critical rationalism blog

In this paper Gunther Wachterhauser tells a fascinating story of the evolution of ideas about the nature of living matter, and how living things evolved, with a highly speculative theory about the very beginning of life on earth.

That is the background to his explanation of Popperism as the alternative to inductivism – hence the title of the essay “The Uses of Karl Popper”. It is a chapter in a book edited by Anthony O’Hear, Karl Popper: Philosophy and Problems. CUP 1995.

And here is Wachterhauser on Light and Life, and the origin of Visual Perception.

Bartley wrote another long paper (more than 10,000 words) to demonstrate how the dominant philosophy of physics is refuted by biology (and is defective as the philosophy of physics). The paper begins with an exchange between Popper and a leading physicist, with Popper drawing applause from the biologists present when he pointed out that ‘what you say is refuted biology’.

The central theme of the paper is the way physics took on board the philosophy of idealism – “to be is to be perceived”- and became hostage to the doctrines of “sensationalism” (nothing to do with the gutter press) and “presentationalism” as opposed to the realistic approach that Bartley labeled “representationalism”.

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Some time ago in this essay on the three world theory and literary criticism I suggested that there was a degree of similarity in at least one of the problems confronted by Popper and Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein, like Popper and Piaget, was taught by Buhler and he refused to take on board the mechanistic cause-and-effect model of physics to account for human language and behaviour. Wittgenstein’s response is his doctrine of  forms of life and language games. This may be compared with Popper’s answer – the three world theory, critical rationalism and conjectural objective knowledge. These divergent lines of thought are generally considered to be incommensurable and none of the myriad of books and articles generated by the Wittgenstein industry even mentions Popper. But once their common problem is recognised then they can be compared in terms of the fertility of their different solutions.

Bill Bartley did some research on the careers of Popper and Wittgenstein and turned up a lot of interesting information which adds some support to that proposition. The important factor was the exposure that each receive to the ideas of the Wurzburg school of psychlogists, especially their theories of language. He wrote a very long (10,000 word) paper on Wittgenstein and Popper as Austrian Schoolteachers. Because the paper is so long, I have done a short form which is less than half the size in case this is more helpful for busy readers who don’t need all the scholarly details. Even the short form is still very wordy, so be prepared to skim!

Anthony de Jasay is one of my favorite commentators, he is a libertarian or very strong liberal and a regular columnist even in his old age.  A search reveals that he is Hungarian born and spent time in both Austria and Australia!

After two years in Austria, he emigrated to Australia in 1950 and took a part-time course in Economics at the University of Western Australia. Winning a Hackett Studentship, he went to Oxford in 1955 and was elected a research fellow of Nuffield College where he stayed till 1962, publishing papers in the Economic Journal, the Journal of Political Economy and other learned journals.

In 1991 he published a scathing critique of  Popper and piecemeal social engineering, this turned  up by accident when I was browsing in Questia, the on-line library.

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Xmas bookshopping, found the fourth volume of Sir Anthony Kenny’s history of western philosophy dealing with modern times, starting with Bentham to Neitzsche, then Pierce to Strawson, then Freud to Derrida, Logic, Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, God.

Popper gets a sentence in the section on Logical Positivism (in the Logic chapter) before two or three pages on Wittgenstein. (Witt gets space in Metaphysics as well, in fact the index shows between 30 and 40 pages for Witt spread over several chapters).

The reference in Logic reads something like “The most enduring legacy of the logical positivists is probably Logik der Forschung by Karl Popper who was not actually a member of the Circle”. But no hint about the contents or the differences with the Circle.

Kenny is apparently a scholar of theology and Wittgenstein. You would never have guessed:)

In the Politics chapter there are a couple of good paras on The Open Society.

Nothing in the chapters on epistemology, mind or metaphysics.