Karl Popper

In recent years, the full text of papers are increasingly available electronically which opens up the possibility of quantitatively investigating citation contexts in more detail. In this study, we introduce a new form of citation analysis, which we call citation concept analysis (CCA). CCA is intended to reveal the cognitive impact certain concepts—published in a highly-cited landmark publication—have on the citing authors. It counts the number of times the concepts are mentioned (cited) in the citation context of citing publications. We (...) demonstrate the method using three classical highly cited books: (1) The structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, (2) The logic of scientific discovery—Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft in German—, and (3) Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge by Karl R. Popper. It is not surprising—as our results show—that Kuhn’s “paradigm” concept seems to have had a significant impact. What is surprising is that our results indicate a much larger impact of the concept “paradigm” than Kuhn’s other concepts, e.g., “scientific revolution”. The paradigm concept accounts for about 40% of the concept-related citations to Kuhn’s work, and its impact is resilient across all disciplines and over time. With respect to Popper, “falsification” is the most used concept derived from his books. Falsification is the cornerstone of Popper’s critical rationalism. (shrink)

We examine the sub-field of philosophy of science using a new method developed in information science, Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS). RPYS allows us to identify peak years in citations in a field, which promises to help scholars identify the key contributions to a field, and revolutionary discoveries in a field. We discovered that philosophy of science, a sub-field in the humanities, differs significantly from other fields examined with this method. Books play a more important role in philosophy of science (...) than in the sciences. Further, Einstein’s famous 1905 papers created a citation peak in the philosophy of science literature. But rather than being a contribution to the philosophy of science, their importance lies in the fact that they are revolutionary contributions to physics with important implications for philosophy of science. (shrink)

Poppers doppelter Falsifikationismus führt dazu, daß der Kritische Rationalismus nicht als die Metatheorie der empirischen Sozialwissenschaften angesehen werden kann. Außerdem ist in diesem Ansatz die logische Asymmetrie von Verifikation und Falsifikation nicht realisiert.

Summary Popper's methodology does not entail any playing down of the various indispensible distinctions such as the distinction between knowing and guessing, the distinction between myth and science, the distinction between the observational and the theoretical, and between the vernacular and technical sublanguages or technical vocabulary. By avoiding both the totalization that led to the foundationalist position and the scepticist reactions to these frustrated foundationalist hopes, Popper's methodology makes it possible to combine fallibilism with a realist view of theories. It (...) combines the perennial willingness to re-examine positions, statements, etc. with the claim that a particular theory (as an item of knowledge in the objective sense) constitutes cognitive progress over its rivals. However, some of his formulations have been deliberately provocative and in this way have given rise to certain misgivings about possible paradoxical implications, even in philosophers congenial with Popper's approach. The concept of knowledge in the objective sense is, of course, an explicatum which Popper proposes primarily for use in methodology and epistemology. The concept is an expression of the acknowledgment of fallibility in principle. The phrasing that ‘knowledge is conjectural’ or ‘knowledge is fallible’, even when it refers to knowledge in the objective sense, is but an abbreviation for: since our methods for ascertaining the truth-value of a particular statement about empirical reality are fallible in principle, there cannot be any certain knowledge about reality. In everyday life and in politics tolerance will be possible to the extent to which the recognition of this fallibility is more than a declaration. (shrink)

Die Frage der Erhaltung der Parität bei der Wechselwirkung von Elementarteilchen, der Vorschlag ihrer Verletzung, die experimentelle Bestätigung dieses Vorschlags und die daraus sich ergebenden Folgerungen, die zur Formulierung der mathematischen Struktur der schwachen Wechselwirkungen führten, sind die wichtigsten Entwicklungen in der Elementarteilchenphysik während der Periode von 1953 bis 1958. Vorliegender Aufsatz versucht die rationale Rekonstruktion dieser Periode und des Forschungsprogrammes, welches als eines der progressivsten Programme der modernen Physik angesehen wird. Hierzu benutzen wir eine modifizierte Fassung von Poppers tetradischem (...) Schema als auch die Bemerkungen von Lakatos über gewisse Aspekte der Methodologie von Forschungsprogrammen. Es wird unterstrichen, daß die Dynamik der positiven Heuristik derart war, daß die theoretische Forschung fortgeführt werden konnte, trotz experimenteller Resultate, die nur als Gegenbeweise gegen die vorgeschlagene Struktur der schwachen Wechselwirkungen angesehen werden konnten. (shrink)

Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in den Interpretationen von Ludwig und Popper werden aufgezeigt. Daß überhaupt Unterschiede festzustellen sind, erscheint zunächst verwunderlich, da zum einen von verschiedenen Autoren eine enge Korrelation zwischen Interpretationen der Quantenmechanik und Wahrscheinlichkeitsinterpretationen behauptet wird, zum anderen aber Ludwigs Chancengewichtungen als propensities im Sinne Poppers interpretiert werden können. Es zeigt sich, daß die Unterschiede in den Interpretationen der Quantenmechanik auf Unterschieden in dem jeweils verwendeten wahrscheinlichkeitstheoretischen Formalismus beruhen, die jedoch für die Möglichkeit, Chancengewichtungen als propensities zu interpretieren, ohne (...) Bedeutung sind. (shrink)

In this article we interlink the philosophical ideas of Ernst Schumacher and Karl Popper within the framework of planning and management, describe project management cases implemented using the principles of project cycle management and study whether the success or failure can be attributed to following these concepts.We consider two basic concepts for perceiving the world surrounding us: the concept of organisation and that of self-organisation. The former emphasises the predictability of the future, where the results of each activity are predetermined (...) and can always be achieved through thorough analytical planning. The latter sees the world as a generic whole where numerous interactions take place simultaneously, leaving the future unknown. As it has been shown, for example, by Schumacher, Hayek and Popper, the real world is uncertain and orders of great complexity appear spontaneously in a self-organised manner.Mankind has thus to cope with the self-organising world and to plan and manage therein. PCM is one of the most widespread contemporary management techniques used for that purpose in both the private and public sectors. However, PCM lacks a proper theoretical basis as well as philosophical framework. We have proposed elsewhere that the concept of piecemeal social engineering elaborated by Popper in his The Poverty of Historicism could serve as a theoreticalbasis, which can combine the organisational nature of planning and the self-organising and fuzzy world.Thus the task is mentally to split the planning and implementation issue: to take the whole into pieces and rearrange them in a desired manner in the planning phase. The actual implementation of the plan ought to be conducted following a stepwise approach, re-planning all through the process. “The future cannot be forecast, but it can be explored.” Not allhuman actions are unpredictable, but we cannot be sure what the results would be or judge the value of an action based on its inclusion in some plan. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of ‘integrative medicine’ as an ideal of medical progress on the grounds that it fails to realise the cognitive value of alternative medicine. After a brief account of the cognitive value of alternative medicine, I outline the form of ‘integrative medicine’ defended by the late Stephen Straus, former director of the US National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Straus’ account is then considered in the light of Zuzana Parusnikova’s recent criticism of ‘integrative medicine’ and (...) her distinction between ‘cognitive’ and ‘opportunistic’ engagement with alternative medicine. Parusnikova warns that the medical establishment is guilty of ‘dogmatism’ and proposes that one can usefully invoke Karl Popper’s ‘critical rationalism’ as an antidote. Using the example of Straus, I argue that an appeal to Popper is insufficient, on the grounds that ‘integrative medicine’ can class as a form of cognitively-productive, critical engagement. I suggest that Parusnikova’s appeal to Popper should be augmented with Paul Feyerabend’s emphasis upon the role of ‘radical alternatives’ in maximising criticism. ‘Integrative medicine’ fails to maximise criticism because it ‘translates’ alternative medicine into the theories and terminology of allopathic medicine and so erodes its capacity to provide cognitively-valuable ‘radical alternatives’. These claims are then illustrated with a discussion of ‘traditional’ and ‘medical’ acupuncture. I conclude that ‘integrative medicine’ fails to exploit the cognitive value of alternative medicine and so should be rejected as an ideal of medical progress. (shrink)

Popper is commonly considered as an analytical philosopher who focuses on epistemological and methodological aspects of scientific development, disregarding any social, cultural or political consideration. Against this popular image of Popper’s philosophy, I argue in this paper that Popper’s acco..

Karl Popper's work is of great diversity. It touches on virtually every intellectual activity. But he himself considered his philosophy of science one of his most important achievements. And indeed his achievement here is revolutionary. It destroyed the philosophy of inductivism which held sway over science for hundreds of years.

It is one of Karl Popper's great distinctions that he has an intense—some would say too intense—awareness of the history of philosophy within which he works. He knows not only its patterns, but also its comedies, and sometimes he plays rhetorically against their grain. He knows, for example, that the drive to consistency tends to turn philosophy into compositions of related doctrines, each seeming to involve the others. Religious belief, for example, tends to go with idealism and free will, religious (...) scepticism with materialism and determinism. Popper does not believe in a religion, was for long some kind of a socialist, and takes his bearings from the philosophy of science. Aha! it seems we have located him. Here is a positivist, a materialist, probably a determinist. But of course he denies he is any of these things. Again, like many modern thinkers, he wants to extend scientific method not only to the social sciences but also to history. So far so familiar, until we discover that he regards nature as no less ‘cloudy’ than human societies. (shrink)

In the last decades the concept of objectivity has been criticized by the ?new epistemologies?. These criticisms favour the consolidation of relativist and subjective positions, which condition the objectivity of scientific knowledge to such an extent that it seems to be a goal impossible to achiev..