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Einstein's general relativity theory proven
Popper studied the differences between Freud and Einstein. He discovered Freud contorted past data to prove his theories. While Einstein used a much risker methos and looked ahead to try and predict future data. In 1919 Eddington’s experimental test during a solar eclipse proved Einstein’s general relativity theory. If results were different general relativity would have been disproven (Thorton 2022). Here is a CrashCourse video on Karl Popper, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8Xfl0JdTQ. -
Breakthrough in political philosophy
In 1945 he published “The Open Society and It’s Enemies”. It is considered one of the most important books in political philosophy as it critiqued totalitarianism. It outlined his views of critical inquiry that requires scientific investigation should also be used in politics (Princeton 2023). Here is a video of Karl Popper himself discussing the book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVnlzYfIAj0 -
Falsifiability
In 1959 he published “The logic of discovery”, an English version of “Logik der forschung” (1934). His views exposed a flaw in science. He separated science and pseudoscience by science disconfirms while pseudoscience confirms. Meaning that every false belief discovered is good because it gets scientists closer to believing only true things and the only way to test a theory is to test to falsify it, known as falsifiability. Check out a short video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-sGqBsWv4 -
Conjectures and Refutations
In 1963, he published “Conjectures and Refutations”. In this book he frames verisimilitude or truthiness which combines truth and content. He argues a theories content is the totality of its logical consequences (Thornton 2022). He believed this can be divided into two classes, truth-content and falsify-content. Truth-content is the true consequences of a theory and falsify-content is the false consequences of a theory.