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Karl R. Popper

  • Birth if Karl Popper

  • Earned his Ph.D. in philosophy

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    Falsificationism:The 20th century part 1

    Falsificationism claims that a hypothesis is scientific if and only if it has the potential to be refuted by some possible observations. To be scientific, a hypothesis must “stick its neck out.” If a theory takes no risks at all it is compatible with every possible observation, then it is not scientific. According to popper it is never possible to confirm or establish a theory by showing its agreement with observations.
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    Falsificationism:The 20th century part 2

    Like Hume, Popper was an inductive skeptic, and Popper was skeptical about all forms of confirmation and support other than deductive logic itself. Most philosophers of science have thought that if induction and confirmation are just myths, that is very bad news for science.
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    Falsificationism:The 20th century part 3

    Popper argued that induction was a myth, but science did not need it anyway. So inductive skepticism, for Popper at least, was not threat to the rationality of science. Popper believed it is never possible to confirm a theory, not even slightly, and no matter how many observations the theory predicts successfully.
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    Falsificationism:The 20th century part 4

    Popper placed great emphasis on the idea that we can never be completely sure, that a theory is true, or that it is probably true, or even that it is more likely to be true than it was before the test. The theory might be true, but we can’t say more than that.
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    karl popper major works

    Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945.
    Popper, Karl R. The Poverty of Historicism. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957.
    Popper, Karl R. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge, 1959.
    Popper, Karl R. Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge, 1962.
  • Was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

  • Took retirement from academic life

  • Death of Karl Popper

    September 17, 1994 in Croydon, Greater London, England