Author Archives: Rafe

There is an old saying that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, falsely attributed to the Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke who presided over the event. I suppose it means that battles are won by teamwork … Continue reading →

Sometimes I wonder about the libertarian movement, how it is going world-wide – numbers, influence, key figures, new ideas etc. Anyway, this is a London event billed as the most glittering libertarian event on the Continent. Nice that they think … Continue reading →

On the History and Philosophy of Science email list someone wrote: “I always wonder what scientists are claiming when they say they are Popperians.  Very few, if any, I have found, eschew confirmation (and positive evidence) in practice.  Mostly they … Continue reading →

You could say that a Soil Science student in Australia had a better chance of getting a positive introduction to Popper than a Philosophy student. That was when Keith Barley and Geoffrey Leeper were teaching Soil Science.

I don’t want to be pedantic about this, it looks as though this is a British/US difference. For those who like to get the full story on these things there is more from Wik.

“Analytic philosophy is not so much a school of thought as a style or method. It is a style of philosophizing which seeks to be rigorous and careful.”  A C Grayling in the Introduction to Philosophy 1. “This makes it, … Continue reading →

For those who did not pursue the links in the Larry Boland CR Scholar post, you missed a treat in the anthropological study of the economists. A sample:

This is lifted from a paper on  Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge, prepared for a short radio talk. The paper started with the four-stage problem-solving schema P -> TS -> EE -> new P and there were four aims.

The GMU Program is a label that I used for a line of research that links theory and practice in the appropriate manner. It comes from the work that is done by a mix of Austrians, quasi-Austrians and fellow travellers … Continue reading →

This is a summary of a really helpful paper which introduced the idea of problem-solving as a feature of effective thinking and learning. The paper was in a collection of papers that I bought from the remaindered books table in … Continue reading →