He Had the Most Peculiar Ears I Had Ever Seen
And he taught me to listen critically — go figure
But the ears were not the first thing I noticed about him.
It was the praise.
Only a few days after being robbed, I noticed Nassim Taleb talking about him with immense praise.
The first book I devoured by Taleb was Antifragile. I loved it. There’s a beauty about a powerful concept that makes you see it all around you once you understand it.
I noticed antifragility, robusticity, and fragility everywhere I looked.
But inside the book, I saw his name appear several times.
Popper.
Karl Popper.
Karl Raimund Popper.
I’m not certain if he mentioned his full name, but I’m certain about the latter two. So I asked myself:
What is it about this guy? Why so much praise? I need to know more about him.
So I did the only thing I knew to do at that time. Look people up. I promise I’m not a stalker.
The first thing I noticed was he had the most peculiar ears I have ever seen. His accolades matched the outstanding facial features because he influenced most of the scientific thinking during the 20th century.
Who was this man?
I’d soon find out.
The first thing Wikipedia said about him was that he was a philosopher. My phone was stolen so I was willing to read what a philosopher had written.
I decided to read a book by a philosopher.
I’m lucky I picked a legend of a philosopher.
The books
I quickly finished Antifragile and found the first book I could on him.
It was The Open Society and Its Enemies. It was divided into three books. The first one was on Plato’s spell.
I have never met a writer whose words were so densely packed with value and whose prose was so clear like that of Karl Popper. I say dense because after reading a few pages, I’d sit and ask myself several questions.
Often, it was questions I had no answers to.
I remember him once challenging what I believed so much throughout my life that I had to close the book and take a walk. But his words never left me. They kept on lingering in my mind.
Challenging.
Prodding.
Folding.
By the time I returned back to my seat, I was ready to see how he would defend his stance.
He did it with patience, brevity, and rigour. I had to hand it to him. He was convincing.
As much as he convinced me to start viewing things critically, he did not immediately win the approval of his countrymen. Not all, however.
He was opposed to a concept in science known as induction. He believed there was no such thing as induction. Only deduction.
He was right.
I learned about it when I read his second book — The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
This book was heavy. I only got the big ideas but the details would sometimes bypass me.
Again, he had a tonne of sense. New ideas, if they came from old ones, were not new. They were only an extension of the initial framework. Tautological.
Logically speaking, a brand-new scientific idea would be new if it was initially thought to be false. It would then have to be tested through analysis and experimentation.
It had to run contrary to the previous ideas or interpret the old ideas in a new light before it could be considered new. He gave good examples.
Einstein’s gravity was different from Newtonian gravity. His idea was new.
Kepler’s ideas of the movement of planets were different from Tycho Brahe’s. It was new.
Darwin’s concept of descent with modification was different from Lamarck’s. His concept was new.
Throughout his argument, he was also solving another problem — the problem of demarcation. He tried to identify the single criteria that would include an idea in the scientific realm or cast it out.
It had to be falsification.
It was the consistent need for scientists to find the falsities in theories.
In this way, he taught me the scientific method. My lecturer, Prof. Saidi, had taught us the relevance of being critical, but I had never learned the logic of the scientific method.
As a result, we could never know if something was true with certainty. We could only prove that it was false. It is how science progresses. From proving the falsities of one theory to the next.
Einstein proved that Newton’s theory could not explain the bulge in Mercury’s orbit. Newton’s theory was false when it came to this bit of evidence.
Kepler showed that planets moved through ellipses, not circles. His mentor’s ideas were false in this regard.
Darwin showed how environmental pressures led to animal changes over generations. Lamarck’s ideas were false.
Science progresses from revolution to revolution, by exposing theoretical falsities.
In all this, I had to confirm if Popper was a philosopher. His writing was so simple, that I started to distill my thinking to his style of using micro-steps to take his reader from point to point until he delivered you to his side of his argument.
My thesis, then, was that philosophy has to be open to criticism from outside, and not just to philosophers. You can only do it by being clear in your writing. As Feynman says, if you cannot explain it to a 6th-grade kid, you do not properly understand it.
Despite his clarity, he was not immediately accepted by his countrymen.
The autobiography
I learned from his autobiography that he gained inspiration from different fields. Of interest to me was his fascination with music.
I say this because I am fascinated by hip-hop, and how it can be used as a tool of instruction. Lupe Fiasco, a hip-hop artist, has a class at MIT where he teaches people the value of rap.
It is only in reflection that I also use music to gain inspiration to write my ideas. Popper looked at the language of music, and compared it to science. This eventually led to his various ideas in the philosophy of science.
The one he is well remembered for is the idea of falsification. His countrymen, who would regularly meet as the Viena Circle, believed in induction. He believed in falsification.
It would take a while for people to accept his ideas.
One person, Freidrich von Hayek, the Nobel Laureate, and also an Austrian, was the one who encouraged him to continue with his ideas. He would help him to publish The Logic of Scientific Discovery and give him a platform to discuss his ideas at the London School of Economics.
Finally, somebody started to listen.
The philosophy that brought me to my book
Looking back, the one person who taught me the most about science also told me what to expect when introducing a new idea.
The theory of Organismal Selection is very new. It is also bizarre. But it has extreme potential.
His ideas were not accepted by his people initially, but later, they would. In several of his works, he would insist on the need for the creators of various theories to be just as bold as the theory itself, for it to withstand the almost fated criticism it would face.
I am yet to face it, but I know it will come through my claims. For instance, I claim that an atom is an organism. Would you believe me?
If I were you, I wouldn’t believe me either. But I’d be willing to listen to my argument.
His legacy
I have talked about him in my book, through a schema. I call it the Popperian schema.
It talks about the ever-solving quest of organisms. According to Popper, all life is problem-solving.
I couldn’t say it better.
I have read almost all books written by him. It is only the sequela following the Logic of Scientific Discovery that I haven’t wolfed down.
I am currently reading The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch. I recently finished Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Goldstein. These two authors have redefined what I knew about Popper’s concepts.
In the spirit of one of his biggest ideas, critical rationalism, I have discovered some of them could be falsified. But the core of his approach and philosophy still remains.
Even more, you have to admit, he has the most peculiar of ears.
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