Karl Popper | July 28, 1902 - September 17, 1994

Karl Popper's Life

Period: 1902 to 1995

Ref: Thornton, Stephen. “Karl Popper.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 18 Mar. 2021, plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/.

Birth

Jul 28, 1902

Karl Popper is born.

Published Logik der Forschung

1934

Argued that knowledge comes from personal experience. What is true for one person may not be true for another. These ideas paved the way for his future decisions regarding empirical sciences and falsifiability.

Major Published Works

Period: 1944 to 1957

The Poverty of Historicism (1944; 1957) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) were his major works regarding government and society. He argued against totalitarianism and Marxism. --> Popper, Karl Raimund. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Routledge, 2008.
--> Popper, Karl. Poverty of Historicism. Routledge, 2015.

Professor of Logic and the Scientific Method - London School of Economics

1949

He argued that the scientific method is great for testing the truth of a hypothesis but a scientist's duty is to also test the falsifiability of a scientific truth. If something cannot be tested to prove falsifiability then it is not science. The inability to prove a theory false then justifies current understanding of its truth.

Knighted

1965

He was knighted and regarded as one of the most influential philosophers and went on to publish several more books during his retirement. He helped the world understand what science is and what it is not.

Death

Sep 17, 1994

Karl Popper dies at age 92.