Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance
Karl Popper (1902-1994) was a very important philosopher of science. I think it's crucial to study Popper in order to understand the development of the philosophy of science over the 20th century - how it led up to him, what he contributed to it, and how it developed beyond him. His principle of falsifiability, in particular, is a profoundly insightful, yet subtly nuanced concept, that is often misunderstood (and often confused with Lakatos's falsificatonism) and which, itself, developed in sometimes surprising ways over the course of Popper's lifetime. (It's crucial to understand that Popper was not an empiricist or an inductionist - in fact, his motto was "theory comes first"!) I'm particularly interested in some of the ideas that David Deutsch has come up with in interpreting and developing Popper's ideas. But none of that is what I'm talking about today. Unfortunately, these days, when people bring up Popper, it is usually not to discus...