There will be a Popper Symposium in Pennsylvania, September 16-18, 2014.
The twentieth anniversary of Karl Popper’s death (September 17, 1994) provides a fitting occasion to reflect on Popper’s contributions to many fields of inquiry …
A session of the symposium will be devoted to the recent work of Dr. Mark Notturno regarding differences between Popper and Hayek …
The symposium will take place on the campus of Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania …
Here is the link:
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=214975
This should be interesting. I’ve alway thought there is a lot of possible synergy to be generated between the ideas of Hayek and Popper via their methodological individualism, their theories of knowledge, their institutional approach toward society, and their interest in extended orders.
A good example of this might be Larry Boland’s paper that explores the limits of equilibrium models starting with comments by Hayek and supplementing them with Popper’s ideas about the growth of knowledge:
Equilibrium process vs. equilibrium attainment (pdf).
However, it seems that the Notturno aspect of this symposium will mainly be focused on arguing Hayek had “propensities toward scientism and economism.” There will also be criticism presented of Hayek’s ideas as far as they concern democracy and the rule of law.
If you are interested in attending the symposium, there is still time to submit a paper. Please follow the link and check out the details.
Hi Matt, Many thanks for posting the announcement. Please advise those interested in contributing papers at the symposium to email abstracts (with author contact info and affiliation) to popper2014@lvc.edu. Also, please note an updated symposium webpage is available at http://www.lvc.edu/history-politics-globalstudies/popper.aspx. Best regards, Philip
Thanks for the announcement.
I look forward to reading Mark Notturno’s book.
What seems to me particularly interesting in the comparison between Hayek and Popper relates to democracy.
In most, if not all, cases, parliamentary democracies proceed in a piecemeal, step by step, fashion by introducing new rules as responses to specific problems. Yet Hayek made it clear in The Constitution of Liberty that he does not regard this kind of democratic process as a spontaneous evolution leading to progress (leading to the discovering of better institutions). Popper, on the contrary, approved such a process since it is an example of what he called piecemeal social engineering. Hayek and Popper had a different conception of the development of institutions (Popper was more democrat than Hayek on this matter).
Regards,
Régis Servant.
Popper wanted the process of piecemeal reform to be checked by critical appraisal of the outcome of the reforms. This has not happened and we have reached a situation in most of the Western democracies where the combination of unfunded expenditure and the growing mass of intervention and regulation by red and green tape is not sustainable in the long term. Greece, here we come:)
The (tentative) schedule is now available at http://www.lvc.edu/popper