Karl Popper

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Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902, Vienna – 17 September 1994, London) was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics.

Opponent of application of grand social theories to political practice, which he held would inevitably lead to totalitarianism, Popper is noted for his proposition that any theory must be capable of falsification if it is to be accepted as a valid theory; an opponent of the Logical Positivism for which his hometown of Vienna is famous, Popper developed the concept of “Objective Knowledge”, socially transmitted through institutions, practices and social experience as the foundation of knowledge, as opposed to the individualistic approach of many others concerned with the problems of epistemology and the methodology of science.

Educated at the University of Vienna, Popper emigrated to New Zealand in 1937, teaching at the University of New Zealand in Christchurch and then to England in 1945, where he was granted British citizenship and lived for the remainder of his life. He lectured in Philosophy at University College Cambridge (1937-1945) and in 1969 was appointed an Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics. He has held a variety of positions and lectured at Universities throughout Europe and America.

Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) launched scathing attacks on totalitarian ideology of both Left (in the first volume) and Right (in the second volume published later), and succeeded in making enemies for him in just about every direction. Nevertheless, over time, his insistence that social problems are best solved by piecemeal social engineering rather than grand world-transforming crusades, came to descriptive of what most people were doing, and he gained a wider audience from the early 1960s.

Popper wrote extensively on the history and philosophy of science, his Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972) popularised the concept of “falsifiability” as a criterion of validity of a theory, and developed an epistemology which endeavoured to overcome the subjectivism of the dominant Logical Positivist currents. (Source)

Works

Monographs

  • Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie [1930-33], ed. Troels Eggers Hansen, Tübingen: Mohr, 1979. (German)
    • The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, trans. A. Pickel, London: Routledge, 2007. (English)
  • Das Elend des Historizismus [1936], 1957. First presented as private reading at a meeting in Brussels, 1936; first published as a series of articles in Econometrica, 1944-1945. (German)
    • Misère de l'historicisme, Paris: Plon, 1956. (French)
    • The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, 1957, xiv+166 pp; 2nd ed., 1961. (English)
    • La miseria del historicismo, trans. Pedro Schwartz, Madrid: Taurus, 1961; Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1972; 1999; 2006, PDF. (Spanish)
    • A Miseria do historicismo, São Paulo: Cultrix, 1980. (Brazilian Portuguese)
    • Mizeria istoricismului, trans. Dan Suciu and Adela Zamfir, Bucharest: All, 1996. (Romanian)
  • The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols., Routledge, 1945. (English)
    • Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde, 2 vols., trans. P. K. Feyerabend, Bern: Francke, 1958; repr., Munich: Francke, 1975. (German)
    • La società aperta e i suoi nemici, 2 vols., trans. Renato Pavetto, Rome: Armando, 1973; 2nd ed., 1981, 485 & 548 pp. (Italian)
    • A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos, 2 vols., trans. Milton Amado, Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, and Sao Paulo: USP, 1974, 394 & 416 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)
    • I anoichti koinonia kai oi echthroi tis [Η ανοιχτή κοινωνία και οι εχθροί της], vol. 1, trans. Ειρήνη Παπαδάκη, Athens, 1980; repr., Athens, 1991, 577 pp. (Greek)
    • Societatea deschisă și dușmanii ei, trans. D. Stoianovici, one volume ("Vraja lui Platon" and "Epoca marilor profeții: Hegel și Marx"), Bucharest: Humanitas, 1992; 2017, 783 pp. (Romanian)
    • Społeczeństwo otwarte i jego wrogowie, 2 vols., trans. Halina Krahelska, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1993, 367 & 422 pp. (Polish)
    • Otevřená společnost a její nepřátelé. I. Uhranuti Platonem, vol. 1, trans. Miloš Calda, Prague: Oikoymenh, 1994, 354 pp. (Czech)
    • Otvoreno društvo i njegovi neprijatelji, 2 vols., 1998, 494 pp. (Bosnian)
    • La sociedad abierta y sus enemigos, 2 vols., trans. Eduardo Loedel Rodríguez, Paidos, 2006, 809 pp. (Spanish)
  • Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London: Routledge, 1962, xii+412 pp; repr., Routledge, 2002. A collection of 21 of Popper's papers on the philosophy of science. Review: Levison (Science). (English)
  • Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, London: Fontana, 1976; 5th ed., Routledge, 2002. (English)
    • Ausgangspunkte. Meine intellektuelle Entwicklung, trans. Friedrich Griese and Karl Popper, Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1979. (German)
  • Realism and the Aim of Science [1956-57], ed. W.W. Bartley III, London: Hutchinson, 1983. (English)
  • Auf der Suche nach einer besseren Welt: Vorträge und Aufsätze aus dreißig Jahren, Munich/Zurich: Piper, 1984; 2nd ed., 1987. (German)
    • In Search of a Better World, 1984. (English)
    • În căutarea unei lumi mai bune, trans. Anca Rădulescu, Bucharest: Humanitas, 1998. (Romanian)

Lectures

  • A World of Propensities, Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990, ix+51 pp. Expanded versions of two lectures given in 1988 and 1989. (English)
  • Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In Defense of Interaction, ed. Mark Amadeus Notturno, London: Routledge, 1995. Based on lectures delivered by the author at Emory University in 1969. (English)
  • The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, ed. Mark Amadeus Notturno, London: Routledge, 1994. A collection of papers "prepared on different occasions as lectures for non-specialist audiences". (English)

Selected essays

  • The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment, eds. Arne F. Petersen with Jørgen Mejer, London: Routledge, 1998, x+328 pp. (English)
  • All Life is Problem Solving, London: Routledge, 1999.
  • Frühe Schriften, ed. Troels Eggers Hansen, 2006. Includes Popper's writings and publications from before the Logic, including his previously unpublished thesis, dissertation and journal articles published that relate to the Wiener Schulreform. (German)
  • After the Open Society, eds. Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner, 2008. Contains Popper's previously unpublished or uncollected writings on political and social themes. (English)

Bibliography

Interviews

  • with Giancarlo Bosetti, La lezione di questo secolo, Venice: Marsilio, 1992. (Italian)
    • The Lesson of this Century, trans. Patrick Camiller, 1992. (English)
    • Lecția acestui secol, trans. Florin Dumitrescu, Bucharest: Nemira, 1998. (Romanian)

Literature

  • Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902-1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna, Cambridge University Press, 2000. Review: Caldwell. (English)
  • Stephen Thornton, "Karl Popper", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1997; rev., 2018. (English)

Links

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