Popper Selections

by Popper, Karl Raimund; Miller, David

• ISBN13: 9780691020310
• ISBN10: 0691020310
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-02-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

One of the most controversial of twentieth-century philosophers, especially for his devastating criticisms of Plato and Marx and for his uncompromising rejection of inductive reasoning, Sir Karl Popper relentlessly challenged both the authority and the appeal to authority of the most fashionable philosophies of our time. His own philosophy of critical rationalism is distinctive in its emphasis on the way in which we learn through the making and correcting of mistakes-on the role played by imagination in proposing new possibilities, and by reason in exposing and eliminating the errors among them. David Miller, once Popper's research assistant and now a leading expositor and critic of his work, has chosen thirty excerpts from Popper's non-technical writings in the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and social philosophy. Together they illustrate the breadth, profundity, and originality of Sir Karl's contribution to human learning. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Sir Karl Popper was Professor of Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1949 to 1969, and Professor Emeritus from 1969 until his death in 1994

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction	p. 9
Theory of Knowledge
The Beginnings of Rationalism (1958)	p. 25
The Defence of Rationalism (1945)	p. 33
Knowledge without Authority (1960)	p. 46
Knowledge: Subjective versus Objective (1967)	p. 58
Evolutionary Epistemology (1973)	p. 78
Two Kinds of Definitions (1945)	p. 87
The Problem of Induction (1953, 1974)	p. 101
The Problem of Demarcation (1974)	p. 118
Philosophy of Science
Scientific Method (1934)	p. 133
Falsificationism versus Conventionalism (1934)	p. 143
The Empirical Basis (1934)	p. 152
The Aim of Science (1957)	p. 162
The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1960)	p. 171
Truth and Approximation to Truth (1960)	p. 181
Propensities, Probabilities, and the Quantum Theory (1957)	p. 199
Metaphysics
Metaphysics and Criticizability (1958)	p. 209
Realism (1970)	p. 220
Cosmology and Change (1958)	p. 226
Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status (1977)	p. 239
Indeterminism and Human Freedom (1965)	p. 247
The Mind-Body Problem (1977)	p. 265
The Self (1977)	p. 276
Social Philosophy
Historicism (1936)	p. 289
Piecemeal Social Engineering (1944)	p. 304
The Paradoxes of Sovereignty (1945)	p. 319
Marx's Theory of the State (1945)	p. 326
Individualism versus Collectivism (1945)	p. 338
The Autonomy of Sociology (1945)	p. 345
The Rationality Principle (1967)	p. 357
Against the Sociology of Knowledge (1945)	p. 366
Notes	p. 379
Editorial Note, Sources, and Acknowledgements	p. 462
Bibliography	p. 467
Index of Names	p. 471
Index of Subjects	p. 476
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