Karl Popper
Philosopher of science
Karl Popper was an Austrian-British philosopher of science. He held that scientific theories can be tested and falsified but never proven, and he defended liberal democracy.
2 summaries 30 min of listening
Born 1902 in Vienna, Austria Died 1994
About Karl Popper
Karl Popper was born in Vienna in 1902 and died in 1994. Before becoming a philosopher he worked as an assistant cabinet maker and as a school teacher. In the 1930s he left Austria for New Zealand and later settled in the United Kingdom, where he founded the Department of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was knighted in 1965. Popper wrote The Logic of Scientific Discovery while still living in Vienna, and revised it several times afterwards. In it and in related work he rejected the inductivist view of scientific method and proposed falsifiability as the test of an empirical theory. His political thought is set out in The Open Society and Its Enemies, where he defends liberal democracy and opposes totalitarianism.