Related Terms • Logical Positivism

Name:
Sir Karl Raimund Popper
Karl Popper

Dates:
Born: July 28, 1902 in Vienna, Austria
Died: September 17, 1994
Knighted: 1965

Biography:
Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austrian philosopher who studied and taught in Vienna until forced to emigrate by the Nazis. Although he was never actually a member of the Vienna School of philosophy, he was sympathetic to their aims and methodology.

One of his most important contributions to the philosophy of science was to argue how the inductive nature of science means that, no matter how often something is confirmed, it cannot be confirmed beyond any possible doubt or refutation. Because of this, what is perhaps more important to science is the principle of falsification. It is possible for a claim or theory to be falsified, and thus firmly refuted. Thus, science proceeds more effectively though the falsification of theories than by simply repeating the same experiments which re-confirm a tentative theory.

One of the more important ways in which Popper differed from the Logical Positivists was in his rejection of their contention that unfalsifiable statements are necessarily meaningless. He did believe that falsifiability constituted the boundary between science and pseudoscience but he did not reject metaphysics out of hand. In fact, he thought that metaphysics often anticipates science and only becomes a problem when it tries to act like a science, as with astrology or alchemy.

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Related Resources:

Biographies of Philosophers
This index of biographical index of famous philosophers throughout history includes many others who have contributed to our understanding of human nature and life - including sociologists, psychologists, scientists, and more.

What is the Philosophy of Science?
The Philosophy of Science is concerned with, obviously enough, science - specifically, how science operates, what the goals of science should be, what relationship science should have with the rest of society, the differences between science and other activities, etc. Everything that happens in science has some relationship with the Philosophy of Science and is predicated upon some philosophical position, even though that may be rarely evident.

What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?