Karl Popper

By Daniel_Caban

  • The Birth of Karl Popper

    • Karl Popper was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, in the year 1902.

  • The Logic of Scientific Discovery

    • In the year 1934, Karl Popper wrote his first book, Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery). It was later rewritten in English in the year 1959.
    • This book was published by the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, but in it, he rejects their inductive empiricism and historicism. He presents his ideas on falsifiability and verifiability.
    • Karl Popper's Falsification
    • Popper, K. (1935). Logik der Forschung. Springer.
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    Popper Teaches Philosophy

    • After finishing his studies at the University of Vienna, he became a teacher of philosophy at Canterbury University College in New Zealand.

  • The Open Society and Its Enemies

    • In 1945, Popper's work "The Open Society and Its Enemies" gets published.
    • He offers his defense of Liberal Democracy and the open society. He criticizes the theories of historicism, which claim that history unfolds according to universal laws. He criticizes philosophers Plato, Karl Marx, and Georg Hegel for using historicism as the backbone of their political philosophies.
    • Popper, K. (1945). The Open Society and Its Enemies. Abingdon-on-Thames, United Kingdom: Routledge.
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    Popper works at the London School of Economics

    • In 1949, Popper gets a job as a professor of logic and the scientific method at the London School of Economics. This was his job until he retired in 1969.

  • The Poverty of Historicism

    • Popper released his book The Poverty of Historicism in 1957
    • Popper expresses his belief that the central doctrine of historicism is to expose the law of evolution of our societies in order to predict their future.
    • He offers his description of historicism and explains its fundamental problems. Human actions or reactions can never be accurately predicted, so neither can the future.
    • Popper, Karl R (1957). The poverty of historicism. Boston: Beacon Press.

  • Sir Karl Raimund Popper

    In 1965 Popper is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

  • Popper Appears in a Video Interview

  • Realism and the Aim of Science

    • The first of three volumes of the postscript to his original work "The Logic of Scientific Discovery." This postscript is the culmination of his work. He makes an attack on subjectivist approaches to the philosophy of science.
    • In this volume, Popper expresses his non-justificationist theory of knowledge, asserting that science must continue its inquiries in all its theories, even those that seem to be true.
    • Popper, K. R., & Bartley, W. W. (1983). Realism and the aim of science. Routledge.

  • The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism

    • The second volume of the postscript, The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism, continues to drive home Popper's Philosophies
    • Popper asserts that no theory can reduce the world to a causally determined system, freedom, and creative behavior, can never be removed from the human experience.

  • Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics

    • Popper's book, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, is the third and final volume of his famous postscript.
    • Popper relates the idea that something can come from nothing, to the current situation in quantum physics. He uses his philosophies to offer an interpretation of physics. Stressing understanding and that our ignorance grows faster than our conjectural knowledge.
    • Popper, K. R. (1992). Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics. Routledge.

  • The Death of Karl Popper

    • Sir Karl Raimund Popper died of "complications of cancer, pneumonia, and kidney failure" in the United Kingdom in the year 1994. He was 92 years old.