Karl Popper, The Logic Of Scientific Discovery

Karl Popper, The Logic Of Scientific Discovery

Author: Karl Popper

Year: 1910

Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery (first published in German in 1934 as Logik der Forschung, and in English in 1959) is arguably the most important text in the 20th-century philosophy of science. The book completely upended the prevailing view of how science works. Before Popper, the standard view (championed by the Logical Positivists) was that science progressed through induction—gathering evidence to prove a theory true. Popper argued the exact opposite: science progresses by attempting to disprove its own theories. Here is a breakdown of the foundational arguments in the text. 1. The Rejection of Induction Popper begins by attacking the "Problem of Induction" (a concept dating back to David Hume). Inductive reasoning assumes that because we have observed a phenomenon happen many times, it will always happen. Popper argued that no number of supporting observations can definitively prove a universal law. His famous example is the white swan: no matter how many thousands of white swans you observe, you cannot logically conclude that "all swans are white." However, the observation of just one black swan definitively proves the statement false. Therefore, scientific la