Popper’s most influential, and at the same time most controversial, philosophical claims are, first, the doctrine of “falsificationism” in the philosophy of science, and second, the critique of “historicism” in the philosophy of history—or, rather, political philosophy.
For Popper, the move from the philosophy of science to political philosophy is “internally consistent”: the philosophy of science is the starting point and foothold of Popper’s thought, and his views on the philosophy of history are in fact an extension and implementation of his falsificationism. For Popper’s opponents, however, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of history are far less closely connected, and were even once almost entirely separate realms. This puts Popper’s opponents, especially those who oppose his philosophy of history, in a passive position—they can at most insist that one cannot simply apply the methods or theories of the natural sciences to history or the social sciences. But Popper’s reply is: you think the social sciences and the natural sciences use different methods, but do you actually know what the methods of the natural sciences are? In fact, you do not understand the natural sciences at all, so what right do you have to say that the social sciences differ from them? Popper believed that unless one accepts the most reasonable conception of science—namely, the falsificationism he advocated—then whether one maintains that the methods of the social sciences are the same as those of the natural sciences or not, one is wrong; historicism “is influenced by holistic ideas, and it arises from misunderstandings of the methods of the natural sciences.”[1]
And many philosophers of history do indeed know little about the debates in the philosophy of science, so at most they can only keep to their own ground and “defend” themselves, making it difficult to mount an effective counterattack. Thus, if one wants to reverse this passive position and launch an active “offensive” against Popper’s philosophy of history, one must begin with the philosophy of science.
The controversies surrounding Popper’s philosophy of science are no fewer than those surrounding his philosophy of history. First of all, it is by no means true, as Popper said, that he destroyed the positivist school. On the contrary, positivists had long since raised many highly important objections to falsificationism. Positivism, if anything, was not destroyed by Popper so much as it dissolved from within. In this respect, the influence of Quine—a holist—was far greater than Popper’s, and Quine’s holism, together with his philosophy of language, would also strike at Popper. However, I am more concerned with the responses that came after Popper—especially those from Kuhn. Coincidentally, the new school of the philosophy of science founded by Kuhn was precisely what came to be called “historicism.”
Kuhn’s “historicism” is completely different from the “historical determinism” opposed by Popper. However, compared with the historicism described by Popper, the term is actually more apt for Kuhn. “Kuhn’s view of history is in the same lineage as historicism in the philosophy of history, and therefore he can be said to be a historicist. This is closely related to the historicization of reason in the philosophy of history.”[2]
As a new current in the philosophy of history, so-called “historicism” is precisely “the opposition to the Greek view of history and the rationalist view of history”[3]; that is to say, historicism rejects the search for “general laws” behind history, and the search for ultimate causes or purposes. And the so-called “historical determinism” that Popper describes as attempting to find regularities in history and make predictions is exactly what historicists oppose.
One cannot really blame Popper for confusing concepts. Popper himself did not use the English “historism,” which would correspond to the German “Historismus,” but instead coined “historicism,” perhaps precisely in order to indicate a distinction. Popper said: “I have always tried to describe historicism as a well-considered and closely connected philosophy. I have not hesitated to construct arguments in its support, and these supporting arguments, as far as I know, were not put forward by historicists themselves. In doing so, I hope that I have succeeded in constructing a genuinely useful position of attack. In other words, I have tried to refine a theory that is often advanced yet has almost never appeared in a fully developed form. That is why I have carefully and cautiously chosen this somewhat unusual label ‘historicism.’ By introducing it, I hope to avoid mere verbal quibbling: for I hope that no one will try to question whether any of the arguments discussed here are truly and properly, in essence, historicist, or question what the true, proper, or essential meaning of the word ‘historicism’ is.”[4]
That is to say, the so-called “historicism” criticized by Popper is one he himself has “constructed,” and his kindly “refinement” of historicism probably is not recognized by any actual school of philosophy of history. Yet for Popper, any philosophy of history other than his own falls into historicism (because it misunderstands the methods of natural science), and he places a wide variety of radically different views of history together for criticism. This is somewhat like the once-popular practice of grouping all manner of diverse schools and claims under the banner of “idealism” and then denouncing them uniformly and vehemently. The greatest feature of such sweeping criticism is that it leaves the opponent utterly powerless, because the opponent’s features have been cobbled together, or even designed, in the first place. If one takes up a defensive position from within “historicism,” it is very easy to fall into the trap constructed by Popper.
On the other hand, the concept of “history” Popper discusses is even more narrow. When speaking of the claim that history has no meaning, Popper believed: “When people speak of human history… they mean, and they learn in school, the history of political power.”[5] In Popper’s view, “history” means nothing other than the “history of political power.” Thus Popper’s philosophy of history simultaneously becomes political philosophy. One cannot really blame Popper for this narrow understanding: in writing history, an excessive emphasis on politics and power is indeed a habit of many historians, and this is something reflected upon by many schools of philosophy of history that arose in modern times. But in any case, human history cannot simply be regarded as the history of political power; the limitations of this perspective will be mentioned again below.
Popper’s so-called “historicism” mainly refers to “historical determinism.” For example, Popper writes: “The central point of the historicist method, more specifically, the central point of Marxism, seems to be this. … Just as an eclipse can be predicted, so should a revolution be predictable. …”[6] The usual response is something like: “Marx did not mean that, but rather…” or “History is not necessarily completely unpredictable; one can…” These responses may well be reasonable, but they are always a passive defense, and further discussion is easily constrained by the concepts and line of thought Popper has constructed. Therefore, a more direct response is needed: not to defend one particular view attacked by Popper, but to concentrate one’s mind on examining Popper’s own argument.
Below, I will use several key terms as threads, beginning with the philosophy of science, to criticize Popper’s philosophy of history.
Replacing “verification” with “falsification,” and taking “falsifiability” as the standard and principle of science, is one of Popper’s most influential creations. The superiority of this substitution seems quite obvious: no universal proposition can be completely verified logically, but the appearance of a single counterexample suffices to falsify it with certainty. For example, the proposition “All swans are white” can never be absolutely verified no matter how many white swans one examines; however, the discovery of a single black swan falsifies the proposition. By eliminating the inductive method altogether, Popper solved the problem of induction that had troubled philosophers ever since Hume.
However, it is precisely the view that “observation is theory-laden,” which Popper himself also endorsed, that makes falsificationism far from logically perfect as well—“if the truth of some observational statement O is already given, then it can be logically deduced that a certain theory that predicts not-O is false. But it is precisely falsificationists themselves who insist that the observational statements that constitute the foundation of science are theory-dependent and fallible. Therefore, the conflict between T and O does not entail that T is false. From the fact that T yields a prediction inconsistent with O, the logical conclusion is: either T is false, or O is false. When observation and experiment provide evidence that conflicts with the predictions of a certain law or theory, perhaps it is the evidence that is wrong, not the law or theory…. Put bluntly, conclusive falsification of a theory by observation is impossible.”[7]
In addition, the so-called “Duhem-Quine thesis” reminds us that what leads to a certain observation is not only a theory or hypothesis, but also initial conditions, auxiliary assumptions, and so on—for example, conditions such as temperature during the experiment and disturbances from the external environment. Moreover, these conditions and assumptions are often impossible to exhaust; at the end of such conditions one often has to add a clause like “all else being equal.” And once the actual observation is found not to match the prediction of the theory, what has gone wrong is not necessarily the theory itself; more often it is a failure in the control of some experimental condition, or the presence of some unknown interfering factor. Thus, an experimenter can never have a logically adequate criterion for deciding whether to continue searching for unknown interfering factors or to reject the original theory.
Popper’s answer might be: once a prediction goes wrong, we can regard it as falsified; then we can learn from the error, propose new hypotheses, and launch a revolution. Popper distinguishes conservative change from revolutionary change, and within the more conservative kind of change, he distinguishes between “hypotheses for this purpose” and “auxiliary hypotheses.”[8] For example, when Uranus’s motion was found not to match the predictions of Newtonian theory, the hypothesis “there exists a new planet” was auxiliary, because it was “individually testable.” However, what Popper says is falsified is in fact only the prediction that “Uranus will move in such and such a way.” Yet science is not made up of such individual assertions, as Popper also fully understood: the main part of scientific theory consists of universal propositions. People hope that falsificationism can handle the problem of universal propositions more effectively than verificationism. When Popper says that scientific theories must be “falsifiable,” what he wants to express is things like: “Newton’s first law is logically falsifiable,” “Einstein’s theory of relativity is logically falsifiable,” and so on. But merely saying that the prediction about “Uranus moving in such and such a way” has been refuted tells us nothing—we do not know where the problem lies. Only when we make it clear that the error lies in an auxiliary condition rather than the foundational theory do we know that Newton’s law has not been falsified by this event, but rather has become even more convincing. In the end, the decisive event is precisely the discovery of Neptune, which “confirms” the hypothesis that “there exists a new planet.” Similarly, a genuine counterexample to Newton’s law of gravitation—the perihelion advance of Mercury—was only truly established as a “falsification” of Newton’s law when it became a “confirmation” of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Imagine if Neptune had not been found where it was expected? Would Newton’s law then have been “falsified”? One could still go on to propose new hypotheses, such as the existence of a dark star that does not reflect light, or a cloud of interstellar dust blocking the way, and so on. Of course, at certain times one may also need to resort to so-called “hypotheses for this purpose” that are temporarily untestable. Popper’s attitude toward such hypotheses is rather contradictory. He said: “Do not issue excessively severe decrees against hypotheses for this purpose: they can eventually become testable, just as a metaphysical hypothesis can also undergo such a transformation. But in general, our criterion of testability warns us against hypotheses for this purpose. … Hypotheses for this purpose, that is to say auxiliary hypotheses that are at the time untestable, can almost save any theory from any particular refutation.”[9] It is clear that Popper also recognized the ambiguity of his criterion of science, but he never proposed an effective improvement.
Compared with earlier positivists, Popper was one of the first philosophers of science to advocate paying attention to the history of science. He noted: “Only those who understand science (that is, scientific problems) can understand the history of science. Only those who have a certain genuine understanding of the history of science (the history of the situation of scientific problems) can understand science.”[10] Yet the historical fact is: “If the methodology (of falsificationism) were strictly followed by scientists, then those theories regarded as the best exemplars of scientific theory simply could not have developed, because they would have been discarded at a very early stage of germination. Any classical scientific theory can serve as an example: whether at the time it was proposed or at a later stage, one can find observational statements, accepted at the time, that were thought to be inconsistent with that theory. Even so, those theories were not discarded, and that they were not discarded has been a fortune for science.”[11]
For example, for the sixty years after Newton proposed the law of universal gravitation, the predicted value of the motion of the Moon’s apogee was always only half the observed value, and physicists were never able to find the source of the problem or propose a reasonable hypothesis, but no one seriously considered modifying the law of universal gravitation. It was not until 1750 that people realized: it was only the applied mathematics that was mistaken, while Newton’s theory had been valid from beginning to end.[12] And when Maxwell first published the detailed content of the theory of gas motion in 1859, he acknowledged in the same paper that the theory had been falsified by measurements of the specific heat of gases.[13] Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, when first proposed, not only had to face refutations such as the fact that parallax could not be observed, but its predictive accuracy was not higher than that of the Ptolemaic system. Its advantage lay only in the theory’s “simplicity.”
As Kuhn said, in the history of science, “the early formulations of new theories, including the imperfect formulations of novel concepts, are sustained and developed in defiance of repeated apparent falsifications. Only after centuries of intellectual labor and practical activity by many scientists, after a new system of physics has finally been created, can the new theory successfully fit the results of observation and experiment even in detail.”[14]
Popper was also aware of these facts from the history of science; for example, he likewise noted: “When Copernicus put forward his system, the Ptolemaic system had not yet been refuted.”[15] He also mentioned the need to defend old theories: “A limited dogmatism is necessary for progress. Without the serious struggle for survival in which old theories are stubbornly defended, the competing theories cannot display their mettle—that is, their explanatory power and their truth content.”[16] But he never proposed an effective solution. When Kuhn criticized Popper’s criterion of falsification, he said with no little irony: “Sir Karl is of course not a naive falsificationist; he understands everything just said, and has stressed it from the beginning of his scholarly career. For example, as early as The Logic of Scientific Discovery he wrote: ‘A theory can in fact never be conclusively falsified, for we can always say that the experimental results are unreliable, and any discrepancy asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory is only apparent and will disappear with the progress of our understanding.’ These statements show that he is more in agreement with me than he thinks in our views of science, but our understanding is nevertheless radically different. To my mind this is fundamental: it is both the argument and the source. But Sir Karl thinks exactly the opposite: this is merely a substantial limitation threatening the integrity of his basic viewpoint. He has excluded conclusive falsification, but cannot find anything to replace it, and so the language he uses still remains logical falsification. Therefore, although Sir Karl is by no means a naive falsificationist, I think there are grounds for regarding him as one.”[17]
Regarding the mismatch between historical facts of science and falsificationism, some commentators have excused Popper by saying that his doctrine is not descriptive but transcendental—that is, it does not explain the actual development of science, but provides norms and guidance for scientific research, and so on. Yet the crux of the matter is, as Kuhn said, that falsificationism is not sufficient to characterize the main features of science; what Popper evades are some things that are even less ignorable in scientific activity, and these are what I shall discuss in the next part.
By the way: at least some propositions generally regarded as scientific are also unfalsifiable, for example, “all human beings die.” It cannot be logically confirmed, but it also cannot be logically falsified—for to falsify this proposition would be to discover a person who does not die. Suppose there really were such a person, say he lived to be a thousand years old; even then we could not prove that he would not die in the next few years. Interestingly, Popper mentioned the proposition “all mortals must die” and pointed out that this “generally accepted law” had already been refuted! He said: this law “was part of Aristotle’s theory—that all living things, after a certain period, must weaken and die. Although the length of this period is determined by the essence of the organism, it also varies according to the accidental circumstances of the organism. This theory was refuted because it was discovered that bacteria do not necessarily die; division and reproduction are not death; and later it was recognized that although it seems all forms of life can be killed by violent means, living things are generally not fated to perish… For example, … cancer cells can continue to live.”[18] But how was the “discovery” that “cancer cells do not necessarily die” established? First, this proposition is also impossible to confirm, because even if we observed some cancer cell showing no sign of decline after 100 million divisions, that still would not prove that it would not die after 100 trillion divisions. So to say that cancer cells do not necessarily die is at most a new hypothesis—in other words: falsifying a hypothesis by means of a hypothesis? Then how can this new hypothesis, supposedly capable of falsifying the old one, be established? Unfortunately, even as a hypothesis this proposition is not qualified, because logically it cannot be falsified—the proposition “cancer cells also all die” cannot be confirmed by observation. This example shows that even for Popper himself, the practical application of the criterion of falsification is highly problematic.
Popper takes “falsifiability” as the criterion for distinguishing science from pseudoscience and non-science. Scientific theories must be capable of being falsified; vague theories that can never be refuted are not science. This criterion is quite insightful; however, if taken as the sole criterion, it is still far from sufficient.
As Kuhn pointed out, some pseudosciences also make highly falsifiable predictions: for example, “astrology has had an intellectually refutable history over the centuries, recording many obviously failed predictions.”[19] Imagine a mysterious guru declaring that the world will turn to ash in an instant on November 10, 2010; this prediction is obviously falsifiable. Conversely, the assertion that the world will not turn to ash in an instant on November 10, 2010 is impossible to falsify—because to falsify the latter assertion, someone would have to observe that at that very moment the world was indeed completely destroyed. Yet if even one observer survived, that would show that the world had not been entirely destroyed, so falsification of this assertion is in principle impossible. Then is a prediction of the world’s destruction scientific, while the assertion that the world will not be destroyed pseudoscientific? This is obviously hard to accept.
The key issue is, as I have already mentioned: science is not built up from one prediction after another. Popper consistently carried through his anti-holism, and for him science is simply an activity carried out by individuals, testing and revising one assertion after another. For Kuhn, by contrast, science is a collective human enterprise.
Popper believed that: “Science should be conceived as a continual progress from problem to problem”[20] yet in concrete discussion Popper in fact still interpreted scientific progress as the replacement of one set of assertions by another. But even if we say that science progresses from problem to problem, what exactly is a scientific problem? Where do scientists derive the standards by which they judge which scientific problems are legitimate and worth studying, and which solutions are reasonable and convincing?
Kuhn noticed that scientists’ preferences in choosing problems and solutions do not rest on any universal standard that stands above history; in different periods and under different theoretical backgrounds, scientists’ worldviews are different. Kuhn used the word “paradigm” to encompass the theoretical background, worldview, habits of method, standards of judgment, and so on, of a scientific community: “… a paradigm gives scientists not only a map, but also directions for making maps. In learning a paradigm, the scientist at the same time learns theory, method, and standards, which are usually intertwined and hard to disentangle. Therefore, when paradigms change, the standards that normally determine the legitimacy of problems and solutions also undergo major change.”[21]
Popper also noticed the influence of “problem-situations” in history, and even maintained that “the main purpose of historical understanding is entirely to reconstruct a historical problem-situation from hypotheses.”[22] To take an example, why did Galileo not accept the theory that the moon influences the tides? Popper points out: “Galileo’s tentative theory was not merely an attempt to explain changing tides; it was also an attempt to explain changing tides within a certain background and within an established theoretical framework.”[23] Popper also realized that comparison across different theoretical frameworks is difficult, but he believed that this difficulty could and must be overcome. In “The Myth of the Framework,” Popper criticized doctrines represented by Kuhn, saying: “A framework, like a language, may be an obstacle, but different frameworks are, like a foreign language, not an absolute obstacle.”[24]
Yet for Kuhn, comparing paradigm changes to translation between different languages is precisely an apt metaphor. Kuhn’s emphasis on the “incommensurability” between paradigms does not mean that they cannot be compared at all. The original meaning of “incommensurable” refers to the relation between the diagonal of a square and its side length—that is, “not evenly divisible,” “having no common measure”—and clearly their lengths can still be compared. To use translation between languages as a metaphor for incommensurability, the key is not whether translation is possible or difficult, but rather to emphasize the vagueness and uncertainty of translation. A rabbit in one language may be a duck in another; the meaning of a word in one language may require thousands of words to explain in another. A language system, just like a scientific paradigm, is a whole, not a pile of words and characters. Behind every word, there are a whole series of related meanings: worldview, values, linguistic habits, historical background, and so on. Therefore, translation between languages cannot have a mechanical, determinate method, such as mapping some words onto others. It is impossible to do translation well merely by following the rules of vocabulary and grammar; more accurate translation must be based on an overall understanding of another language system—including the culture, history, and worldview behind it. In other words, translation or communication between languages is not based on comparing one word with another, one sentence with another, but on communication and conversion between wholes and wholes. The same is true of what Popper calls a “theoretical framework” or what Kuhn calls a “paradigm”: a theoretical framework is not simply built by piling up one statement after another, nor can transformation between paradigms be accomplished by revising statements one by one. Therefore paradigm revolution must be “holistic,” not “piecemeal and gradual.” This point will also be discussed later in the section on “revolution.”
Apart from their understanding of the Scientific Revolution, the more important disagreement between Kuhn and Popper lies in their understanding of “normal science.” In the debate, Popper thanked Kuhn for reminding him of the existence of “normal science.” Yet on the understanding of “normal science,” the two were poles apart. Popper thought normal science conservative, dogmatic, and embarrassing. Kuhn, however, took normal science as the main feature of scientific activity; it is precisely in normal science that science distinguishes itself from philosophy and pseudoscience.
What Popper regarded as the main feature of science, Kuhn saw as only a special manifestation of science in extraordinary times. Kuhn noted: “The examples he (Popper) likes are all alarming and destructive in consequence, such as Lavoisier’s calcination experiments, the eclipse observations of 1919, and more recently the parity-conservation experiments. These are classic tests, but if Sir Karl uses them to show where the characteristics of scientific activity lie, he will miss something crucial. These cases are rare in the development of science. They arise either because there is already a crisis here (as in Lavoisier’s experiments or the Lee-Tsung-Dao and Yang Chen-Ning experiments), or because some other theory is competing with the existing research rules (as in Einstein’s general theory of relativity). These are what I call ‘extraordinary research’ undertakings, in which scientists do indeed display many of the characteristics Sir Karl emphasizes; but such research, at least in the past, has appeared only intermittently under very special conditions in a particular scientific specialty.”[25] “Only when a choice must be made among competing theories does the scientist’s behavior resemble that of a philosopher.”[26] As Chalmers said: “Popper’s method is very good for describing the epic picture of Einstein’s originality and of his great advances by challenging some basic principles of physics, but we should not forget the fact that two hundred years of detailed work within the Newtonian paradigm and one hundred years of detailed work within electromagnetic theory were needed to reveal the problems Einstein could identify and solve with his theory of relativity. Continuous criticism of basic principles is a characteristic of philosophy, not of science.”[27]
What Kuhn emphasizes is precisely this kind of detailed work carried out under a determinate paradigm, namely “normal science.” The main activity of normal science is not criticism and dispute, but the activity of solving “difficulties” or, in other words, “puzzles.” In Kuhn’s view, the anomalous experiences that so troubled falsificationism—those discrepancies with prediction that were in fact never regarded as falsifications—precisely define the main task of normal science. Kuhn said: “… anomalous experience is not the same thing as falsifying experience. I even doubt the existence of the latter. As I have repeatedly stressed above, no theory can solve all the puzzles it confronts in a given period; even the solutions obtained are not often perfect. On the contrary, it is precisely this incompleteness and imperfection in the fit between theory and data that defines many of the puzzles characterizing normal science. If even the slightest discrepancy between theory and data were a reason to abandon the theory, then all theories should be abandoned at any time.”[28]
No set of theories can solve everything or be without flaws. At any stage in the development of science, there are always many “unsolved mysteries” awaiting scientists to crack. For example: “Why does the orbit of Uranus not conform to prediction?” “How is the phenomenon of Mercury’s perihelion precession to be explained?” “Why is it that only one-third of the neutrinos from the sun observed on earth are as expected?” “How is ball lightning formed?” and so on. Such puzzles are generally the “topics” of normal research for scientists. Scientists take the current theory as the “rules of the game” for solving difficulties, and of course they will put forward “hypotheses,” but those hypotheses generally do not negate the current theory; rather, they attempt to explain phenomena within the current theoretical framework. They will propose research papers such as “Conjectures on the Mechanism of Ball Lightning Formation,” and design experiments to test them. Yet their conjectures are usually only about how to use existing theories of mechanics, electricity, and chemistry to explain this phenomenon; few would believe that explaining ball lightning would require rewriting some laws of physics. And the tests they design “are usually not directed at the current theory” either: “… they are only tests of his own conjecture. If it fails the test, what is to be blamed is only his personal competence, not the whole scientific system of today. In short, although normal science is constantly subjected to tests, it is a special kind of testing: what is being tested after all is only the individual scientist, not the current theory.”[29] And if the conjecture passes the test, what it means is precisely the success rather than the failure of the current theory; the result is a supplement, improvement, or refinement of the current theory, not a refutation of it.
Only when certain serious inconsistencies cannot be resolved for a long time, and when people increasingly lose patience and confidence that the current paradigm can ultimately solve these puzzles, do some people begin to propose various ways of breaking with the current paradigm, and science enters an “extraordinary” period, that is, the “crisis” period Kuhn speaks of. At this time, various new paradigms are proposed and compete with one another. The motive for abandoning the old paradigm and choosing a new one is not that the old paradigm has been falsified or that the new paradigm is necessarily superior in puzzle-solving ability, but rather that people have lost confidence in the old paradigm’s ability to solve puzzles, and hope and believe that the new paradigm will be able to solve these puzzles better in the future. This is the motive of scientific revolution; in fact, it is very similar to the situation in political revolution, and this will be discussed further in the later section on “revolution.”
In short, we see that Popper’s view of science is extremely idealized, and also “privatized”: it ignores the public and holistic nature of science, and therefore is far removed from real scientific activity. This is related to Popper’s anti-holistic position, and I shall discuss holism shortly; but before that, the question “What is science?” is still not finished. I believe that Popper not only failed to grasp the characteristics of scientific activity in a complete way, but also had a very one-sided understanding of scientific method, for example in his understanding of “experiment” and “technology.”
[1] [英] Karl Popper: *The Poverty of Historicism*, trans. He Lin Zhaoping, China Social Sciences Press, 1998, p. 92
[2] Wang Shuming, Wan Dan: *From Philosophy of Science to Cultural Philosophy*, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2006, p. 19
[3] Ibid., p. 22
[4] “Historicism (1936),” in [英] David Miller, ed., *The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Essential Popper*, trans. Zhang Zhizang, Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2000, p. 317
[5] [UK] Karl Popper, *The Open Society and Its Enemies*, vol. 2, trans. Lu Heng et al., China Social Sciences Press, 1999, p. 406
[6] [UK] Karl Popper, *Conjectures and Refutations*, trans. Fu Jizhong, Ji Shuli, Zhou Changzhong, and Jiang Ge, China Academy of Art Press, 2003, p. 429 (marginal page p. 338)
[7] [Australia] Alan Chalmers, *What Is This Thing Called Science?*, trans. Qiu Renzong, Hebei Science and Technology Press, 2002, pp. 137–138
[8] See “The Demarcation Problem (1974),” in [UK] David Miller, ed., *Open Minds and Society—A Selection of Popper’s Thought*, trans. Zhang Zhicang, Jiangsu People’s Press, 2000, p. 126
[9] The Demarcation Problem (1974) [UK] David Miller, ed., *Open Minds and Society—A Selection of Popper’s Thought*, trans. Zhang Zhicang, Jiangsu People’s Press, 2000, p. 126
[10] [UK] Karl Popper, *Objective Knowledge*, trans. Shu Weiguang et al., Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2005, p. 211
[11] [Australia] Alan Chalmers, *What Is This Thing Called Science?*, trans. Qiu Renzong, Hebei Science and Technology Press, 2002, p. 143
[12] See [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, trans. Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, pp. 74–75 (p. 81)
[13] [Australia] Alan Chalmers, *What Is This Thing Called Science?*, trans. Qiu Renzong, Hebei Science and Technology Press, 2002, p. 144
[14] Ibid., p. 156
[15] [UK] Karl Popper, *Conjectures and Refutations*, trans. Fu Jizhong, Ji Shuli, Zhou Changzhong, and Jiang Ge, China Academy of Art Press, 2003, p. 315 (p. 246)
[16] [UK] Karl Popper, *Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge*, trans. Li Benzheng and Fan Jingzhong, China Academy of Art Press, 2001, p. 182
[17] Kuhn: “The Logic of Discovery or the Psychology of Research,” in [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Essential Tension*, trans. Fan Dainian, Ji Shuli, et al., Peking University Press, 2004, p. 274 (pp. 281–282)
[18] [UK] Karl Popper, *Objective Knowledge—An Evolutionary Approach*, trans. Shu Weiguang, Zhuo Rufei, Zhou Baiqiao, Zeng Congming, et al., Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2005, p. 12
[19] Kuhn, “The Logic of Discovery or the Psychology of Research,” in [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Essential Tension—Selected Essays on Tradition and Change in Science*, trans. Fan Dainian, Ji Shuli, et al., Peking University Press, 2004, p. 268 (p. 274)
[20] [UK] Karl Popper, *Conjectures and Refutations*, trans. Fu Jizhong, Ji Shuli, Zhou Changzhong, and Jiang Ge, China Academy of Art Press, 2003, p. 284 (p. 222)
[21] [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, trans. Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 100 (p. 109)
[22] [UK] Karl Popper, *Objective Knowledge*, trans. Shu Weiguang et al., Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2005, p. 195
[23] [UK] Karl Popper, *Objective Knowledge*, trans. Shu Weiguang et al., Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2005, p. 197
[24] [UK] Karl Popper, *Through Knowledge Toward Liberation*, trans. Fan Jingzhong and Li Benzheng, China Academy of Art Press, 1996, p. 93
[25] Kuhn, “The Logic of Discovery or the Psychology of Research,” in [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Essential Tension—Selected Essays on Tradition and Change in Science*, trans. Fan Dainian, Ji Shuli, et al., Peking University Press, 2004, p. 266 (pp. 271)
[26] Kuhn, “The Logic of Discovery or the Psychology of Research,” in [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Essential Tension—Selected Essays on Tradition and Change in Science*, trans. Fan Dainian, Ji Shuli, et al., Peking University Press, 2004, p. 267 (p. 273)
[27] [Australia] Alan Chalmers, *What Is This Thing Called Science?*, trans. Qiu Renzong, Hebei Science and Technology Press, 2002, pp. 183–184
[28] [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, trans. Jin Wulun and Hu Xinhe, Peking University Press, 2003, p. 132 (p. 146)
[29] Kuhn, “The Logic of Discovery or the Psychology of Research,” in [US] Thomas Kuhn, *The Essential Tension—Selected Essays on Tradition and Change in Science*, trans. Fan Dainian, Ji Shuli, et al., Peking University Press, 2004, p. 265 (pp. 270–271)
Latest Comments
- Gu
2006-10-26 11:03:23
I bought Lakatos’s edited *Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge*, which includes a set of essays in which falsificationism and historicism confront each other directly; it is very much worth consulting. I’ll wait to write the latter part until after I have seriously finished reading this book.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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