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Although his first book, THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY (1935), was published by the Vienna
Circle of logical positivists, Popper rejected their inductive empiricism and developmental
historicism. According to this traditional view, a scientific hypothesis may be tested and verified by
obtaining the repeated outcome of substantiating observations. Popper argued instead that
hypotheses are deductively validated by what he called the "falsifiability criterion." Under this
method, a scientist seeks to discover an observed exception to his postulated rule. The absence of
contradictory evidence thereby becomes corroboration of his theory. According to Popper, such
pseudosciences as astrology, metaphysics, Marxist history, and Freudian psychoanalysis are not
empirical sciences, because of their failure to adhere to the principle of falsifiability.
In political discourse, he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of
social criticism that he came to believe made a flourishing open society possible. In THE OPEN
SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES (1945) and THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM (1957), Popper developed a
critique of historicism and a defence of the "Open Society". He argued that historicism (according to
which history develops inexorably and necessarily according to knowable general laws towards a
determinate end) is the principal theoretical presupposition underpinning most forms of
authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and that it is founded upon mistaken assumptions regarding
the nature of scientific law and prediction. Since the growth of human knowledge is a causal factor
in the evolution of human history, and since "no society can predict, scientifically, its own future
states of knowledge", it follows, he argued, that there can be no predictive science of human history.
For Popper, metaphysical and historical indeterminism went hand in hand.
* Open Society and Its Enemies, The (Princeton, 2013) -- ePUB + PDF
* Quantum Theory & the Schism in Physics (Rowman & Littlefield, 1982) -- PDF
* Realism and the Aim of Science (Routledge, 1996). W. Bartley III, ed. -- PDF
* Self and Its Brain, The [with John C. Eccles] (Springer, 1985) -- PDF