There’s an associated problem here that may be getting ignored: Popper isn’t a terribly good writer.” The Logic of Scientific Discovery” was one of the first phil-sci books I ever read and it almost turned me off of phil-sci. This is in contrast for example with Lakatos or Kuhn who are very readable. Some of the difficulty with reading Popper and understanding his viewpoints is that he’s just tough to read.
That said, I think that chapter 3 of that books makes clear that Popper’s notion of falsification is more subtle than what I would call “naive Popperism”. But Popper never fully gave an explanation of how to distinguish between strict falsification theory and his notions.
There’s an associated important issue: many people claim to support naive Popperism as an epistemological position, either as a demarcation between science and non-science or as a general epistemological approach. In so far as both are somewhat popular viewpoints (especially among scientists) responding to and explaining what is wrong with that approach is important even as one should acknowledge that Popper’s own views were arguably more nuanced.
Popper never fully gave an explanation of how to distinguish between strict falsification theory and his notions.
Did you read his later books? He does explain his position. One distinguishing difference is that Popper is not a justificationist and they are. Tell me if you don’t know what that means.
There’s an associated problem here that may be getting ignored: Popper isn’t a terribly good writer.” The Logic of Scientific Discovery” was one of the first phil-sci books I ever read and it almost turned me off of phil-sci. This is in contrast for example with Lakatos or Kuhn who are very readable. Some of the difficulty with reading Popper and understanding his viewpoints is that he’s just tough to read.
That said, I think that chapter 3 of that books makes clear that Popper’s notion of falsification is more subtle than what I would call “naive Popperism”. But Popper never fully gave an explanation of how to distinguish between strict falsification theory and his notions.
There’s an associated important issue: many people claim to support naive Popperism as an epistemological position, either as a demarcation between science and non-science or as a general epistemological approach. In so far as both are somewhat popular viewpoints (especially among scientists) responding to and explaining what is wrong with that approach is important even as one should acknowledge that Popper’s own views were arguably more nuanced.
I do not find Popper hard to read.
Did you read his later books? He does explain his position. One distinguishing difference is that Popper is not a justificationist and they are. Tell me if you don’t know what that means.