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Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science: Rationality without Foundations
This book seeks to rectify misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, an approach which applies his own mature view, that we gain knowledge through conjectures and refutations, to his own development, by portraying him in his intellectual growth as just such a series. Gattei seeks to reconstruct the logic of Popper’s development, in order to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.
- GenresPhilosophyScience
154 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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September 4, 2012
While not a terribly long read, the book is definitely not lacking in terms of content. Gattei presents an in-depth overview of the history and philosophy of Karl Popper, and there is plenty. What helps to keep the book concise is that Gattei presupposes a working knowledge of early 20th century academic history and some general background knowledge in philosophy of science. The book becomes a much more dense and difficult read without those points of reference, but is worth the read in any case for those interested in getting into some of the early 20th century philosophy or some more contemporary philosophy of science.
Popper's successors in philosophy of science, and the debates that sprung up in the decades after his work, are largely neglected in Gattei's discussion, as is the fact that Popper's dissent from Justified True Belief epistemology hasn't had a lasting impact on most of the philosophical community, for a handful of reasons. Some of the more contemporary work would make for a nice addition to Gattei's text, but given that one of the better things about the text is how short and to the point it is, it is probably best that Gattei keeps the focus where he does.
The last chapter of the book is a great assessment of the way that Popper's philosophy of science fits into his larger ethical worldview. As someone very familiar with Popper and his contemporaries, this was a particularly curious piece of writing, chalking Popper up as a very liberal, humanistic thinker in a time where there were still many more open questions about ethics and political philosophy with regard to the writing of non-Anglo thinkers. In an Anglo-centric time, Popper was generating some wonderfully open-ended and pluralistic ethical thought.
The most important background to have before stepping into Gattei's discussion of Popper, I think, is a familiarity with the writing of Wittgenstein, at least fairly broadly, as well as some awareness of his influence on the metaphysicians of his time; the writing of the Vienna Circle is hugely important for locating Karl Popper in his appropriate historical context, and Wittgenstein lays the foundation for that. The other person who is useful to understand [who I wish I was more familiar with in passing through Gattei] is Hans Reichenbach. While Gattei makes some notes on conjectures generated by Reichenbach, it is hard to ground those conjectures without some background in his writing. Also, there are large portions of Gattei's text that deal with Kuhn [i.e. the whole fourth chapter] but Kuhn's views are fairly well laid out for those less familiar with them.
Popper's successors in philosophy of science, and the debates that sprung up in the decades after his work, are largely neglected in Gattei's discussion, as is the fact that Popper's dissent from Justified True Belief epistemology hasn't had a lasting impact on most of the philosophical community, for a handful of reasons. Some of the more contemporary work would make for a nice addition to Gattei's text, but given that one of the better things about the text is how short and to the point it is, it is probably best that Gattei keeps the focus where he does.
The last chapter of the book is a great assessment of the way that Popper's philosophy of science fits into his larger ethical worldview. As someone very familiar with Popper and his contemporaries, this was a particularly curious piece of writing, chalking Popper up as a very liberal, humanistic thinker in a time where there were still many more open questions about ethics and political philosophy with regard to the writing of non-Anglo thinkers. In an Anglo-centric time, Popper was generating some wonderfully open-ended and pluralistic ethical thought.
The most important background to have before stepping into Gattei's discussion of Popper, I think, is a familiarity with the writing of Wittgenstein, at least fairly broadly, as well as some awareness of his influence on the metaphysicians of his time; the writing of the Vienna Circle is hugely important for locating Karl Popper in his appropriate historical context, and Wittgenstein lays the foundation for that. The other person who is useful to understand [who I wish I was more familiar with in passing through Gattei] is Hans Reichenbach. While Gattei makes some notes on conjectures generated by Reichenbach, it is hard to ground those conjectures without some background in his writing. Also, there are large portions of Gattei's text that deal with Kuhn [i.e. the whole fourth chapter] but Kuhn's views are fairly well laid out for those less familiar with them.
Displaying 1 of 1 review