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Simple statements are to be prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us more because their empirical content is greater and because they are better testable.

Karl Popper

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Karl Popper
Age: 92 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 28
Died: 1994
Died: September 17
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Karl Raimund Popper Sir
Karl Raimund
Sir Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper
Content
Ones
Greater
Simple
Testable
Less
Prized
Tell
Empirical
Better
Highly
Statements

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I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth
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A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
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The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.
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Propose theories which can be criticized. Think about possible decisive falsifying experiments-crucial experiments. But do not give up your theories too easily-not, at any rate, before you have critically examined your criticism.
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We never know what we are talking about.
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[The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality.
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The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.
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A theory that explains everything, explains nothing
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What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.
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Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .
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Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
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There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.
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no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
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We do not know. We can only guess.
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But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they clash, then we know that there is a reality something that can inform us that our ideas are mistaken.
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Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves.
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Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
Karl Popper
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The fundamental thing about human languages is that they can and should be used to describe something and this something is, somehow, the world. To be constantly and almost exclusively interested in the medium - in spectacle-cleaning - is a result of a philosophical mistake.
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A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.
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Man, some modern philosophers tell us, is alienated from his world: he is a stranger and afraid in a world he never made. Perhaps he is yet so are animals, and even plants. They too were born, long ago, into a physico-chemical world, a world they never made.
Karl Popper