The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Introduction

Popper, then a schoolteacher in Vienna, condensed a much longer manuscript into this book; it appeared in late 1934, dated 1935, in a series edited by Moritz Schlick and Philipp Frank. Against the Vienna Circle he argues that verification cannot be the mark of science, since no number of observations proves a general law. A theory is scientific if it can in principle be refuted by observation; the more it forbids, the more it says. Popper replaces inductive logic with a method of bold conjectures and severe tests, and discusses probability and quantum mechanics at length. An expanded English version, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, followed in 1959.

Connections

Responds to

• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding1748 · David Hume

Criticizes

• The Logical Structure of the World1928 · Rudolf Carnap

Criticized in

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions1962 · Thomas S. Kuhn
• Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes1970 · Imre Lakatos
• Against Method1975 · Paul Feyerabend

More works by Karl Popper

• 1945The Open Society and Its Enemies