Popper Cb Quotes

“Animals make noises with expressive and signalling functions, but to these two purposes, virtually always present in human speech, man has added at least two more, the descriptive and the argumentative functions (though the most sophisticated forms of animal communication, like the dance of the bees, already include some very rudimentary descriptive messages). Language made possible, among so many other things, the formulation of descriptions of the world, and thus made understanding possible. It gave rise to the concepts of truth and falsity. In short it made the development of reason possible - or rather was itself a part of the development of reason - and thus marked the emergence of man from the animal kingdom.”
― Brian Magee, Popper Cb

“So Popper's theory of knowledge is coterminous with a theory of evolution. Problem-solving is the primal activity: and the primal problem is survival. 'All organisms are con stantly, day and night, engaged in problem-solving; and so are all those evolutionary sequences of organisms - the phyla which begin with the most primitive forms and of which the now living organisms are the latest members.'2”
― Brian Magee, Popper Cb

“The traditional view of scientific method had the following stages in the following order, each giving rise to the next: I, observation and experiment; 2, inductive generalization; 3, hypothesis; 4, attempted verification of hypothesis; 5· proof or disproof; 6, knowledge. Popper replaced this with: I, problem (usually rebuff to existing theory or expectation); 2, proposed solution, in other words a new theory; 3· deduction of testable propositions from the new theory; 4, tests, i.e. attempted refutations by, among other things (but only among other things), observation and experiment; 5· preference established between competing theories.”
― Brian Magee, Popper Cb

“Of course, most of the truth content of any theory will be either trivial or irrelevant to our particular purposes: what we want, obviously, is relevant or useful truth content. But we may even get more of this from a false statement than from a true one. Suppose it is now one minute to noon: then the statement: 'It is twelve o'clock precisely' is false. Yet for almost every pur pose I can think of this false statement has more relevant and useful truth content than the true statement 'The time is now between ten in the morning and four in the after noon'. Likewise in science: for most purposes a clearcut statement which is slightly out is more serviceable than one which is true but vague. I am not, obviously, suggesting that we should rest content with false statements. But scientists are commonly in the position of having to use a theory which they know to be faulty, because there is as yet no better one available.”
― Brian Magee, Popper Cb

“The erroneous belief that science eventually leads to the certainty of a definitive explanation carries with it the implication that it is a grave scientific mis- demeanour to have published some hypothesis that eventually is falsified. As a consequence scientists have often been loath to admit the falsification of such an hypothesis, and their lives may be wasted in defending the no longer defensible. Whereas according to Popper, falsification in whole or in part is the anticipated fate of all hypotheses, and we should even rejoice in the falsification of an hypo thesis that we have cherished as our brain-child.”
― Brian Magee, Popper Cb

“The method of basing general statements on accumulated observations of specific instances is known as induction, and is seen as the hallmark of science. In other words the use of the inductive method is seen as the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science. Scientific statements, being based on observational and experimental evidence - based, in short, on the facts - are contrasted with statements of all other kinds, whether based on auth ority, or emotion, or tradition, or speculation, or prejudice, or habit, or any other foundation, as alone providing sure and certain knowledge. Science is the corpus of such know ledge, and the growth of science consists in the endless pro cess of adding new certainties to the body of existing ones.”
― Brian Magee, Popper Cb