Karl Popper Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Errors, Differences

• It is a myth that the success of science in our time is mainly due to the huge amounts of money that have been spent on big machines. What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Ideas, Growth

• The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities-perhaps the only one-in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.

  Karl Popper

  Dream, Mistake, Learning

  1960 Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), ch.10.

• Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.

  Karl Popper

  Funny, Art, Crazy

  1982 Quoted in the Observer,1Aug.

• All we can do is search for the falsity content in our best theory.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Theory, Falsity

• [Great scientists] are men of bold ideas, but highly critical of their own ideas: they try to find whether their ideas are right by trying first to find whether they are not perhaps wrong. They work with bold conjectures and severe attempts at refuting their own conjectures.

  Karl Popper

  Hard Work, Science, Greatness

  Sir Karl Raimund Popper, Karl Raimund Popper (1974). “The Philosophy of Karl Popper”

• It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

  Karl Popper

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  The Logic of Scientific Discovery Ch. 10

• The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism.

  Karl Popper

  Future, Mean, Science

• Science is not a system of certain, or -established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality... And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover-discover. Like Bacon, we might describe our own contemporary science-'the method of reasoning which men now ordinarily apply to nature'-as consisting of 'anticipations, rash and premature' and as 'prejudices'.

  Karl Popper

  Nature, Science, Men

• I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge,' but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable.'

  Karl Popper

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  The Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 317)

• Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

  Karl Popper

  Learning, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Lecture to British Academy, 20 Jan. 1960, in Proceedings of the British Academy (1960) vol. 46, p. 69

• Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Practice, Criticism

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.87, Routledge

• In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to say that the experimental results are not reliable or that the discrepancies which are asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory are only apparent and that they will disappear with the advance of our understanding. If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Understanding, Benefits

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

• It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions... A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Thinking, People

• Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Technology, Alive

  "My Universe: A Transcendent Reality". Book by Alex Vary, Part II, 2011.

• To give a causal explanation of an event means to deduce a statement which describes it, using as premises of the deduction one or more universal laws, together with certain singular statements, the initial conditions ... We have thus two different kinds of statement, both of which are necessary ingredients of a complete causal explanation.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Science, Law

• [The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality.

  Karl Popper

  Taken, Science, Law

• Almost everyone... seems to be quite sure that the differences between the methodologies of history and of the natural sciences are vast. For, we are assured, it is well known that in the natural sciences we start from observation and proceed by induction to theory. And is it not obvious that in history we proceed very differently? Yes, I agree that we proceed very differently. But we do so in the natural sciences as well.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Differences, Well Known

  Karl Popper (2014). “The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality”, p.140, Routledge

• I am opposed to looking upon logic as a kind of game. ... One might think that it is a matter of choice or convention which logic one adopts. I disagree with this view.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Thinking, Views

• Some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whisky. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing, or by repeating observations.

  Karl Popper

  Drinking, Coffee, Science

  Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, III (2013). “Realism and the Aim of Science: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.36, Routledge

• Science is perhaps the only human activity in which errors are systematically criticized and, in time, corrected.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Errors, Humans

• Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Science, Judgement

• Psychologism is, I believe, correct only in so far as it insists upon what may be called 'methodological individualism' as opposed to 'methodological collectivism'; it rightly insists that the 'behaviour' and the 'actions' of collectives, such as states or social groups, must be reduced to the behaviour and to the actions of human individuals. But the belief that the choice of such an individualist method implies the choice of a psychological method is mistaken.

  Karl Popper

  Mistake, Believe, Science

  "The Open Society and its Enemies".

• There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Principles, Conclusion

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.25, Routledge

• A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.

  Karl Popper

  Attitude, Believe, Successful

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.28, Routledge

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