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With the risk of being unpopular I have to admit I have found what I've read of Popper to be seriously overrated. So far I have gone through The Open Society...
by leto_ii 4y ago
With the risk of being unpopular I have to admit I have found what I've read of Popper to be seriously overrated. So far I have gone through The Open Society... and the better part of The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Open Society to me read mostly like a critique of the political philosophy of Plato, Hegel and Marx, with brief mentions of what the open society is actually supposed to be (I recall some mentions of social engineering and other such things). At best it felt like a grounding for the currently dominant neo-liberal social order.
The Logic... on the other hand does seem to bring novel content, but I feel the core of his endeavor is hopeless. Science definitely doesn't and can't work in a perfectly coherent algorithmic way. Science is a human social process that can't be subjected to a strict methodology. On this front I think Lakatos or even Kuhn are much closer to how things can/do work.
- domenicrosati 4y agoYa... those are not great places to start with him... as far as philosophy of science essays in conjectures and criticisms and objective knowledge are really great and much more mature than the logic for the reasons you mentioned. Plus he develops some of the logical tools like content theory and verisimilitude in really cool ways.
- leto_ii 4y agoConjectures and Refutations is the next one of his on my list :) After The Logic... I do however want to read Feyerabend's Against Method.
- jmeister 4y ago> At best it felt like a grounding for the currently dominant neo-liberal social order. He wrote it at a time when fascism and communism were tearing Europe apart and butchering millions. "Neo-liberal" social order was not at all dominant at that time.
- leto_ii 4y ago> "Neo-liberal" social order was not at all dominant at that time. I meant our current time, not the time of the book's writing.
- wawjgreen 4y agoi agree. i realized Popper was a bozo when he criticized Descartes--the thinker whose achievements made technologies possible that brought us on HN.