Notes on Karl Popper’s "Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition"

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I consider this to be one of Popper’s more important essays, which is why I provide some rough study notes here. I highly recommend people read this essay. It is contained in Conjectures and Refutations, pages 162 to 182.

1. Popper asks: what problem would a theory of tradition solve? How would we go about constructing it?

2. Popper cites Edmund Burke as having launched the best defense of traditions in his criticism of the French Revolution. While Popper thinks highly of Edmund Burke, he criticizes him for ultimately taking an irrationalist stance. Popper states, “The anti-rationalists in the field of politics, social theory, and so on, usually suggest that this problem cannot be tackled by any kind of rational theory. Their attitude is to accept tradition as something just given. You have to take it; you cannot rationalize it; it plays an important role in society, and you can only understand its significance and accept it.

3. There is hostility between rationalists and irrationalists: “Rationalists are inclined to adopt the attitude: ‘I am not interested in tradition. I want to judge everything on its own merits; I want to find out its merits and demerits, and I want to do this quite independently of any tradition. I want to judge it with my own brain, and not with the brains of other people who lived long ago.‘”

4. Ironically, the rationalists attitude that he must judge things on their own merit is, in itself, a tradition of sorts. So some rationalists seem to beg the question. That is, they follow a rule: you should judge everything on your own. Following that rule constitutes a certain tradition. Why should that tradition be any better than any other? This is very similar to the problem of justification.

5. Neither the irrationalists or the rationalists have adequately dealt with the problem of tradition.

6. “Certain types of tradition of great importance are local, and cannot easily be transplanted.” Popper discusses the scientific tradition. It was started in Greece, but destroyed and did not start again for quite some time. While now in some countries the scientific tradition is pursued in others it has still not taken root.

7. Popper seems to complain about both the scientific tradition in New Zealand and the classical music tradition in America. He cites these as an example of how difficult it is to transplant a tradition. This essay is from a lecture Popper delivered in 1949, by the way.

8. Popper states there are two main attitudes we can have towards tradition.

8a. We can passively and unconsciously accept it.

8b. We can be critical of it, either accepting it or rejecting it, or perhaps making   some kind of compromise in regards to it.

9. However, even if you accept the critical attitude, you can’t criticize nothing. Popper states, “we have to know of and to understand a tradition before we can criticize it, before we can say: ‘We reject this tradition on rational grounds.’ Now I do not think that we could ever free ourselves entirely from the bonds of tradition. The so-called freeing is really only a change from one tradition to another. But we can free ourselves from the taboos of a tradition; and we can do that not only by rejecting it, but also by critically accepting it. We free ourselves from the taboo if we think about it, and if we ask ourselves whether we should accept it or reject it. In order to do that we have first to have the tradition clearly before us, and we have to understand in a general way what may be the function and significance of a tradition.

10. Popper discusses the scientific tradition as it is one he is familiar with. He discusses two problems he finds with the scientific tradition:
10a. “A part of the rationalist tradition is, for example, the meta-physical idea of determinism. People who do not agree with determinism are usually viewed with suspicion by rationalists who are afraid that if we accept indeterminism, we may be committed to accepting the doctrine of Free Will, and may thus become involved in theological arguments about the Soul and Divine Grace. I usually avoid talking about free will, because I am not clear enough about what it means, and I even suspect that our intuition of a free will may mislead us. Nevertheless, I think that determinism is a theory which is untenable on many grounds, and that we have no reason whatever to accept it. Indeed, I think that it is important for us to get rid of the determinist element in the rationalist tradition. It is not only untenable, but it creates endless trouble for us. It is, for this reason, important to realize that indeterminism–that is, the denial of determinism–does not necessarily involve us in any doctrine about our ‘will’ or about ‘responsibility’.

10b. “Another element in the rationalist tradition which we should question is the idea of observationalism–the idea that we know about the world because we look around, open our eyes and ears, and take down what we see, hear, and so on; and that this is what constitutes the material of our knowledge. This is an extremely deep-rooted prejudice and is, I think, an idea which impedes the understanding of scientific method.

11. Popper now states that a theory of tradition would have to be a kind of sociological theory. Therefore, Popper first proposes to discuss the task of theoretical social sciences.

12. Popper first discounts what he calls a mistaken theory which he attributes to many rationalists. He calls this the “conspiracy theory of society”.

13. Early Greeks attributed the vagaries of social life to the gods. Modern man, often shirking off theism of any kind, attempted to do the same thing, only instead of attributing things to various gods, they blame powerful men or groups.

14. Popper states that conspiracies are bound to fail because of unexpected outcomes: “… one of the striking things about social life that nothing ever comes off exactly as intended. Things always turn out a little bit differently. We hardly ever produce in social life precisely the effect that we wish to produce, and we usually get things that we do not want into the bargain. Of course, we act with certain aims in mind; but apart from the question of these aims (which we may or may not really achieve) there are always certain unwanted consequences of our actions; and usually these unwanted consequences cannot be eliminated.

14a. It’s important to note here that this idea is very similar to Edmund Burke’s views concerning tradition. Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France states:

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught *a priori*. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate, but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.” While there seems to be at least some controversy regarding Burke’s views, and Popper, himself, calls Burke an irrationalist, in my initial reading of _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ I saw many similarities with Popper’s approach and what Burke discusses there. I think comparison between Popper and Burke is something that deserves more time than I have at present.

14b. Another important thinker who also talks a great deal about unintended consequences is F.A. Hayek. It is a running theme in most of his works. A particularly good essay where this issue is addressed is in his essay “The Errors of Constructionism”. While those with an interest are urged to check out this essay, which is in Hayek’s, New Studies, a very small selection should help give an idea regarding Hayek’s position:
The proper conclusion from the considerations I have advanced is by no means that we may confidently accept all the old and traditional value. Nor even that there are *any* values or moral principles, which science may not occasionally question. The social scientist who endeavours to understand how society functions, and to discover where it can be improved, must claim the right critically to examine, and even to judge, every *single* value of our society. The consequences of what I have said is merely that we can never at once and the same time question *all* its values. Such absolute doubt could lead only to the destruction of our civilisation and – in view of the numbers to which economic progress has allowed the human race to grow – to extreme misery and starvation. Complete abandonment of all traditional values is, of course, impossible; it would make man incapable of acting.

15. Popper states that the purpose of social science is to study unintended consequences: “The characteristic problems of the social sciences arise only out of our wish to know the unintended consequences, and more especially the unwanted consequences which may arise if we do certain things.

16. People who approach history with a conspiracy theory are missing the real point of social sciences. Popper states, “It is the task of social theory to explain how the unintended consequences of our intentions and actions arise, and what kind of consequences arise if people do this that or the other in a certain social situation.

17. Here Popper discusses the issue of conscious design. Conspiracy theories generally assume there is someone who is planning everything, such that someone is aware of all that is going on. Collective groups are viewed almost as individuals (For example, the Jews, or the Japanese, or the Religious Right, or the liberal media, or whatever). However, given that no one can know all the consequences of their actions, such total control is simply not possible.

18. It’s rare that people actually intentionally create a tradition. Traditions are often created unintentionally. Given this, how are we to study the origin of traditions?

19. Another, more important problem, is the role of traditions in social life. Is it possible to provide a rational explanation for various traditions and social institutions?

20. In order to look at this issue, Popper proposes to look at scientific traditions as a kind of model case.

21. Popper wants to draw a parallel between how we hold theories about the world, and how we hold various traditions.

22. Popper asks where did the rational tradition start. Some people assert it started when the Greeks first attempted to explain nature, and it was a result of trying to explain nature that gave rise to the tradition. Popper rejects this. (Note this also helps understand why Popper rejects determinism. Some people assume science is merely about adopting a determinist attitude, then attempting to describe the world from their observations. For them, that is science. Popper is rejecting this viewpoint.)

23. While it’s true that Greek philosophers did indeed try to understand nature, so did many of those who proceeded them. So we can not assign the rational tradition to the attempt to explain nature.

24. Popper asserts that what changed with the early Greek philosophers was there willingness to question old explanations and try to improve them. They didn’t just accept old tradition but were willing to challenge it, invent new alternatives, and debate more than one explanation. (Thus science can be associated less with explanation and more with the critical attitude.)

25. Popper distinguishes a first order tradition, that of passing down explanations of the world in the form of myths, and a second order tradition which consists of critical discussions in regards to these myths.

26. Popper believes that this second order tradition was entirely new, and it is what gave rise to the scientific tradition.

27. At this point observation took on new meaning. Observation was used to test some myths against others. In arguing about which myth best explain observations, observation became a way to test one myth against another.

28. Thus, observation is not something we *just* do. It is something we do to test our myths, our theories about the world. The Greeks were the first to realize this.

29. Popper notes: “From this point of view the growth of the theories of science should not be considered as the result of the collection, or accumulation, of observations; on the contrary, the observations and their accumulation should be considered as the result of the growth of the scientific theories. (This is what I have called the ‘searchlight theory of science’–the view that science itself throws new light on things; that it not only solves problems, but that, in doing so, it creates many more; and that it not only profits from observations, but leads to new ones.) If in this way we look out for new observations with the intention of probing into the truth of our myths, we need not be astonished if we find that myths handled in this rough manner change their character, and that in time they become what one might call more realistic or that they agree better with observable facts. In other words, under the pressure of criticism the myths are forced to adapt themselves to the task of giving us an adequate and a more detailed picture of the world in which we live. This explains why scientific myths, under the pressure of criticism, become so different from religious myths. I think, however, we should be quite clear that in their origin they remain myths or inventions, just like the others. They are not what some rationalists–the adherents of the sense-observation theory-believe: they are not digests of observations. Let me repeat this important point. Scientific theories are not just the results of observation. They are, in the main, the products of myth-making and of tests. Tests proceed partly by way of observation, and observation is thus very important; but its function is not that of producing theories. It plays its role in rejecting, eliminating, and criticizing theories; and it challenges us to produce new myths, new theories which may stand up to these observational tests. Only if we understand this can we understand the importance of tradition for science.

30. It’s impossible to observe without some theory to guide us. Moreover, random observations are not any where near as important to us as observations made with the intent to test a theory.

31. Popper next discusses the importance of the problem situation. “All this means that a young scientist who hopes to make discoveries is badly advised if his teacher tells him, ‘Go round and observe,’ and that he is well advised if his teacher tells him: ‘Try to learn what people are discussing nowadays in science. Find out where difficulties arise, and take an interest in disagreements. These are the questions which you should take up.’ In other words, you should study the problem situation of the day. This means that you pick up, and try to continue, a line of inquiry which has the whole background of the earlier development of science behind it; you fall in with the tradition of science. It is a very simple and a decisive point, but nevertheless one that is often not sufficiently realized by rationalists–that we cannot start afresh; that we must make use of what people before us have done in science. If we start afresh, then, when we die, we shall be about as far as Adam and. Eve were when they died (or, if you prefer, as far as Neanderthal man). In science we want to make progress, and this means that we must stand on the shoulders of our predecessors. We must carry on a certain tradition. From the point of view of what we want as scientists–understanding, prediction, analysis, and so on–the world in which we live is extremely complex. I should be tempted to say that it is infinitely complex, if the phrase had any meaning. We do not know where or how to start our analysis of this world. There is no wisdom to tell us. Even the scientific tradition does not tell us. It only tells us where and how other people started and where they got to. It tells us that people have already constructed in this world a kind of theoretical framework–not perhaps a very good one, but one which works more or less; it serves us as a kind of network, as a system of co-ordinates to which we can refer the various complexities of this world. We use it by checking it over, and by criticizing it. In this way we make progress.

32. Popper summarizes his thinking this way: “It is necessary for us to see that of the two main ways in which we may explain the growth of science, one is rather unimportant and the other is important. The first explains science by the accumulation of knowledge: it is like a growing library (or a museum). As more and more books accumulate, so more and more knowledge accumulates. The other explains it by criticism: it grows by a more revolutionary method than accumulation–by a method which destroys, changes, and alters the whole thing, including its most important instrument, the language in which our myths and theories are formulated.

33. So what we have here is the case of tradition being vital, as it shows us the road we have thus far traveled. However, we also have it being vital that we question and exam tradition itself. So, like the rationalists, Popper thinks we should question things. Yet, like the traditionalists he thinks we must respect and guard our traditions.

34. After having giving science as an example, Popper goes on to discuss the problem of a sociological theory of tradition.

35. Popper cites J.A.C. Brown who stated that if “if there is no discipline in a factory, then ‘the workers become anxious and terrified’.” Popper agrees that the unknown, that is the unpredictable is one of humans’ great fears. Kind of makes me think of H.P. Lovecraft who once said, “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

36. Popper disagrees that the answer to fear is merely discipline. Instead, Popper points out the traditions and institutions help us to make sense of our world. He states, “What we call social life can exist only if we can know, and can have confidence, that there are things and events which must be so and cannot be otherwise.

37. Popper argues, “The mere existence of these regularities is perhaps more important than their peculiar merits or demerits. They are needed as regularities, and therefore handed on as traditions, whether or not they are in other respects rational or necessary or good or beautiful or what you will. There is a need for tradition in social life.

38. Popper’s main point is that without some form of order, rational action would be impossible. Even language itself would not be possible. Popper states, “It is not possible for you to act rationally in the world if you have no idea how it will respond to your actions.” We simply have no way of knowing how people will respond to us, unless we are all following at least some of the same rules.

39. Popper argues that no world is perfect, but at least the one we have now has developed a complex tradition that has a history behind it. The idea that we could wipe clean all our traditions and start fresh is misguided. The new society would be an impoverished one. He states, “Similarly traditions have the important double function of not only creating a certain order or something like a social structure, but also giving us something upon which we can operate; something that we can criticize and change. This point is decisive for us, as rationalists and as social reformers. Too many social reformers have an idea that they would like to clean the canvas, as Plato called it, of the social world, wiping off everything and starting from scratch with a brand new rational world. This idea is nonsense and impossible to realize. If you construct a rational world afresh there is no reason to believe that it will be a happy world. There is no reason to believe that a blue-printed world will be any better than the world in which we live. Why should it be any better? An engineer does not create a motor-engine just from the blue-prints. He develops it from earlier models; he changes it; he alters it over and over again. If we wipe out the social world in which we live, wipe out its traditions and create a new world on the basis of blue-prints, then we shall very soon have to alter the new world, making little changes and adjustments. But if we are to make these little changes and adjustments, which will be needed in any case, why not start them here and now in the social world we have?

40. Popper argues if we were to sweep away the entire social order, then what would their be to inform us that the new planned order was any good. “Moreover the idea of canvas-cleaning (which is part of the wrong rationalist tradition) is impossible, because if the rationalist cleans the social canvas and wipes out the tradition he necessarily sweeps away with it himself and all his ideas and all his blueprints of the future. The blue-prints have no meaning in an empty social world, in a social vacuum. They have no meaning except in a setting of traditions and institutions–such as myths, poetry, and values–which all emerge from the social world in which we live. Outside it they have no meaning at all. Therefore the very incentive and the very desire to build a new world must disappear once we have destroyed the traditions of the old world.

41. Popper does a little summarizing, explaining how he can understand both the traditionalists and the rationalists. They both seem to have it right, at least as much as they have it wrong. Both of them seem to be neglecting the importance of the other. We need a tradition as it gives us a framework within which to work on our problems, however, if we stick rigidly to that framework we can’t make progress. So we need our traditions, and we need to criticize them.

42. Popper compares and contrasts the roles of traditions and institutions. He feels that institutions develop very much like traditions.

43. Popper finishes up with a discussion of language and how it relates to both institutions and traditions.

A few links of interest:

Rafe Champion’s review of F. A. Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit”

Kelly Ross’s essay: “Conservatism, History, and Progress”

Greg Nyquist’s “True Conservatism, False Conservatism”

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