[Liberal in Your Pocket] Karl R. Popper

“We May All Be Wrong”

Karl R. Popper (1902–1994)

- Born in Vienna, Austria

- For a time, involved in communist activities from 1918

- Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1928

- Professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1937

- Professor at the London School of Economics in 1946

- Major works: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), The Poverty of Historicism (1944), The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

“We may return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one path open to us. That path is the path of the ‘open society.’”

- From The Open Society and Its Enemies -

Popper’s open society does not aim at constructing a utopian and totalitarian ideal state. Rather, it is a society in which criticism and debate are freely permitted, and in which empirical and pluralistic values and the diverse values of human beings can be expressed.

According to Popper’s theory of science, for a theory to qualify as scientific truth, it must be able to withstand falsification. In this respect, Marxist theory is not truth but pseudoscience. Yet those who follow Marx try to evade such falsification by resorting to auxiliary hypotheses—for example, by claiming that after the collapse of socialism, the socialist states of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, were not truly socialist but rather forms of state monopoly capitalism. This, Popper argues, is precisely the hallmark of pseudoscience. Moreover, because Marxism contains unfalsifiable convictions akin to religious faith, Popper denounces it as nothing less than pseudo-theology.

According to Popper, if we are to make this world a better place, we must not only remain vigilant against the enemies of the open society but also make a conscious effort. However, he argues that this must not become “utopian social engineering” aimed at reconstructing society as a whole, because that inevitably entails violence. Instead, he proposes “piecemeal social engineering.” Rather than trying to realize some abstract good, we should strive to eliminate concrete evils through direct means. More specifically, he urges us to work to abolish poverty through direct means.

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Original title: [주머니 속의 자유주의자 ] 칼포퍼(Karl R.Popper

Author: Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

Date: 2005-12-20

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=22&idx=10663