Karl Popper [antikvár]

Introductory Karl Popper is not, as yet anyway, a household name among the educated, and this fact requires explanation. For as Isaiah Berlin writes in his biography of Karl Marx, Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies contains "the most scrupulous and formidable criticism of the philosophical and historical doctrines of Marxism by any living writer"; and if this judgment is anywhere near sound. Popper is—in a world one-third of whose inhabitants live under governments which call themselves Marxist—a figure of world importance on this ground alone. But quite apart from this he is regarded by many as the greatest living philosopher of science. Nobel Prize winners who have publicly acknowledged his influence on their work include Sir Peter Medawar, Jacques Monod, and Sir John Eccles. Eccles's advice to other scientists is "to read and