8 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Dibakar Das Media type Print Originally published 1934 Subject Philosophy of science Genres Science, Non-fiction | 4/5 Goodreads Language German OCLC 62448100 Original title Logik der Forschung | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Pages 513 (2002 Routledge edition) ISBN 3-16-148410-X (German edition)
0-415-27844-9 (2002 Routledge edition) Page count 513 (2002 Routledge edition) Similar The Open Society and Its En, Conjectures and Refutations, The Structure of Scientific, The Poverty of Historicism, Objective knowledge | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Logic of Scientific Discovery is a 1959 book about the philosophy of science by Karl Popper. Popper rewrote his book in English from the 1934 German original, titled Logik der Forschung. Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft, which literally translates as, Logic of Research: On the Epistemology of Modern Natural Science. The work is famous.
Contents
Summary
Popper argues that science should adopt a methodology based on falsifiability, because no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a single experiment can contradict one. Popper held that empirical theories are characterized by falsifiability.
Reception
The Logic of Scientific Discovery is famous. Harry Guntrip wrote that its publication "greatly stimulated the discussion of the nature of scientific knowledge", including by philosophers who did not completely agree with Popper, such as Thomas Kuhn and Horace Romano Harré. Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, valued the work. The writer Vincent Brome recalls Jung remarking in 1938 that it exposed "some of the shortcomings of science". Historian Peter Gay described Popper's work as "an important treatise in epistemology". Philosopher Bryan Magee wrote that Popper's criticisms of logical positivism were "devastating". In his view, Popper's most important argument against logical positivism is that, while it claimed to be a scientific theory of the world, its central tenet, the verification principle, effectively destroyed all of science. Physicist Alan Sokal argued that a significant part of the problems that currently affect the philosophy of science "can be traced to ambiguities or inadequacies" in Popper's book.