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Karl Popper's Philosophical Breakthrough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stefano Gattei
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Abstract

Despite his well-known deductivism, in his early (unpublished) writings, Popper held an inductivist position. Up to 1929 epistemology entered Popper's reflections only as far as the problem was that of the justification of the scientific character of these fields of research. However, in that year, while surveying the history of non-Euclidean geometries, Popper explicitly discussed the cognitive status of geometry without referring to psycho-pedagogical aspects, thus turning from cognitive psychology to the logic and methodology of science. As a consequence of his reflections on the problematic relationship between geometrical-mathematical constructions and physical reality Popper was able to get over a too direct notion of such a relationship, cast doubts on inductive inference and started conceiving in a new (strictly non-inductivist) manner the relationship between theoretical and observational propositions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 448 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am most grateful to Joseph Agassi, Nimrod Bar-Am, Malachi H. Hacohen, Troels E. Hansen, John R. Wettersten, and two anonymous referees for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. Special thanks to Roberta Magrini and particularly Ferdinando Vidoni, without whom I would never have been able to write this paper. I dedicate it to John Preston, with friendship.

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