Karl Popper Quotes

“The word 'proof' should strictly only be used when we are dealing with deductive inferences.... Popper claimed that scientists only need to use deductive inferences.... So if a scientist is only interested in demonstrating that a given theory is false, she may be able to accomplish her goal without the use of inductive inferences.... When a scientist collects experimental data, her aim might be to show that a particular theory...is false. She will have to resort to inductive reasoning.... So Popper's attempt to show that science can get by without induction does not succeed.”
― Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction

“We" are the empirical decision makers who hold that uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“The failure of Popper's demarcation criterion throws up an important question. Is it actually possible to find some common feature shared by all the things we call 'science...'? It may be that they share some fixed set of features that define what it is to be science, but it may not.... If so, a simple criterion for demarcating science from pseudo-science is unlikely to be found.”
― Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction

“It is often asserted that, in view of the situation in quantum theory, object and subject can no longer be sharply separated. 1 To use Heitler’s words, the ‘separation of the world into an “objective outside reality”, and “us”, the self-conscious onlookers, can no longer be maintained. Object and subject become inseparable from each other’. 2 This, according to Bohr, is due to ‘the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behaviour of atomic objects and the interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear’. 3 Heitler elaborates the point in some detail. ‘One may ask’, he writes, ‘if it is sufficient to carry out a measurement by a self-registering apparatus or whether the presence of an observer is required.’ And he arrives at the conclusion that the self-registering apparatus is insufficient, and that ‘the observer appears, as a necessary part of the whole structure, and in his full capacity as a conscious being’.”
― Karl Popper

“…the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than Popper (or, for that matter, most scientists) would have us believe. There is, in other words, no litmus test.”
― Massimo Pigliucci, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

“[...] while I felt that the Marxist attitude towards their theory was not at all admirable but was typically dogmatic and had all these properties which the Marxists usually said were characteristic of the churches. So I realized fairly early that Marxism was more of a church than of a science.”
― Karl Popper

“1. Human beings meet their needs by using the resources in their environment.
2. Human beings have a limited knowledge of their environment.
3. Human beings have the ability to learn and remember so their knowledge of their environment increases over time.
4. As human knowledge of the environment increases, new ways of meeting human needs become available.
5. If the news ways of meeting human needs are better than the old ways of meeting human needs they will be adopted and the old ways discarded.
6. The adoption of new ways of meeting human needs constitutes social and cultural change in itself, but also leads to further social and cultural change.
7. The order of discovery of new means of meeting human needs follows a particular path from that which is most easily discovered to that which is more difficult to discover. Many discoveries require prior discoveries before the discovery can take place. This means there is a necessary order in the discoveries that constitute and cause social and cultural change.
8. The particular order in the discoveries, means social and cultural change occurs in a particular order, so that the sequence of social and cultural change is inevitable and is rationally understandable.

All of the above statements appear to be obviously correct. If they are then the study of social and cultural history can be considered to be a science in the same way as biological evolution is considered to be a science. Social and cultural change derived from increasing human knowledge is not random and so can be scientifically understood. We can not predict the future of social and cultural change as we do not know what future discoveries we will make. This is analogous to biological evolution where changes in living species are unpredictable as we do not know what changes will occur in the environment of those species. However biological evolution does make changes in living species rationally understandable, just as an analysis of the order of discovery of the human environment makes social and cultural change rationally understandable.”
― Rochelle Forrester

“Ever increasing human knowledge is the ultimate cause of the development of human societies from hunter gathering to agrarian to industrial societies. However as human societies change from one form to another, there are substantial changes in the social and cultural institutions of those societies. The different types of societies tend to develop with different population structures, class systems, belief systems, government and legal systems, and different types of economies. The changes to these social and cultural systems are dependent on the prior changes to technological systems and so occur in a particular order as the technological changes occur in a particular order.”
― Rochelle Forrester

“Changes in human knowledge causes changes in technology and through the effect that technology has on the social and cultural systems of a society, the change in human knowledge will affect all elements in that society. Changes in human knowledge may also directly affect the social and cultural systems in human society. Ideas such as biological evolution and cultural relativity have affected human society, without producing any technological innovations. Human history in all its elements will be effected by the increase in knowledge that gradually accumulates in human culture.”
― Rochelle Forrester

“But the approach to truth is not easy. There is only one way towards it, the way through error. Only through our errors can we learn; and only he will learn who is ready to appreciate and even to cherish the errors of others as stepping stones towards truth, and who searches for his own errors: who tries to find them, since only when he has become aware of them can he free himself from them.”
― Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World

“Race and religion have been deliberately conflated. All the intolerant have to do is say that it’s racist, or politically incorrect, or antisemitic, to challenge them, and the cowed liberals immediately all fall into line like the craven little poodles they are. The one thing the fascists can bank on is that if they play the race card, or any other minority card, they gain instant and total immunity. All the useful idiots of liberalism will rally around them and support them. But all intelligent Westerners should see through the scam. Islam is not, and never will be, a race. It has nothing to do with race. It’s a totalitarian system trying to take over the world, and everyone has the right and indeed duty to oppose it.”
― Jim Lee, In (Unlikely) Praise of Donald Trump: Embracing America’s Shadow

“Y de eso se trata, de trabajar en estar cada vez menos errados, de alejarnos progresivamente de lo falso o “no verdadero” como mecanismo iterativo de acercamiento asintótico hacia la verdad”
― Juan I. Fernández, Libertad para Gente Inteligente: De la cognición a la acción