Karl Popper

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Karl Popper:

Key ideas:

Falsification: The process by when a theory is proposed all measures must be taken to attempt to disprove it. If it cannot be disproven then it is accepted as tentatively true until it is disproven

Took further than hume

Popper response to verification

Can never be certain or final

Disprove an idea until we can safely assume it fairly true

Truth is only tentative

Hypothesis rather than facts

Key Quotes:

Part 1:

"The ultimate source of knowledge was observation" - British school

"It was the intellectual intuition of clear and distinct ideas" - Continental School

"I shall try to show of the two schools of empiricism and rationalism that their differences are much smaller that their similarities, and that both are mistaken"

"Neither observation nor reason can be described as a source of knowledge"

Part 2:

"Our problem belongs to the theory of knowledge, or to epistemology"

"Hume for example, one of the greatest thinkers in the field predicted that, because of the remoteness and abstractness and practical irrelevance of some of his results, none of his readers would believe in them for more than an hour"

"There is no such thing as objective truth"

"The judge cannot have made a factual mistake because he can no more be wrong about the facts than he can be right"

Part 3:

"At the heart of this new optimistic view of knowledge lies the doctrine that truth is manifest"

"Truth may perhaps be veiled. But it may reveal itself"

"Once the naked truth stands revealed before our eyes, we have the power to see it, to distinguish it from falsehood and to know that it is truth"

"There was no need for man to appeal to authority in matters of truth because each man carried the sources of knowledge in himself"

"Man can know; thus he can be free"

"Disbelief in the power of human reason, in man's power to discern the truth, is almost invariably linked with distrust of man"

"In the absence of an objective and discernible truth, we are faced with the choice between accepting the authority of tradition, and chaos"

Part 4:

"Ideas may, to large extent, be motivated and unconsciously inspired by political hopes and by utopian dreams"

"But am i not liable to be influenced ,unconsciously by my political hopes and beliefs?"

Part 5:

“We have been given eyes to see the truth, and the natural light of reason to see it by” “What we clearly and distinctly see to be true must indeed be true” “Nature is an open book. He who reads it with a pure mind cannot misread it. Only if his mind is poisoned by prejudice can he fall into error” “Knowledge, the possession of truth, need not be explained” “This curious belief in an conspiracy is the almost inevitable consequence of the optimistic belief that truth and therefore goodness, must prevail if only truth is given a fair chance” “But in the main it was a myth, just as the theory of manifest truth from which it grew was a myth” “Truth is often hard to come by, and that once found it may easily be lost again”

Part 6:

“The theory that truth is manifest-

that it is there for everyone to see, if only he wants to see it”

Part 7:

“The doctrine that our intellect is a

source of knowledge because God is a source of knowledge”

“Always owe, not only what we should

call their inspiration, but their actual knowledge of facts to the

Muses”

“The doctrine of the divine source of

our knowledge plays a decisive part in Plato’s famous theory of

ánamnésis which in some measure grants to each man the possession

of divine sources of knowledge”

“Only if we see the truth again shall

we recognise it”

“We see the truth, we cannot but

recognise it as the truth”

“As a doctrine which makes men eager

to learn, to search and to discover”

“The world of our experience is only

a shadow, a reflection of the real world”

“It consists in giving names to what

is non-existent”

“But you shall learn how it was that

delusive opinion, Bound to be taken for real, was forcing its way

through all things. Now of this world thus arranged to seem wholly

like truth I shall tell you; then you will be nevermore led astray by

the notions of mortals”

Part 8:

"Socrates was the inventor of the method of induction"

"Bacon i wish to suggest, meant by induction, not so much the inferring of universal laws from particular observed instances as 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"

"Anamnéis is the power of seeing the true nature or essence of a thing"

"The maieutic of Socrates consists essentially in asking questions designed to destroy prejudices"

"Socrates himself does not pretend to know"

"It achieves this by teaching us to doubt our own convictions"

Part 9:

"The framework of Bacons theory of induction is this. He distinguishes in the Novum Organum between a true method and a false method"

"Although we may be unable to imagine that there is a better one"

"We imply that there are other interpretations or readings, leaving the question open"

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