The Philosophy Book

262

IN SO FAR AS

A SCIENTIFIC

STATEMENT SPEAKS

ABOUT REALITY,

IT MUST BE

FALSIFIABLE

KARL POPPER (1902–1994)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Philosophy of science

APPROACH

Analytic philosophy

BEFORE

4th century BCE Aristotle

stresses the importance of

observation and measurement

to understanding the world.

1620 Francis Bacon sets

out the inductive methods of

science in Novum Organum.

1748 David Hume’s

Enquiry concerning Human

Understanding raises the

problem of induction.

AFTER

1962 Thomas Kuhn criticizes

Popper in The Structure of

Scientific Revolutions.

1978 Paul Feyerabend, in

Against Method, questions the

very idea of scientific method.

W

e often think that science

works by “proving”

truths about the world.

We might imagine that a good

scientific theory is one that we

can prove conclusively to be true.

The philosopher Karl Popper,

however, insists that this is not the

case. Instead, he says that what

makes a theory scientific is that it

is capable of being falsified, or being

shown to be wrong by experience.

Popper is interested in the

method by which science finds out

about the world. Science depends

on experiment and experience, and

if we want to do science well, we

need to pay close attention to what

philosopher David Hume called