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Karl Popper Quotes about Science - Page 2

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The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

Karl Popper
Plato, Hard Work, Science
Karl Popper (2014). “After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings”, p.190, Routledge

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

Karl Popper
Attitude, Science, Two
Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.87, Routledge

Psychologism is, I believe, correct only in so far as it insists upon what may be called 'methodological individualism' as opposed to 'methodological collectivism'; it rightly insists that the 'behaviour' and the 'actions' of collectives, such as states or social groups, must be reduced to the behaviour and to the actions of human individuals. But the belief that the choice of such an individualist method implies the choice of a psychological method is mistaken.

Karl Popper
Mistake, Believe, Science
"The Open Society and its Enemies".

It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.

Karl Popper
Science, Scientific Method, Way
Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.33, Routledge

The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.

Karl Popper
Science, Proud, Humans

But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they clash, then we know that there is a reality; something that can inform us that our ideas are mistaken.

Karl Popper
Science, Reality, Ideas
Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, III (2013). “Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.3, Routledge

[The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality.

Karl Popper
Taken, Science, Law

To give a causal explanation of an event means to deduce a statement which describes it, using as premises of the deduction one or more universal laws, together with certain singular statements, the initial conditions ... We have thus two different kinds of statement, both of which are necessary ingredients of a complete causal explanation.

Karl Popper
Mean, Science, Law

Almost everyone... seems to be quite sure that the differences between the methodologies of history and of the natural sciences are vast. For, we are assured, it is well known that in the natural sciences we start from observation and proceed by induction to theory. And is it not obvious that in history we proceed very differently? Yes, I agree that we proceed very differently. But we do so in the natural sciences as well.

Karl Popper
Science, Differences, Well Known
Karl Popper (2014). “The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality”, p.140, Routledge

But it is certainly not possible to insist on one hand that the formalism is complete and to insist on the other hand that its application to 'the actual' actually demands a step which cannot be derived from it.

Karl Popper
Science, Hands, Demand
Karl Raimund Popper (1992). “Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics”, p.123, Psychology Press

It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)

Karl Popper
Science, Views, Ease
Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, III (2013). “Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.103, Routledge

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