Does Science give us Knowledge?
Karl popper was a keen philosopher in the 20th Century. As a philosopher he took an extremely hard stance on knowledge and what we can claim to know as epistemic knowledge. Karl Popper also feared that humanities “ tolerance means that we may eventually fail to tolerate intolerance”. This he said would lead to a sort of totalitarian world.
An article by Liz Williams called “Karl Popper, the enemy of certainty, part 5: the craving to be right” breaks down some of Karl Poppers beliefs and discusses the practicality of them. Liz Williams looks into Popper’s beliefs about falsification and the strong rebuke this theory has received from many scientists and other academics. I personally agree with the stance taken by scientists such as Alan Sokal. He states that if a theory passes falsification attempts then it will become more widely accepted by other people. This appears to be a fairly sensible idea for if the results of an experiment are replicable then it becomes more likely that the outcome is correct. Popper however refused to ever allow anything to become epistemic knowledge except “I think, therefore I am.”
As discussed before there are severe problems with taking Karl Poppers line of reasoning which borders on skepticism and denialism. When someone lives by this sort of philosophy they live in a constant hypocrisy which then makes it difficult for them to truly justify their view on anything else.
tolerance means that we may eventually fail to tolerate intolerance
The article then goes on to investigate Karl Popper’s views on Politics. Popper believed that Humanity was becoming to PC and that eventually we would become a totalitarian world in which we could not tolerate intolerance. This i believe raises interesting questions about a topic that is being hotly debated today with all the talks about freedom of speech and the fine line between that and hate speech.
