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Realism and the Aim of Science: From the "Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery"

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Popper has presented his controversial views of induction and the nature of scientific discovery in a number of essays and books, but no where does he advance some of his seemingly paradoxical views better than in "Realism and the Aim of Science." At first blush, Popper's views of the nature of scientific inquiry seem to defy common sense. He believes, for instance, that the distinguishing mark of scientific theories are their falsibiability, rather than verifiability; that audacity, rather than caution, is the essence of science; that irrefutability is not a virtue in a theory but a vice; and that no scientific theory ever becomes more probable when evidence is discovered in its favor but must always remain infinitely improbable. What makes this book so remarkable is the brilliant arguments Popper advances for these seemingly absurd views. Popper demonstrates why these views are necessary in order to have a rational view of science, arguing that the opposite view of knowledge, the view that regards verifiability as central to scientific inquiry, tends to blind those seeking the truth from facts which would refute their theories. Hence Popper's belief that, instead of trying to prove our theories, we should try to falsify them instead. That way, if there are facts out there which would disprove them, we are much more likely to find them.

During the 1950s, while "Logik der Forschung" was being translated to become "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" Popper prepared almost a thousand pages of manuscript for publication as a companion volume to be called "The Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discover: After 20 Years". The 20 years was the time from the original publication of "Logik". It eventually became almost 50 years. For various reasons publication was delayed until William W. Bartley undertook the task of editing the large manuscript. At last The Postscript appeared in three volumes (with further additions) in 1982 and 1983. Volume 1 is "Realism and the Aim of Science", volume 2 is "The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism" and volume 3 is "Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics".

This is probably the least enjoyable of Popper's works, though it offers an important corrective to the widespread idea that Popper's ideas were superseded by Kuhn and Lakatos. In the first part, "The Critical Approach" Popper replies to Kuhn and Lakatos and shows that they never really offered significant criticisms (or alternatives) to the critical approach or to Popper's theory of conjectural objective knowledge. They did identify some problems with "falsification" and these were widely regarded as serious criticisms of Popper's ideas, even though he had recognized the problems some decades before and answered them. For example, Popper had always realised that falsification was only logically decisive (in a way that verification was not) because in real life observations are fallible and they need to be interpreted in the light of theories.

In the second part of the book Popper outlines his thoughts on the propensity interpretation of probability. This is his effort to overcome the defects of subjective theories of probability and the challenge of providing a theory of the probability of single events. This is an important but technical area of his work which some people find engrossing and others approach with a kind of mental block. I suggest that you ask David Miller to comment on Part II.