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Born in Vienna, Austria
Karl Popper was born in Vienna to Simon Popper and Jenny Schiff. His father was educated as a lawyer and before Karl's birth, his parents had rejected their Jewish religion and had been baptized to be Lutherans, a somewhat progressive faith in a predominately catholic country. Along with their progressive faith, they had become increasingly liberal in their politics, rejecting the conservatism that was ruling Hapsburg Austria, which could point to how Karl would progress in his early years. -
Socialism leads to Enlightenment
There was sweeping revolutionary air in Austria after the Great war, and while attending the University of Vienna, Poppler got heavily involved in left-wing politics and joined a socialist school organization and considered himself a Marxist. After time being with them, he became disillusioned with their ideas and how violence was mixed into their viewpoints. He also began to see flaws in how their theories could only be confirmed and never denied, the same in hearing Freud and Adler as well. -
1920's - The Beginnings of Falsification
Seeing how Marxism had its foundation set upon with doctrines and data that could only point to its proof and never to the contrary, he began to see other great thinkers and how they were similar in how their theories were confirmed. Freud and Adler also affirmed only data and assumed facts that led to the confirmation of their work. This he could see was the opposite of Einstein, who had recently been attempted to refute his own work in relativity to confirm his theory. -
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Originally published in 1934 and later translated in English, Popper illustrated in print what had fully matured into a new scientific way of thinking. He had sought out the demarcation of where science begins and showed that falsifiability shows that testable and refutable theories are what makes science what it is. To be able to take the risk in a hypothesis that could be completely destroyed is what we need to do in order to truly discover what is fact and what is false. -
Works Cited and Video Link
Popper, Karl R. (Karl Raimund). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 2nd ed. London ;: Routledge, 2002. Print. Malachi Haim Hacohen. Karl Popper – The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. pp. 10 & 23 Thornton, Stephen, "Karl Popper", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/popper/. https://youtu.be/-X8Xfl0JdTQ
