Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge

Karl Popper is one of the wisest philosophers in the 20th century. And in contrast to the logical positivists (for example, Carnap) who tried to ignore him, he is still relevant today while they are not.

You (mean Amazom) should set up reader's group about important book like this one. And give the kindle print edition as possible you can. The paper edition buyer has right to as you do that. Every one will get no harm, but benefit.

The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge (2009) was first published in German in 1979. It is a thick book comprising a collection of drafts and preliminary work from the years 1930 to 1933 for Karl Popper's first published book Logik der Forschung (1934). The Logik der Forschung was not published in English until 1959 with the title The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Popper seemed to have a habit of writing and then delaying publishing for decades. The delay in publication of the three volumes of the Postscript is the other notable example, written in the fifties and published in the eighties. It is unfortunate for generations of students that Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and others in the meantime interpreted Popper's work so separated from his actual writings that at times they may as well have been talking about something else entirely. It is not criticism that is an issue but misattribution of Popper's views before criticism. It reminds me of the time my Scottish grandfather was at a funeral and could not conjoin the content of the eulogy with the deceased subject, he leaned over and whispered "I think we are at the wrong funeral". I recommend the purchase of The Two Fundamental Problems even if one only wants to read the introduction written by Popper in 1978. The introduction is as good a synopsis some of his core themes as I have read, startling in clarity and brilliance. Some aphoristic points: 1. Plato's Apology of Socrates is perhaps the most beautiful philosophical work known. Socrates is a little wiser than others perhaps because he knows that he does not know. 2. For Kant, Newton's theory is not empirically gleaned from phenomena through the senses but is derived from our understanding. Kant believes Newton's theory is true, Popper adds that it is not necessarily so. 3. Up until the Einsteinian revolution, Newton's theory was corroborated better than anyone could have dreamed of. For Kant Newton's theory is justifiable science, and therefore certain knowledge. For Einstein knowledge about reality is uncertain. 4. Fallibilism destroys scientism. 5. Science is the searching for truth: not the possession of truth, but the quest for truth. The idea of truth as manifest is unfortunately widespread. 6. In Popper's view there is only one theory of truth that is to be seriously entertained: the correspondence theory; namely the thesis that the truth of a statement consists in its correspondence with the facts. The statement, "A cat is sleeping here", is true, if and only if, a cat is sleeping here, no matter what language "A cat is sleeping here" (the object language) is spoken in. 7. We must sharply distinguish between the question of whether a statement is decidable (whether we believe we can prove it true or false) and the question of its truth. 8. Universal theories are fundamentally hypothetical or conjectural because they are not decidably true. This does not mean however that they may not be true. 9. The criterion for demarcation (falsifiability) is non-empirical. It was not obtained by observing what scientists do or do not do whether by studying living scientists or by studying the history of science. 10. Theories such as the Einsteinian and Newtonian theories of gravitation have an infinite number of potential falsifiers. 11. I have strongly emphasised in The Logic of Scientific Discovery that there is almost certainly no such thing as indubitable (or final) falsification by observation. 12. The critical attitude is characterised by the fact that we try not to verify our theories but rather to falsify them. Naturally one should not dwell on errors that are easily repaired but, if possible, correct them before embarking on serious criticism. 13. It is not even possible to formulate a principle of induction that is moderately plausible. 14. The fundamental weakness of inductivism lies in its extremely popular but fundamentally erroneous tabula rasa theory of the human mind. We are active, creative, inventive, even if our inventions are controlled by natural selection. The stimulus-response scheme is replaced by the mutation-selection scheme (mutation= new action). Knowledge is not a passive expression of the "data" provided by the senses. and last but not least Problem of induction (Hume's problem) : "Can we know more than we know?" Problem of demarcation (Kant's problem) : "When is a science not science?" I think Popper's answer to these problems is: we don't know but we do guess and we can structure our guesses as criticisable and falsifiable. A Guide to The Logic of Scientific Discovery (The Popular Popper) Reason and Imagination (Critical Rationalist Papers)

Simply a classic

This is the hardest of all of Popper's works to read and understand. There are vast tracts of the book that deal with highly technical logical arguments, the point of which can take a lot of work by the reader to understand. And yet... ...and yet, buried in this book are many passages and arguments that are pure gold. Some of the arguments are in fact startling, and if this book had been published in English long ago, then it is hard to see how any of the criticisms of Lakatos and Feyerbend etc. could have been seen to have any bite at all. What is most starting about the book is that it reveals that the very points that these later critics had raised against Popper (such as the Duhem-Quine problem, and the problem of the practical acheivability of actual falsification) are among the central problems that Popper was wrestling with on his way to solving them with his methodological theories (as they appear in The Logic of Scientific Discovery). Indeed, it would be more fair to speak of the "Duhem-Popper" problem if 1933 could be taken as the actual date of original publication. The detailed arguments uses as he shows how the logic of falsifiability can be translated into methodological principles for falsification run like a seam of gold through the later part of the book. The book also stands as a corrective to those who think that the demarcation problem is peripheral to Popper's thought, and that it was a mere distraction from Popper's main thought. Popper's destruction of early Wittgensteinian logical positivism is seen as a counter to Wittgenstein's own demarcation theory, both to be understood in the context of a crisis in physics in the early part of the 20th Century. Popper even shows how the problem of induction reduces to the problem of demarcation. The full extent of Popper's scholarship, and the brilliance of his interpretation and critique of Kant and post-Kantian philosophy fills up much of the bulk of the book. Reading it, one can only laugh that the phrase "naive falsficationist" was even invented. If there was ever a less naive philosopher, I'd like to know who it was. Also a treasure for the true Popper fan is his early writings on biology, behaviourism, evolution, and psychologism. Arguments that seem to appear only in later Popper, can now be seen as having been central to his thinking from the earliest stages. This isn't a book for the faint of heart. It is a serious book for the serious scholar, but it is a book that should be read widely in order that just as Popper returned to Kant following the failure of the post-Kantian philosophers, so we may return to Popper given the sterility of the post-Popperian philosophers of science.

現在日本語訳は出ていないが、本書は若き日のポパーの科学思想を基本的に位置付ける論文であり、その内容は極めて示唆に富む。 ポパーが先達として敬愛するカントへの論評も多くみられることから、読者には事前にカントの主著である ” 純粋理性批判 ” の理解・把握が求められよう。 ポパーの原文は独語による著作で、本書は英語圏の読者待望の出版であり、ポパーのその後の思想展開の根底をなす初期論文として、大変重要な内容を含んでいる。 就中、induction（帰納法の問題点） , demarcation（科学と非科学の峻別） に焦点が当てられている。 また、若きポパーが、カントの純粋理性批判の認識論に対し ” transcendental deduction" について " typical example of the confusion of epistemological with genetic-psychological aspects ”と勇気をもって切り込んでおり、” optimistic apriorism ” と論評している論旨は、根源的な問題提起として傾聴に値するものと評し得よう。 本書は、その内容の重要性から邦訳により多くの読者を獲得すべき論文である。

A valuable translation.

Great book. Very happy that this book is finally available in the English language.

very good