Talk:Karl Popper

To begin with I like a lot of Popper stuff and think that "The Open Society" is a great book in lots of ways, but.... I don't know any professional classicists who think that his take on Plato holds water. There may be some philosophers who do, but I wonder if they're specialists in Ancient (i.e., read Plato {1} in Greek and {2} for anything other than a 100-level course. I am far from thinking that one should defer to specialists, but the tone of dismissiveness from classicists is significant. --MichaelTinkler

I added a brief comment about Popper's influence on George Soros. It is not of philosophical importance per se, but I think it is interesting that a philosopher who did not, to my knowledge, even seriously treat economic or business questions can be applied successfully to questions of investment. Hieronymous

I think this entry is not trying to be objective and not in line with the NPOV. It is by far too positive on Popper; all critics are belittled, spurious statements abound (I think citations show clearly that most philosophers of science put, e.g., Kuhn over Popper), see MichaelTinkler's comments above (this is not only so with Classicists but also with Philosophers), etc. etc. The problem is that one cannot really edit the article at all, because the hagiographic tone is part of the structure, so one would have to rewrite it altogether. Clossius 06:36, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy starts its entry on Popper with “Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.” By all means, add some crticism to this article. But might I sugest moving cautiously, and please check out Falsificationism and related pages as well. Banno 21:04, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

One of them, surely; this is not, however, what the current entry says. And as I said, adding criticism won't help in this case. Clossius 21:21, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So do you intend to do a re-write, or is this just wind? Banno 09:14, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh, is this the alternative? I think I've said now twice that this is clearly and demonstrably a biased article (which Popper himself really wouldn't have liked), but that it can't be changed piecemeal, or by addition. I think the best option for now is to let it stand as is but marked as non-objective, until a brave Popper expert finds the time to write a better one, or to edit it very thoroughly. Clossius 09:21, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Would that we had some brave Popper experts on whom we could rely. Unfortunately, we have only you and I. ; )

Perhaps you might assist by being a bit more specific in your comments. What specific errors of fact occur in the article? Which statements do you find “spurious”? Or is your objection simply to the tone of the article, admittedly high in praise.

Incidentally, a straw pole among the philosophers of my acquaintance definitely put Popper well ahead of Kuhn. Do you have anything concrete - numbers of citations, or whatever – to back up your claim? Banno 22:31, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I really liked the Freudian slip. :-) I'm sure there'll be some more Popper experts to come, in case that some aren't here already. The problem for me is, to answer you on the level you require would take far more research into Popper and Popper reception than I'd like to invest, although I've done some of that already for dead tree publications. Yes, you can demonstrate the Kuhn vs. Popper reception / impact via citations, but then e.g. you'd get into the problem of blind citation (both OSE and SSR are famous in citation studies for being cited without being read), so you'd have to edit those out which don't provide page no.s, etc. No, I don't only object to the tone of the article, I really think that the description of Popper's epistemology is outdated as far as the scientific discourse is concerned (and the description of the criticism starts with saying why the criticism is wrong, rather than listing it in good faith first, i.e. the rebuttal is at the beginning!), and the problems with Popper's political philosophy, historicism, etc., aren't addressed at all. But again, to counter these in detail would require much more effort and a much grander restructuring (which I think given the hierarchy mechanisms of the wikipedia might easily not hold ;-)) than I am able to expand on right now. I think, though, that - especially from a Popperian perspective - you don't have to substitute a "better" version for something you criticize; criticizing is already a contribution, no? Clossius 09:18, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I definitely think that among professional philosophers of science, Popper is not seen as the most important philosopher of science of the 20th century. (Although it would be hard to prove this short of taking a large poll among them, which is somewhat unpractical.) Victor Gijsbers 14:57, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested, Google searches for a few modern day philosophers give the following results: Karl Popper (111,000 hits), Ludwig Wittgenstein (77,300 hits), Thomas Kuhn (61,000 hits), Paul Feyerabend (13,400 hits), Imre Lakatos (8,310 hits).

Poppers philosophy, for me, is like popular music. I used to like it when I was younger and now its popularity is strangely inexplicable. I guess it's a matter of taste (or age [or the will to express individuality]). Chris

Reversion

I have several problems with the way this article has been written and structured. However, the most recent round of edits, including such statements as:

According to a view that still persists in Britain, Germany, and Austria (but not among American philosophers), Popper has played a vital role in establishing the philosophy of science as a vigorous, autonomous discipline within Analytic philosophy, …

and:

… Within the academy, Popper has been much more influential among philosophically naive scientists and social scientists than among philosophers themselves, who view his work as amounting to little more than a footnote to logical positivism.

… is completely unacceptable POV. The portrayal of Popper as a marginal figure considered as a serious thinker only by a band of "philosophically naive" "proponents," "supporters," etc. is not the way to counteract an overly hagiographic article. This is, among many other things, simply counterhistorical. (Follow the citations in the work of Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Putnam, and others and you will find Popper there. Most people doing contemporary Analytic philosophy of science—in America or in Britain—are by no means Popperians, and Popper's work has persisted more strongly amongst scientists themselves than amongst philosophers of science. But to claim that he has only had marginal influence in the recent history of Analytic philosophy of science is, quite bluntly, absolutely loopy.)

There are several other complaints that I think are important to lodge, where the cases are too numerous and too repetitive to put forward an exhaustive set of examples. The wholesale revision of claims about Popper's influence, arguments, conclusions, theories, etc. to claims ostentatiously placed only in the mouth of Popper himself and an anonymous horde of acolytes is similarly POV. I mean things such as the transformation of this claim:

He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century; …

to this:

By his proponents, he is claimed to be an influential philosopher of science of the 20th century; …

and what's worse, this:

He is best known for his repudiation of the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science, his espousal of falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science, and his defence of the 'Open Society'.

to this:

He and his followers viewed him as best known for his repudiation of the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science, is espousal of falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science, and his defence of the 'Open Society'.

(Popper certainly did repudiate the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science, did put forward empirical falsifiability of theories as a criterion for distinguishing science from non-science, and did publicly and extensively defend a conception of the open society. If he is not actually best known for these three elements of his work, then what in the world is he best known for?)

Here's a moral about the critical revision of articles that are lopsidedly positive toward a particular thinker: it's tempting to try to fix the problem by simply visibly putting all of the claims into the mouths of the people who allegedly advocate the claims (such as the thinker herself or the thinker's proponents). That's a fine way to do it in some cases, but as a general procedure I have to say that it is lazy and it is ineffective; what it amounts to is simply casting doubt on all of the positions espoused by ostentatiously scare-quoting them, and then dismissing them by appealing to an untested consensus of an anonymous set of authorities, rather than doing the work of rewriting the article in a more balanced fashion. And more than that, through the scare-quoting it amounts to POV: we don't scare-quote things visibly and repeatedly to express a neutral stance toward them; we scare-quote them to explicitly indicate that the usages are not ours, that they are at least dubious, or even to suggest that they are out-and-out shams. Editing the Popper article as it has been edited here is no different.

(Imagine if I were to try editing an essay on Leninism and replaced every reference to the "worker's state" with "the so-called 'worker's state'" or all the references to the dictatorship of the proletariat with "what Lenin and his coterie claimed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat". In some cases such revisions would be perfectly acceptable; but if repeated throughout the article and in several different contexts and even when statements are taken to be internal to an argument in the voice of the subject it would, I think, pretty transparently come across as the POV claim that the Leninist claims of worker autonomy and revolutionary freedom were tendentious, dubious, or an outright sham. Of course, in fact they were all those things, but adjudicating such a dispute (1) isn't the job of WikiPedia, and (2) can't even be successfully done through such tactics, since they syntactically preclude any chance of charitably reconstructing the positions and arguments to be understood and disputed.)

I think it's worth paying attention to some of the tendentious areas that these most recent edits may have highlighted, but the edits themselves are flagrantly POV. I have reverted to the most recent previous edit.

Radgeek 21:17, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is it reasonable to remove the "disputed" flag? The current version (Sep 27, 2004) of the article seems to me to have a fairly NPOV, after many of the criticisms in this talk thread have been addressed. (Like most scientists who have an opinion, I prefer Popper over Kuhn and I find the POV mildly anti-Popper, which I take to be a sign that it is probably about neutral.) --Crust 21:21, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"disputed"? - as in how

The fact that, say, there are professional classicists out there who don't think very highly of Popper (because Popper doesn't think highly of Plato, or for whatever reason) is "interesting" but rather irrelevant (worth a footnote at best given good contextual reasoning & backed up by serious evidence): Not a legitimate reason to prohibit the writer of this article to lay out Popper's ideas on the page dedicated to - Popper.

To pull out the "dispute"-club on an entry only because there are people out there who disagree with the views laid out (pretty authentically) at one's own site? That's why the entry exisits in the first place: to put forth POPPER'S ideas, not X's, Y's, or Z's.

There is more than plenty of space on wikipedia for X, Y and Z to lay out THEIR ideas and claims; and if those are at odds with others', including Popper's: all the better and more colorful and appreciated. As long as they do it on their own respective pages.

That's not to say that references and side bars should be completely excluded... not only quite impossible in social/philosophical discussion, but it would also make the entry rather sterile and dull. It is legitimate to attack competing positions on one's "own" site (& vice versa), but it would be methodologically illegitimate and highly undesirable to have B prescribe how A hast to frame his thoughts at his, A's, own page (as the "disputed"-label implies).... (& vice versa).

rgrds, AL

appropriate wikilink

I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with this subject. I was reading the article, and in the introduction, I was wondering whether it would be possible to wikilink the phrase "the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science", or some part of it. I wasn't sure what that meant, and I didn't want to add links to the wrong places. Thanks! -- Creidieki 12:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Later Popper

The article, in my judgement, does a good job in covering roughly the first half of Popper's career. However there are later developments that should be mentioned. One is his notion of three realms or 'worlds.' This is a notion of Popper's that people find most difficult to accept. Popper distinguished between different sorts of reality: the physical realm like rocks, rivers, etc; a person's private feelings (World2); and what he called World3, the products of the human mind, such as a mathematical theorem, a scientific theory, a work of art. This ontology, Popper thought, had important ramifications for the theory of knowledge (see a later work of his, _Objective Knowledge_) and for the mind-body problem (see another later work, with Nobel Prize Winner Sir John Eccles, _The Self and Its Brain_.) Another development is the turn toward evolutionary epistemology. Popper, indeed, may be considered to be one of the most important figures in this research program. Evolutionary epistemologists hold that Darwin should be "taken seriously." Another leader in this movement, the late psychologist Donald Campbell, held that knowledge grows by a process of blind variation and selective retention. Essays by Popper on evolutionary epistemology can be found in his _All Life Is Problem Solving_.