Wednesday Wisdom

Perhaps, one of the least-known philosophers, but one of the most influential to the scientific community in the 20th century was Karl Popper. He was born in Vienna Austria in 1902 but moved to London and eventually worked at the prestigious London School of Economics. Popper worked during the time of Freud and Einstein and that provided him the opportunity to observe and contrast their respective approaches towards attaining knowledge.

Popper’s principal contribution to the philosophy of science rests on his rejection of the inductive method in the empirical sciences. Inductive reasoning or logic is the process where observations lead to general theories. Deductive reasoning or logic is where theory or assumption is empirically tested and retested toward a probable outcome.

According to this traditional view, a scientific hypothesis may be tested and verified by obtaining the repeated outcome of observations. The Scottish empiricist David Hume had shown only an infinite number of such confirming results could prove the theory correct. An empiricist is someone who believes that knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience, what we see, hear, touch, and observe rather than from pure reason or innate ideas Popper argued instead that hypotheses are deductively validated by what he called the "falsifiability criterion” Under this method, a scientist seeks to discover an observed exception to his postulated rule. The absence of contradictory evidence thereby becomes a corroboration of his theory. In other words, rather than testing for confirmation, test for falsification.

What he produced

Popper’s later works included The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), The Poverty of Historicism (1957), and Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 3 vol. (1981–82).

He is most commonly known for his "White Swan Analogy" as a way to test a belief.  Suppose a theory proposes that all swans are white. The obvious way to prove the theory is to check that every swan really is white, but there’s a problem. No matter how many white swans you find, you can never be sure there isn’t a black swan lurking somewhere. One would spend perpetuity trying to prove that this theory is true. In contrast, finding one solitary black swan guarantees that the theory is false. This is the unique power of falsification: the ability to disprove a universal statement with just a single example, an ability, Popper pointed out, that flows directly from the theorems of deductive logic.

Popper went on to promote falsification as the essence of the scientific process, with the search for falsifiable predictions being the distinguishing feature between science and pseudoscience. 

2025- why do we care?

Popper’s thought was shaped by the contrasting influence of two towering figures of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and physicist Albert Einstein. Contrasting Freud’s psychoanalysis while delving into Einstein's theory of relativity led to his thinking on how knowledge and truth are found. He believed that psychoanalysis cannot be proven wrong so, therefore, it should be characterized as unscientific. In contrast parts of Einstein's theory of relativity can be proven false and are subject to empirical data. Karl Popper believed that scientific knowledge is provisional meaning there is no way of knowing everything, so the answers are the best we can do at the moment given the available information. The Falsification Principle, proposed by Karl Popper, is a way of demarcating science from non-science. It suggests that for a theory to be considered scientific it must be able to be tested and conceivably proven false. For Popper, science should attempt to disprove a theory, rather than attempt to continually support theoretical hypotheses. According to Popper, such pseudoscience as astrology, metaphysics, Marxist economic history, and Freudian psychoanalysis are not empirical sciences, because of their failure to be falsified.

Essentially, Popper's philosophy of logic, is that beliefs are probable and contingent. A true understanding can only be attained by keeping an open mind and being willing to change one's mind as new information is uncovered.

While this may seem obvious today, this is most likely due to Popper's influence over scientists, economists, technology, and legal scholars over the last 100 years. In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the title Knight Bachelor, which made him Sir Karl Popper. The honor recognized his profound influence on the philosophy of science, especially his ideas about falsifiability and the defense of the open society against totalitarianism.

Prove it to be false, and you are one step closer to the truth......

And now you know...

Thank you, Dad, for the gift of curiosity

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.