Karl R. Popper

Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach.

Objective knowledge; an evolutionary approach , Objective knowledge; an evolutionary approach , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

The Propensity Interpretation of Probability

In this paper I intend to put forward some arguments in favour of what I am going to call the propensity interpretation of probability.

Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the authors view on epistemology. This chapter introduces the authors various theses, and his explanation of the third world and the world of objective contents of thought , especially of scientific and poetic thoughts and of works of art. A biological approach to the third world is provided in the chapter to defend the existence of an autonomous world by a kind of biological or evolutionary argument. The chapter illustrates the objectivity and the autonomy of this third world. With the evolution of the argumentative function of language, criticism becomes the main instrument of further growth. The autonomous world of the higher functions of language becomes the world of science. The chapter provides an appreciation and criticism of Brouwers epistemology and discusses the logic and the biology of discovery. It presents the concept of discovery, humanism, and self-transcendence.

Quantum Mechanics without “The Observer”

This is an attempt to exorcize the ghost called “consciousness” or “the observer” from quantum mechanics, and to show that quantum mechanics is as “objective” a theory as, say, classical statistical mechanics. My thesis is that the observer, or better, the experimentalist, plays in quantum theory exactly the same role as in classical physics. His task is to test the theory.

Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science

The thesis from which I start* is that, for a conference convened by biologists, the outstanding questions of reduction are three: (1) Can we reduce, or hope to reduce, biology to physics, or to physics and chemistry ? (2) Can we reduce to biology, or hope to reduce to biology, those subjective conscious experiences which we may ascribe to animals and, if question (1) is answered in the affirmative, can we reduce them further to physics and chemistry ? (3) Can we reduce, or hope to reduce, the consciousness of self and the creativeness of the human mind to animal experience, and thus, if questions (1) and (2) are answered in the affirmative, to physics and chemistry?

A NOTE ON VERISMILITUDE

The four recent discussion notes on verisimilitude in this Journal by Pavel Tichy ([1974]), John H. Harris ([1974]), and David Miller ([1974a], [19746]) have had a somewhat shattering effect on the situation of the theory. All of these papers are in my opinion very important. The present note which is greatly indebted to David Miller for suggestions, improvements, and for cuts, contains, apart from some critical remarks on the preceding notes, a few positive hints (developed mainly from a suggestion by Stefan Mazurkiewicz [1934]). Tichy proposes in his section 4 a new definition of verisimilitude applicable to very simple languages and he announces an extension of this to richer languages. I am extremely anxious to have the status of verisimilitude established, and for this reason I very much hoped that Tichys theories would be acceptable. Miller ([1974a], pp. 175-7) n a s raised very interesting objections to Tichys theory: he showed that it made verisimilitude dependent on language in a manner that would clearly be unacceptable in a final theory. I hoped however that once we had obtained a definition satisfactory with respect to one language, it would be possible to obtain a measure of verisimilitude which like truth would be invariant with respect to translations into other languages. I still think that this might be a promising way. But I think now that Tichys proposed metrical definition suffers from further inadequacies (inadequacies which, incidentally, are remarkably similar to those which he himself has pointed out in my own metrical definition).

Zur Kritik der Ungenauigkeitsrelationen

v e r s t ~ i n d l i c h e r g e w o r d e n , a l s s ie m e i n e s E r a c h t e n s j e m a l s a u i l a m a r e k i s t i s c h e r E r k l ~ i r u n g s b a s i s w e r d e n k 6 n n t e . D a B n i c h t m u t i e r t e o d e r i n a n d e r e r R i c h t u n g m u t i e r t e F o r m e n y o n Olenus d e r n a t f l r l i c h e n A u s l e s e a n h e i m f i e l e n , g e h t d a r a u s u n m i t t e l b a r h e r -

Possible direct physical detection of de Broglie waves

Abstract A modified version of the Mandel-Pfleegor experiment implies conflicting measurable predictions of the Copenhagen and statistical interpretations of quantum mechanics. Their detection would help to choose between the antagonistic positions of Bohr and Einstein in the Bohr-Einstein controversy.

INDETERMINISM IN QUANTUM PHYSICS AND IN CLASSICAL PHYSICS: PART II

BEFORE entering into a more detailed discussion, I shall attempt, in this introductory section, to state my main points in outline. Quantum physics is now generally admitted to be indeterministic in the sense that it implies the impossibility of predicting certain kinds of physical events, however complete our initial information may be concerning the physical system in question ; given sufficiently precise initial information we may, however, predict the probability of these events, i.e. the frequency of their occurrence under sufficiently similar conditions. Classical physics, on the other hand, is usually taken to be deterministic in the sense that it implies the predictability, with any desired degree of precision, of every single physical event, on the basis of sufficiently precise initial information. In the present paper I propose to show that the opposition indicated here is misleading even although the prima Jade deterministic character of classical physics must be admitted. In spite of important differences, the situation in classical physics shows greater similarities to that in quantum physics than is usually believed. My thesis is that most systems of physics, including classical physics and quantum physics, are indeterministic in perhaps an even more fundamental sense than the one usually ascribed to the indeterminism of quantum physics (in so far as the unpredictability of the events which we shall consider is not mitigated by the predictability of their frequencies). The impossibility, implied by quantum physics, of predicting events of a certain kind is an impossibility of a peculiar character. If we assert of an observable event that it is unpredictable we do not mean, of course, that it is logically or physically impossible for anybody to give a correct description of the event in question before it has occurred; for it is clearly not impossible that somebody may hit upon such a description accidentally. What is asserted is that certain rational 1 Expanded version of a paper read before the Philosophy of Science Group of the British Society for the History of Science, at their first Ordinary Meeting on November 15th, 1948.

The Worlds 1, 2 and 3

Whether or not biology is reducible to physics, it appears that all physical and chemical laws are binding for living things — plants and animals, and even viruses. Living things are material bodies. Like all material bodies, they are processes; and like some other material bodies (clouds, for example) they are open systems of molecules: systems that exchange some of their constituent parts with their environment. They belong to the universe of physical entities, or states of physical things, or physical states.