Author Archives: Rafe

A student who is studying Popper in London  sent this paper by David Papineau for comment. His immediate task is to write a paper on induction so I will not dwell on other matters except to suggest that Popper deserves some credit … Continue reading →

At last the ms has become an ebook.  Misreading Popper. Popper made an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science and he made a significant mark in several other fields as well, including political philosophy and the theory of rationality. … Continue reading →

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 →