Monthly Archives: April 2014

Looking through the misreadings of Popper that are collected in my forthcoming book, the following thoughts occurred about the work required for a good critique. Whether not commentators agree with Popper’s views, if they write about him  they need to read  all … Continue reading →

HELP WANTED AGAIN. In Unended Quest  Popper questioned the scientific status of evolutionary theory which he regarded as a metaphysical research program. Some time later he changed his mind and agreed that aspects of evolutionary theory can be tested and … Continue reading →

Popper was prepared to allow a little dogmatism to persist with a theory that appeared to be in trouble with anomalies. Bartley wrote that this did not need to be described in terms of dogmatism, instead we would just accept … Continue reading →

Can someone recall the source of this Popperism? I suggest that much confusion is due to the tendency of attributing to Science (with a capital S) a kind of omniscience and I suggest that this theological view of science ought … Continue reading →

Frank has put me under pressure to finish my book, so I have made the concluding chapter very short so I can get done this weekend (more realistically, this week). The  book starts with a run through Popper’s progress, the … Continue reading →

As I reach the end of my booklet Misreading Popper the thought occurs that some kind of constructive and forward-looking conclusion is required, in addition to challenging the philosophers to read Popper more carefully. So I want to say that  … Continue reading →

The grue emerald problem surely ranks with the Gettier problem as a red herring of the first order, generated by the misguided quest for confirmation, like Hempel’s paradox of the ravens. The paradox of the ravens means that the existence of … Continue reading →

The first edition was published in 2000 in the Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy Series. Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings (eds Balashov and Rosenberg, 2004) is a companion anthology. After a chapter on scientific explanation and a chapter on the … Continue reading →

The author took his first degree in Sydney and is a Distinguished Professor in Philosophy in the Graduate Centre at the City University of New York. His   book Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection won the 2010 Lakatos award. This book is an … Continue reading →