Conjectures and Refutations The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

is written by Karl Popper. The publisher of this title is Taylor & Francis Group.

Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insights into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work : not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error. Popper brilliantly demonstrates how knowledge grows by guesses or conjectures and tentative solutions, which must then be subjected to critical tests. Although they may survive any number of tests, our conjectures remain conjectures, they can never be established as true. What makes Conjectures and Refutations such an enduring Book is that Popper goes on to apply this bold theory of the growth of knowledge to a fascinating range of important problems, including the role of tradition, the origin of the scientific method, the demarcation between Science and metaphysics, the body-mind problem, the way we use language, how we understand history, and the dangers of public opinion. Throughout the book, Popper stresses the importance of our ability to learn from our mistakes. Conjectures and Refutations is essential reading, and a book to be returned to again and again.

Karl Popper (1902-94). Philosopher, born in Vienna. One of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century.

Preface
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the Third Edition

INTRODUCTION :
1. On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance

I. CONJECTURES :
1. Science : Conjectures and Refutations
Appendix : Some Problems in the Philosophy of Science

2. The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science
3. Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge :
i. The Science of Galileo and Its Most Recent Betrayal
ii. The Issue at Stake
iii. The First View : Ultimate Explanation by Essences
iv. The Second View : Theories as Instruments
v. Criticism of the Instrumentalist View
vi. The Third View : Conjectures, Truth, and Reality

4. Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition
5. Back to the Presocratics
Appendix : Historical Conjectures and Heraclitus on Change

6. A Note on Berkeley as Precursor of Mach and Einstein
7. Kant's Critique and Cosmology :
i. Kant and the Enlightenment
ii. Kant's Newtonian Cosmology
iii. The Critique and the Cosmological Problem
iv. Space and Time
v. Kant's Copernican Revolution
vi. The Doctrine of Autonomy

8. On the Status of Science and of Metaphysics :
i. Kant and the Logic of Experience
ii. The Problem of the Irrefutability of Philosophical Theories

9. Why are the Calculi of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality?
10. Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge :
i. The Growth of Knowledge : Theories and Problems
ii. The Theory of Objective Truth : Correspondence to the Facts
iii. Truth and Content : Verisimilitude versus Probability
iv. Background Knowledge and Scientific Growth
v. Three Requirements for the Growth of Knowledge
Appendix : A Presumably False yet Formally Highly Probable Non-Empirical Statemen

II. REFUTATIONS :
11. The Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics :
i. Introduction
ii. My Own View of the Problem
iii. Carnap's First Theory of Meaninglessness
iv. Carnap and the Language of Science
v. Testability and Meaning
vi. Probability and Induction

12. Language and the Body-Mind Problem :
i. Introduction
ii. Four Major Functions of Language
iii. A Group of Theses
iv. The Machine Argument
v. The Causal Theory of Naming
vi. Interaction
vii. Conclusion

13. A Note on the Body-Mind Problem
14. Self-Reference and Meaning in Ordinary Language
15. What is Dialectic? :
i. Dialectic Explained
ii. Hegelian Dialectic
iii. Dialectic After Hegel

16. Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences
17. Public Opinion and Liberal Principles :
i. The Myth of Public Opinion
ii. The Dangers of Public Opinion
iii. Liberal Principles : A Group of Theses
iv. The Liberal Theory of Free Discussion
v. The Forms of Public Opinion
vi. Some Practical Problems : Censorship and Monopolies of Publicity
vii. A Short List of Political Illustrations
viii. Summary

18. Utopia and Violence
19. The History of Our Time : An Optimist's View
20. Humanism and Reason :
Addenda : Some Technical Notes :
i. Empirical Content
ii. Probability and the Severity of Tests
iii. Verisimilitude
iv. Numerical Examples
v. Artificial vs. Formalized Languages
vi. A Historical Note on Verisimilitude (1964)
vii. Some Further Hints on Verisimilitude (1968)
viii. Further Remarks on the Presocratics, especially on Parmenides (1968)
ix. The Presocratics : Unity or Novelty? (1968)
x. An Argument, due to Mark Twain, against Naïve Empiricism (1989)