3 Knowledge without Authority (1960) * by Karl Popper This part of my lecture might be described as an attack npircon, as formulated for example in the following classical Statement of Hume's: ‘If | ask why you believe any particular fatter of fact... you mus tell me Some reason} and this reason will be some other fact, connected with it. But as you cannot Proceed after this manner, in infinitum, you must at last terminate ‘in some fact, which is present to your memory of senses; or must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation. The problem ofthe validity of empiricism may be roughly put 1 follows: is observation the ultimate soure of our knowledge of ‘nature? And if not, what are the sources of our knowledge? ‘These questions remain, whatever I may have sad about Bacon, tna ven iT should have managed to make tote parts of his Philosophy on which Ihave commented somewhat unattractive for Beconans and for oher empiric, ——— problem of the source of our knowledge has recent! seated flow Iw make an wero, mem oy hb means that we must be able to. ans i ths mea ble to answer the following “How do you know? What are the sources of your astern?" ‘Ths empickit hos, amounts in it tur othe question, servations (or memories of observations) underlie ‘What ob of observations) ander your id ths sing of questions quit unsatisfactory. of all, most of our assertions are not based ahaerans, ut upon al Kinds of ther source ead in Times’ oF pethaps ‘I read it in the Encyclopaedia Bruannica’ is 2 *in Popper Selections 0. Miller (ed) Princeton Wnversihy Press, 1985, XNOWLEDGE WITHOUT AUTHORITY a sore likely and a more definite answer to the question ‘How do you know?" than ‘I have observed it” or “I know it from an ‘observation I made last year’. ‘But’, the empiricist will reply, how do you think that The Times ‘or the Encyclopaedia Britannica got their information? Surely, if ‘you only carry on your inquiry long enough, you willend up with "epors ofthe observation of eyewitneses (Sometimes called “protocol ‘sentences” or—by yourself—"“basic statements”), Admittedly’, the ‘empiricist will continue, ‘books are largely made from other books. Adasinedly «historian fo example, wil wor rom documents, But ulkimately, in the last analysis, these other books, oF documents, must have been based upon observations. Otherwise they would have to be described as poetry, or invention, or lies, bbut not as testimony. It is in this sense that we empircists assert that observation must be the ultimate source of our knowledge.” ‘Here we have the empiricst’s cas, as it is still put by some of iy positivist friends. | shall try to show that this case is 2 litle valid as Bacon’s; that the answer to the question ofthe sources of knowledge goes against the empiricist; and, finally, that this whole question of ultimate sources - sources to which one my appeal, as one might to higher cout or a higher authority - must be rejected as based upon & mistake. First | want to show that ifyou actually went on questioning The Times and its correspondents about the sources oftheir knowledge, you would in fact never arrive at all thote observations by ‘eyewitnesses inthe existence of which the empiricist believes. You ‘would find, rater, that with every single step you take, the need for further steps increases in snowbal-lke fashion. ‘Take as an example the sort of assertion for which reasonable people might simply accept assuffcient the answer'T read itin The Times’; let us say the assertion ‘The Prime Minister has decided to return to London several days ahead of schedule’. Now assume fora moment that somebody doubts this assertion, o feels the need to investigate ie truth, What shall he do? If he bas friend in the Prime Minister’ office, the simplest and most direct way would be toring him up; and ifths friend corroborates the message, then that is hat. In other words, the investigator will, if possible, try to check,