Logicians From Austria

"A theory that explains everything, explains nothing."

"I referred above to the Popperian school as a school, and yet it was not until I came to Sydney from London that I fully realised the extent to which I had been in a school. I found, to my surprise, that there were philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein or Quine or Marx who thought that Popper was quite wrong on many issues, and some who even thought that his views were positively dangerous. I think I have learnt much from that experience. One of the things that I have learnt is that on a number of major issues Popper is indeed wrong, as is argued in the latter portions of this book. However, this does not alter the fact that the Popperian approach is infinitely better than the approach adopted in most philosophy departments that I have encountered."

"The first article republished in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, "Degrees of Explanation," originally published in 1955, was largely consistent with Popper's methodology. Hayek embraced Popper's "hypothetico-deductive" approach to science: "The conception of science as a hypothetico-deductive system has been expounded by Karl Popper in a manner which brings out clearly some very important points." Here, as elsewhere in his work, Hayek distinguished between the facts of the natural and social sciences primarily on the basis of their complexity."

"I learned from Popper what for me is the essence of scientific investigation—how to be speculative and imaginative in the creation of hypotheses, and then to challenge them with the utmost rigor, both by utilizing all existing knowledge and by mounting the most searching experimental attacks. In fact, I learned from him even to rejoice in the refutation of a cherished hypothesis, because that, too, is a scientific achievement and because much has been learned by the refutation."

"Through my association with Popper I experienced a great liberation in escaping from the rigid conventions that are generally held with respect to scientific research. ... When one is liberated from these restrictive dogmas, scientific investigation becomes an exciting adventure opening up new visions; and this attitude has, I think, been reflected in my own scientific life since that time."

"[T]he paradox lurking at the heart of Karl Popper's career... Everyone says this opponent of dogmatism is almost pathologically dogmatic. ...Popper scoffs at scientists’ hope that they can achieve a final theory of nature. "...I think we have gone very far, but we are much further away." He... returns with his book Conjectures and Refutations... [and] reads his own words with reverence: "In our infinite ignorance we are all equal." ...Can a skeptic avoid self-contradiction... the Popper paradox? And if he doesn’t, if he preaches but fails to practice intellectual doubt and humility, does that negate his work? Not at all. Such paradoxes corroborate the skeptic’s point... the quest for truth is endless, twisty and riddled with pitfalls, into which even sharp-eyed seekers tumble. In our infinite ignorance we are all equal."

"The leading critic of the positivists in their heyday was of course Popper. There has been a tendency for philosophers of science to regard Popper as something of an embarrassment. However, naturalistic philosophers should take it as an interesting fact about science that Popper has long been the favourite philosopher of science among scientists; and it would be condescending to attribute this entirely to the fact that Popper's philosophy is relatively non-complex, self-contained, and flattering to scientists."

"Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk."

"Socrates (and so Plato) makes it quite clear that the rule of wisdom is tyrannical, and that it cannot tolerate words or deeds, laws or traditional institutions, and certainly political theories that impinge upon its rule. In this sense, modern enemies of Plato's political thought, of whom the most prominent in our time is no doubt Karl Popper, are correct in their objections, although they are ingenuous or let us say insufficiently rigorous in their consideration of the political consequences of theoretical truth. In Popper's case, this is probably due to his conviction that we can establish the falsehood of a proposition but not its truth. This conviction may well be more compatible with democracy in the modern sense of the term than the conviction that genuine philosophers know the truth. The argument of the Republic on the other hand is that, if we did know the truth, we would be led to support a city very much like the one constructed in the Republic under the leadership of Socrates."

"I do have a great respect for Popper. I mean, I think... he's nearer to... I mean, Popper's ambition, in relation to science, at least, was to discriminate between, sort of, science and what he called pseudo-science."

"Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed owing to the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion of a good society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian. I learned from Popper, in addition to the difference between an open and a closed society, that between an open and a closed mind."

"I read Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper, whose analysis in many ways complemented that of Hayek, approached Marxism from the point of view of the philosopher of the natural sciences. This meant that he was ideally equipped to expose the fraudulent claim of Marxists to have discovered immutable laws of history, social development or "progress" – laws which were comparable to the laws of natural science. It was not just that the "inevitable" course of events which Marx had prophesied had not occurred and showed no signs of occurring. Marx and Marxists had not even understood the scientific method, let alone practised it in their analysis. Unlike the Marxists – whether historians, economists or social scientists – who tried to "prove" their theories by accumulating more and more facts to sustain them, "the method of science is rather to look out for facts which may refute the theory... and the fact that all tests of the theory are attempted falsifications of predictions derived with its help furnishes the clue to scientific method". The political consequences of this basic error – perhaps more properly described as basic fraud – were summed up by Popper in the dedication of his later book The Poverty of Historicism: "In memory of the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.""

"I got to know Bertrand Russell in the last years of his life. I knew Karl Popper quite well, and they were a whole class above me in intelligence. It wasn’t that I was jealous, it was that I was trying to grapple with these problems with inadequate weaponry… Popper had this originality, Russell had it, and Einstein had it in spades."

"I do not believe in what is often called... 'exact '... [or] in definitions... [they] do not... add to exactness... I especially dislike pretentious terminology and... pseudo-exactness concerned with it."

"You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy", and the other "tyranny"."

"Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether they are compatible with each other or realizable.)"

"If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted."

"Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer—whether animal or man—perishes with his false beliefs."

"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

"For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance."

"Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong."

"Appealing to his Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one."

"From Plato to Karl Marx and beyond, the fundamental problem has always been: who should rule the state? (One of my main points will be that this problem must be replaced by a totally different one.)"

"There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. ... It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory."

"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit."

"It seems to me that I may be living too long. Indeed: my nearest relations have all died, and so have some of my best friends, and even some of my best pupils. However, I do not have a reason to complain. I am grateful and happy to be alive, and still be able to continue with my work, if only just. My work seems to me more important than ever."

"I think so badly of philosophy that I don't like to talk about it. ... I do not want to say anything bad about my dear colleagues, but the profession of teacher of philosophy is a ridiculous one. We don't need a thousand of trained, and badly trained, philosophers — it is very silly. Actually most of them have nothing to say."

"I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. ... One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was."

"If the many, the specialists, gain the day, it will be the end of science as we know it - of great science. It will be a spiritual catastrophe comparable in its consequences to nuclear armament."

"When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it."

"Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell."

"Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative."

"Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again."

"...no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white."

"A principle of induction would be a statement with the help of which we could put inductive inferences into a logically acceptable form. In the eyes of the upholders of inductive logic, a principle of induction is of supreme importance for scientific method: "... this principle", says Reichenbach, "determines the truth of scientific theories. To eliminate it from science would mean nothing less than to deprive science of the power to decide the truth or falsity of its theories. Without it, clearly, science would no longer have the right to distinguish its theories from the fanciful and arbitrary creations of the poet's mind." Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. Indeed, if there were such a thing as a purely logical principle of induction, there would be no problem of induction; for in this case, all inductive inferences would have to be regarded as purely logical or tautological transformations, just like inferences in inductive logic. Thus the principle of induction must be a synthetic statement; that is, a statement whose negation is not self-contradictory but logically possible. So the question arises why such a principle should be accepted at all, and how we can justify its acceptance on rational grounds."

"The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."