37,
Gomperz, Theodor. 11, 25 54, 56
Gödel, Kurt. 136-138. Klemke, E. D. 140-142
Gregory, Frederick. 51 Kołakowski, Leszek. 30, 37,
85
Habermas, Jürgen. 6, 85-86 Kotarbiński, Tadeusz. 36, 124
Hacohen, Malachi H. viii, 1, 8- Kraus, Karl. 16
9, 12fn, 13-16, 18fn, 21, 25, Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert.
28, 30fn, 45, 47, 58fn, 50, 104fn
51fn, 52fn, 54, 60, 61fn, Kraft, Julius. 31, 46-49, 58, 64,
65fn, 68, 72fn, 121-123, 65, 68
143 Kraft, Victor. 38, 40, 59, 67,
Hanfling, Oswald. 111fn, 115 73, 74fn, 76fn
Hansen, Troels E. 57, 58fn, 68, Kripke, Saul. 115fn
72fn, Külpe, Oswald. 66, 138-139
Hayek, Friedrich A. 7, 42,
106-108, 110, 111fn, 133 Lassalle, Ferdinand. 15
Hegel, Georg. 42, 47, 52fn, Leśniewski, Stanisław. 124
101, 107fn 135-136, 146 Levinas, Emmanuel. 8
Heidegger, Martin. 8, 48-49, Locke, John. 42, 76, 102
125, 126fn Lorenz, Konrad. 50, 89, 123
Henke, Ernst L T. 51, 52fn Lotze, Hermann. 121, 143-144
Hess, Moses. 22 Łukasiewicz, Jan. 34fn
Hilbert, David. 109
Hobbes, Thomas. 42 Marcuse, Herbert. 6
Hudson, Wayne. viii Marty, Anton. 129
Hume, David. 1, 42, 50fn, Marx, Karl. 2, 15, 31, 81
52fn, 54, 62-63, 130 Meinong, Alexius. 138-139
Name Index 187
Mendelssohn, Moses. 22-23, Safranski, Rüdiger. 126fn

25 Salamun, Kurt, viii, 41
Mill, J. S. 42 Santayana, George. 143fn
Miller, David. 32fn, 35fn, 43, Selz, Otto. 45, 61, 64, 66, 70,
46, 50, 81 88-90, 117, 123, 131, 138-
Munz, Peter. 50fn, 98, 99fn 139
Musgrave, Alan. vii, 97-98 Schelling, Friedrich. W. J. 42
Schiff, Jenny. 13
Natorp, Paul. 33, 49 Schlipp, Arthur. 87fn, 92,
Nelson, Leonard. 29, 47, 49- 132fn
50, 52 Schlick, Moritz. 59, 63, 123
Neurath, Otto. 27, 30, 38, 68 Shearmur, Jeremy. vii, 45fn,
Newton, Isaac. 69, 86, 92-94, 73fn, 75fn, 109
118, 128, 144 Smith, Barry. 8, 106, 124, 137
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 3 Socrates. 101, 105, 150
Stadler, August. 49
O’Hear, Anthony. vii Stadler, Friedrich. 31
Stokes, Geoffrey. 79, 85-86,
Parmenides. 56, 99, 105, 133- 122
134, 148-149 Stumpf, Carl. 41, 138
Petersen, Arne F. vii, 24fn, 38,
45, 72fn, 90fn, 118fn, Tarski, Alfred. 34, 39, 81-89,
133fn 92-99, 108, 124, 137, 143
Plato. 1, 4, 22, 24, 36, 104- ter Hark, Michel. vii, 45, 57,
107, 111, 115, 121, 125, 60-61, 64, 139-140
136, 145-147, 153-154 Toulmin, Stephen. 39-40
Plotinus. 135, 147, 155 Trebitsch, Arthur. 16
Popper, Israel. 13, 18fn Twardowski, Kazimierz. 35,
Popper, Simon. 12-13, 27 122, 124, 129-130, 139
Popper-Lynkeus, Joseph. 18-
19, 148 Voltaire. 42-43
Pralong, Sandra. 36fn, 81fn
Pseudo-Dionysius. 110 Watkins, John. 132fn
Weber, Max. 74
Quine, Willard V. O. 111 Weininger, Otto. 16
Weinstein, David. 14, 20
Rojszczak, Artur. 40, 97 Wettersten, John R. 49, 68
Rosenzweig, Franz. 23 Whitehead, Alfred North. 139
Rousseau. 42 Willey, Thomas E. 49
Russell, Bertrand. 30, 39, 138 Williams, Douglas E. 143-144
Williams, Rowan. 157 Xenophanes. 56, 57fn, 68, 133

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1, 6, 8,
12fn, 13fn, 34-35, 39-41, Zakai. Avihu. 14, 20,
50fn, 55, 57fn, 63-64, 69,
70fn, 79-82, 95-99, 101,
103, 105, 111-112, 114-
116, 148
Walter, Bruno. 13
Wolenski, Jan. 35fn, 83fn,
84fn
Subject Index
Aesthetics 117-120, 150, 158- Dogmatism/anti-dogmatism

159 39fn, 50, 52-53, 80, 104,
Abstract society 108 159
Cartesian intellectualism 108- Empiricism 43, 62, 70, 76, 83,

109 105fn
Causality 127, 131 Enlightenment, Jewish En-
Certainty 51, 115, 151 lightenment, Kantian, radi-
Closed society 3, 50 cal, anti-enlightenment,
Conjecture and refutation, English, Scottish and
method of, 20, 77, 118 French Enlightenments 9-
Conventionalism 113fn 12, 15, 20fn, 22-23, 24fn,
Cosmology 133-134, 148, 158 24fn
Cosmopolitanism 10-11, 16, Epistemology 33-34, 43, 45fn,
20, 21fn, 26 49-50, 52-54, 56-58, 60,
Critical rationalism 7, 30, 62-73, 75, 77, 80, 82, 85,
35fn, 39, 43, 47, 53, 73fn, 90-91, 101-104, 121, 125-
74, 75fn, 86 126, 133, 135, 141-143,
Criticisability 74, 100 146, 148, 155
Essentialism 82, 101-104, 110,
Deductivism, deductive logic 117, 130fn
4, 39, 42, 48, 61, 63-65, 70, Evolution, evolutionary cogni-
84, 96, 103, 105 tion, evolutionary episte-
Demarcation, criteria of 47, mology 88, 91, 101-102,
50, 58fn, 62, 70 113, 117, 121-122,
Democracy, and science, and 125,130-131, 134, 136,
social reform, piecemeal 140, 142, 152-153, 155,
social engineering 145-146 157, 159
Determinism 127, 132
Dialogue 20, 153 Fallibilism 24, 54, 102-103,
Dispositions 59, 75, 116fn, 117, 148
126, 130-131, 134, 154 Falsifiability 2, 4, 7, 25, 32,
35-36, 51, 69-70, 72fn, 74,
124, 127
Foundationalism, anti- 34, 51- Kantianism 49, 57fn, 65, 103,

56, 67-69, 73, 101, 104, 111, 117fn, 135-137, 144-
107, 114 146, 159
Freedom, and determinism,
and individualism, demo- Liberalism 7, 10, 14-15, 17,
cratic institutions, meta- 21, 80, 152-153, 159
physics of 13, 23, 107, 125, Logic of Scientific Discovery
134, 158, 159 2, 36fn, 50fn, 51fn, 75,
76fn, 77fn, 100fn, 103fn,
Geometry, axioms, postulates 113fn, 124fn, 126, 127fn,
and definitions of 45, 57- 151fn,
61, 125 Logical positivism, Vienna
Circle 31-35, 38-39, 59
Historicism 2, 11, 26, 125fn,
159 Marxism 55
Hermeneutics 86 Methodology 4, 38fn, 102
Human nature 5, 156-157 Mind, mind-body problem and
Hypothetico-deductive 4, 43, interactionism, dualism,
54, 84, 108, 134 materialist philosophy, and
self 50-52, 57, 66, 86, 88-
Idealism, anti- 11fn, 35fn, 47, 89, 93-94, 109, 117, 119-
65-66, 89, 94-95, 126, 134, 120, 123, 125, 127-132,
143fn, 145 134-136, 142-157.
Ideology 53 Moral responsibility 25-26, 32,
Indeterminism, vs determin- 38-39, 133
ism, metaphysical 56,
112fn, 117, 154 Natural science, difference in
Individualism 17, 25 method from social science
Induction/inductivism 4, 37, 52, 55, 69, 113, 149
45-46, 48, 52, 56fn, 60-62, Naturalism 27, 58, 75-76, 83-
68, 107 84, 91, 95, 98, 108, 113,
Inter-subjective, notion of 122-123, 126, 130-131,
objectivity 35, 92, 113-115, 134, 139, 146-149, 152,
151-152 160
Intuition/Intuitionism 47, 54, Negative utilitarianism 18
56, 85, 100fn, 105fn, 135, Neo-Platonism 3-4, 19, 44, 74,
155 135, 147, 149, 153
Irrational/Irrationalism 27, 34,
43, 53-54, 100, 151-152, Objects, kinds of, thought ob-
156 jects 51, 102, 113, 122-123,
Subject Index 191
126-128, 130-131, 134-142, Realism, and common sense,

147 metaphysical, methodolog-
Objective knowledge 7, 65fn, ical 4-5, 84, 94-95, 12, 118-
82, 89, 126, 152 119, 131, 142, 144-145,
Objectivity; see: inter- 154, 157
subjective Reality, kinds of 85, 87-88, 93-
Ontology 38, 43, 56, 89-90, 95, 98, 102, 122, 127, 129-
108fn, 121-122, 125-126, 130, 134-135, 144-145,
130, 135, 137, 139-144 149-150
Open rationality 151 Reason 2-3, 10, 37, 47, 51-54,
Open Society and Its Enemies 58, 70, 75, 85, 105, 125,
2, 10, 26, 100-107 134
Open system 130 Relativism 80, 83, 156
Religion 10, 18, 23, 27, 55,
Positivism, also see logical 156
positivism
Poverty of Historicism 2, 26, Self-criticism, self-critical
125fn, 159 attitude 3, 118
Presocratics 24, 28, 130, 133- She'elot ut'shuvot 22
134, 150 Situational analysis and situa-
Progress 10, 15-16, 20, 24, 26, tional logic 58, 102, 113-
39, 55, 92-93, 112, 118, 114, 125, 128-129, 138,
156 147, 149
Propensity theory of probabil- Social democracy 7, 15, 49
ity, numerical propensities Social and political theory, and
72fn, 122, 126-131, 142, thought 6, 79
144, 147, 149, 153-154. Suffering 156-157
Prophetic ethos, false prophets
1, 12, 21, 26, 42-43, 107 Testability 37, 77, 152
Tolerance, paradox of 17, 55-
Quantum computation 4 56, 93, 159
Quantum mechanics/ theory Totalitarianism 22, 152
72fn, 126 Tradition 23, 25-27, 35, 117,
158
Rationalism, rationality 7, 25, Transcendence 76, 86, 89, 99-
31, 36-38, 42-43, 47, 53-55, 100, 105fn, 107, 110, 116,
58, 60, 62, 67, 70, 72-75, 119, 125, 131-132, 134,
85-86, 91, 93, 96, 100, 107, 140, 147, 155
115-116, 136, 148, 151- Truth, common sense notion,
153, 154, 156 consensus theory, corre-
spondence theory, consen- Values, social and cultural,

sus vs. correspondence, co- epistemic and non-
herence theory, as a regula- epistemic 82, 88-91, 99-
tive ideal, also see verisi- 100, 118, 125, 145, 151
militude 2, 35, 41, 46, 48, Verificationism, verifiability
51-52, 56, 59, 64, 65, 67- 85, 76-77
69, 74, 79, 83-85, 97, 112, Verisimilitude 35, 83, 85, 98-
124, 130, 136, 138, 141fn, 99
143, 147, 149, 151-152, Violence, non-violence 16-17,
154 53, 153
Universals 38, 75, 76, 87, 110,

116
Utopianism, utopia 54, 145-
146, 152, 159

Alexander Naraniencki Returning To Karl Popper

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Alexander Naraniencki Returning To Karl Popper

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Table of Contents

2. Was Karl Popper a Positivist? 29

3. The early philosophical problems 45

5. Definitions, essences and meaning 101

6. Popper’s metaphysics 121

7. Towards an Open Rationality 151

Archival Material 161

I am grateful to the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at

Karl Popper is a more complex thinker than is commonly

performance of the theorist. I suggest that this tension between actual

the fundamentally deficient nature of human observation and the need

century thinkers amongst academic philosophers and their students.

historical interest in liberal Cold Warriors, particularly Central

Popper’s thought within constellations of thinkers that he is not

This chapter explores Karl Popper’s thought within the anti-nationalist

from a very distinct Jewish tradition of Haskalik or Enlightenment

that was teleologically “open,” a Voltairian epistemological

1.2 The Popper family

An understanding of the Popper family background may yield some

The Popper name (‫ )פאפרש‬was common in Bohemia. According

Karl wanted to see himself as belonging to the Germanophone

I do not consider myself “an assimilated German Jew”: I think this is

As Hacohen points out, Popper indeed saw himself as a

1.3 Popper, Israel and Jewish identity

Hacohen sees Popper as a typical member of the class of acculturated

from Engels of using violence as a threat.21 While universalist ideals

understandably but not wisely, invaded politics and journalism. . . .

Such statements reveal Popper’s concern with the ethno-political

attitude may guide our understanding of Popper’s relationship to

nationalism, and nationalism is a terrible danger, especially the

Although I am not a Jew by religion, I have come to the conclusion

Here, then, is a rare written example of Popper explicitly

world.” 29 While Popper accepted this wisdom, considering his later

process.”33 In Exile and Interpretation: Popper’s Re-Invention of the

Popper’s ambivalence about being Jewish, despite being victimized

When seen within Popper’s Jewish, progressivist Viennese

Einstein’s correspondence that not only did rational discussion and

Einstein describes here a central problem of political

Notwithstanding such sentiments, it is possible to argue that

1.4 The Jewish Enlightenments

To gain a clearer view of Popper’s Jewishness we must look to the

Jewish loyalty and an inner freedom to discriminate between the

progressive German-Austrian. Within his distinctly Jewish formative

Building upon Mendelssohn’s attempt to free Judaism from

were common among progressivist Viennese Jewry. The same

Society he referred to Kierkegaard as “the great reformer of Christian

The ideal of Bildung, the German language, Kantianism, and the

attitude to personal development. Hacohen also identified the Danish

2.2 The Vienna Circle

Popper’s intellectual and social connections to the Vienna Circle were

incorporated Kantian elements from the Vienna Circle as well as some

be done through this group. In Unended Quest Popper gave as one of

amongst the Vienna Circle has been a matter of considerable scholarly

made the distinction between a science generating laws from a science

appreciate the fundamentally Kantian mindset that underpinned the

inter-subjectively communicable and testable. This emphasis upon the

of the Vienna Circle, reflected the standpoint of another leading

is therefore largely inductive’. 26 This work as a whole is a rather

would have to be deductive and have a transcendental component.30

certain view of the ‘early’ Wittgenstein and failure of logical

This criticism of the ‘scholasticism’ into which the Vienna

raises many issues for our understanding of Popper. If we accept Janik

Wittgenstein’s insistence that the relationship between language and