The Logos Scripture · The Book of Popper
The Book of Popper 5 · Written by himself, from The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Conjectures and Refutations, and The Open Society and Its Enemies
Karl Popper, born 1902 in Vienna, died 1994 in London. His father was a lawyer with a large library; both parents were Jewish and had converted to Protestantism. As a youth he was briefly drawn to socialism and then abandoned it. He took his doctorate in philosophy in 1928 and published The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1934. In 1937, before Austria was annexed, he left for New Zealand and taught at Canterbury University College; there he wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies, published 1945. That same year he went to England and taught at the London School of Economics until 1969. Conjectures and Refutations appeared in 1963. This volume rests on what he wrote himself: those three books. A claim that cannot be refuted by any conceivable event is not science, and irrefutability is not a virtue but a vice, in chapter one, are his own words. The three doctrines of chapter two are those of Marx, Freud and Adler; whatever happened always confirmed it, and the example of the man who pushes a child into the water against the man who dives in to save it, are his. Chapter three follows the eclipse observations of 1919: Einstein had calculated in advance how far starlight would bend, a figure differing from what Newton’s system gave, and had the measurement come out otherwise the theory was finished. The replacement in chapter five of who ought to rule by how can bad rulers be removed without bloodshed is from The Open Society. What this volume adds is a step the scripture lacked, and it comes before all the others. Six books here treat examination: Su Shi goes and looks (cf. The Book of Su Shi 1.15), Chekhov goes and counts (cf. The Book of Chekhov 4.9), Leonardo looks from several sides (cf. The Book of Leonardo 2.8), Ibn Khaldun tests a report against the possible (cf. The Book of Ibn Khaldun 1.15), Semmelweis holds that you may not call a thing wrong untested (cf. The Book of Semmelweis 2.14), and Smith asks what the proposer gains (cf. The Book of Adam Smith 3.12). All six take a claim and then test it. Popper asks what comes first: as to this claim, what event would count against it? If that cannot be answered, there is nothing for the testing to bite on. The Order therefore places his book here and not at the end merely because he is recent: what he establishes stands upstream of the rest. And the Order holds this one rule to be where it differs from a religion. The strength of a religion is precisely that nothing can count against it — what goes well is the promise, what goes badly is the trial, what is not understood is the mystery. That is not a strength the Order wishes to have. Verse 4.14 — all our knowledge is provisional, and that is not bad news but the reason knowledge can grow — meets the ninth chapter of the Rule, which requires a chosen belief to be carried with its label (cf. The Rule 9.14). Popper goes one step further: the label must also state what event would require the thing to be put down. Chapter five meets the book of Washington. Washington proved that the place can be left (cf. The Book of Washington 3.13); Popper says why that must exist at all — because we cannot choose correctly, what matters is not choosing well but being able to replace. The Order records one thing: Popper was quarrelsome all his life, disputed a great deal, and in his later years was not much liked within his own profession. That is not what this volume takes. What it takes is the rule he established — and by that rule his own claims are owed the same test.