#Culture#KARL. Popper is a typical example of young fame.
His more influential works in China: "Open Society and Its Enemies", "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", "Conjecture and Rebuttal", etc., and many of his works were mostly completed in his youth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > a sharp-minded and not "profound" Popper</h1>
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bople was a sought after philosopher by many Chinese college students. His "three worlds" theory and science can only be falsified, not confirmed, and other views have deeply influenced a generation.
Later, his position in the hearts of Chinese college students was gradually replaced by heidegger, a phenomenological master.
In his youth, Popper was also an avid supporter of Marxism. Until one time, he saw a group of Marxists taking to the streets and carrying out violent and bloody movements, which had a great impact on his thinking.
In Popper's view, the progress and development of society should not require violence and bloodshed to carry out. Rather, it is to eradicate all the injustices and inequalities that already exist through modest reform measures, and he is a staunch social reformist.
As some philosophers have said of Bopler,
He became famous at a young age, was sharp-minded, and was able to express deep, complex ideas in clear and concise language.
But this also caused him to think about some issues not deeply enough and not accumulate deeply.
Coupled with the fame of youth, it is inevitable to be frivolous and openly accuse the philosophers and thinkers of the past. It is easy to declare that many previous philosophical problems have been solved, such as the "Hume problem".
Hume believed that the "causal relationship" on which people depended on their daily lives was unreliable.
The judgments and predictions we human beings make through existing successful precedents are not so much a knowledge as a belief, and people cannot really confirm it. For example, the "knowledge" that the sun rises every day.
That is, Hume's suspicions made the unfounded nature of science clear, and human scientific research was first based on "inductive summary".
But when this "inductive summary" is also unreliable, are the previous scientific research and descriptions meaningless and valuable?
In fact, this point of doubt, in the traditional thinking of the Chinese, there is no place to stand. Because traditional Chinese thought does not need a "foundation" to be constructed.
The West, on the other hand, is always looking for something in this world, such as the "foundation", and then constructing a grand theoretical "building" on it.
This is also an important difference between the connotations of Chinese and Western thought, that is, the difference between non-systematic and systematic, non-structural and structural.
Therefore, some people say that it is impossible to combine Chinese and Western theories. Because their respective principles are the opposite.
But we can also see that this essence is what we often call the two sides of the contradiction.
Kant also acknowledged that science is foundationless, but we humans need this transcendental illusion, which is to assume that the world has a "foundation" and a "ceiling."
Popper even said that the philosophical research done by Russell's disciple Wittgenstein was meaningless.
It is his earth-shattering "style" that makes people accuse him of being the enemy of "open society".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > truth can never be eternal</h1>
Popper's writings have distinct personality traits,
Characteristics of "difficult to read but easy to generalize" and "complex arguments but clear conclusions".
It is also Popper's keen thinking and expression characteristics that make the depth of his thinking covered up and criticized by the world.
Fortunately, Popper also realized this and immersed himself in learning later in the years.
In fact, as long as people who have read Popper's works, they will not be entangled in the dispute between the meaning of science and non-science.
Because in his view, science is falsifiable, and non-scientific is non-falsifiable.
Image source network
As long as we apply this criterion, we can basically distinguish between the "pseudoscience" in reality that is trying to cloak itself in the guise of science.
Many people like to confuse "pseudoscience" with non-scientific fields. As soon as I saw the knowledge of non-scientific subjects, I was shocked.
Although myths, religions, art, philosophy, Freud's psychology and other propositions are not falsifiable in real experience, and statements are not scientific enough, they also have important meaning and value, and can often become the source of scientific conjectures.
For example, the judgment and prediction that the sun will rise tomorrow is a scientific elaboration, because one can falsify it empirically, just wait until tomorrow. But people can't confirm it, because the sun may not rise one day, but humans can't see it at that time.
At the same time, this also leads to another famous view of Popper,
"A prophecy, if described in more detail, is more falsifiable."
We cannot rationally prove a hypothesis using the precedents we already have.
And falsifiability, simply put, relative to a judgment, no matter what predictions are derived from it, it can be said in the past, and people can never prove its faultiness.
The most typical examples are fortune tellers and warlock prophecies, and there is a good passage on the Internet that can be used to illustrate the falsifiability of this judgment.
Someone said that when he was a child, he was predicted by a fortune teller that when he grew up, he would be accompanied by yellow robes and big fish and meat every day.
His parents were very happy to hear it, and thought that their son was the "true son of heaven".
After growing up, he really wore a yellow Meituan takeaway suit and delivered delicious food to customers every day.
Here, can we say that the fortune teller's words are accurate? Of course, we can also say that his prophecies were inaccurate.
People cannot falsify the fortune teller's words, because no matter how the situation changes later, he can tell his judgment round and not be falsified.
That's why Popper said that science is a "truth" that is infinitely close to the truth, but people cannot possess it because it can be falsified at any time.
But until then, we humans can believe that scientific theories that have not yet been falsified and that can accurately judge and explain phenomena are the truths of human society.
Therefore, after understanding this, we will not be tempted to accuse some scientific theories. For example, Darwin's theory of evolution, etc., their theories are imperfect, but they are scientific theories that can make reasonable explanations for some phenomena to the greatest extent in human society.
About Karl. Popper's thought, and another book worth reading, is "Truth and Error". In the preface to the new edition, Popper begins by describing Popper as a philosopher who sees truth from error.
From the beginning, he traced the veins of his thoughts from his life.
Then, focusing on Popper's philosophical and sociological ideas, we can learn about Popper's analytic philosophy, falsificationism, "three worlds" and other theories.
Finally, popper's ideas on social reformism, sociology of knowledge, and the principle of social autonomy derived from his reflection on the critique of historicist ideals are introduced.
Another old version of the book was my first philosophical enlightenment. In high school, I had a habit of going to a nearby used bookstore to look for books and read books after school on Saturday mornings.
Because it is a small shop that buys second-hand books all year round, there is usually no classic bibliography to read. But when I first saw Popper's Truth and Error, I first opened it with suspicion, and then I didn't hesitate to buy it for a dollar of 5 cents.
For the first time, I lamented that in a philosophical book, it is possible to explain philosophical problems in the form of mathematical formulas. In philosophy books, Popper often explains his theoretical ideas in the form of mathematical formulas.
The personal impact of that book on me at that time was that truth and error were not so clearly distinguished, that they could be interchanged under certain conditions, and that truth could be seen from errors.
A lot of people think that many of Popper's views seem to be very common, but it's just that we think about it in a non-systematic way of thinking. At the same time, it is also because the predecessors have paved the way for us, so that we feel that the "opinions" that have previously confused human society are not enough, and feel that they have always existed as the "common sense" of human society.
This is nothing more than an afterthought method of thinking, just like saying that "the earth is round" now, not because it is so, but because the predecessors made this "knowledge" exist as common sense of human beings through continuous research and efforts.