Objective Knowledge

Objective Knowledge presents an incisive account of the philosophical views of a major contemporary philosopher, Sir Karl R. Popper. It deals primarily with his concept of reality and his approach to epistemology and scientific methodology. This is in the form of a collection of essays that Popper had published at earlier dates, and that he has revised and expanded for this volume. It is the reviewer’s opinion that the monograph should serve the philosopher and the scientist well, not only in making clear Popper’s own views, but also in laying bare several of the major problems in contemporary philosophy. Even if the reader would not agree with Popper’s resolutions of these problems, their clear presentation should further stimulate his thinking and help to promote philosophical dialogue. According to Popper’s methodology, one cannot effectively approach an understanding of the real world unless it is by means of continual critical analyses of the ongoing paradigms-that is to say, by means of continual conjectures and refutations. There is an assumption made here that not all scholars are willing to admit, but is indeed borne out by the history of ideas. It is that man can never become omniscient. Rather, to make genuine progress in his understanding of the real world, he must continually probe and be ready to reject hypotheses already ’established’, if they can be refuted with experimental facts or demonstrations of logical inconsistency. In this review, I should like to take Popper up on his charge, and critically analyse the main points of his own philosophy of reality, as expressed in this book. There is a great deal more in Objective Knowledge to discuss than could be given justice in the space available for a single review. However, there are two primary themes in this book, that are its main theses, which I will attempt to critically analyse in this review. One of these deals with the author’s pluralistic view of reality-a view in terms of three autonomous worlds. The other theme is his argu-