The Myth Of The Framework

The Myth of the Framework

In a career spanning sixty years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the twentieth century discussion of science and rationality. The Myth of the Framework is a new collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject. Sir Karl discusses such issues as the aims of science, the role that it plays in our civilization, the moral responsibility of the scientist, the structure of history, and the perennial choice between reason and revolution. In doing so, he attacks intellectual fashions (like positivism) that exagerrate what science and rationality have done, as well as intellectual fashions (like relativism) that denigrate what science and rationality can do. Scientific knowledge, according to Popper, is one of the most rational and creative of human achievements, but it is also inherently fallible and subject to revision. In place of intellectual fashions, Popper offers his own critical rationalism - a view that he regards both as a theory of knowlege and as an attitude towards human life, human morals and democracy. Published in cooperation with the Central European University.

Rational Changes in Science

THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY Fashion is a fickle mistress. Only yesterday scientific rationality enjoyed considerable attention, consideration, and even reverence among phi losophers; "but today's fashion leads us to despise it, and the matron, rejected and abandoned as Hecuba, complains; modo maxima rerum, tot generis natisque potens - nunc trahor exui, inops", to cite Kant for our purpose, who cited Ovid for his. Like every fashion, ours also has its paradoxical aspects, as John Watkins correctly reminds in an essay in this volume. Enthusiasm for science was high among philosophers when significant scientific results were mostly a promise, it declined when that promise became an undeniable reality. Nevertheless, as with the decline of any fashion, even the revolt against scientific rationality has some reasonable grounds. If the taste of the philosophical community has changed so much, it is not due to an incident or a whim. This volume is not about the history of and reasons for this change. Instead, it provides a view of the new emerging image of scientific rationality in both its philosophical and historical aspects. In particular, the aim of the contributions gathered here is to focus on the concept around which the discussions about rationality have mostly taken place: scientific change.

The Myth of the Framework