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REALISM and the AIM of SCIENCE Titles by Karl Popper Available from Routledge REALISM AND THE AIM OF SCIENCE Titles by Karl Popper available from Routledge THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES VOLUME I THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES VOLUME II THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS UNENDED QUEST THE SELF AND ITS BRAIN (with J. C. Eccles) THE OPEN UNIVERSE QUANTUM THEORY AND THE SCHISM IN PHYSICS IN SEARCH OF A BETTER WORLD KNOWLEDGE AND THE BODY-MIND PROBLEM THE MYTH OF THE FRAMEWORK THE LESSON OF THIS CENTURY THE WORLD OF PARMENIDES ALL LIFE IS PROBLEM SOLVING REALISM AND THE AIM OF SCIENCE KARL POPPER From the POSTSCRIPT TO THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY Edited by W. W. Bartley, III Routledge R Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1983 Paperback edition 1985 Reprinted 1992, 1994, 1996 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Reprinted with corrections 1999 and 2000 Transferred to Digital Printing 2005 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group ©1956, 1983 Karl Popper All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-415-08400-8 TO MY EDITOR For his rescue of the Postscript CONTENTS Editor's Foreword xi Acknowledgements xvn Introduction, 1982 xix REALISM AND THE AIM OF SCIENCE Preface, 1956 5 PART I: THE CRITICAL APPROACH Chapter /. INDUCTION I I 1. (* 1) A Puzzled Philosopher Abroad. 2. (*2) The Critical Approach. Solution of the Problem of Induction. 3. (*3) On So-Called Inductive Procedures, with Notes on Learning, and on the Inductive Style. 4. (*4) A Family of Four Problems of Induction. 5. (*5) Why the Fourth Stage of the Problem is Metaphysical. 6. (*6) The Metaphysical Problem. 7. (*7) Metaphysical Realism. 8. (*8) Hume's Metaphysics. 'Neutral' Monism. 9. (*9) Why the Subjective Theory of Knowledge Fails. 10. (*10) A World Without Riddles. 11. (* 11) The Status of Theories and of Theoretical Concepts. Note on Numbering of Sections. The sections in each of the three volumes of the Postscript, and in the two parts of the first volume, are numbered consecutively, beginning with section 1. The original section numbers, indicating the order of the sections within the Postscript as a whole, are given in starred brackets in the Tables of Contents. Ed. vii CONTENTS 12. (*12) Criticism of Instrumentalism. Instrumentalism and the Problem of Induction. 13. (»13) Instrumentalism Against Science. 14. (*14) Science Against Instrumentalism. 15. (*15) The Aim of Science. 16. (*16) Difficulties of Metaphysical Realism. By a Metaphysical Realist. Chapter II. DEMARCATION 17. (*17) The Significance of the Problem of Demarcation. 18. (*18) A Case of Verificationism. 19. CM 9) Testability But Not Meaning. 20. (*20) Non-Testable Statements. 21. (*21) The Problem of <Eliminating, Metaphysics. 22. (»22) The Asymmetry between Falsification and Verification. 23. (*23) Why Even Pseudo-Sciences May Well Be Meaningful. Metaphysical Programmes for Science. Chapter III. METAPHYSICS: SENSE OR NONSENSE? 24. (*24) Logical Remarks on Testability and Metaphysics. 25. (*25) Metaphysical Terms Can Be Defined by Empirical Terms. 26. (*26) The Changing Philosophy of Sense and Nonsense. Chapter IV. CORROBORATION 27. (*27) Corroboration: Certainty, Uncertainty, Probability. 28. (*28) 'Corroboration' or'Probability'? 29. (*29) Corroboration or Confirmation? 30. (*30) The Problem of Degree of Corroboration. 31. (*32) Corroboration. 32. (::*32A) Some Further Comments on the Definition of Degree of Corroboration. 33. (::"33) Humanism, Science, and the Inductive Prejudice. (*31) Addendum: Critical Remarks on Meaning Analysis. vni CONTENTS PART II. THE PROPENSITY INTERPRETATION OF PROBABILITY Chapter I. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PROBABILITIES 281 1. (*34) The Meanings of Probability. 2. (*35) Relative and Absolute Probabilities. 3. (*36) The Propensity Interpretation. Objective and Subjective Interpretations. 4. (*37) Experimental Tests and their Repetition: Independence. 5. (*38) The Logical Interpretation. 6. (*39) Comparing the Objective and the Subjective Interpretation. 7. (*40) The Objectivist and Subjectivist Interpretations of V in 'pfaby Chapter II. CRITICISM OF PROBABILISTIC INDUCTION 301 8. (Ml) The Simple Inductive Rule. 9. (*42) How to Interpret the Simple Inductive Rule Where It Works. ( y 10. (*43) Summing up of the Status of b in 'p(ayby 11. (*44) The Diminishing Returns of Learning by Induction. 12. (*45) The Paradox of Inductive Learning. 13. (*46) An Inductive Machine. 14. (*47) The Impossibility of an Inductive Logic. 15. (»48) Probability Logic vs. Inductive Logic. 16. (»49) The Inductivist Interpretation of Probability. 17. (*50) The Redundancy of Theories. 18. (*51) No Point in Testing a Theory. 19. (*52) Summary of this Criticism. Addendum 1981: A Brief Summary of the Criticism of Probabilistic Induction. Chapter III. REMARKS ON THE OBJECTIVE THEORIES OF PROBABILITY 347 20. (*53) The Case for Propensities. 21. (*54) Where the Frequency Theory Succeeds. 22. (-55) Where the Frequency Theory Fails. 23. (-56) The Significance of the Failure. 24. (-57) The Neo-Classical and the Frequency Theory Contrasted. IX CONTENTS (*58) The Structure of the Neo-Classical Theory. (*59) Singular Probability Statements. (*60) Further Criticism of the Subjective and Logical Theories. (*61) The Propensity Interpretation of the Probability of Single Events. Concluding Summary, 1982 403 x EDITOR'S FOREWORD THIS book, Realism and the Aim of Science, is the first volume of Sir Karl Popper's long-awaited Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Although it was written some twenty-five years ago, it has never before been published. It contains a new and highly expanded development of Popper's views on induction, demarca­ tion, and corroboration, and also presents his propensity theory of probability. This book also contains a detailed consideration of and reply to numerous criticisms and objections that have been made to Popper's views over the years since The Logic of Scientific Discovery was first published. Together with other parts of the Postscript (all of which are now being published), this volume was written mainly during the years 1951-56, at the time when Logik der Forschung, Popper's first published book (1934), was being translated into English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery. The different volumes of the Postscript were originally part of a series of Appendices to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, in which Popper proposed to correct, expand, and develop the ideas of his first book. Some of these Appendices were in fact included in The Logic of Scientific Discovery when it was published in 1959. But one group of Appendices took on a life of its own, and gradually grew into a single, closely-integrated work—far exceeding the original Logik der Forschung in length. It was decided to publish this new work—called the Postscript: After Twenty Years—as a sequel or companion volume to The Logic of Scientific Discovery. And it was accordingly set in type, in galley proofs, in 1956-57. Within a few months of the anticipated publication, however, the project came grinding to a halt. In Unended Quest, his intellectual xi EDITOR'S FOREWORD autobiography, Sir Karl has reported of these galley proofs: 'Proof reading turned into a nightmare. ... I then had to have operations on both eyes. After this I could not start proof reading again for some time, and as a result the Postscript is still unpublished.' I remember this time vividly: I went to Vienna to visit Popper in the hospital there shortly after his operation for several detachments of both retinas; and we worked on the Postscript as he was recuper­ ating. For a long time he could barely see, and we were very much afraid that he would become blind. When he was able to see again, a great deal of work was done on the Postscript: several sections were added, and thousands of correc­ tions were made to the galleys. But the pressure of other work had now become too great, and virtually nothing was added to the text after 1962. During the next, highly productive decade, after pub­ lishing Conjectures and Refutations (1963), Popper completed and published three new books: Objective Knowledge: An Evolution­ ary Approach (1972), Unended Quest (1974 and 1976), and (with Sir John Eccles) The Self and Its Brain (1977), as well as many papers. These were the years, and the works, in which his now famous theory of objective mind (and of Worlds 1, 2, and 3) was developed, and in which his approach was extended into the biological sciences. Meanwhile, the Postscript, which represented the culmination of Sir Karl's work in the philosophy of physics, went unpublished. But not unread: most of Popper's closest students and colleagues have studied this work, and several have had copies of the galley proofs over the years. It is a source of great satisfaction to those like myself, who have known this book and been deeply influenced by it, to see it finally completed and shared with the general public. The text that has now been edited for publication is essentially that which existed in 1962. Except in a few places, as marked, no major alterations have been made. It was felt that this was the appropriate approach to a work that had now acquired, through its influence on Popper's students and colleagues, an historical charac­ ter—some twenty-five years having passed since its composition, and forty-five years since the writing of the original Logik der Forschung.
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