Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge (2009) was first published in German in 1979. It is a thick book comprising a collection of drafts and preliminary work from the years 1930 to 1933 for Karl Popper’s first … Continue reading →

In 1945 Karl Popper left Christchurch and moved to the London School of Economics where he became the Professor of  Logic and Scientific Method. His main course was Introduction to Scientific Method and he delivered a series of fifteen lectures … Continue reading →

Key Issues in The New Knowledge Management (2003), by Joe Firestone and Mark W. McElroy, is for me a welcome library addition. A strong point is the focus on the epistemological issues. The summary of various theoretical underpinnings is clearly laid out. I have … Continue reading →

Stephen Hicks has posted a link to a survey of US philosophers to find out  how they ranked the books and articles of the 20th century. Using the Philosophers’ Email Directory, we mailed our questionnaire to 5,000 teachers of philosophy. … Continue reading →

This is something a bit different but closely related to the study of metaphysical research programs.  My friend Michael Giffin, another independent scholar in Sydney has made a deep study of metaphysical themes in modern literature, focussed on female novelists … Continue reading →

Writing about the Popperian “turns”provides an opportunity to acknowledge the work of Popper’s research assistants and editors who helped along the way. Think of them as the Sorcerer’s apprentices, or perhaps the elves in Santa’s toy factory. Joe Agassi’s book about … Continue reading →

When Popper wrote Logik der Forschung the notion of truth was problematic and he avoided talking about it until Tarski developed the use of metalanguages to permit a formal statement of the correspondence theory of truth that was robust in … Continue reading →

From “Popper on the Differences between the Natural and the Social Sciences” in In Pursuit of Truth, Paul Levinson (ed), 1982. Popper always sough to communicate with other philosophers, but he underestimated the neurotic element there would be in the reception … Continue reading →

Problem: how did so many hard-working, bright and ambitious people manage to work on the philosophy and methodology of economics without producing much that is helpful for working economists and policy-makers? This became a growth area during the 1980s with … Continue reading →

A theory can only be corroborated by the evidence when the negation of that evidence would falsify the theory. That is, the evidence must represent a test of the theory, and a test requires the possibility of failure. Tautologies and … Continue reading →