The philosophy of Karl Popper

692 Pages·1974·12.982 MB·English

by  Popper, Karl R., Schlipp, Paul

Thp Philosophy of
K ARL POPPER
Paul A. Schilpp, editor
In the familiar pattern of the first thirteen volumes
of The Library of Living Philosophers, this volume
on Karl Popper offers the most comprehensive and
definitive study of his thought by thirty-five dis­
tinguished contemporary scholars of Europe and
America, a complete Bibliography of Sir Karl’s
writings (to date), careful and detailed Replies by
Popper to his critics, and finally Popper’s only
philosophical Autobiography, in which he relates
how and why he came to the conclusions in his
thinking by which he has become known worldwide.
Sir Karl himself has spent years of indefatigable
labors writing his Autobiography and his Replies, in
which he responds in detail to the criticisms and
evaluations of his philosophy made by his critics
and his disciples.
The volume is a notable addition to this important
series, and the Open Court Publishing Company
considers it a privilege and an honor to be able to
present this volume to the philosophers and scien­
tists of the world.
The analyses and evaluations are by H. B. Acton,
Joseph Agassi, Sir Alfred Ayer, Yehoshua Bar-
Hillel, Paul Bernays, Lord Edward Boyle, Jacob
Bronowski, Donald T. Campbell, Alan Donagan,
Sir John Eccles, Herbert Feigl, Eugene Freeman,
Sir Ernst Gombrich, Adolf Griinbaum, William C.
Kneale, Viktor Kraft, Thomas S. Kuhn, Imre
Lakatos, Czeslaw Lejewski, Arnold Levison, Henry
Margenau, Grover Maxwell, Sir Peter Medawar,
Paul E. Meehl, Alan E. Musgrave, Hilary Putnam,
Willard Quine, George Schlesinger, Thomas W.
Settle, Henryk Skolimowski, Patrick Suppes,
J. W. N. Watkins, John Wild, Peter Winch, and
J. O. Wisdom.
THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
KARL POPPER
BOOK I
THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS
Paul Arthur Schilpp, Editor
Already Published:
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY (1939)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GEORGE SANTAYANA (1940)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1941)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF G. E. MOORE (1942)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERTRAND RUSSELL (1944)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERNST CASSIRER (1949)
ALBERT EINSTEIN: PHILOSOPHER-SCIENTIST (1949)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SARVEPALLI RADHAKRISHNAN (1952)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KARL JASPERS (1957)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF C. D. BROAD (1959)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RUDOLF CARNAP (1963)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARTIN BUBER (1967)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF C. I. LEWIS (1968)
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KARL POPPER (1974)
In Preparation:
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GABRIEL MARCEL
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BRAND BLANSHARD
THE PHILOSOPHY OF GEORG HENRIK VON WRIGHT
THE PHILOSOPHY OF W. V. QUINE
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Other volumes to be announced

THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS
VOLUME XIV BOOK I
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
KARL POPPER
EDITED BY
PAUL ARTHUR SCHILPP
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY &
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
LA SALLE, ILLINOIS • OPEN COURT • ESTABLISHED 1887
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KARL POPPER
Copyright ° 1974 by The Library of Living Philosophers, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, The Open Court
Publishing Co., Box 599, La Salle, Illinois 61301.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-186983
ISBN Number: 0-87548-141-8 Vol. I cloth
0-87548-142-6 Vol. II cloth
“Hypothesis and Imagination44 by Peter Medawar was first published in The Art of the Soluble
(London: Methuen & Co., 1971).
GENERAL INTRODUCTION*
TO
“THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS”
According to the late F. C. S. Schiller, the greatest obstacle to fruitful
discussion in philosophy is “the curious etiquette which apparently taboos the
asking of questions about a philosopher’s meaning while he is alive.” The
“interminable controversies which fill the histories of philosophy,” he goes on
to say, “could have been ended at once by asking the living philosophers a few
searching questions.”
The confident optimism of this last remark undoubtedly goes too far.
Living thinkers have often been asked “a few searching questions,” but their
answers have not stopped “interminable controversies” about their real
meaning. It is none the less true that there would be far greater clarity of un­
derstanding than is now often the case, if more such searching questions had
been directed to great thinkers while they were still alive.
This, at any rate, is the basic thought behind the present undertaking.
The volumes of The Library of Living Philosophers can in no sense take the
place of the major writings of great and original thinkers. Students who
would know the philosophies of such men as John Dewey, George Santayana,
Alfred North Whitehead, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ernst Cassirer,
Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Carnap, Martin Buber, et al., will still need to read the
writings of these men. There is no substitute for first-hand contact with the
original thought of the philosopher himself. Least of all does this Library pre­
tend to be such a substitute. The Library in fact will spare neither effort nor
expense in offering to the student the best possible guide to the published
writings of a given thinker. We shall attempt to meet this aim by providing at
the end of each volume in our series a complete bibliography of the published
work of the philosopher in question. Nor should one overlook the fact that
essays in each volume cannot but finally lead to this same goal. The inter­
pretative and critical discussions of the various phases of a great thinker’s
work and, most of all, the reply of the thinker himself, are bound to lead the
reader to the works of the philosopher himself.
* This General Introduction, setting forth the underlying conception this Library, is purposely
reprinted in each volume (with only very minor changes).
viii GENERAL INTRODUCTION
At the same time, there is no denying the fact that different experts find
different ideas in the writings of the same philosopher. This is as true of the
appreciative interpreter and grateful disciple as it is of the critical opponent.
Nor can it be denied that such differences of reading and of interpretation on
the part of other experts often leave the neophyte aghast before the whole
maze of widely varying and even opposing interpretations. Who is right and
whose interpretation shall he accept? When the doctors disagree among
themselves, what is the poor student to do? If, in desperation, he decides that
all of the interpreters are probably wrong and that the only thing for him to
do is to go back to the original writings of the philosopher himself and then
make his own decision—uninfluenced (as if this were possible) by the inter­
pretation of any one else—the result is not that he has actually come to the
meaning of the original philosopher himself, but rather that he has set up one
more interpretation, which may differ to a greater or lesser degree from the
interpretations already existing. It is clear that in this direction lies chaos, just
the kind of chaos which Schiller has so graphically and inimitably described.1
It is curious that until now no way of escaping this difficulty has been
seriously considered. It has not occured to students of philosophy that one
effective way of meeting the problem at least partially is to put these varying
interpretations and critiques before the philosopher while he is still alive and
to ask him to act at one and at the same time as both defendant and judge. If
the world’s great living philosophers can be induced to cooperate in an enter­
prise whereby their own work can, at least to some extent, be saved from
becoming merely “dessicated lecture-fodder,” which on the one hand
“provides innocuous sustenance for ruminant professors,” and, on the other
hand, gives an opportunity to such ruminants and their understudies to
“speculate safely, endlessly, and fruitlessly, about what a philosopher must
have meant” (Schiller), they will have taken a long step toward making their
intentions clearly comprehensible.
With this in mind, The Library of Living Philosophers expects to publish
at more or less regular intervals a volume on each of the greater among the
world’s living philosophers. In each case it will be the purpose of the editor of
the Library to bring together in the volume the interpretations and criticisms
of a wide range of that particular thinker’s scholarly contemporaries, each of
whom will be given a free hand to discuss the specific phase of the thinker’s
work which has been assigned to him. All contributed essays will finally be
submitted to the philosopher with whose work and thought they are con­
cerned, for his careful perusal and reply. And, although it would be expecting
too much to imagine that the philosopher’s reply will be able to stop all
differences of interpretation and of critique, this should at least serve the pur­
pose of stopping certain of the grosser and more general kinds of misinter­