Popper Selections

This book presents a great selection of Popper's writings, a real a crash course on the thinking of one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. The book also presents his work regarding social and political philosophy. As almost any text dealing with philosophy, a calm and slow reading is absolutely required to fully grasp Popper's ideas, especially if you are a layman like me. I mean, this is not the kind of page-turner you can read entirely during a flight. This collection allows you to learn about Popper's legacy without the burden of reading his whole work, which I guess is almost reserved for scholars and students of philosophy.I particularly enjoyed his ideas regarding the philosophy of science and scientific progress, specifically his critical rationalism and the concept of falsifiability (meaning that a hypothesis must be falsifiable and that a proposition or theory cannot be called scientific if it does not admit the possibility of being shown false). I highly recommend this book for those with a serious interest in the evolution of science and the scientific method. A worthy follow up to Sir Karl's views on science would be Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Tough many ideas between these two philosophers of science are similar, Kuhn, in his book The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (1977), presents an interesting discussion in Chapter 11 (Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research) about the disagreements between his views and Popper's regarding scientific development.By the way, Popper's ideas come very handy and this book is a must-read for those with a genuine interest in the trustworthiness of science behind the current "Consensus Theory" explaining the causes of Global Warming. You can bet that in a few years the way most climate scientists are handling simulation modeling, making predictions with an immature science, with selective interpretation of weather data will become a textbook case of politicized science, together with complete disregard for the most basic principles of the scientific method, including the fact that no criticism is allowed. As Popper said:"If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted". The Poverty of Historicism (1957).

I'm hardly a philosopher, so, you may be underwhelmed when I say that I don't agree with everything the greatest pure philosopher of the 20th century (my opinion, of course) has to say. But, that's still more than most philosophers. Some of his thoughts seem to me just outlandish, as with all philosophers, possibly the product of thinking too much about things and trying to be original, but, in the whole, his epistemology and his social philosophy were not only great contributions, but also, relatively easy to read in English. Indeed, other than Russell and perhaps G. E. Moore, there may not have been a more reader friendly well known philosopher than him. Selections is a great place to start and if in fact, that is all you have time for in this busy life, gives you most of his philosophy.

If you like to think about what science is, and is not, this is a great book. Like most professional philosophy books it's not a trivial read, you really have to think, but the language is not technical and you can follow quite easily. I particularly like his argument which says that if you believe something from evidence, but are prepared to be proved wrong then that may qualify as science. If you believe something and will never accept that this belief is wrong, then it's something else. It may be faith, or something different, but it's not science.

Everyone conducting scientific research should understand their key role in society as defenders of objectivity. In 2016, however, not everyone who thinks of themselves that way, however, are on the right side of the demarcation line, especially in areas of public health.

Best cross-cut of Popper, reflecting basic ideas with redundancy and diversity. Also embodies some of disciple Miller's views, who edited selections. Essential perspective.

Readable, thought provoking, and i can't believe i haven't read him until now.

The service was very prompt, the quality of the book was excellentPopper's works should be available for all the young generationsand anybody interested in developing his/her critical thinking capacities.

Still reading the text! Popper is always interesting! He is always correcting himself after criticisms from friends and facuilty.