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Karl Popper
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Karl Popper
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Stephen Thornton
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Karl Popper
First published Thu Nov 13, 1997; substantive revision Thu Mar 18, 2021
Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of

science of the twentieth century. He was also a social and political
philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed critical-rationalist, a
dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism and relativism in science
and in human affairs generally and a committed advocate and staunch
defender of the “Open Society”. One of the many remarkable features of
Popper’s thought is the scope of his intellectual influence: he was lauded
by Bertrand Russell, taught Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend and
philanthropist George Soros at the London School of Economics,
numbered David Miller, Joseph Agassi, Alan Musgrave and Jeremy
Shearmur amongst his research assistants, was counted by Thomas Szasz
as “among my foremost teachers” and had close ties with the economist
Friedrich Hayek and the art historian Ernst Gombrich. Additionally, Peter
Medawar, John Eccles and Hermann Bondi are amongst the distinguished
scientists who have acknowledged their intellectual indebtedness to his
1
Karl Popper
work, the latter declaring that “There is no more to science than its
method, and there is no more to its method than Popper has said”.
1. Life
2. Backdrop to Popper’s Thought
3. The Problem of Demarcation
4. Basic Statements, Falsifiability and Convention
5. The Growth of Human Knowledge
6. Probability, Knowledge and Verisimilitude
7. Objective Knowledge and The Three Worlds Ontology
8. Social and Political Thought—The Critique of Historicism and
Holism
9. Scientific Knowledge, History, and Prediction
10. Immutable Laws and Contingent Trends
11. Critical Evaluation
Bibliography
Primary Literature: Works by Popper
Secondary Literature/Other Sources
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Life
Karl Raimund Popper was born on 28 July 1902 in Vienna. His parents,
who were of Jewish origin, brought him up in an atmosphere which he
was later to describe as “decidedly bookish”. His father was a lawyer by
profession, but he also took a keen interest in the classics and in
philosophy, and communicated to his son an interest in social and political
issues. His mother inculcated in him such a passion for music that for a
time he contemplated taking it up as a career; he initially chose the history
2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stephen Thornton
of music as a second subject for his Ph.D. examination. Subsequently, his

love for music became one of the inspirational forces in the development
of his thought, and manifested itself in his highly original interpretation of
the relationship between dogmatic and critical thinking, in his account of
the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, and, most importantly,
in the growth of his hostility towards all forms of historicism, including
historicist ideas about the nature of the “progressive” in music. The young
Karl attended the local Realgymnasium, where he was unhappy with the
standards of the teaching, and, after an illness he left to attend the
University of Vienna in 1918, matriculating four years later. In 1919 he
became heavily involved in left-wing politics and became for a time a
Marxist. However, he was quickly disillusioned with the doctrinaire
character of the latter, and soon abandoned it entirely. He also discovered
the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler (he served briefly as a
voluntary social worker with deprived children in one of the latter’s clinics
in the 1920s), and heard Einstein lecture on relativity theory. The
dominance of the critical spirit in Einstein, and its total absence in Marx,
Freud and Adler, struck Popper as being of fundamental importance: the
pioneers of psychoanalysis, he came to think, couched their theories in
terms which made them amenable only to confirmation, while Einstein’s
theory, crucially, had testable implications which, if false, would have
falsified the theory itself.
Popper took some time to settle on a career; he trained as a cabinetmaker,

obtained a primary school teaching diploma in 1925 and qualified to teach
mathematics and physics in secondary school in 1929. He undertook a
doctoral programme with the department of psychology at the University
of Vienna the under the supervision of Karl Bühler, one of the founder
members of the Würzburg school of experimental psychology. Popper’s
project was initially designed as a psychological investigation of human
memory, on which he conducted initial research. However, the subject
matter of a planned introductory chapter on methodology assumed a
Spring 2021 Edition 3

Karl Popper
position of increasing pre-eminence and this resonated with Bühler, who,

as a Kant scholar (a professor of philosophy and psychology), had
famously addressed the issue of the contemporary “crisis in psychology”.
This “crisis”, for Bühler, related to the question of the unity of psychology
and had been generated by the proliferation of then competing paradigms
within the discipline which had undermined the hitherto dominant
associationist one and problematized the question of method. Accordingly,
under Bühler’s direction, Popper switched his topic to the methodological
problem of cognitive psychology and received his doctorate in 1928 for
his dissertation “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie”. In extending
Bühler’s Kantian approach to the crisis in the dissertation, Popper
critiqued Moritz Schlick’s neutral monist programme to make psychology
scientific by transforming it into a science of brain processes. This latter
ideal, Popper argued, was misconceived, but the issues raised by it
ultimately had the effect of refocusing Popper’s attention away from
Bühler’s question of the unity of psychology to that of its scientificity.
This philosophical focus on questions of method, objectivity and claims to
scientific status was to become a principal life-long concern, bringing the
orientation of Popper’s thought into line with that of such contemporary
“analytic” philosophers as Frege and Russell as well as that of many
members of the Vienna Circle.
Popper married Josephine Anna Henninger (“Hennie”) in 1930, and she

also served as his amanuensis until her death in 1985. At an early stage of
their marriage they decided that they would never have children. In 1937
he took up a position teaching philosophy at the University of Canterbury
in New Zealand, where he was to remain for the duration of the Second
World War.
The annexation of Austria in 1938 became the catalyst which prompted

Popper to refocus his writings on social and political philosophy. He
published The Open Society and Its Enemies, his critique of

Stephen Thornton
totalitarianism, in 1945. In 1946 he moved to England to teach at the

London School of Economics, and became professor of logic and
scientific method at the University of London in 1949. From this point on
his reputation and stature as a philosopher of science and social thinker
grew, and he continued to write prolifically—a number of his works,
particularly The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), are now widely seen
as pioneering classics in the field. However, he combined a combative
personality with a zeal for self-aggrandisement that did little to endear him
to professional colleagues. He was ill-at-ease in the philosophical milieu
of post-war Britain which was, as he saw it, fixated with trivial linguistic
concerns dictated by Wittgenstein, whom he considered his nemesis.
Popper’s commitment to the primacy of rational criticism was
counterpointed by hostility towards anything that amounted to less than
total acceptance of his own thought, and in Britain—as had been the case
in Vienna—he increasingly became an isolated figure, though his ideas
continued to inspire admiration.
In later years Popper came under philosophical criticism for his

prescriptive approach to science and his emphasis on the logic of
falsification. This was superseded in the eyes of many by the socio-
historical approach taken by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1962). In that work, Kuhn, who argued for the
incommensurability of rival scientific paradigms, denied that science
grows linearly through the accumulation of truths.
Popper was knighted in 1965, and retired from the University of London
in 1969, remaining active as a writer, broadcaster and lecturer until his
death in 1994. (For more detail on Popper’s life, see his Unended Quest
[1976]).

Karl Popper
2. Backdrop to Popper’s Thought

A number of biographical features may be identified as having a particular
influence upon Popper’s thought. His teenage flirtation with Marxism left
him thoroughly familiar with the Marxian dialectical view of economics,
class-war, and history. But he was appalled by the failure of the
democratic parties to stem the rising tide of fascism in Austria in the
1920s and 1930s, and the effective welcome extended to it by the
Marxists, who regarded fascism as a necessary dialectical step towards the
implosion of capitalism and the ultimate victory of communism. The
Poverty of Historicism (1944; 1957) and The Open Society and Its
Enemies (1945), Popper’s most impassioned and influential social works,
are powerful defences of democratic liberalism, and strident critiques of
philosophical presuppositions underpinning all forms of totalitarianism.
Popper was also profoundly impressed by the differences between the

allegedly “scientific” theories of Freud and Adler and the revolution
effected by Einstein’s theory of Relativity in physics in the first two
decades of the twentieth century. The main difference between them, as
Popper saw it, was that while Einstein’s theory was highly “risky”, in the
sense that it was possible to deduce consequences from it which were, in
the light of the then dominant Newtonian physics, highly improbable (e.g.,
that light is deflected towards solid bodies—confirmed by Eddington’s
experiments in 1919), and which would, if they turned out to be false,
falsify the whole theory, nothing could, even in principle, falsify
psychoanalytic theories. They were, Popper argues, “simply non-testable,
irrefutable. There was no conceivable human behaviour which could
contradict them” (1963: 37). As such, they have more in common with
myths than with genuine science; “They contain most interesting
psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form” (1963: 38). What is
apparently the chief source of strength of psychoanalysis, he concluded,
viz. its capability to accommodate and explain every possible form of

Stephen Thornton
human behaviour, is in fact a critical weakness, for it entails that it is not,

and could not be, genuinely predictive. To those who would respond that
psychoanalytic theory is supported by clinical observations, Popper points
out that
… real support can be obtained only from observations undertaken

as tests (by ‘attempted refutations’); and for this purpose criteria of
refutation have to be laid down beforehand: it must be agree which
observable situations, if actually observed, mean that the theory is
refuted. (1963: 38, footnote 3)
Popper also considers that contemporary Marxism also lacks scientific

status. Unlike psychoanalysis, he argues, Marxism had been initially
scientific, in that it was genuinely predictive. However, when these
predictions were not in fact borne out, the theory was saved from
falsification by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses which made it
compatible with the facts. By this means, Popper asserts, a theory which
was initially genuinely scientific degenerated into pseudo-scientific
dogma. As he sees it, the Hegelian dialectic was adopted by Marxists not
to oppose dogmatism but to accommodate it to their cause by eliminating
the possibility of contradictory evidence. It has thus become what Popper
terms “reinforced dogmatism” (1963: 334).
These factors combined to make Popper take falsifiability as his criterion

for demarcating science from non-science: if a theory is incompatible with
possible empirical observations it is scientific; conversely, a theory which
is compatible with all such observations, either because, as in the case of
Marxism, it has been modified solely to accommodate such observations,
or because, as in the case of psychoanalytic theories, it is consistent with
all possible observations, is unscientific. However, Popper is not a
positivist and acknowledges that unscientific theories may be enlightening
and that even purely mythogenic explanations have performed a valuable

Karl Popper
function in the past in expediting our understanding of the nature of

reality.
3. The Problem of Demarcation

For Popper the central problem in the philosophy of science is that of
demarcation, i.e., of distinguishing between science and what he terms
“non-science” (e.g., logic, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and Adler’s
individual psychology). Popper is unusual amongst contemporary
philosophers in that he accepts the validity of the Humean critique of
induction, and indeed, goes beyond it in arguing that induction is never
actually used in science. However, he does not concede that this entails
scepticism and argues that the Baconian/Newtonian insistence on the
primacy of “pure” observation, as the initial step in the formation of
theories, is completely misguided: all observation is selective and theory-
laden and there are no pure or theory-free observations. In this way he
destabilises the traditional view that science can be distinguished from
non-science on the basis of its inductive methodology. In contradistinction
to this, Popper holds that there is no unique methodology specific to
science; rather, science, like virtually every other organic activity, consists
largely of problem-solving.
Popper accordingly rejects the view that induction is the characteristic

method of scientific investigation and inference, substituting falsifiability
in its place. It is easy, he argues, to obtain evidence in favour of virtually
any theory, and he consequently holds that such “corroboration”, as he
terms it, should count scientifically only if it is the positive result of a
genuinely “risky” prediction, which might conceivably have been false. In
a critical sense, Popper’s theory of demarcation is based upon his
perception of the asymmetry which, at the level of logic, holds between
verification and falsification: it is logically impossible to verify a universal
proposition by reference to experience (as Hume saw clearly), but a single

Stephen Thornton
genuine counter-instance falsifies the corresponding universal law. In a

word, an exception, far from “proving” a rule, conclusively refutes it.
Every genuine scientific theory then, in Popper’s view, is prohibitive,

because the theories of natural science take the form of universal
statements. “All As are X” is equivalent to “No A is not-X” which is
falsified if “Some A is not-X” turns out to be true. For example, the law of
the conservation of energy can be expressed as “There is no perpetual
motion machine”.
However, the universality of such laws, he argues, does rule out the
possibility of their verification. Thus, a theory that has withstood rigorous
testing should be deemed to have received a high measure of
corroboration. and may be retained provisionally as the best available
theory until it is finally falsified and/or is superseded by a better theory.
Popper stresses in particular that there is no unique way, no single method

such as induction, which functions as the route to scientific theory, and
approvingly cites Einstein on that point:
There is no logical path leading to [the highly universal laws of

science]. They can only be reached by intuition, based upon
something like an intellectual love of the objects of experience.
(2002: 8–9)
Science, in Popper’s view, starts with problems rather than with

observations—it is, indeed, precisely in the context of grappling with a
problem that the scientist makes observations in the first instance: his
observations are selectively designed to test the extent to which a given
theory functions as a satisfactory solution to a given problem.
On this criterion of demarcation physics, chemistry, and (non-

introspective) psychology, amongst others, are classified as sciences,

Karl Popper
psychoanalysis is a pre-science and astrology and phrenology are pseudo-

sciences.
4. Basic Statements, Falsifiability and Convention

Popper draws a clear distinction between the logic of falsifiability and its
applied methodology. The logic of his theory is utterly simple: a universal
statement is falsified by a single genuine counter-instance.
Methodologically, however, the situation is complex: decisions about
whether to accept an apparently falsifying observation as an actual
falsification can be problematic, as observational bias and measurement
error, for example, can yield results which are only apparently
incompatible with the theory under scrutiny.
Thus, while advocating falsifiability as the criterion of demarcation for

science, Popper explicitly allows for the fact that in practice a single
conflicting or counter-instance is never sufficient methodologically for
falsification, and that scientific theories are often retained even though
much of the available evidence conflicts with them, or is anomalous with
respect to them.
In this connection, in the Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper introduces

the technical concept of a “basic statement” or “basic proposition”, which
he defines as a statement which can serve as a premise in an empirical
falsification and which takes the singular existential form “There is an X at
Y”. Basic statements are important because they can formally contradict
universal statements, and accordingly play the role of potential falsifiers.
To take an example, the (putative) basic statement “In space-time region k
there is an apparatus which is a perpetual motion machine” contradicts the
law of the conservation of energy, and would, if true, falsify it (2002: 48).
Accordingly, Popper holds that basic statements are objective and are
governed by two requirements: (a) the formal, that they must be both

Stephen Thornton
singular and existential and (b) the material, that they must be
intersubjectively testable.
In essence, basic statements are for Popper logical constructs which

embrace and include ‘observation statements’, but for methodological
reasons he seeks to avoid that terminology, as it suggests that they are
derived directly from, and known by, experience (2002: 12, footnote 2),
which would conflate them with the “protocol” statements of logical
positivism and reintroduce the empiricist idea that certain kinds of
experiential reports are incorrigible. The “objectivity” requirement in
Popper’s account of basic statements, by contrast, amounts to a rejection
of the view that the truth of scientific statements can ever be reduced to
individual or collective human experience. (2002: 25).
Popper therefore argues that there are no statements in science which

cannot be interrogated: basic statements, which are used to test the
universal theories of science, must themselves be inter-subjectively
testable and are therefore open to the possibility of refutation. He
acknowledges that this seems to present a practical difficulty, in that it
appears to suggest that testability must occur ad infinitum, which he
acknowledges is an operational absurdity: sooner or later all testing must
come to an end. Where testing ends, he argues, is in a convention-based
decision to accept a basic statement or statements; it is at that point that
convention and intersubjective human agreement play an indispensable
role in science:
Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or

falsification, must stop at some basic statement or other which we
decide to accept. If we do not come to any decision, and do not
accept some basic statement or other, then the test will have led
nowhere. (2002: 86)

Karl Popper
However, Popper contends that while such a decision is usually causally

related to perceptual experience, it is not and cannot be justified by such
experience; basic statements are experientially underdetermined.
Experiences can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or a

rejection of a statement, but a basic statement cannot be justified by
them—no more than by thumping the table. (2002: 87–88)
Statements can be justified only by other statements, and therefore testing

comes to an end, not in the establishment of a correlation between
propositional content and observable reality, as empiricism would hold,
but by means of the conventional, inter-subjective acceptance of the truth
of certain basic statements by the research community.
The acceptance of basic statements is compared by Popper to trial by jury:

the verdict of the jury will be an agreement in accordance with the
prevailing legal code and on the basis of the evidence presented, and is
analogous to the acceptance of a basic statement by the research
community:
By its decision, the jury accepts, by agreement, a statement about a

factual occurrence—a basic statement, as it were. (2002: 92)
The jury’s verdict is conventional in arising out of a procedure governed

by clear rules, and is an application of the legal system as a whole as it
applies to the case in question. The verdict is accordingly represented as a
true statement of fact, but, as miscarriages of justice demonstrate all too
clearly,
the statement need not be true merely because the jury has
accepted it. This … is acknowledged in the rule allowing a verdict
to be quashed or revised. (2002: 92)

Stephen Thornton
This is comparable, he argues, to the case of basic statements: their

acceptance-as-true is also by agreement and, as such, it also constitutes an
application of a theoretical system, and
it is only this application which makes any further applications of

the theoretical system possible. (2002: 93)
However, the agreed acceptance of basic statements, like that of judicial

verdicts, remain perennially susceptible to the requirement for further
interrogation. Popper terms this “the relativity of basic statements” (2002:
86), which is reflective of the provisional nature of the entire corpus of
scientific knowledge itself. Science does not, he maintains, rest upon any
foundational bedrock. Rather, the theoretical systems of science are akin
to buildings in swampy ground constructed with the support of piles:
The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not
down to any natural or “given” base; and if we stop driving the
piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We
simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to
carry the structure, at least for the time being. (2002: 94)
5. The Growth of Human Knowledge

For Popper, the growth of human knowledge proceeds from our problems
and from our attempts to solve them. These attempts involve the
formulation of theories which must go beyond existing knowledge and
therefore require a leap of the imagination. For this reason, he places
special emphasis on the role played by the creative imagination in theory
formulation. The priority of problems in Popper’s account of science is
paramount, and it is this which leads him to characterise scientists as
“problem-solvers”. Further, since the scientist begins with problems rather
than with observations or “bare facts”, he argues that the only logical

Karl Popper
technique which is an integral part of scientific method is that of the

deductive testing of theories which are not themselves the product of any
logical operation. In this deductive procedure conclusions are inferred
from a tentative hypothesis and are then compared with one another and
with other relevant statements to determine whether they falsify or
corroborate the hypothesis. Such conclusions are not directly compared
with the facts, Popper stresses, simply because there are no “pure” facts
available; all observation-statements are theory-laden, and are as much a
function of purely subjective factors (interests, expectations, wishes, etc.)
as they are a function of what is objectively real.
How then does the deductive procedure work? Popper specifies four steps
(2002: 9):
a. The first is formal, a testing of the internal consistency of the

theoretical system to see if it involves any contradictions.
b. The second step is semi-formal, “the investigation of the logical form
of the theory, with the object of determining whether it has the
character of an empirical or scientific theory, or whether it is, for
example, tautological” (2002: 9).
c. The third step is the comparing of the new theory with existing ones
to determine whether it constitutes an advance upon them. If its
explanatory success matches that of the existing theories, and it
additionally explains some hitherto anomalous phenomenon or solves
some hitherto unsolvable problems, it will be adopted as constituting
an advance upon the existing theories. In that sense, science involves
theoretical progress: on this account, a theory X is better than a
“rival” theory Y if X has greater empirical content, and hence greater
predictive power, than Y.
d. The fourth and final step is the testing of a theory by the empirical
application of the conclusions derived from it. If such conclusions are
shown to be true, the theory is corroborated (but never verified). If

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the conclusion is shown to be false, then this is taken as a signal that

the theory cannot be completely correct (logically the theory is
falsified), and the scientist begins his quest for a better theory. He
does not, however, abandon the present theory until such time as he
has a better one to substitute for it.
The general picture of Popper’s philosophy of science, then is this:

Hume’s philosophy demonstrates that there is a contradiction implicit in
traditional empiricism, which holds that universal scientific laws are in
some way finally confirmable by experience, despite the open-ended
nature of the latter being acknowledged. Popper eliminates the
contradiction by removing the demand for empirical verification in favour
of empirical falsification or corroboration. Scientific theories, for him, are
not inductively inferred from experience, nor is scientific experimentation
carried out with a view to verifying or finally establishing the truth of
theories; rather, all knowledge is provisional, conjectural, hypothetical—
the universal theories of science can never be conclusively established.
Hence Popper’s emphasis on the importance of the critical spirit to science
—for him critical thinking is the very essence of rationality. For it is only
by critical thought that we can eliminate false theories and determine
which of the remaining theories is the best available one, in the sense of
possessing the highest level of explanatory force and predictive power.
6. Probability, Knowledge and Verisimilitude

In the view of many social scientists, the more probable a theory is, the
better it is, and if we have to choose between two theories which differ
only in that one is probable and the other is improbable, then we should
choose the former. Popper rejects this. Science values theories with a high
informative content, because they possess a high predictive power and are
consequently highly testable. For that reason, the more improbable a
theory is the better it is scientifically, because the probability and

Karl Popper
informative content of a theory vary inversely—the higher the informative

content of a theory the lower will be its probability. Thus, the statements
which are of special interest to science are those with a high informative
content and (consequentially) a low probability, which nevertheless come
close to the truth. Informative content, which is in inverse proportion to
probability, is in direct proportion to testability. As a result, the severity of
the test to which a theory can be subjected, and by means of which it is
falsified or corroborated, is of fundamental importance.
Popper also argues that all scientific criticism must be piecemeal, i.e., he
holds that it is not possible to question every aspect of a theory at once, as
certain items of what he terms “background knowledge” must be taken for
granted. But that is not knowledge in the sense of being conclusively
established; it may be challenged at any time, especially if it is suspected
that its uncritical acceptance may be responsible for difficulties which are
subsequently encountered.
How then can one be certain that one is questioning the right thing? The
Popperian answer is that we cannot have absolute certainty here, but
repeated tests usually show where the trouble lies. As we saw, for Popper
even observation statements are corrigible and open to review, and science
in his view is not a quest for certain knowledge, but an evolutionary
process in which hypotheses or conjectures are imaginatively proposed
and tested in order to explain facts or to solve problems. For that reason,
he emphasises both the importance of questioning the background
knowledge when the need arises, and the significance of the fact that
observation-statements are theory-laden and corrigible.
Popper was initially uneasy with the concept of truth, and in his earliest
writings he avoided asserting that a theory which is corroborated is true—
for clearly if every theory is an open-ended hypothesis, then ipso facto it
has to be at least potentially false. However, he came to accept Tarski’s

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reformulation of the correspondence theory of truth, and in Conjectures

and Refutations (1963) he integrates the concepts of truth and content to
frame the metalogical concept of “truthlikeness” or “verisimilitude”. A
“good” scientific theory, Popper argues in that work, has a higher level of
verisimilitude than its rivals, and he explicates this concept by reference to
the logical consequences of theories. A theory’s content is the totality of
its logical consequences, which can be divided into two classes:
a. the “truth-content”, which is the class of true propositions which may

be derived from it, and
b. the “falsity-content” of a theory, which is the class of the theory’s
false consequences (which may be empty, and in the case of a theory
which is true is necessarily empty).
Popper offers two accounts of how rival theories can be compared in terms
of their levels of verisimilitude; these are the qualitative and quantitative
definitions. On the qualitative account, verisimilitude is defined in terms of
subclass relationships: a theory t2 has a higher level of verisimilitude than
t1 if and only if their truth- and falsity-contents are comparable through
subclass relationships, and either
a. t2 ’s truth-content includes t1 ’s and t2 ’s falsity-content, if it exists, is

included in, or is the same as, t1 ’s, or
b. t2 ’s truth-content includes or is the same as t1 ’s and t2 ’s falsity-
content, if it exists, is included in t1 ’s.
On the quantitative account, verisimilitude is defined by assigning

quantities to contents, where the index of the content of a given theory is
its logical improbability, given again that content and probability vary
inversely (1963: 233–4). The utilisation of either method of computing
verisimilitude shows, Popper argues, that even if a theory t2 with a higher
content than a rival theory t1 is subsequently falsified, it can still

Karl Popper
legitimately be regarded as a better theory than t1 , and “better” is here now

understood to mean t2 is closer to the truth than t1 (1963: 235).
Thus, scientific progress involves, on this view, the abandonment of

partially true, but falsified, theories, for theories with a higher level of
verisimilitude, i.e., which approach more closely to the truth. In this way,
verisimilitude allowed Popper to mitigate what some saw as the pessimism
of an anti-inductivist philosophy of science. With the introduction of the
concept, Popper was able to represent his account as an essentially
realistic position in terms of which scientific progress can be seen as
progress towards the truth, and experimental corroboration can be viewed
as an indicator of verisimilitude.
However, subsequent research revealed defects in Popper’s formal

definitions of verisimilitude. The concept is most important in his system
because of its application to theories which are approximations (which are
common in the social sciences) and thus known to be false. In this
connection, Popper had written:
Ultimately, the idea of verisimilitude is most important in cases

where we know that we have to work with theories which are at
best approximations—that is to say, theories of which we know
that they cannot be true… In these cases we can still speak of
better or worse approximations to the truth (and we therefore do
not need to interpret these cases in an instrumentalist sense).
(1963: 235)
In 1974, David Miller and Pavel Tichý, working independently,

demonstrated that the conditions specified by Popper in his accounts of
both qualitative and quantitative verisimilitude for comparing the truth-
and falsity-contents of theories can be satisfied only when the theories are
true. In the crucially important case of false theories, Popper’s definitions

Stephen Thornton
are formally defective: for with regard to a false theory t2 which has
excess content over a rival theory t1 , both the truth-content and the falsity-
content of t2 will exceed that of t1 . With respect to theories which are false
then, Popper’s conditions for comparing levels of verisimilitude, whether
in quantitative and qualitative terms, can never be met.
Popper’s response was two-fold. In the first place, he acknowledges the

deficiencies in his own formal account:
“…my main mistake was the failure to see at once that my ’A

Theorem on Truth-Content’ [1966], could be extended to falsity
content: if the content of a false statement a exceeds that of a
statement b, then the truth content of a exceeds the truth content of
b, and the same holds of their falsity contents.” (1979, 371)
But he argues that
“I do think that we should not conclude from the failure of my

attempts to solve the problem that the problem cannot be solved.
Perhaps it cannot be solved by purely logical means but only by a
relativization to relevant problems or even by bringing in the
historical problem situation” (1979, 372).
This suggestion was to precipitate a great deal of important technical

research in the field. He additionally moves the task of formally defining
the concept from centre-stage in his philosophy of science by protesting
that he had never intended to imply
that degrees of verisimilitude … can ever be numerically

determined, except in certain limiting cases. (1979: 59)
Instead, he argues, the chief value of the concept is heuristic, in which the
absence of an adequate formal definition is not an insuperable impediment

Karl Popper
to its utilisation in the actual appraisal of theories relativised to problems

in which we have an interest.
Many see the thrust of this latter strategy as genuinely reflecting the
significance of the concept of verisimilitude in Popper’s system, but it has
not satisfied all of his critics.
7. Objective Knowledge and The Three Worlds

Ontology
Popper’s hostility to psychologistic approaches to epistemology is evident
from his earliest works. Questions relating to the origins of convictions,
feelings of certainty and the like, he argues, are properly considered the
province of psychology; their attempted use in epistemology, which has
been characteristic in particular of some schools of empiricism, can lead
only to confusion and ultimately to scepticism. Against it, he repeatedly
insists on the objectivity of scientific knowledge and sees it as the
principal task of epistemology to engage with the questions of justification
and validity in that connection (2002: 7).
In some of his later works in the field, particularly his “Epistemology

Without a Knowing Subject” (1967, republished in Objective Knowledge
[1972]) and in his lecture “Three Worlds” in the Tanner Lectures on
Human Values delivered in 1978 (published 1980), Popper develops the
notion of objectivity further in a novel but controversial way by seeking to
free it completely from all psychological constraints. What is central to
epistemology, he reaffirms, is the concept of objectivity, which he seeks to
show requires neither the notions of subjective mental states nor even that
of a subject “possessing” knowledge: knowledge in its full objective
sense, he argues, is knowledge “without a knowing subject”.

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Popper’s angle of approach here is to situate the development of

knowledge in the context of animal and human evolution. It is
characteristic of evolutionary processes, he points out, that they come to
take place in an environment which is itself in part fashioned by the
species in question. Examples of this abound, such as the reefs built by
corals, the hives built by bees, the dams built by beavers and the
atmospheric effects yielded by plants. This, Popper contends, is also true
of human beings: we too have created new kinds of products, “intellectual
products”, which shape our environment. These are our myths, our ideas,
our art works and our scientific theories about the world in which we live.
When placed in an evolutionary context, he suggests, such products must
be viewed instrumentally, as exosomatic artefacts. Chief amongst them is
knowledge
in the objective or impersonal sense, in which it may be said to be

contained in a book; or stored in a library; or taught in a university.
(1979: 286)
On this view, termed “evolutionary epistemology”, the growth of human

knowledge is an objective evolutionary process which involves the
creation and promulgation of new problem-solving theories, which are
then subjected to the challenge of criticism, modification, elimination and
replacement. These latter activities are seen by Popper as growth-
promoting in the evolution of knowledge, which he represents by means of
a tetradic schema (1979: 287):
P1 → TT → EE → P2 .
Here “P1 ” stands for the “initial problem”; “TT” stands for “tentative
theory” designed to solve it, “EE” stands for “attempts at error-
elimination”, and “P2 ” represents further problems that arise out of the
critical process.

Karl Popper
This kind of knowledge development, Popper argues, cannot be explained

either by physicalism, which seeks to reduce all mental processes and
states to material ones, or by dualism, which usually seeks to explicate
knowledge by means of psychological categories such as thought,
perception and belief. Consequently, he proposes a novel form of
pluralistic realism, a “Three Worlds” ontology, which, while
accommodating both the world of physical states and processes (world 1)
and the mental world of psychological processes (world 2), represents
knowledge in its objective sense as belonging to world 3, a third,
objectively real ontological category. That world is the world
of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and

stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or theories, and
mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies; paintings and
sculptures. (1980: 144)
In short, world 3 is the world of human cultural artifacts, which are

products of world 2 mental processes, usually instantiated in the physical
world 1 environment.
Popper proceeds to explicate his distinction between the subjective and

objective senses of knowledge by reference to this ontology. The
subjective sense of knowledge relates to psychological processes and
states, mental dispositions, beliefs and expectations, which may
generically be termed “thought processes” and which belong to world 2.
Knowledge in the objective sense, by contrast, consists not of thought
processes but of thought contents, that is to say, the content of
propositionalised theories: it is
the content which can be, at least approximately, translated from

one language into another. The objective thought content is that

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which remains invariant in a reasonably good translation. (1980:

156)
And it is that thought content, when linguistically codified in texts, works

of art, log tables, mathematical formulae, which constitutes world 3, to
which objective knowledge relates.
For those who would suggest that such objects are mere abstractions from
world 2 thought processes, Popper counters that world 3 objects are
necessarily more than the thought processes which have led to their
creation. Theories, for example, usually have logical implications beyond
anything considered by their original author, as instanced in the case of
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Moreover, what is most
characteristic about such objects is that, unlike world 2 mental processes,
they can stand in logical relationships to each other, such as equivalence,
deducibility and compatibility, which makes them amenable to the kind of
critical rational analysis and development that is one of the hallmarks of
science. As he puts it,
Criticism of world 3 objects is of the greatest importance, both in

art and especially in science. Science can be said to be largely the
result of the critical examination and selection of conjectures, of
thought contents. (1980: 160)
Popper takes Michelangelo’s sculpture The Dying Slave as an illustrative

example of a world 3 object, embodied in a world 1 block of marble.
Other examples given include memory engrams in the brain, the American
Constitution, Shakespeare’s tragedies, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and
Newton’s theory of gravitation. Each one of these, he contends, is a world
3 object that transcends both its physical, world 1 embodiments and its
world 2 cognitive origins (1980: 145).

Karl Popper
Popper was aware that he would be accused of hypostatising abstractions

in asserting the reality and objectivity of world 3 objects. In response, he
indicates strongly that he has no interest in what he regards as pointless
terminological disputes over the meaning of the term “world” or “real”.
He is therefore content, if required, to express his account of objective
knowledge in more familiar and perhaps more mundane terms: world 3
objects are abstract objects while their physical embodiments are concrete
objects. But that should not be allowed to disguise the fact that he saw the
relationships between the three categories of his ontology as of enormous
importance in understanding the role of science as an element of culture:
my thesis is that our world 3 theories and our world 3 plans

causally influence the physical objects of world 1; that they have a
causal action upon world 1. (1980: 164)
In the final analysis it is the causal interaction between the worlds that
ultimately matters in Popper’s objectivist epistemology: it allows him to
represent the growth of human knowledge as an evolutionary process of
exosomatic adaptations, which is ultimately a function of the interplay of
relations between the physical and mental worlds and the world of
objective knowledge or thought content.
8. Social and Political Thought—The Critique of

Historicism and Holism
Given Popper’s personal history and background, it is hardly surprising
that he developed a deep and abiding interest in social and political
philosophy. He understood holism as the view that human social
groupings are greater than the sum of their members, that they act on their
human members and shape their destinies and that they are subject to their
own independent laws of development. Historicism he identified as the
belief that history develops inexorably and necessarily according to certain

Stephen Thornton
principles or rules towards a determinate end (as for example in the

Marx’s dialectical materialism). The link between them is that holism
holds that individuals are essentially formed by the social groupings to
which they belong, while historicism suggests that we can understand such
a social grouping only in terms of the internal principles which determine
its development.
These lead to what Popper calls “The Historicist Doctrine of the Social
Sciences”, the views (a) that the principal task of the social sciences is to
make predictions about the social and political development of man, and
(b) that the task of politics, once the key predictions have been made, is, in
Marx’s words, to lessen the “birth pangs” of future social and political
developments. Popper thinks that this view of the social sciences is both
theoretically misconceived and socially dangerous, as it can give rise to
totalitarianism and authoritarianism—to centralised governmental control
of the individual and the attempted imposition of large-scale social
planning. Against this, he advances the view that any human social
grouping is no more (or less) than the sum of its individual members, that
what happens in history is the (largely unforeseeable) result of the actions
of such individuals, and that large scale social planning to an antecedently
conceived blueprint is inherently misconceived—and inevitably disastrous
—precisely because human actions have consequences which cannot be
foreseen. Popper, then, is an historical indeterminist, insofar as he holds
that history does not evolve in accordance with intrinsic laws or principles,
that in the absence of such laws and principles unconditional prediction in
the social sciences is an impossibility, and that there is no such thing as
historical necessity.
The link between Popper’s theory of knowledge and his social philosophy
is his fallibilism. We make theoretical progress in science by subjecting
our theories to critical scrutiny, and abandoning those which have been
falsified. So too in an open society the rights of the individual to criticise

Karl Popper
administrative policies will be safeguarded and upheld, undesirable

policies will be eliminated in a manner analogous to the elimination of
falsified scientific theories, and political differences will be resolved by
critical discussion and argument rather than by coercion. The open society
as thus conceived of by Popper may be defined as
an association of free individuals respecting each other’s rights

within the framework of mutual protection supplied by the state,
and achieving, through the making of responsible, rational
decisions, a growing measure of humane and enlightened life. (R.
B. Levinson 1953: 17)
Such as society is not a utopian ideal, Popper argues, but an empirically

realised form of social organisation which is in every respect superior to
its (real or potential) totalitarian rivals. His strategy, however, is not
merely to engage in a moral defence of the ideology of liberalism, but
rather to show that totalitarianism is typically based upon historicist and
holist presuppositions, and of demonstrating that these presuppositions are
fundamentally incoherent.
9. Scientific Knowledge, History, and Prediction

Historicism and holism, Popper argues, have their origins in what he terms
one of the oldest dreams of mankind—the dream of prophecy, the

idea that we can know what the future has in store for us, and that
we can profit from such knowledge by adjusting our policy to it.
(1963: 338)
This dream was given impetus, he suggests, by the emergence of a

genuine predictive capability regarding solar and lunar eclipses at an early
stage in human civilisation, which became refined with the development
of the natural sciences. Historicism derives a superficial plausibility from

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the suggestion that, just as the application of the laws of the natural
sciences can lead to the prediction of such events as eclipses, knowledge
of “the laws of history” as yielded by a social science or sciences can and
should lead to the prediction of future social phenomena. Why should we
not conceive of a social science which would function as the theoretical
natural sciences function and yield precise unconditional predictions in the
appropriate sphere of application? Popper seeks to show to show that this
idea is based upon a series of misconceptions about the nature of science,
and about the relationship between scientific laws and scientific prediction.
In relation to the critically important concept of prediction, Popper makes

a distinction between what he terms “conditional scientific predictions”,
which have the form “If X takes place, then Y will take place”, and
“unconditional scientific prophecies”, which have the form “Y will take
place”. Contrary to popular belief, it is the former rather than the latter
which are typical of the natural sciences, which means that typically
prediction in natural science is conditional and limited in scope—it takes
the form of hypothetical assertions stating that certain specified changes
will come about if and only if particular specified events antecedently take
place. This is not to deny that “unconditional scientific prophecies”, such
as the prediction of eclipses, for example, do take place in science, and
that the theoretical natural sciences make them possible. However, Popper
argues that (a) these unconditional prophecies are not characteristic of the
natural sciences, and (b) that the mechanism whereby they occur, in the
very limited way in which they do, is not understood by the historicist.
What is the mechanism which makes “unconditional scientific prophecies”

possible? Popper’s answer is that they are possible because they are
derived from a combination of conditional predictions (themselves derived
from scientific laws) and existential statements specifying that the
conditions in relation to the system being investigated are fulfilled.

Karl Popper
Given that this is the mechanism which generates unconditional scientific

prophecies, Popper makes two related claims about historicism:
The first is that the historicist does not, as a matter of fact, derive
his historical prophecies from conditional scientific predictions.
The second … is that he cannot possibly do so because long term
prophecies can be derived from scientific conditional predictions
only if they apply to systems which can be described as well
isolated, stationary, and recurrent. These systems are very rare in
nature; and modern society is surely not one of them. (1963: 339)
Popper accordingly argues that it is a fundamental mistake for the

historicist to take the unconditional scientific prophecies of eclipses as
being typical and characteristic of the predictions of natural science; they
are possible only because our solar system is a stationary and repetitive
system which is isolated from other such systems by immense expanses of
empty space. Human society and human history are not isolated systems
and are continually undergoing rapid, non-repetitive development. In the
most fundamental sense possible, every event in human history is discrete,
novel, quite unique, and ontologically distinct from every other historical
event. For this reason, it is impossible in principle that unconditional
scientific prophecies could be made in relation to human history—the idea
that the successful unconditional prediction of eclipses provides us with
reasonable grounds for the hope of successful unconditional prediction
regarding the evolution of human history turns out to be based upon a
gross misconception. As Popper succinctly concludes, “The fact that we
predict eclipses does not, therefore, provide a valid reason for expecting
that we can predict revolutions” (1963: 340).

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10. Immutable Laws and Contingent Trends

An additional mistake which Popper discerns in historicism is the failure
of the historicist to distinguish between scientific laws and trends. This
makes him think it possible to explain change by discovering trends
running through past history, and to anticipate and predict future
occurrences on the basis of such observations. Here Popper points out that
there is a critical difference between a trend and a scientific law: the latter
is universal in form, while a trend can be expressed only as a singular
existential statement. This logical difference is crucial: neither conditional
nor unconditional predictions can be based upon trends, because trends
may change or be reversed with a change in the conditions which gave rise
to them in the first instance. As Popper puts it, there can be no doubt that
the habit of confusing trends with laws, together with the intuitive
observation of trends such as technical progress, inspired the
central doctrines of … historicism. (1957: 106)
He does not, of course, dispute the existence of trends or deny that

observing them can be of practical utility value. But the essential point is
that a trend is something which itself ultimately stands in need of scientific
explanation, and it cannot therefore function as the frame of reference in
terms of which an unconditional prediction can be based.
A point which connects with this has to do with the role which the
evolution of human knowledge has played in the historical development of
human society. Human history has, Popper points out, been strongly
influenced by the growth of human knowledge, and it is extremely likely
that this will continue to be the case—all the empirical evidence suggests
that the link between the two is progressively consolidating. However, this
gives rise to a further problem for the historicist: no scientific predictor,
human or otherwise, can possibly predict its own future results. From this

Karl Popper
it follows, he holds, that no society can predict, scientifically, its own

future states of knowledge. Thus, while the future evolution of human
history is extremely likely to be influenced by new developments in
human knowledge, we cannot now scientifically determine what such
knowledge will be.
From this it follows that if the future holds any new discoveries or any
new developments in the growth of our knowledge, then it is impossible
for us to predict them now, and it is therefore impossible for us to predict
the future development of human history now, given that the latter will, at
least in part, be determined by the future growth of our knowledge. Thus,
once again historicism collapses—the dream of a theoretical, predictive
science of history is unrealisable, because it is an impossible dream.
Popper’s argues against the propriety of large-scale planning of social

structures on the basis this demonstration of the logical shortcomings of
historicism. It is, he argues, theoretically as well as practically misguided,
because, again, part of what we are planning for is our future knowledge,
and our future knowledge is not something which we can in principle now
possess—we cannot adequately plan for unexpected advances in our
future knowledge, or for the effects which such advances will have upon
society as a whole. For him, this necessitates the acceptance of historical
indeterminism as the only philosophy of history which is commensurate
with a proper understanding of the provisional and incomplete nature of
human knowledge.
This critique of historicism and holism is balanced, on the positive side, by

Popper’s affirmation of the ideals of individualism and market economics
and his strong defence of the open society—the view that a society is
equivalent to the sum of its members, that the actions of the members of
society serve to fashion and to shape it, and that the social consequences
of intentional actions are very often, and very largely, unintentional. This

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part of his social philosophy was influenced by the economist Friedrich

Hayek, who worked with him at the London School of Economics and
who was a life-long friend. Popper advocates what he (rather
unfortunately) terms “piecemeal social engineering” as the central
mechanism for social planning: in utilising this mechanism, intentional
actions are directed to the achievement of one specific goal at a time,
which makes it possible to determine whether adverse unintended effects
of intentional actions occur, in order to correct and readjust when this
proves necessary. This, of course, parallels precisely the critical testing of
theories in scientific investigation. This approach to social planning
(which is explicitly based upon the premise that we do not, because we
cannot, know what the future will be like) encourages attempts to put right
what is problematic in society—generally-acknowledged social ills—
rather than attempts to impose some preconceived idea of the “good” upon
society as a whole. For Popper, in a genuinely open society piecemeal
social engineering goes hand-in-hand with negative utilitarianism, the
attempt to minimise the amount of suffering and misery, rather than, as
with positive utilitarianism, the attempt to maximise the amount of
happiness. The state, he holds, should concern itself with the task of
progressively formulating and implementing policies designed to deal with
the social problems which actually confront it, with the goal of mitigating
human misery and suffering to the greatest possible degree. The positive
task of increasing social and personal happiness, by contrast, can and
should be left to individual citizens, who may, of course, act collectively
to that end. “My thesis”, Popper states, is that
human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public

policy and that happiness is not such a problem. The attainment of
happiness should be left to our private endeavours. (1963: 361)
Thus, for Popper, in the final analysis the activity of problem-solving is as

definitive of our humanity at the level of social and political organisation

Karl Popper
as it is at the level of science, and it is this key insight which unifies and
integrates the broad spectrum of his thought.
11. Critical Evaluation

While it cannot be said that Popper was modest, he took criticism of his
theories very seriously, and spent much of his time in his later years in
addressing them. The following is a summary of some of the main ones
which he had to address. (For Popper’s responses to critical commentary,
see his “Replies to My Critics” (1974) and his Realism and the Aim of
Science (1983).
First, Popper claims to be a realist and rejects conventionalist and

instrumentalist accounts of science. But his account in the Logic of
Scientific Discovery of the role played by basic statements in the
methodology of falsification seems to sit uneasily with that. As we have
seen, he follows Kant in rejecting the positivist/empiricist view that
observation statements are incorrigible, and argues that they are
descriptions of what is observed as interpreted by the observer with
reference to a determinate conceptual and theoretical framework. He
accordingly asserts that while basic statements may have a causal
relationship to experience, they are neither determined nor justified by it.
However, this would seem to pose a difficulty: if a theory is to be

genuinely testable, it must be possible to determine, at least in principle,
whether the basic statements which are its potential falsifiers are actually
true or false. But how can this be known, if basic statements cannot be
justified by experience? As we have seen, Popper’s answer is that the
acceptance or rejection of basic statements depends upon a convention-
based decision on the part of the scientific community.

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From a logical point of view, the testing of a theory depends upon

basic statements whose acceptance or rejection, in its turn, depends
upon our decisions. Thus it is decisions which settle the fate of
theories. (2002: 91)
Traditional conventionalism, as exemplified in the work of Mach, Poincaré

and Milhaud amongst others, holds that a “successful” science is one in
which universal theories have assumed such explanatory critical mass that
a convention emerges to pre-empt the possibility of their empirical
refutation. This is strongly rejected by Popper, who differentiates his
position from it by arguing that it is the acceptance of basic statements,
rather than that universal theory, which is determined by convention and
intersubjective agreement. For him, the acceptance or rejection of theory
occurs only indirectly and at a higher investigative level, through critical
tests made possible by the conventional acceptance of basic statements. As
he puts it, “I differ from the conventionalist in holding that the statements
decided by agreement are not universal but singular” (2002: 92).
Simultaneously, however, he rejects any suggestion that basic statements
are justifiable by direct experience:
I differ from the positivist in holding that basic statements are not
justifiable by our immediate experiences, but are, from the logical
point of view, accepted by an act, by a free decision. (2002: 92)
It is thus evident that Popper saw his account of basic statements as

steering a course between the Scylla of orthodox conventionalism and the
Charybdis of positivism/empiricism. However, while it is both coherent
and consistent in that regard, there can be little doubt but that it constitutes
a form of conventionalism in its own right. And it is not clear that it is
compatible with scientific realism, understood as the view that scientific
theories give true or approximately true descriptions of elements of a
mind-independent world. As Lakatos puts it,

Karl Popper
If a theory is falsified, it is proven false; if it is “falsified” [in

Popper’s conventionalist sense], it may still be true. If we follow
up this sort of “falsification” by the actual “elimination” of a
theory, we may well end up by eliminating a true, and accepting a
false, theory. (Lakatos 1978: 24)
Second, Popper’s theory of demarcation hinges quite fundamentally on the

assumption that there are such things as critical tests, which either falsify a
theory, or give it a strong measure of corroboration. Popper himself is fond
of citing, as an example of such a critical test, the resolution, by Adams
and Leverrier, of the problem which the anomalous orbit of Uranus posed
for nineteenth century astronomers. They independently came to the
conclusion that, assuming Newtonian mechanics to be precisely correct,
the observed divergence in the elliptical orbit of Uranus could be
explained if the existence of a seventh, as yet unobserved outer planet was
posited. Further, they were able, again within the framework of Newtonian
mechanics, to calculate the precise position of the “new” planet. Thus
when subsequent research by Galle at the Berlin observatory revealed that
such a planet (Neptune) did in fact exist, and was situated precisely where
Adams and Leverrier had calculated, this was hailed as by all and sundry
as a magnificent triumph for Newtonian physics: in Popperian terms,
Newton’s theory had been subjected to a critical test, and had passed with
flying colours.
Yet Lakatos flatly denies that there are critical tests, in the Popperian
sense, in science, and argues the point convincingly by turning the above
example of an alleged critical test on its head. What, he asks, would have
happened if Galle had not found the planet Neptune? Would Newtonian
physics have been abandoned, or would Newton’s theory have been
falsified? The answer is clearly not, for Galle’s failure could have been
attributed to any number of causes other than the falsity of Newtonian
physics (e.g., the interference of the earth’s atmosphere with the telescope,

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the existence of an asteroid belt which hides the new planet from the earth,
etc). The suggestion is that the “falsification/corroboration” disjunction
offered by Popper is unjustifiable binary: non-corroboration is not
necessarily falsification, and falsification of a high-level scientific theory is
never brought about by an isolated observation or set of observations.
Such theories are, it is now widely accepted, highly resistant to
falsification; they are “tenaciously protected from refutation by a vast
‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses” (Lakatos 1978: 4) and so are
falsified, if at all, not by Popperian critical tests, but rather within the
elaborate context of the research programmes associated with them
gradually grinding to a halt. Popper’s distinction between the logic of
falsifiability and its applied methodology does not in the end do full justice
to the fact that all high-level theories grow and live despite the existence
of anomalies (i.e., events/phenomena which are incompatible with them).
These, Lakatos suggests, are not usually taken by the working scientist as
an indication that the theory in question is false. On the contrary, in the
context of a progressive research programme he or she will necessarily
assume that the auxiliary hypotheses which are associated with the theory
can in time be modified to incorporate, and thereby explain, recalcitrant
phenomena.
Third, Popper’s critique of Marxism has not, of course, gone

unchallenged. The debate arising from, however, has in many cases tended
to revolve around ideological rather than philosophical issues, which will
be passed over here. However, there have also been some trenchant
philosophical responses. Cornforth sees Marxism as a rational scientific
discipline and Marxian thinking as “a rational and scientific approach to
social problems” (Cornforth 1968: 6) of the kind which both Marx and
Popper consider important. Consequently, he takes Popper to task for
representing Marxism as a system of dogmas designed to close minds or
pre-empt the operation of our rational faculties in addressing social issues.
Against that view, he argues that it constitutes a way of thinking designed

Karl Popper
to open minds to the real possibilities of human life, and sees it as the
philosophy best calculated to promote the ideals of the open society to
which he, like Popper, subscribes. Hudelson (1980) argues that Marxian
economics survives the Popperian critique of historicism and that, in any
case, Marx did not hold many of the tenets of historicism identified by
Popper. He also contends that Popper fails to show that there cannot be,
and that we cannot know, laws of social development and that Marx did
not in fact confuse trends and laws in the way that Popper suggests.
Fourth, In the case of Freudian psychoanalysis, the adequacy of Popper’s

critique has been challenged on philosophical grounds by a number of
commentators, particularly Adolf Grünbaum (1984). Grünbaum is highly
critical, indeed scornful, of Popper’s dismissal of the claims of
psychoanalysis to be scientific and argues that Freud showed “a keen
appreciation of methodological pitfalls that are commonly laid at his door
by critics” (Grünbaum 1984: 168) such as Popper. He argues that Freud
was sensitive to the question of the logic of the confirmation and
disconfirmation of psychoanalytic interpretations and cites Freud’s use of
the concept of consilience, the convergence of evidence from disparate
sources, as a serious and explicit attempt to meet the requirements of that
logic. For Grünbaum, Popper’s critique of Freud amounts a veritable
parody of the pioneering thinker who established the discipline of
psychoanalysis, and he attributes that to Popper’s “obliviousness to
Freud’s actual writings” (1984: 124). He points out, for example, that the
case of the drowning child which Popper uses in Conjectures and
Refutations (Popper 1963: 35), upon which he rests part of his case against
psychoanalysis, is contrived and not in any way derived from Freud’s
actual clinical texts.
Grünbaum contends that there are instances in Freud’s writings where he

shows himself to be “a sophisticated scientific methodologist” (Grünbaum
1984: 128), keenly aware of the need for his theoretical system to meet the

Stephen Thornton
requirement of testability. One such occurs when Freud, in his assessment

that anxiety neuroses are due to disturbances in sexual life, explicitly
refers to the notion of falsifiability: “My theory can only be refuted when I
have been shown phobias where sexual life is normal” (Freud 1895 [1962:
134]). Another occurs in Freud’s 1915 paper “A Case of Paranoia Running
Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease”, in which, as the
title suggests, he saw the patient’s collection of symptoms as potentially
falsifying the theory. Moreover, Freud’s entire account of paranoia as
being due to an underlying repressed homosexuality is open to empirical
refutation, Grünbaum argues, since it has the testable implication that a
reduction in rates of paranoia should result from a removal or loosening of
social sanctions against same-sex relationships (1984: 111).
Grünbaum accordingly holds that Freudian theory should be considered

falsifiable and therefore genuinely scientific—albeit, in his view,
ultimately unsuccessful, because the clinical evidence offered in its favour
is contaminated by suggestion on the part of the analyst and cannot
therefore support its conceptual weight. That is a verdict very different to
what Grünbaum sees as the reductive dismissal of Freud offered by
Popper: “the inability of certain philosophers of science to have discerned
any testable consequences of Freud’s theory”, he concludes, “betokens
their insufficient command or scrutiny of its logical content rather than a
scientific liability of psychoanalysis” (1984: 113).
There can be little doubt of the seriousness of this challenge to Popper’s

critique of the claims of psychoanalytic theory to scientific status. Further,
the unparalleled cultural impact of Freudianism upon contemporary life
can scarcely be denied, and even a cursory examination of the vast corpus
of Freud’s works reveals a thinker of quite extraordinary theoretical power
and imagination whose claims to scientific validity cannot be dismissed
lightly.

Karl Popper
However, while the detail of this psychoanalytic response to Popper is

contestable, what is perhaps most striking and important about it is that, as
articulated by Grünbaum, it is itself couched in broad terms of an
acceptance of a Popperian account of science. That is to say, in rejecting
the claim that psychoanalysis fails to meet the standard of falsifiability
specified by Popper, Grünbaum—who also rejects the hermeneutic
interpretation of Freud offered by thinkers such as Paul Ricoeur and
Jurgen Habermas—nonetheless implicitly accepts that very standard, and
with it the broad sweep of Popper’s theory of demarcation. For that reason
alone, it seems clear that Popper’s work will continue to function as a
critical reference point in the ongoing debate regarding the scientific status
of Freudian thought.
Fifth, scientific laws are usually expressed by universal statements (i.e.,

they take the logical form “All As are X”, or some equivalent) which are
therefore concealed conditionals—they have to be understood as
hypothetical statements asserting what would be the case under certain
ideal conditions. In themselves they are not existential in nature. Thus “All
As are X” means “If anything is an A, then it is X”. Since scientific laws
are non-existential in nature, they logically cannot in themselves imply
any basic statements, since the latter are explicitly existential. The
question arises, then, as to how any basic statement can falsify a scientific
law, given that basic statements are not deducible from scientific laws in
themselves? Popper answers that scientific laws are always taken in
conjunction with statements outlining the “initial conditions” of the
system under investigation; these latter, which are singular existential
statements, yield hard and fast implications when combined with the
scientific law.
This reply is adequate only if it is true, as Popper assumes, that singular

existential statements will always do the work of bridging the gap between
a universal theory and a prediction. Hilary Putnam in particular has argued

Stephen Thornton
that this assumption is false, in that in some cases at least the statements
required to bridge this gap (which he calls “auxiliary hypotheses”) are
general rather than particular, and consequently that when the prediction
turns out to be false we have no way of knowing whether this is due to the
falsity of the scientific law or the falsity of the auxiliary hypotheses. The
working scientist, Putnam argues (Putnam 1974; see also the 1991
reprinting with its retrospective note), always initially assumes that it is
the latter, which shows not only that, but also why, scientific laws are,
contra Popper, highly resistant to falsification, as Kuhn (1962) and
Lakatos (1970, 1978) have also argued.
Popper’s final position is that he acknowledges that it is impossible to

discriminate science from non-science on the basis of the falsifiability of
the scientific statements alone; he recognises that scientific theories are
predictive, and consequently prohibitive, only when taken in conjunction
with auxiliary hypotheses, and he also recognises that readjustment or
modification of the latter is an integral part of scientific practice. Hence his
final concern is to outline conditions which indicate when such
modification is genuinely scientific, and when it is merely ad hoc. This is
itself clearly a major alteration in his position, and arguably represents a
substantial retraction on his part: Marxism can no longer be dismissed as
“unscientific” simply because its advocates preserved the theory from
falsification by modifying it—for in general terms, such a procedure, it
transpires, is perfectly respectable scientific practice. It is now condemned
as unscientific by Popper because the only rationale for the modifications
which were made to the original theory was to ensure that it evaded
falsification, and so such modifications were ad hoc, rather than scientific.
This contention—though not at all implausible—has, to hostile eyes, a
somewhat contrived air about it, and is unlikely to worry the convinced
Marxist. On the other hand, the shift in Popper’s own basic position is
taken by some critics as an indicator that falsificationism, for all its
apparent merits, fares no better in the final analysis than verificationism.

Karl Popper
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confirmation | convention | Feyerabend, Paul | Hume, David | induction:
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of

2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

of music as a second subject for his Ph.D. examination. Subsequently, his

Popper took some time to settle on a career; he trained as a cabinetmaker,

Spring 2021 Edition 3

position of increasing pre-eminence and this resonated with Bühler, who,

Popper married Josephine Anna Henninger (“Hennie”) in 1930, and she

The annexation of Austria in 1938 became the catalyst which prompted

4 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

totalitarianism, in 1945. In 1946 he moved to England to teach at the

In later years Popper came under philosophical criticism for his

Spring 2021 Edition 5

2. Backdrop to Popper’s Thought

Popper was also profoundly impressed by the differences between the

6 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

human behaviour, is in fact a critical weakness, for it entails that it is not,

… real support can be obtained only from observations undertaken

Popper also considers that contemporary Marxism also lacks scientific

These factors combined to make Popper take falsifiability as his criterion

Spring 2021 Edition 7

function in the past in expediting our understanding of the nature of

3. The Problem of Demarcation

Popper accordingly rejects the view that induction is the characteristic

8 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

genuine counter-instance falsifies the corresponding universal law. In a

Every genuine scientific theory then, in Popper’s view, is prohibitive,

Popper stresses in particular that there is no unique way, no single method

There is no logical path leading to [the highly universal laws of

Science, in Popper’s view, starts with problems rather than with

On this criterion of demarcation physics, chemistry, and (non-

Spring 2021 Edition 9

psychoanalysis is a pre-science and astrology and phrenology are pseudo-

4. Basic Statements, Falsifiability and Convention

Thus, while advocating falsifiability as the criterion of demarcation for

In this connection, in the Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper introduces

10 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In essence, basic statements are for Popper logical constructs which

Popper therefore argues that there are no statements in science which

Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or

Spring 2021 Edition 11

However, Popper contends that while such a decision is usually causally

Experiences can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or a

Statements can be justified only by other statements, and therefore testing

The acceptance of basic statements is compared by Popper to trial by jury:

By its decision, the jury accepts, by agreement, a statement about a

The jury’s verdict is conventional in arising out of a procedure governed

12 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This is comparable, he argues, to the case of basic statements: their

it is only this application which makes any further applications of

However, the agreed acceptance of basic statements, like that of judicial

5. The Growth of Human Knowledge

Spring 2021 Edition 13

technique which is an integral part of scientific method is that of the

a. The first is formal, a testing of the internal consistency of the

14 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

the conclusion is shown to be false, then this is taken as a signal that

The general picture of Popper’s philosophy of science, then is this:

6. Probability, Knowledge and Verisimilitude