Popper's Vienna 9781935790020, 9781888570922

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Popper’s Vienna

Contemporary European Cultural Studies Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Series Editors This series publishes English translations of works by contemporary European intellectuals from philosophy, religion, politics, law, ethics, aesthetics, social sciences, and history. Volumes included in this series will not be included simply for their specific subject matter, but also for their ability to interpret, describe, explain, analyze, or suggest theories that recognize its historicity. Proposals and suggestions for this series should be directed to: Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Series Editors The Davies Group Publishers PO Box 440140 Aurora, Colorado, 80044-0140 US

Manfred Frank, The Boundaries of Agreement Antonio Livi, Reasons for Believing Jósef Niżnik, The Arbitrariness of Philosophy Paolo Crocchiolo, The Amorous Tinder José Guimón, Art and Madness Dario Antiseri, Popper’s Vienna Remo Bodei, Logics of Delusion Giovanni Mari, The Postmodern, Democracy, History

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POPPER‘S VIENNA Dario Antiseri

A volume in the series Contemporary European Cultural Studies Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Editors

The Davies Group, Publishers

Aurora, Colorado

Popper‘s Vienna, © 2006, Dario Antiseri. Previously published as La Vienna di Popper, Rubbetino, Soveria Mannelli, 2000. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced, stored in an information retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by any means — electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the express written permission of the publisher, and the holder of copyright. Submit all inquiries and requests to the publisher: The Davies Group, Publishers, PO Box 440140, Aurora, CO 80044-0140, USA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Antiseri, Dario. [Vienna di Popper. English] Popper’s Vienna / Dario Antiseri. p. cm. – (Contemporary European cultural studies) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-1-888570-92-2 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-888570-92-X (alk. paper) 1. Popper, Karl Raimund, Sir, 1902-1994. 2. Vienna circle. I. Title. B1649.P64A6713 2006 192–dc22 2006024413

Printed in the United States of America 1234567890

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Contents vii

Preface Chapter 1. Ernst Mach’s Knowledge and Error and Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery

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Chapter 2. Three German scientists: Justus von Liebig, Heinrich Hertz and Albert Einstein; and two American philosophers: Charles S. Peirce and Clarence Irving Lewis

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Chapter 3. The construction of a “logic of hypotheses” in English, French and Italian thinkers between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

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Chapter 4. Evolutionary Epistemology in Vienna from Ernst Mach to Karl Popper

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Chapter 5. The Vienna fin de siècle against Freud

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Chapter 6. Karl Bühler and Heinrich Gomperz: Karl Popper’s two Viennese masters

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Chapter 7. Carl Menger and Karl Popper: The “shortcomings” and “errors” of historicism

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Chapter 8. Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. von Hayek and Karl Popper: four Viennese in defense of methodological individualism

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Chapter 9. Hans Kelsen and Karl Popper: Two Viennese Critics of Plato’s Totalitarianism

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Chapter 10. The destiny of historical materialism and dialectical materialism in fin de siècle Vienna

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Notes

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Preface “Everybody knows nowadays that logical positivism is dead. But nobody seems to suspect that there may be a question to be asked here — the question “Who is responsible?” or, rather, the question “Who has done it?” […] I fear that I must admit responsibility.”1 This is written in Karl Popper’s intellectual biography Unended Quest. Popper admits that he has been the killer of neopositivism. However, his confession provokes an unavoidable question: what weapons did Popper use in his successful fight against positivism? In this book I hold that, in his struggle against positivism (and in the development of many of his theories), Popper resorted to weapons that were widespread in the Vienna fin de siècle, in the pre-neopositivistic Vienna of the years between 1870 and 1930. “Theories are like fishing nets: only who spreads them can fish something”, said Novalis. And Popper is very sympathetic with this idea. I attempt to use Popper’s theories as “hermeneutic nets”, in order to fish in a quite neglected — but immensely fertile — world. The following pages constitute only a first inquiry in areas of the World 3 of Vienna 1870–1930: it is a programme of research undertaken in the most recent years and only partially realized. Dario Antiseri

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Chapter One Ernst Mach’s Knowledge and Error and Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery: two classic Viennese texts on hypothesism and fallibilism

There is no method for discovering a scientific theory, for ascertaining the truth of it, or for ascertaining whether a hypothesis is ‘probable’ or ‘probably true’. — Karl Popper

“I assert” — says Karl Popper in the Preface to the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery — “that no scientific method exists in any of these three senses. To put it in a more direct way: 1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory. 2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth of a scientific hypothesis, i.e., no method of verification. 3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is ‘probable’, or ‘probably true.’”1 1. There is no method for discovering a scientific theory; that is, there is no method or mechanical procedure for discovering a new theory. Theories are discovered in the sense that they are invented: They are the result of creative effort, not routine procedures. Actually, in 1934, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper had already written, “there is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas […]. My view may be expressed by saying that every discovery contains ‘an irrational element’, or ‘a creative intuition’, in Bergson’s sense.” In a similar way, Einstein speaks of the “search for those highly universal laws […] from which a picture of the world can be obtained by pure deduction. There is no logical path,” he says, “leading to these […] laws. They can only be



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reached by intuition, based upon something like an intellectual love (‘Einfülhung’) of the objects of experience.”2 The problem “how do we arrive at new theories?” is very different from the question concerning the validity of a theory. And whether one arrives at a conjecture drinking coffee, tea, whisky or beer or through an induction (in the vague sense of “induction”, which is not a kind of inference) — Popper says — it does not matter at all.3 In fact, “some scientists find, or so it seems, that they get their best ideas when smoking; others by drinking coffee or whisky. Thus there is no reason why I should not admit that some may get their ideas by observing, or by repeating observations. And in this sense, I should be quite willing to mitigate my thesis that we never proceed by induction: let us replace ‘never’ by ‘hardly ever’.”4 2. There is no method for ascertaining the truth of a scientific hypothesis, that is, no method of verification. If by verification of a theory we mean a proof that ascertains the truth of the theory, that makes it true, this procedure or method simply does not exist. It does not exist because we do not have a criterion of truth. We have no instrument that enables us to say that a theory — even one that has been corroborated very often — is certain, definitively true, true for eternity.5 A theory that has obtained confirmation up to now can be disproved during the next test. In science nothing is certain: neither universal propositions nor individual assertions. Even if we have formulated a true theory (that really corresponds to facts), we cannot know it. One reason we cannot know it is because only a limited number of actual tests can be done on the consequences of a theory, while its consequences are infinite. Therefore, a theory cannot be verified or proven to be true. As we shall see later, on the contrary, a theory can be falsified or made false when it enters into contrast with assertions that, as far as we know, describe facts. But falsifications can also be fallible: “All knowledge remains fallible, conjectural. There is no justification, including, of course, no final justification of a refutation.”6 3. Therefore: There is no method for finding new theories and there is no method for demonstrating the truth of a theory. Nor is there any method for ascertaining if a hypothesis is “probable,” or

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probably true. To understand this thesis, let’s consider the following two inferences: Valid Inference Inference with a certain degree of Validity All men smoke x% of all men smoke Jack is a man Jack is a man _______________ _______________ Jack Smokes Jack smokes Now, while the first inference is deductively valid, the second (which is called inductive inference) is not deductively valid in the sense that the premises do not strictly imply the conclusion. This inference is called “more or less valid” or “having a certain degree of validity”: the truth of its conclusion is uncertain, yet “the conclusion is made more or less probable — to be precise, probable to the degree of x per cent.”7 Obviously the conclusion of this kind of inductive inference “goes beyond what is stated in the premises: it is not fully entailed by the premises.”8 It seems, therefore, that the problem of induction might be solved when a theory of probabilities is formulated that permits us to determine the value of r (where r is any fraction included between 0 and 1) of the probability p of a hypothesis h (“inductive conclusion”) given the premises or “inductive evidence” e: p(h,e) = r. Actually, though, Popper says, the situation is very different because the argumentation just cited is completely wrong. This can be shown by considering that “every universal hypothesis h goes so far beyond any empirical evidence e that its probability p(h, e) will always remain zero, because the universal hypothesis makes assertions about an infinite number of cases, while the number of observed cases can only be finite.”9 Therefore: 1) There is no method for finding new theories; they are the product of creativity, not routine procedures. 2) There is no method for proving that a theory is absolutely true; in principle, even well founded theories can be proven wrong. 3) If, on the one hand, greater richness in the informative content of a theory is



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incompatible with the increasing probability of the theory itself, on the other, there is no method for ascertaining the probability of any universal assertion since it refers to an infinite number of cases while empirical evidence is always limited to a finite number of cases observed.

The entire way of proceeding in rational science can be summed up in three words: problems — theories — criticism Having said this, Popper adds: “Having thus explained to my student that there is no such thing as scientific method, I hasten to begin my discourse, and we get very busy. For one year is hardly enough to scratch the surface of even a non-existent subject.”10 Getting to the heart of the question then what does Popper mean by scientific method ? His conception of scientific method is simply this: it systematizes the prescientific method which consists in learning from our errors. The scientific method consists of three steps: 1) we encounter some problem; 2) we try to solve it, proposing some new theory; 3) we learn from our errors, especially from those that are made evident by the critical discussion of our attempts of solution. To say it more briefly: problems — theories — criticisms. Rational science proceeds in this way.11 Scientific research is an attempt to solve problems. It tries to give new answers to old problems, answers to new problems, and to demonstrate the incorrectness or illegitimacy of other problems. These are three significant aspects of cognitive progress. Nevertheless, it is important to stress — as the chemist George Gore did at the end of the nineteenth century — that every problem that is solved produces other problems to deal with.12 This is like the principle of radiating problems established by Kant: “any answer given according to the principles of experience always begets a new question which also requires an answer.”13 Consequently,

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science advances from problem to problem, towards deeper and deeper problems.14 Scientific research is unending research that progresses from problem to problem. Some, however, might also think that at least it begins with observation and that from the accumulation of observations, generalizations or laws are induced which, once negated, will give rise to a chain of problems that stirs up the scientific community. In opposition to this Baconian-type idea maintaining that science begins with observation and proceeds inductively, Karl Popper says that science begins with theories, prejudices, myths and superstitions: more precisely, it begins with the demolition of a myth. This means that science begins with problems: practical problems and theoretical problems.15 This occurs because we are not at all a tabula rasa, an empty blackboard, or a blank sheet of paper. Sometimes — Popper says — while we come down from a ladder, we realize that we were expecting another rung (which is not there) or that we were expecting no more rungs (but there is still one). We have had some unconscious expectations. The expectation, conscious or unconscious, at the pre-scientific level corresponds to what we call conjecture (about a future event) or theory at the scientific level.16 Usually we begin with problems, such as, for example, a contrast between theories or negated theories that do not stand up under the weight of contrary facts and thus force the “irritated” mind of the researcher to find and test a better theory. However, one might still object that the researcher’s mind was not born with the theories it possesses now; it has been “loaded” with ordinary language, every-day life experiences, and schooling. Is it not perhaps true that at the beginning this mind was a tabula rasa that learned by looking around at the world? Some will maintain that at least at the beginning there are no problems at all but rather observations, pure observations made by a pure mind free of prejudices, a mind that faces the dawn of the world. As Popper says — we have to defeat this venerable idea. Every animal was born with many expectations, usually unconscious: from its birth he has something



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that is like a set of hypotheses, an innate knowledge, which is not at all reliable. These innate hypotheses, if wrong, will cause our first problems, and the growth of our knowledge: such a growth consists in the amendments and changes of the previous knowledge.17 Of course, observation is fundamental in science. But what is really important is to understand in what sense it is fundamental. Observations are important in science insofar as they confirm or negate some hypothesis formulated in an attempt to solve some problem. Observation (programmed or by chance) is important, for example, when, in negating some conjecture (consciously or unconsciously sustained), it generates a new (and often unexpected, embarrassing, but possibly profound) problem. Therefore, observation is fundamental; but theory is far more important because problems arise within theories. Problems are the expression of the tension between knowledge and ignorance:18 knowledge does not begin with perception or observation, but with problems. Every problem begins with the realization that something is going wrong or, in logical terms, with the discovery of a contradiction between what we believe we know and the facts, or — even more precisely — with the discovery of an apparent contradiction between what we believe to be our knowledge and what we believe to be the facts.19 To sum up, the point of departure for research is always the problem;20 research does not start out “from an observation of statements, but from a problem-situation.”21 Popper illustrates with a simple experiment that observation is always guided by theoretical expectations. He invites us to make an observation here and now. Someone might reply: “What do you want me to observe?” In order to make an observation, we must have in mind a definite question, which we hope to solve through the observation. As Charles Darwin said, every observation cannot be but in favour of or against a certain theory.22 Scientific research is an endless struggle with problems. One becomes an expert in a problem by working on it and trying to solve it. After a long series of failures, we will become experts on a particular problem: when someone offers a solution to the problem, we will know if this solution is one of those we have already re-

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jected, or a new problem. In the latter case, we will be able to check if the proposed solution can overcome those standard difficulties with which we are already familiar.23

There is no “pure” observation Popper makes clear the following points: 1) The idea that we can get our mind free of any prejudice is naïve and mistaken. In scientific research, we can notice that some of our ideas are prejudices. We realize that one of our beliefs is a prejudice only after having abandoned it, through the progress of science. 2) The rule “rid yourself of prejudices” can only cause the dangerous result that, after a few attempts, we think to be free of prejudices. Yet we will stick to our prejudices and dogmas without realizing it. 3) Moreover, the rule means “rid yourself of every theory.” But a mind without theories will not be pure; it will just be empty. 4) We always operate through theories, even if we are unaware of them. Therefore, we should always attempt to formulate explicitly the theories we sustain; only in this way we can produce alternative theories and choose the best one. 5) “Pure” observation does not exist. Every observation of facts is made through some theories.24 Observation and experimentation thus have a decisive function: they help us discard the weaker theories and sustain the theory which has not been rejected by fact yet.25 Observation and experimentation are the tribunal for theoretical imagination, the imagination that creates hypotheses in the struggle “between ‘nature that does not tire of providing’ and reason that does not wish to ‘tire of conceiving.’”26 It should be emphasized, however, that maintaining that the function of observation is critical does not in the least mean that scientific research begins with observation and proceeds inductively. “We have — says Popper — “many examples of deductively valid inferences, and even some partial criteria of deductive validity; but no example of an inductively valid inference exists.”27



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“Moreover,” — he continues — “I hold that neither animals nor men use any procedure like induction, or any argument based on the repetition of instances. The belief that we use induction is simply a mistake. It is a kind of optical illusion.”28 In brief, in Popper’s view “induction simply does not exist, and the opposite view is a straightforward mistake.”29

The sad end of the “inductivist” turkey In the past the term “induction” was used primarily in two senses: a) repetitive induction or by enumeration; b) induction by elimination. Repetitive induction (or induction by enumeration) would consist of often-repeated observations that should establish some generalizations of the theory. “The invalidity of this kind of reasoning is evident: no number of observations of white swans can ever establish that all swans are white. Induction by enumeration is invalid: it cannot ground anything.”30 As for induction by elimination, Popper argues that this type of induction may seem very similar to the method of critical discussion that he upholds, but it is not at all. Bacon and Mill thought that, by the elimination of all the false theories, the true theory could emerge. Yet the number of the possible conflicting theories is infinite, even if at a particular time the number of the proposed theories is finite. Induction does not exist because there are no are no inductive inferences or arguments that can permit us to pass from individual observation to generalizations in a logical way. Actually generalizations are invented to explain the problematic assertions of observation. It is a mistake to think that science proceeds by adopting inductive methods or that the human mind works inductively. The human mind is not a container to be filled: it is not passive but active and creative. It reads reality through a more or less tight net of expectations or theories and continually questions reality. Usually, one asserts that an inference is inductive when one passes from individual assertions like the accounts of results of observations or experiments to universal assertions like hypotheses

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or theories. But Popper, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, had already written “from a logical point of view, […] we are justified in inferring universal statements from singular ones, no matter how numerous; for any conclusion drawn in this way may always turn to be false: no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.”32 Consequently, induction establishes nothing and does not justify any conclusion, as is illustrated by the story of the “inductivist turkey” told by Bertrand Russell: This turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkey farm, he was fed at 9 a. m. However, being a good inductivist, he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he had collected a large number of observations of the fact that he was fed at 9 a. m., and he made these observations under a wide variety of circumstances, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, on warm days and cold days, on rainy days and dry days. Each day, he added another observation statement to his list. Finally, his inductivist conscience was satisfied and he carried out an inductive inference to conclude, ‘I am always fed at 9 a.m.’ Alas, this conclusion was shown to be false in no uncertain manner when, on Christmas Eve, instead of being fed, he had his throat cut.33

The logical asymmetry between verification and falsification of universal assertions Scientific research proceeds by trial and error on the road of conjectures and attempts at confutation. The solution to problems requires an imagination that creates hypotheses, which must then be tested. A theory is its content and the contents of a theory are its consequences; and it is on these consequences, which describe possible observations, that a theory is tested.34 It is obvious that comparing the consequences of a theory with the “facts” (or to be more exact, with other propositions that, as far as we know,

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describe facts) will lead either to the confirmation (always temporary) of the theory or to its (never definitive) negation. Thus, it is easy to understand that a theory is scientific when it verifiable by facts; but saying that a theory is verifiable by facts is the same as saying that it can be negated by facts, demonstrated to be false or falsified. The falsifiability of a theory is precisely the criterion of demarcation that Popper intended to establish between empirical or scientific assertions and non-empirical ones. It is important to understand — Popper wrote in the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery — that, falsifiability in the sense of my demarcation criterion is a purely logical affair. It has to do only with the logical structure of statements and of classes of statements. And it has nothing to do with the question whether or not certain possible experimental results would be accepted as falsifications. A statement or theory is, according to my criterion, falsifiable if and only if there exists at least one potential falsifier — at least one possible basic statement that conflicts with it logically. It is important not to demand that the basic statement in question be true. The class of basic statements is designated so that a basic statement describes a logically possible event of which it is logically possible that it might be observed.35 This is what Popper wrote in the Postscript. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery he had stated: I shall certainly admit a system as certainly 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. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, one and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for

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an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience. (Thus the statement, ‘It will rain or not rain here tomorrow’ will not be regarded as empirical, simply because it cannot be refuted; whereas the statement, ‘It will rain here tomorrow’ will be regarded as empirical.)36 The criterion of falsification is the line of demarcation between empirical assertions and assertions that are not empirical (for example, mathematical and metaphysical ones). The criterion of falsification is not a criterion of significance (tending to establish which assertions make sense and which don’t, something the Viennese Neopositivists claimed with their principle of verification), but of demarcation between science and non-science. More specifically, apropos of metaphysical assertions, it does not say that they do not make sense but that they cannot be falsified, even though some metaphysics has been rich in testable hypotheses. It should not be forgotten that metaphysical theories — which cannot be falsified factually — are, according to Popper, rational only when they are criticizable; and they are criticizable when they can come up against parts of World 3 (a scientific theory, a mathematical result, a theorem of logic, another metaphysical idea, etc.) that are well established at the time and one is not willing to renounce.37 It should also be borne in mind that the proposal for the falsifiability of a theory as the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science, …is based upon an asymmetry between verifiability and falsifiability; an asymmetry that results from the logical form of universal statements. For these are never derivable from singular statements, but can be contradicted by singular statements. Consequently, it is possible by means of purely deductive inferences (with the help of the modus tollens of classical logic) to argue from the truth of singular statements to the falsity of universal statements. Such an argument to the falsity of universal statements is the only strictly deductive kind of inference that proceeds, as it were,

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in the ‘inductive direction’; that is, from singular to universal statements.38 Here it would be necessary to distinguish between logical falsification (naive and definitive), methodological falsification (sophisticated and not definitive), and the negation of a theory (which happens when one takes possession of a better and more powerful theory from the explicative and predictive point of view). In any case, once again we should point out the most important epistemological message Popper bequeathed to us: “All knowledge remains fallible, conjectural. There is no justification, including, of course, no final justification of a refutation. Nevertheless we learn by refutations, i. e., by the elimination of errors.”39 Or, in clearer terms: We know nothing — that is the first point. Therefore we should be very modest — that is the second. That we should not claim to know when we do not know — that is the third. This is more or less the approach I should like to popularize. It does not have good prospects.40 And, finally, there are the opening words of a lecture Popper gave on January 13, 1983 in Turin: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board. You are the first passengers of an airplane entirely computerized. On this plane there is no captain to wish you a pleasant journey. Actually there is no crew as well and you do not need to fasten your seat belts. Even the slightest mistake, which could escape human controls, will be immediately corrected by hundreds of fully objective computer’s controls. For this reason nothing can go wrong … nothing can go wrong … nothing can go wrong … nothing can go wrong .41 This joke, Popper says, “elucidates the meaning of the philosophy of fallibilism,”42 which is a philosophy “that was developed by

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Charles Sanders Peirce.”43 “And,” Popper says, “in agreement with Peirce and Socrates, I also believe that human beings are fallible, and that they know so little; I also believe that computers, which are produced by men, are fallible. Are they less fallible than men? Perhaps they are, but they are also much less responsible.”44

“Science is a series of conjectures and corrections” — Ernst Mach “Vicktor Kraft [1880–1975] was the first member of the Vienna Circle I met […] He was ready to pay serious attention to my criticism of the Circle.”45 Popper mentions this in his autobiography. In his book, Die Grundformen der wissenschaftlichen Methoden (1925), Kraft offers “a most valuable description of a number of the methods actually in use in science, and it showed that at least some of these methods are not inductive but deductive — hypotheticodeductive.”46 Actually, Kraft does not believe there is any logical inference that allows for a passage from specific observations to generalizations.47 The researcher makes suppositions and conjectures (Annahmen) and then tests them on the facts. The nature of a theory is always a hypothetical-deductive system.48 Hypotheses do not come from experiments even though they can and must be tested and modified by experiments.49 In reference to these problems of induction, Heinrich Gomperz, one of Popper’s mentors, would publish early in 1934 a small volume entitled Die Wissenschaft und die Tat that, as we shall see in more detail later in this work, attributes to Kraft the solution of the vexata quaestio of induction and notes that in a book by the young Karl Popper in press at that time there was further elaboration of Kraft’s idea.50 It was an extremely simple idea that affirmed there is no logical justification of a generalization — generalizations are conjectures;51 and conjectures can be negated.52 While Kraft was a great influence on Popper’s ideas about hypothesis, we should not overlook Herbert Feigl (1902–1988)53 or,

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even more important, Moritz Schlick (1882–1936).54 However, despite Popper’s declarations to the contrary, perhaps the greatest influence on his hypotheticism and falsificationism was exerted by Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Mach also believed that scientific research consisted of the solution to problems. However, what do we mean by problem? In 1905, in Knowledge and Error, Mach wrote, “problems arise when thought and fact, or thought and thought no longer agree.”55 And he said that the way to solve problems is not by the inductive method but by the formulation of hypotheses and tests of what can be observed from them. “The forms of factual laws are often assumed since it would actually take infinitely many observations, with all interference excluded, to furnish the law. These assumptions or hypotheses relate to the conditions that make a fact intelligible, that is they are explanatory.”56 Therefore, it is necessary to have a vivid imagination for representing hypotheses. Even what is called incomplete induction is nothing more than the creation of hypotheses: “incomplete induction anticipates a widening of knowledge, but thereby includes the danger of error and is from the outset designed to be tested, corrected or even rejected.”57 Science in the making — Mach says — advances by conjectures and corrections,58 agreements or differences, while it is necessary to bear in mind that “the essential function of a hypothesis is that it leads to new observations and experiments, which confirm, refute or modify our surmise and so widen experience.”59 However, by broadening experience, which means saying more than is observed, and by establishing functional connections (casual, univocal relationships where there were only infinite possible temporal sequences of disorganized facts in space), “an hypothesis […] will with wider experience apply in some cases and certainly not in others. Thus, it lies in the nature of hypothesis to be changed in the course of enquiry, becoming adapted to new experience or even dropped.”60 Consequently, “enquirers […] will not be too timid in framing hypotheses: on the contrary, a measure of daring is quite beneficial.”61

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Experimentation is guided from beginning to end by theory; and the “laws of nature” are limitations of the possibilities While it takes courage to propose hypotheses, it also requires readiness to discard those that don’t hold up. Whether a hypothesis will hold up — for more or less time, depending on the case — will be determined by testing. This is done by deducing consequences from a hypothesis formulated in a simple and precise way and by then seeing whether or not these consequences are verified by the facts:62 “Just think — Mach says — about the principles of Newtonian mechanics and the consequences derived from them in astronomy.”63 All this tells us two things: 1) that logic is not enough for science: and 2) that experimentation is guided from beginning to end by theory. 1) When we have a theory we want to test we deduce the consequences using logic, but it is not these forms of logic that give us knowledge of the thing. On the contrary, “any example shows that knowledge of these forms alone is of little use: at best it may serve to check a line of thought, but not to find a new one. Indeed, thought does not proceed in empty forms, but according to a vividly presented content, either directly or through concepts. […] Empty logical formulae cannot replace a knowledge of facts.”64 Expressed in Popperian terms, logic is the organ of criticism. 2) To conduct a test or set up an experiment there must be something to test or experiment (with); this something is hypotheses or conjectures or the laws assumed to explain problematic facts. Apropos of this, Mach, in agreement with Duhem, maintains: a) that in physics “experimentation without theory is absolutely inconceivable,”65 that “experiments guided by thought lie at the basis of science”66 and that, “in fact, one must be wary when the result of the experiment agrees in general with the theory adopted”67; b) that “deliberate, autonomous extension of experience by physical experiment and systematic [thought] are thus always guided by thought and cannot be sharply limited and cut off from thought experiment”68; c) that “observation and theory […] are not sharply

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separable, since almost any observation is already influenced by theory and, if important enough, in turn reacts on theory.”69 On the other hand, it does not take much to realize that the “laws of nature” are “limitations to our expectations,” that “a law always consists in a restriction of possibilities,”70 and “with the progress of natural science there arises in fact an increasing restriction of expectations, which assume a gradually more determined shape.”71 For example, the first limitations are of a qualitative nature (moments A, B, C … determine expectation M; but a further restriction will be a quantification of these qualitative connections. We restrict or limit our expectations when we are impelled by “our mental need to find our way about in nature, so that we do not stand estranged and baffled in front of natural processes.”72 At this point, however, limiting expectations means our laws or hypotheses must say more: “the progressive refinement of the laws of nature and the increasing restriction of expectations corresponds to a more precise adaptation of thought to fact.”73 But — Mach hastens to explain — “the facts are not compelled to conform to our thoughts.”74 Therefore, limiting expectation means our hypotheses say more, and this means they risk coming up against the facts more and, consequently being disproved by them. We can never have guarantees against errors.75 “Knowledge and error flow from the same mental sources, only success can tell the one from the other. A clearly recognized error, by way of corrective, can benefit knowledge just as a positive piece of knowledge can.”76 Science “advances by conjectures and comparisons”; it is “a series of conjectures and corrections”; “experience constantly works at transforming and perfecting our ideas.”77 The representations we make “arouse expectations and urge us towards new observations and experiments.”78 “This strengthens the tenable elements and casts out untenable ones, modifying or even replacing them by new ones, special importance attaches to those experiments that force us to decide between two ideas or groups of ideas that both represent the facts”79 — these are experimenta crucis.

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“The scientist must always expect to be disproved” The history of science has demonstrated, and the logic of hypotheses has proven, that there are no hypotheses, conjectures or theories that are sure, definitive, and cannot be disproved. The scientist’s way of thinking and working is very different from that of the philosopher. For the scientist is not so fortunate as to possess unshakeable principles, he has become accustomed to regarding even his safest, most well-founded views and principles as provisional and liable to modification through experience. Indeed, the greatest advances and discoveries have been possible only through this attitude.80 For example, Newton, who said that one should never form hypotheses that go beyond observation (and “this view is refuted on every page of Newton’s writings: what sets him apart from others is precisely a wealth of surmises”81), “he is quick to sort out by experiment those that are useless and do not stand up to test.”82 Hypothesis sounds out nature by conjecturing a broadening of experimentation and hypothesizing, by supposing connections between facts, that properties or behaviors of objects have validity even under more general circumstances. This, however, implies that by broadening experimentation the hypothesis can be confuted or disproved by it. Thus, “it lies in the nature of hypotheses to be changed in the course of enquiry”83; to adapt itself to new tests; and to be corrected, discarded and replaced. There is no perfect science; indeed, the impossibility of it can be proved.”84 Infallibility is not an attribute of scientific theories; on the contrary, the enquirer must always be prepared for disappointments, since he never knows whether he has taken into account all the dependences applicable in a particular case. His experience is limited in space and time and offers him only a small segment of the totality of events. No fact of experience repeats itself with absolute accuracy; each new discovery uncovers flows of insight and reveals a so far unnoticed residue of dependences.85

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The process of research is never finished and never can be.86 As a matter of fact, “scientific developments mostly begin […] in the depths of pre-history, but are by no means concluded today. Instead of the problems that have been solved or recognized as sham, more numerous and usually more difficult new problems have cropped up.”87 Consequently, it is still possible that hypotheses that can be disproved by facts at any moment and problems that have been solved but generate other problems together give rise to never-ending research. No matter where it occurs, this research proceeds in the same way: by conjecture and comparison, by trial and error. “Equipped with the concept of function and the method of variation, the enquirer sets out on his journey. Whatever else he might need, he must learn from the special acquaintance with his field. For this no special rules can be set up. The method of variation is at the base of both quantitative and qualitative investigation.”88 Of the presuppositions to research, there are at least two that we should not forget: 1) the importance of participation of various intellectuals in the same problem, which is a presupposition of a social order. For example, “astronomy, whose development has spun its web through millennia in the most varied heads, shows very vividly that science is not a personal matter but viable only as a social one”89; 2) the postulate of uniformity in nature: “indeed we cannot decide to enquire into a field unless we assume that is investigable.”90 Real research tries to reveal the functional relationships or equations between elements,91 that is, the constant connections between elements. However, since experience is endless, “we shall never be able to prove that the postulate is applicable with absolute precision everywhere in space and time: like any tool of science, it will remain an ideal.”92 Moreover, “the postulate relates only to uniformities, without specifying of what kind. If expectation is disappointed we are therefore always free to seek new uniformities instead of the previously expected ones.”93 This is a metaphysical postulate of science.

Chapter Two Three German scientists: Justus von Liebig, Heinrich Hertz and Albert Einstein; and two American philosophers: Charles S. Peirce and Clarence Irving Lewis negate induction in favor of a hypothesist and fallibilist view of science

“In natural science all research is deductive and a priori.” — Justus von Liebig At the beginning of The Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper says: “Liebig (in Induktion und Deduktion, 1865) was probably the first to reject the inductive method from the standpoint of natural science; his attack is directed against Bacon.”1 In fact, in 1863, Liebig (1803–1873), the great German chemist, published a very critical — and in part, unfair — attack against Bacon. The title of the book — which aroused very heated debate — was Über Francis Bacon von Verulam und die Methode der Naturforchung.2 Liebig writes: The biographers of Bacon and the majority of authors who dealt with his works consider and treat him as the antagonist of Scholasticism, the reviver (Erneuerer) of the natural sciences, and the founder of a new method of research and the new empiricist or utilitarian philosophy […]. And three centuries later his name still shines like a star that, it is said, has shown us the way and the real purpose of the sciences.3 Actually, Liebig, says, Bacon lived in the most outstanding and marvelous century of the Christian era: “Great discoveries in the skies and on earth aroused a powerful movement in the spirit of the European populations: it was the time of men like Kepler, Galileo,

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Stevin, Gilbert and Harriot, founders of our new astronomy and physics, of mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, electrology, and of the theory of magnetism.”4 Considering the splendid period Bacon lived in, from his works dealing with the sciences of observation we should be able to tell if he was really immersed in the current of his time or if he stood motionless on the shore. We should consider what effect the discoveries of the eminent astronomers and physicists of the time had on him. We should understand whether these discoveries were sources for his ideas and, above all, whether he understood and evaluated them correctly and what part he played in the great questions of his time.5 Careful analysis, especially of Sylva sylvarum,6 led Liebig to maintain that the world Bacon describes “is not at all the world that God created; on the contrary, everything of his own that Bacon added is full of errors and deceit.”7 Similarly, Bacon’s analysis of the scientific method in Novum Organum8 leads Liebig to conclude that “[for Bacon] the inductive method is completely useless for developing even the simplest concepts; after a lengthy discussion we know nothing more than we knew at the beginning […].”9 Actually “Bacon promises us a way to solve the hardest problems regarding the nature of things, but if we follow him he only leads us into a maze which he himself does not know how to get out of.”10 In other words, “Bacon’s method is not at all the method for studying the natural sciences.”11 Things should be made to talk.12 But, “when he explains something, it is always Bacon speaking without ever letting things speak for themselves. In order to be their interpreter he should understand their language; but it is precisely this he lacks.”13 Bacon does not know or does not understand the great scientific discoveries of his times,14 but because of his undeserved prestige he was a hindrance to the development of science.15 Vain and presumptuous,16 Bacon “managed to fool the world.”17 His objectives in life, which were benefits, power and control, also became the objectives of his science.18 “The word ‘truth’ as we understand it and which is the only objective and sole task of science can not be found in the Bacon’s scientific vocabulary.”19

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The Baconian inductive method is a falsehood.20 “Anybody who is at all familiar with the study of nature knows that every natural phenomenon, every event in nature, contains the entire law or laws from which the phenomenon or the event originates. Therefore, the true method does not proceed, as Bacon would have it, from many cases, but from a single case; and when this is explained all other analogous cases are explained.”21 The real method of the natural sciences is diametrically opposed to Bacon’s method.22 In the process of research Bacon […] gives great importance to experimentation, but he knows nothing about its significance. He considers it a necessary means which, once set into motion, automatically produces the work, but in natural science all research is deductive and a priori. Experimentation is merely a means of helping the thought process, similar to calculation. In all cases, if experimentation is to have any meaning it must necessarily be preceded by thought. Empirical research on nature, in the usual sense of the term, simply does not exist. An experiment which does not presuppose a theory or an idea is as much like real research on nature as the sound of children’s whistles is like music.23 On March 28, 1865, two years after he published the book on Bacon, Liebig gave a famous address to the Royal Academy of Sciences on Induktion und Deduktion24 — the address mentioned by Popper. In it Liebig states that the scientist needs the power of imagination (Einbildungskraft).25 The man of science, as opposed to the craftsman, looks for the causes of phenomena and thus starts off from a concept of the whole to trace the parts back to their roots.26 This is precisely why in science as in daily life, the workings of the spirit do not occur according to the rules of logic. On the contrary, the idea of a truth, a conjecture about an event, or the cause of a phenomenon regularly precede the proof (Bewisführung).27 The idea is the point of departure for experimentation and proof. And often — Liebig stresses — this beginning idea is

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completely false, and only by continuing the research does the right one emerge.28 To sum up, Liebig concludes that for our knowledge, intellect and imagination are equally necessary and justified; both of them play a part in all the problems of physics and chemistry, of medicine, of economics, of history and of linguistics; and each of them occupies a certain space within these sciences.29

“What is derived from experiment can be undone by experiment.” — Heinrich Hertz After the chemist Justus von Liebig came the physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894), an author well known to Popper for both his writings on physics and his thoughts on epistemology.30 In the Introduction to The Principles of Mechanics (1894) Heinrich Hertz writes: “The most direct, and in a sense the most important, problem which our conscious knowledge of nature should enable us to solve is the anticipation of future events, so that we may arrange our present affairs in accordance with such anticipation.”31 For this to happen, Hertz says, we try to make images of external objects and these images should conform to the objects.32 “The images which we here speak of are our conceptions of things.”33 And “all images which implicitly contradict the laws of our thought”34 are inadmissible. Consequently, “we postulate in the first place that all our images shall be logically permissible — or, briefly, that they shall be permissible.”35 Therefore, our images or representations of things should not be self-contradictory. But obviously this is not sufficient. In fact, Hertz continues, “we shall denote as incorrect any permissible images, if their essential relations contradict the relations of external things, i. e. if they do not satisfy our first fundamental requirement,”36 the requirement of conformity with things. Therefore, our images of things must be permissible and correct. Nevertheless, “two permissible and correct images of the same external objects may yet differ in respect of appropriateness. Of two images of the same object that is the more appropriate

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which pictures more of the essential relations of the object, — the one which we may call the more distinct.”37 Furthermore, “of two images of equal distinctness the more appropriate is the one which contains, in addition to the essential characteristics, the smaller number of superfluous or empty relations, — the simpler of the two.”38 Our images of things, therefore, must be consistent, in keeping with the facts, and simple. Specifically, as far as images that can be considered scientific representations are concerned, we must we must be very clear about what properties identify their permissibility, correctness, and appropriateness. Only if we are clear about this can we “attain the possibility of modifying and improving our images.”39 Therefore, “what is ascribed to the images for the sake of appropriateness is contained in the notations, abbreviations, and, in short, all that we can arbitrarily add or take away. What enters into the images for the sake of correctness is contained in the results of experience, from which the images are built up. What enters into the images, in order that they may be permissible, is given by the nature of our mind.”40 These characteristics are determined as follows: To the question whether an image is permissible or not, we can without ambiguity answer yes or no; and our decision will hold good for all the time. And equally without ambiguity we can decide whether an image is correct or not; but only according to the state of our present experience, and permitting an appeal to later and riper experience. But we cannot decide without ambiguity whether an image is appropriate or not; as to this difference of opinions may arise. One image may be more suitable for one purpose, another for another; only by gradually testing many images can we finally succeed in obtaining the most appropriate.41 Of course it can readily be said that some of our basic ideas (of mechanics, for example) seem to be full of logical doubts, but this has not prevented many triumphs in the application of mechanics.42

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That’s why — Hertz says — they [logical doubts] cannot consist of contradictions between the essential characteristics of our image, nor, therefore, of contradictions between those relations of mechanics which correspond to the relations of things. They must rather lie in the unessential characteristics which we have ourselves arbitrarily worked into the essential content given by nature.43 As far as correctness is concerned, Hertz says, mechanics corresponds well to the facts. Nevertheless — and this is the fallibilism of Hertz — “that which is derived from experience can again be annulled by experience.”44 Just a single contrary fact or example, is enough “to invalidate the correctness of our system of beliefs.”45 In other words, it is necessary to be aware of the fact that “the system goes a little beyond the results of assured experience; it therefore has the character of a hypothesis which is accepted tentatively and awaits sudden refutation by a single example or gradual confirmation by a large number of examples.”46

“There is no induction; theories are conjectural and can be disproved.” — Albert Einstein Popper himself recalls that the idea of falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation between empirical science and non-science originates in a comparison of Einstein’s theory of relativity on the one hand, and the Marxist theory of history, the psychoanalysis of Freud and the individual psychology of Alfred Adler on the other.47 During his life Popper would meet Einstein three times, and the subject of their conversation was indeterminism. Popper recalls, “I tried to persuade him to give up his determinism, which amounted to the view that the world was a four-dimensional Parmenidean block universe in which change was a human illusion, or very nearly so. (He agreed that this had been his view, and while discussing it I called him “Parmenides”).”48 In any case, Popper continues, “it is difficult to convey the impression made

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by Einstein’s personality. Perhaps it may be described by saying that one felt immediately at home with him. It was impossible not to trust him, not to rely implicitly on his straightforwardness, his kindliness, his good sense, his wisdom, and his almost childlike simplicity.”49 In an interview on the BBC regarding Einstein’s influence on his philosophy of science, Popper openly admitted: “Einstein’s influence on my thinking has been immense. I might even say that what I have done is mainly to make explicit certain points which are implicit in the work of Einstein.”50 Popper records what he learned directly or indirectly from Einstein in four points: 1. Even the best-established scientific theory, such as Newton’s theory of gravitation or Fresnel’s theory of light, may be overthrown, or corrected, as Einstein has shown. Consequently, even the best-established scientific theory always remains a hypothesis, a conjecture 2. The recognition of this fact can be and should be of outstanding importance for one’s own scientific work. It certainly was so for Einstein’s work. He was never satisfied with any of the theories he proposed. […] Again and again did he criticize his own work in his papers. For example, he began his famous paper of 1915 in which he first proposed the field equation for gravitation with the statement that some of his previous papers were utterly mistaken; and similarly he wrote in 1918, while replying to some criticism, that he had so far failed to distinguish between two different principles, and that this failure had led to confusion. 3. This attitude, which may be called the critical attitude, is characteristic of the best scientific activity. 4. With Einstein’s work it became very clear that this attitude of criticism was in science something fundamentally different from what philosophers consider and describe as the ‘critical attitude’, or the ‘sceptical attitude’, or the ‘attitude of doubt’.51

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After Einstein — Popper says — scientists no longer believe their theories can be proven to be true or “verified.” Today they can only think that a theory manages to explain more facts than other theories do or that it manages to explain the same facts better; that it can be tested like these other theories or even better, and that it stands up to these tests at least as well as these other theories.52 Even in his last works Einstein never thought that his theory was definitive — quite the opposite. “Einstein was highly critical of his own theories, not only in the sense that he was trying to discover and point out their limitations, but also in the sense that he tried, with respect to every theory he proposed, to find under what conditions he would regard it as refused by experiment.”53 Einstein, Popper says, considered all theories of physics attempts to find out how things were — attempts in the sense that it is always possible for them to be surpassed by better theories and, therefore, they can never be verified — so that it is of the utmost importance to specify the conditions under which the researcher would declare his or her theories disproved or falsified. Popper writes: “This attitude became the basis of my own thesis of the logical asymmetry between verification and falsification or refutation: of the thesis that theories cannot be verified, but that they can be falsified.”54 Readiness to reject a theory in accordance with the verdict of experiments is the very special characteristic of Einstein’s work.55 In brief: “The Einstenian revolution has influenced my own views deeply: I feel that I would never have arrived at them without him. In my view it is fundamental to science that it consists of theories which are tentative, or hypothetical, or conjectural. This means that any theory can be overthrown, however successful it may have been, and however well it may have been tested.”56 No theory has ever had a more spectacular success than Newton’s, “but Einstein showed that even Newton’s theory was only a conjecture.”57 Einstein (1879–1955) believed that anyone who is unable to get surprised or amazed is lifeless; his eyes are dull.58 He also believed that as far as theories seen as attempts to solve problems is concerned, there is no inductive method that holds up: “Physics

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constitutes a logical system of thought which is in a state of evolution, and whose basis cannot be obtained through distillation by any inductive method from the experience lived through, but which can only be attained by free invention.”59 There must be imagination and creativity in hypotheses; there is no logical path leading to the laws of physics. Anything that happens is due to creative thought.60 The passage from possible worlds (logical hypotheses) to the real world (scientifically corroborated theories) is obtained by testing: “[…] experience is the alpha and the omega of all our knowledge of reality.”61 Therefore, theories cannot be deducted from experimentation, but “experience remains, of course, the sole criterion of the physical utility of a mathematical construction. But the creative principle resides in mathematics.”62 Actually, “science is not […] a catalogue of unrelated facts. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts. Physical theories try to form a picture of reality and to establish its connection with the wide world of sense impressions. Thus the only justification for our mental structures is whether and in what way our theories form such a link.”63 Logical thought, says Einstein, “is necessarily deductive; it is based upon hypothetical concepts and axioms.”64 These concepts and axioms cannot be obtained through a routine procedure the way the inductive method presumes they can. “There is no inductive method,” Einstein repeats, “which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics. Failure to understand this fact constituted the basic philosophical error of so many investigators of the nineteenth century.”65 With the help of the theories of physics, “we try to find our way through the maze of observed facts, to order and understand the world of our sense impressions. We want the observed facts to follow logically from our concept of reality.”66 This concept with “the smallest possible number of hypotheses and axioms” tends “to cover the greatest possible number of empirical facts.”67 In this sense, the “evolution [of physics] is going on in the direction of increasing simplicity of the logical basis. In order further to approach this goal, we must make up our mind to accept the fact that the logical basis departs more and more from the facts of experience, and that the path of our thought from the fundamental

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basis to these resulting theorems, which correlate with sense experiences, becomes continually harder and longer.”68 As far as principles are concerned, Einstein’s theory of gravitation is far removed from the principles of Newton’s theory. On a practical level, however, the two theories agree so closely that it was hard to find experimental proof of differences that disprove them. In What is the Theory of Relativity? Einstein explains these experimental differences of his theory as compared to Newton’s mechanics. 1. In the revolution of the ellipses of the planetary orbits round the sun (confirmed in the case of Mercury). 2. In the curving of light rays by the action of gravitational fields (confirmed by the English photographs of eclipses). 3. In a displacement of the spectral lines towards the red end of the spectrum in the case of light transmitted to us from stars of considerable magnitude.”69 The theory of relativity is completely logical: the consequences listed here are the outcome of it premises or principles and “if a single one of the conclusions drawn from it proves wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible.”70 The idea of falsificationist verification of a theory could not be formulated better. In any case, in a brief article entitled Induktion und Deduktion in der Physik that appeared on December 25, 1919, in the “Berliner Tageblatt,” Einstein amassed the essential nuclei of his theory of science. He held that the image of the empirical science (Erfahrungswissenschaft) at its origin is that which is based on the inductive method: individual facts are chosen and put together according to the law-like connection which holds between them. Yet the most important advancements in the empirical science have been achieved through an opposite method. An intuitive conceiving (Erfassung) of the essential properties of a big deal of facts takes the scientist to the proposal (Aufstellung) of one or more hypothetical principles (Grundgesetze). The scientist derives

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from such axiomatic principles the particular consequences and the comparison of these consequences with the experiences gives a criterion for the justification (Berechtigung) of the proposed principles. Principles and their consequences constitute the “theory”. The biggest achievements of science — as Newton’s gravitational theory or modern electrodynamics — have been obtained in this way. The researcher does move from empirical facts, but he does not proceed by the inductive method: he observes the facts through an axiom based theory which is intuitively chosen. A theory is said to be wrong if there is some logical mistake in its deduction or is said to be inadequate (unzutreffende) if a fact does not agree with one of the consequences. Yet the truth of a theory cannot be demonstrated: we can never exclude that a fact in future will contradict the theory consequences. If two opposite theories are both compatible with the same observed facts, no other criterion to decide between them can be found. This explains why brilliant researchers can disagree very strongly in theoretical disputes.71

“The hypothetical proposition may be falsified by a single state of things.” — Charles S. Peirce In consideration of the day and hour of his birth, the nurse and several other good women of the neighborhood said first that David Copperfield would be unlucky in life and second that he would have the privilege of seeing ghosts and spirits. In their view this was the fate of all unfortunate babies born during the small hours on a Friday night. Charles Dickens has David Copperfield say: “I need say nothing here […], because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result.” This passage from the first chapter of David Copperfield was noted by Friedrich A. von Hayek.72 Certainly it is interesting to find in a writer both the concept of giving the lie to a prediction based on facts and even adopting the term “falsification” precisely

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in the sense of denying a prediction. This was in 1850. Toward the end of the century it would not be a writer but a philosopher — the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) — who would theorize the idea of the fallibility of human knowledge and also use the terms “falsification” and “falsify.” Peirce was opposed to the Cartesian tradition where knowledge is intuition, to accepting the Scottish School’s assumptions of common sense, and to the Kantian idea that knowledge is a priori synthesis; and he maintained that knowledge is research. Research always starts from doubt: “doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief.”73 Of course, Peirce says, that to sustain a belief means to believe it to be true. Nevertheless, “the true conclusion would remain true if we had no impulse to accept it; and the false one would remain false, though we could not resist the tendency to believe in it.”74 What, however, are the methods for establishing beliefs? Peirce says that basically there are four methods for establishing beliefs: a) the method of tenacity; b) that of authority: c) that of a priori; and finally d) the scientific method. For one reason or another, the first three methods do not hold up and the valid one for establishing belief is the scientific method. In fact, “the ideas of truth and falsehood, in their full development, appertain exclusively to the scientific method of settling opinion.”75 Peirce described himself as a philosopher educated in a laboratory, and his theories of truth and meaning lead to the scientific method and to an attitude toward the world that, at least in the long run, because it goes beyond subjective preferences, will prevail over other methods and bring about the dignity of man and the advancement of civilization.76 But what is this scientific method? Or more, specifically, how does the researcher reason when he does scientific work? Peirce elaborates the philosophy of science in the theory of inference, where inference does not mean a series of mental processes — as a matter of fact, from a psychological point of view one can arrive at a truth in the most inconceivable ways77 — but types of scientific reasoning and the kinds of justifications they can offer. Peirce does not investigate the context of discovery (the psychology

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of research), but the context of justification (the logic of research). In his view, “there are in science three fundamentally different kinds of reasoning, Deduction (called by Aristotle συναγωγή or αναγωγή), Induction (Aristotle’s and Plato’s επὰγωγή) and Retroduction (Aristotle’s απαγωγή, but misunderstood because of corrupt text, and as misunderstood usually translated abduction).”78 Deduction is reasoning that, if correctly used, necessarily leads from true premises to true conclusions. The necessity of deductive reasoning excludes the possibility of the empirical refutation.79 Logical and mathematical deductive reasoning are valid in all possible universes. In brief, Peirce is convinced, as later would be Wittgenstein and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, of the analytical nature of logical and mathematical propositions. For its part, induction “is the experimental testing of a theory.”80 Now, however, the important thing in Peirce’s philosophy of science is that together with deduction and induction there is abduction. The line of reasoning for abduction is the following: 1 – C, a surprising fact, is observed. 2 – But if A were true C would be natural. 3 – Therefore, there is reason to suspect that A is true.81 What is maintained in similar circumstances is that a certain conjecture (or hypothesis), that is that A is true, is worthwhile considering. Thus we can see that abduction is the result of a scientist’s creative moment, of a fortunate moment of the scientific imagination that formulates the explicative hypotheses which, if confirmed, become scientific laws (which, however, can always be corrected or replaced) and, if falsified, are discarded. Abduction is what brings about scientific progress, which on the one hand advances in the direction of progressive absorption of new, unexpected facts that stimulate new hypotheses to explain them, and, on the other hand, in the direction of axiomatic unification of laws brought about by what are said to be the great simple ideas. What is important now is to realize that abduction is intimately connected with deduction and induction in the sense that when a hypothesis must be judged

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admissible or not, any serious hypothesis must be such that consequences can be deducted from it and these in turn can be tested inductively, that is experimentally. Nor — according to Peirce — is such dependence all on one side. […] He thinks of induction as essentially a method of testing conclusions; and these conclusions, he claims, are always suggested in the first instance by hypothetic inference. By induction we generalize and test the consequences that can be deduced from a given hypothesis; so that the mutual dependence of these two forms of inference, and their common dependence on deduction, are equally clear.82 In other words, to understand, foresee and, if necessary, manipulate (where technologically possible) the world and the infinity of facts that make it up, we assail them with hypotheses or conjectures of a general nature from which we can deduce single propositions that, if in agreement with the facts, confirm those hypotheses and thus pass into the status of laws which, however, can always be revised. In the Introduction to Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (originally written from 1930–1933), Popper writes that later he called “fallibilism” the idea of uncertainty or fallibility of all human theories, even the most established ones. As Popper notices, the expression “fallibilism” has been introduced by Peirce.83 Is this all there is? Is it only the word that is found in Peirce or is there also the theory of falsifiability? Eugene Freeman and Henryk Sholimowski have worked on the similarities and differences between Peirce and Popper.84 Freeman has maintained that though both Peirce and Popper are fallibilists, Popper is more radical since Peirce “on some occasions”85 — but not on others86 — seems to adhere to the “theory of manifest truth,” as Popper calls it, while Popper refutes it categorically: in fact, we don’t attain the truth, and even if we did we wouldn’t know it.87 In his Replies to My Critics, Popper finds himself in agreement with Freeman (This is a very fair remark).88 He explains this “great difference” between himself and Peirce by the fact that Peirce wrote

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before the Einsteinian revolution. To be a fallibilist before Einstein, Popper says, was, without a doubt, a conquest. “And it is greatly to Peirce’s credit that he was one. My more far-reaching fallibilism, on the other hand, is the direct result of Einstein’s revolution.”89 As I see it, the essay by Freeman and Sholimowski is good, but not excellent, because of its limited exploration of Peirce’s texts, especially the exclusion of extremely significant pages on the question of fallibilism and falsificationism. It is not at all true — Freeman says — that in Peirce we only find the seed of Popper’s idea of falsification;90 nor is it true that this seed was infertile until Popper caused it to flower.91 A text dated around 1897 and entitled Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution begins as follows: “[…] there are three things to which we can never hope to attain by reasoning, namely, absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality.”92 And if “exactitude, certitude, and universality are not to be attained by reasoning, there is certainly no other means by which they can be reached.”93 After many years of studying the logic of science, Peirce concludes that “we never can be absolutely sure of anything.”94 Fallibilism finds supporters among men animated by the spirit of science:95 “It only says that people cannot attain absolute certainty concerning questions of fact.”96 “Fallibilism is the doctrine that our knowledge is never absolute but always swims, as it were, in a continuum of uncertainty and of indeterminacy.”97 Aware of the function of the imagination and the role of hypothesis in science, convinced of the logical asymmetry between confirmation and negation98 and thus promoter of a non-verificationist attitude,99 convinced that “abduction is, after all, nothing but guessing,”100 and — essentially — a supporter of induction to mean analysis of facts confirming or confuting a proposed hypothesis,101 Peirce not only speaks of fallibilism, but is the first, as far as I know, to speak explicitly of falsification of hypotheses. Towards the end of the century many thinkers had spoken about confutation, negation, factual contradiction, and rejection of theories. Peirce also uses this terminology typical of fallibilism here and there. However, what is outstanding — and as far as I know it has not yet been noted — is that Peirce not only uses the idea of confutation but — perhaps for

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the first time — consciously uses the term “falsification” to signify the opposite of “verification” of theories. Consequently, in his essay On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation, Peirce writes: “The question is what is the sense which is most usefully attached to the hypothetical proposition in logic? Now, the peculiarity of the hypothetical proposition is that it goes out beyond the actual state of things and declare what would happen were things other than they are or may be […] The hypothetical proposition may therefore be falsified by a single state of things.”102

“The proposition ‘all swans are white’ can be falsified by experiment.” — Clarence Irving Lewis “In experience, mind is confronted with the chaos of the given. In the interest of adaptation and control, it seeks to discover within or impose upon this chaos some kind of stable order, through which distinguishable items may become the signs of future possibilities.” Clarence Irving Lewis (1883–1964) said this in 1929 in his book Mind and World Order.103 He continued, “Those patterns of distinction and relationship which we thus seek to establish are our concepts. These must be determined in advance of the particular experience to which they apply in order that what is given may have meaning.”104 Therefore, “Concepts thus represent what mind brings to experience.”105 The concept is the a priori: logical truth like the principle of non-contradiction; categories like that of causality; criteria of distinction and classification (as, for example, real and unreal; vital; material and immaterial); and concepts and scientific theories are all examples of a priori. A Ptolemaic theory or a Copernican theory is not a gift that comes from observing and continuing to look at the stars; they are creations imposed by us on celestial bodies for purposes of prevision and explanation. A priori, therefore, is “something made by mind.” But, says Lewis, “if the a priori is something made by mind”, mind can even modify it; consequently,

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“there will be no assurance that what is a priori will remain fixed and absolute throughout the history of the race or for the developing individual.”106 That our categories are fixed ab aeternitate is “a superstition comparable to the belief of primitive peoples that the general features of their life and culture are immemorial and of a supernatural origin.”107 The a priori is not inalterable: it is “linguistic and variable.” How are these a priori inventions of the human mind selected? Lewis replies: While the a priori is dictated neither by what is presented in experience nor by any transcendent and eternal factor of human nature, it still answers to criteria of the general type which may be termed pragmatic. […] This will be true of the categories of his thinking as in other things. And here, as elsewhere, the result will be reached by a process in which attitudes tentatively assumed, disappointment in the ends to be realized, and consequent alteration of behavior will play their part.108 The most suitable example Lewis cites to support his concept is analysis of scientific knowledge. All scientific knowledge is and remains uncertain. Let’s consider, Lewis says, the proposition “this penny is round.” This proposition implies “a totality of possible experience which is unlimited and inexhaustible .”109 As a matter of fact, if this penny is round, then — if it were measured with accurate instruments — the result would show this or something else; if this penny is round, then it will not appear elliptical if observed when standing in front of it; and it is possible to make as many implications of this sort as we like. This means that the proposition “this penny is round” is not a completely verifiable proposition; it is a proposition that remains open to future tests that can confirm it or disprove it. What we have said about the proposition “this penny is round,” Lewis says, can also be said for all empirical knowledge: all empirical knowledge is subject to the test of later experience in the sense that this future experience can invalidate it.

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Let’s try to be clear on this very pertinent subject by following carefully Lewis’s argument. Let’s consider the following two propositions: 1) “All swans are birds”; 2) “All swans are white.” Lewis says: “the former proposition [“all swans are birds”] can not be falsified by any possible experience because its truth has a purely logical warrant […] But the latter proposition [“all swans are white”] has no such logical warrant and may be falsified by experience: black creatures having all the essential properties of swans may be discovered.”110 The proposition “all swans are white” is an empirical generalization; it is certainly an a priori, but it is not an analytical truth; and it is not an analytical truth because “white color is not included as essential in the denotation assigned to ‘swan’.”111 And more specifically, the proposition “all swans are white” can be falsified since “It is to be noted that any universal proposition asserts the non-existence of some class of things: that all swans are white asserts that the class of swans of different color is a class which has no members.”112 Therefore, Lewis concludes, “the empirical generalization is forever at the mercy of future experience, and hence probable only, while the a priori proposition is forever certain.”113 Empirical knowledge — in its concepts and in its theories — implies foresight, so future experience can always demonstrate that it is false. However, Lewis maintains, “there is just about enough chance that our trusted generalizations may be false to make the pursuit of science pleasantly exciting.”114

Chapter Three The construction of a “logic of hypotheses” in English, French and Italian Thinkers between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

“A true theory is a fact; a fact is a familiar theory — William Whewell William Whewell (1795-1866), a confirmed hypothesist, stated that experimental truths are different from necessary truths;1 that since it is a supposition which solves an enigma, an inductive truth is tested by its agreement with the facts described 2; that “inductive inference is not demonstrative”3; that theories are accepted because “they include and explain […] Facts”4; that “facts involve thoughts, for we know facts only by thinking about them”5; that in the construction of science, the mind is active and not passive, as was erroneously thought by many thinkers in the past6; that “without our ideas, our sensations could have no connexion; without external impressions, our ideas would have no reality”.7 Ideas do not come from sensations, though they are necessary for giving form to them.8 For Whewell, an induction implies possession of general ideas.9 An induction is not a collection of facts but rather a colligation of facts10 — a colligation that is not drawn from the facts; it is imposed on the facts and comes from the mind. In Whewell’s opinion, Bacon neglected inventive genius. However, the history of science unequivocally proves that “an induction is not the mere sum of the facts which are colligated. […] In every induction a new conception is superinduced upon the facts.”11 In inductive inference we go beyond the cases that we have in front of us; we consider them as examples of an ideal case.12 The hidden source of our thoughts is a mystery, says Whewell.13 The real scientist, therefore, makes risky conjectures that serve to tie together the facts

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and are the result of the insight of scientists. This ability cannot be taught.14 Generally, it successfully works by conjectures; and this success seems to consist in the formulation of hypothesis and in the choice of the right one.15 Nevertheless, it is necessary to stress that hypotheses are not formed by following a rule or without creative talent.16 And it goes without saying that once, formulated and proposed, hypotheses or ideas must be selected or chosen. To make a choice the scientist must bring them into rigorous accordance with facts: the idea needs to be proved by the facts.17 And this check is a consequence of an idea or hypothesis. In fact, every general proposition is true based on the truth of the particular proposition it contains; and we can believe it true only by believing that these particular constitutive elements are true.18 And if a hypothesis formulated to explain certain cases manages to predict a different type of facts, its effect and value increase.19 Science advances by means of broader and broader generalizations. Useful to this process are not only the hypotheses that are gradually consolidated but even the false ones: “the road to the truth is made by trying various hypotheses — by modifying these hypotheses, in order to be in accordance with facts, and by considering much more facts, in order to prove the hypotheses.”20 But what is a “fact”? According to Whewell, “a true Theory is a Fact; a Fact is a familiar Theory.”21 What is a fact from one point of view is a theory from another: “the distinction between fact and theory is only relative.”22 A theory may look like a fact, and a fact like a theory, as the same proposition of a demonstration can be the premise of a syllogism and the conclusion of another; as the same person can be father and son.23 Under the influence of Kant,24 a critic of the English empirical tradition 25 who had very broad knowledge of the history of scientific ideas, Whewell, by identifying the scientific method with the logic of hypothesis, managed to create an original philosophy of science that is surprising for its timeliness even today.26

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“Experiments are used, as is right, to confirm or confute hypothetical anticipations of nature” —William S. Jevons The originality, acuity and actuality of Whewell’s work are evident not only when compared to the ideas of John Stuart Mill, but also, for example, if compared with J.F.W. Herschel’s well- known A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,27 which appeared in 1831; with Karl Pearson’s The Grammar of Science,28 which was first published in 1892; with George Gore’s prodigious work The Art of Scientific Discovery,29 published in London in 1878; or with the lecture given by John Tyndall on Liverpool in September 16, 1870 to The British Association for the Advancement of Science on The Scientific Role of the Imagination.30 Clearly expressed ideas contributing to the formation of a “logic of hypothesis” by another Englishman, the logician and economist William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) are on the level of Whewell’s. In his Elementary Lessons in Logic of 1870, Jevons wrote that it is actually the history of science that negates Bacon’s inductivist image of science31 because “the history of science would show conclusively that deduction was the clue to all the greatest discoveries.”32 In Jevons opinion, it was Newton who possessed beyond all question the greatest power of deductive thought which has ever been enjoyed by man. […] Some persons may suppose that Newton, living shortly after Bacon, adopted the Baconian method, but I believe that there is no reference to Bacon in Newton’s works; and it is certain that he did not employ the method of Bacon. The Principia, though containing constant appeals to experiment and observation, is nevertheless the result of a constant and sustained effort of deductive mathematical reasoning.33 Actually in scientific research “the first process consists in such a rough and simple appeal to experience as may give us a glimpse of the laws which operate, without being sufficient to establish their truth. Assuming them as provisionally true, we then proceed

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to argue to their effects in other cases, and a further appeal to experience either verifies or negatives the truth of the laws assumed.”34 In other words, the hypotheses we make are attempts at explanation. “The truth of a hypothesis thus altogether depends upon subsequent verification and accordance with observed facts.”35 The Principles of Science was written in 1873. Chapter XXIII is dedicated to the use of hypothesis. “All inductive investigation — Jevons says — consists of a marriage of hypothesis and experiment.”36 Moreover, “the experiments are employed, as they should be, to confirm or refute hypothetical anticipations of nature.”37 The researcher begins his research from problematic facts and ends with facts used as tools to confirm or refute the explanatory hypotheses. If “any result prove different from what he expects it leads [the researcher] to modify or to abandon his hypothesis expects.”38 However, Jevons points out, “even if the result in any case agrees with his anticipations, he does not regard it as finally confirmatory of his theory, but proceeds to test the truth of the theory by new deductions and new trials.”39 The more rigorous and exact the formulation of an empirically testable hypothesis is, the more severe testing it can sustain.40 In fact, “vagueness and incapability of precise proof or disproof often enable a false theory to live.”41 A theory becomes a good one not due to vagueness but due to the capacity to anticipate facts.42 “We are not infallible.”43 Our hypotheses are never cer44 tain. We accept them temporarily if they agree with the facts and other laws of nature accepted as valid at the time:45 every hypothesis is always being tested. A single fact can be fatal for a hypothesis: “falsa in uno, falsa in omnibus”46 However, “Though one real inconsistency would overturn the most plausible theory, yet there is usually some probability that the fact may be misinterpreted, or that some supposed law of nature, on which we are relying, may not be true.”47 Therefore, not only the acceptance but also the rejection of a theory requires careful examination. Obviously faith in a theory increases with the number of successes reported in scrupulous experiments, but the risk of error can not be eliminated.48 Consequently, “absolute certainty is beyond the powers of inductive

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investigation, and the most plausible supposition may ultimately be proved false.”49 While the imagination must be fertile, the test of the fruits of the imagination must be rigorous: “perfect readiness to reject a theory inconsistent with fact is — says Jevons — a primary requisite of the philosophical mind.”50 However — and this is a very important point —“readiness to reject a false theory may be combined with a peculiar pertinacity and courage in maintaining an hypothesis as long as its falsity is not actually apparent.”51 Proliferation of ideas: because “the man of one idea has but a single chance of truth.”52 Tenacity to sustain an idea that has had success or whose promise, once realized, would represent real progress for science: “If […] a theory exhibits a number of striking coincidences with fact, it must not be thrown aside until at least one conclusive discordance is proved, regard being had to possible error in establishing that discordance .”53

“An idea tested by facts is characteristic of all science” — Claude Bernard Of the French authors who acknowledged the role of hypothesis in scientific research we should mention Prévost, La Sage, Chevreul and, above all Claude Bernard (1813–1878),54 whose Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine is dated 1865. “The experimental method — Claude Bernard says — is nothing but reasoning by whose help we methodically submit our ideas to experience, — the experience of facts.”55 Of course, the phenomena are different in the various areas of research, but “reasoning is always the same, whether in the sciences that study living beings or in those concerned with inorganic bodies.”56 Moreover, “to be worthy of the name, an experimenter must be at once theorist and practitioner. […] We cannot separate these two things: head and hand. An able hand, without a head to direct it, is a blind tool; the head is powerless without its executive hand.”57

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Therefore, for the hand to be able to act there must be the head, that is, ideas, since it is the idea — controlled by facts — that “ideas, given form by facts, embody science.”58 Indeed, “a scientific hypothesis is merely a scientific idea, preconceived or provisioned. A theory is merely a scientific idea controlled by experiment. […] Everything, first and last, leads back to an idea. The idea is what establishes, as we shall see, the starting point or the primum movens of all scientific reasoning, and it is also the goal in the mind’s aspiration towards the unknown.”59 But where do ideas come from? Ideas come from the human mind: “man — says Bernard — is by nature metaphysical and proud”60; and “the metaphysician, the scholastic, and the experimenter all work with an a priori idea.”61 However, while the scholastic “imposes his idea as an absolute truth,”62 the experimenter compares the consequences of his idea with “reality by means of experiment”63 and will never dare “to assert that he has grasped the absolute truth.”64 Actually “by a marvellous compensation, science, in humbling our pride, proportionately increases our power”65 and “the nature or very essence of phenomena, whether vital or mineral, will always remain unknown.”66 There are no longer unexplainable explanations or ones that can not be negated. In Bernard’s opinion, there is no end to research: every scientist “is necessarily destined to be outdistanced and left behind by the progress of successive generations.”67 Every discovery “is but a flash whose gleam discovers for us fresh horizons, toward which our insatiate curiosity repairs with still more ardor.”68 There is no end to research; nor does it lead to absolute truth. The truth of a scientific theory “is never more than relative to the number of experiments and observations that have been made. Even if no observation has so far disproved the truth in question, still the mind does not therefore imagine that things cannot happen otherwise.”69 Consequently, the most important principle of experimentation is doubt.70 And if this is true, then authentic checks of a theory will not be attempts to confirm it but rather serious attempts to negate it.

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When we have put forward an idea or a theory in science, our object must not be to preserve it by seeking everything that may support it and setting aside everything that may weaken it. On the contrary, we ought to examine with the greatest care the facts which apparently would overthrow it, because real progress always consists in exchanging an old theory which includes fewer facts for a new one which includes more. This proves that we have advanced, for in science the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.71 Experimental sciences “can move forward only by revolution and by recasting old truth in a new scientific form.”72 Ideas are discarded under the pressure of experimental tests. But to carry out an experiment of a test there must be something to experiment or test. This something is ideas.73 Ideas are the fruit of creative minds struggling with problems. However, are there rules for obtaining good ideas? No, says Bernard: “No rules can be given for bringing to birth in the brain a correct and fertile idea that may be a sort of intuitive anticipation of successful research. The idea once set forth, we can only explain how to submit it to the definite precepts and precise rules of logic from which no experimenter may depart; but its appearance is wholly spontaneous […] A new idea appears as a new or unexpected relation which the mind perceives among things.”74 Facts do not speak by themselves. It is ideas that illuminate them through interpretation.75 Nor can method produce new ideas; method only evaluates what the mind produces: The new idea appears […] with the rapidity of lightning, as a kind of sudden revelation […]. The experimental method […] cannot give new and fruitful ideas to men who have none; it can serve only to guide the ideas of men who have them, to direct their ideas and to develop them so as to get the best possible results. The idea is a seed; the method is the earth furnishing the conditions in which it may develop,

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flourish and give the best of fruit according to its nature. […] The method itself gives birth to nothing. Certain philosophers have made the mistake of according too much power to method along these lines.76 From all this it is easy to see that in experimental science there is only one method and this consists of testing the ideas proposed as solutions to problems: the mind of man, Bernard says, “always proceeds instinctively from a principle, acquired or invented by hypothesis; but he can never go forward in reasoning otherwise than by syllogism, that is, by proceeding from the general to the particular.”77 “There seems to me to be only one form of reasoning: deduction by syllogism;”78 so that “when we think that we are moving from a special case to a principle, i.e. making an induction, we are really making a deduction.”79

“Every generalization is a hypothesis” — Henri Poincaré The epistemological ideas of H. Poincaré (1854–1912) can be found in two famous volumes: La science et l’hypothèse (1902)80 and La valeur de la science (of 1905).81 Poincaré very willingly recognizes the conventional element in science, but this does not mean he sacrifices the no less present and real cognitive nature of scientific theories. He writes: “For Le Roy science is nothing but a rule for action. We can not know anything, but we have set off and are forced to take action, so we have fixed the rules randomly. All of these rules together is what we call science. Similarly, men wanting to enjoy themselves have established game rules, as, for example in backgammon, which are based, rather than on science on universal consensus. This also occurs when we need to make a choice but are unable, so we toss a coin. The rule for backgammon is undoubtedly a rule of action like science, but do we really see no difference and

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believe that the comparison is right? Game rules are arbitrary conventions and we could have adopted the opposite convention which would have been just as good as the other. On the contrary, science is a rule of action that is successful, at least along general lines, where the opposite rule would not be. If I say, ‘to produce hydrogen use acid on zinc,’ I am formulating a rule of action that works. I could have said, ‘use distilled water on gold,’ and this too would have been a rule, only it would not have worked. Therefore, whether or not scientific ‘recipes’ have value as a rule of action depends on whether we know that they work at least in general. However, knowing this means knowing something, so why do you say that we cannot know anything? Because science foresees it may be useful as a rule of action.82 Le Roy says that the scientist creates the fact,83 but that is not true, even though it is true that the scientist creates “the scientific fact” when speaking of it within a scientific theory. “All that the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he relates it.84 Therefore, the scientist does not create facts: raw facts exist and the scientist makes some of them into “scientific facts.” Thus “it seems superfluous to find out if the raw fact is outside of science, since there can be no science without scientific fact and no scientific fact without a raw fact because the former is the translation of the latter.”85 Then what, Poincairé asks himself, is left of Le Roy’s theory? His answer is that “the scientist intervenes actively when choosing the facts worthy of observation. An isolated fact in itself is of no interest, but it acquires interest if thinking about it might help in foreseeing others or if, before being foreseen, its verification confirms a law. Will those who choose the facts that fulfill these conditions earn the right to citizenship in science? This is the free activity of the scientist.”86 On the other hand, it is true that scientists sometimes promote the most universal and well-established laws to the level of indisputable principles which have been “crystallized” and are no longer subjected to experimental tests.”87 Nevertheless, it is also true that within these principles a whole

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series of hypotheses are established and, based on the knowledge of the times, they are subject to empirical testing. As a matter of fact, “experimentation is the only source of truth.”88 Of course, “every generalization is a hypothesis” so “hypothesis plays a necessary role that no one has ever contested,”89 as, for example, in the choice of “high-yield” facts;90 but in any case it “must be subjected to verification as soon as possible. It is also obvious that, if it does not stand up to this test it must be abandoned.”91 Sometimes this hypothesis is rejected reluctantly; but, says Poincaré, this feeling is not justified, “quite the contrary because the physicist who has renounced one of his hypotheses should be joyful because he has found an unexpected opportunity for discovery.”92 A moderate conventionalist in the physical-naturalistic sciences, Poincaré is famous for having coherently extended his theory to the field of geometry apropos the nature of axioms (of geometry). At that time, the problem was urgent because of non-Euclidean geometries of physical space: is this structure Euclidean or non-Euclidean? Which theorems are valid for it, those of Euclid, Lobacewski or Riemann? Poincaré gave the following classical answer to this problem: Geometric axioms are […] neither synthetic a priori judgments nor experimental facts. They are conventions; our choice among the many possible conventions is guided by experimental facts; but it is free and unlimited except by the need to avoid all contradiction. In this way postulates can remain strictly true even when the experimental laws that determined their adoption are only approximate. In other words, the axioms of geometry (I’m not speaking of arithmetical ones) are only masked definitions. What then are we to think about the following question: is Euclidean geometry true? Well, this question makes no sense […]. One geometry can not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.93

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The development of science is a struggle between “nature that does not tire of producing” and reason that will not “tire of understanding” — Pierre Duhem In his famous book La théorie physique: son object et sa structure [The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory]94 published in 1906, the physicist and historian of science Pierre Duhem wanted to make “a simple logical analysis of the method by which physical science makes progress,”95 because he was convinced that his work on methodology “was born and matured in the daily practice of the science.”96 First of all, for Duhem “a physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible a set of experimental laws.”97 Therefore: no explanation; “a true theory is not a theory which gives an explanation of physical appearances in conformity with reality; it is a theory which represents in a satisfactory manner a group of experimental laws. A false theory is not an attempt at an explanation based on assumptions contrary to reality; it is a group of propositions which do not agree with the experimental laws. Agreement with the experiment is the sole criterion of truth for a physical theory.”98 Therefore, a physical theory is a set of mathematical propositions; it is a conventional and economical set which is more powerful the larger the number of laws that can be derived from it: “the reduction of physical laws to theories thus contributes to that intellectual economy in which Ernst Mach sees the goal and directing principle of science.”99 In Duhem’s opinion, there is a development in physics where we see a continual struggle between “nature that does not tire of providing” and reason that does not wish to tire of conceiving.”100 Indeed, “the experimenter constantly brings to light facts hitherto unsuspected and formulates new laws, and the theorist constantly makes it possible to store up these acquisitions by imagining more condensed representations, more economical systems.”101 A physical theory is a construction of the human mind, and it “never gives us the explanation of experimental laws; it never reveals realities hiding under the sensible

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appearances; but the more complete it becomes, the more we apprehend that the logical order in which theory orders experimental laws is the reflection of an ontological order.”102 Faced with the fetishism of facts promulgated by positivism, the conventionalists’ awareness of the importance of the theorist was a great step ahead that enabled them to understand the dynamism of science, which besides having a method also has a history: physics “makes progress because experiment constantly causes new disagreements to break out between laws and facts, and because physicists constantly touch up and modify laws in order that they may more faithfully represents facts.”103 The laws of physics, Duhem says, are founded on the results of experiments. And it is here, apropos of experimentation, that Duhem made one of his most outstanding contributions by proposing the idea of so-called holistic checks (an idea taken up in our time by W.V.O. Quine so that we speak of the “Quine-Duhem theory”) and another theory, resulting from the idea of holistic checks, that maintains that there are no experimenta crucis. A physicist decides to demonstrate the inaccuracy of a proposition; in order to deduce from this proposition the prediction of a phenomenon and institute the experiment which is to show whether this phenomenon is or is not produced, in order to interpret the results of this experiment and establish that the predicted phenomenon is not produced, he does not confine himself to making use of the proposition in question; he makes use also of a whole group of theories accepted by him as beyond dispute. The prediction of the phenomenon, whose non-production is to cut off debate, does not derive from the proposition challenged if taken by itself, but from the proposition at issue joined to the whole group of theories.”104 All this means that the test of a hypothesis cannot be made in isolation: We need auxiliary hypotheses (that help the hypothesis in question produce observable consequences), instrumentation

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(presupposing and including other theories), etc. Therefore, “the physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses; when the experiment is in disagreement with his predictions, what he learns is that at least one of the hypotheses constituting this group is unacceptable and ought to be modified; but the experiment does not designate which one should be changed.105 “The only experimental check on a physical theory which is not illogical consists in comparing the entire system of physical theory with the whole group of experimental laws, and in judging whether the latter is represented by the former in a satisfactory manner.”106 It is precisely what has just been said, Duhem claims, that makes it impossible in physics to conduct an experimentum crucis (think of Foucault’s experiment to determine the truth of the corpuscular hypothesis of light sustained by Newton, Laplace and Biot or the wave hypothesis of Huygens, Young and Fresnel) which, since there are two incompatible hypotheses, must irrefutably and unequivocally decide the truth of one or the other by creating a condition that, in connection with the first, should give a certain result and that, instead, in connection with the second, should give another. However, Duhem says, this is not possible: the experimentm crucis claims that if one hypothesis is false the other must necessarily be true; but “do two hypotheses in physics ever constitute such a strict dilemma? Shall we ever dare to assert that no other hypothesis is imaginable? […] The physicist is never sure he has exhausted all the imaginable assumptions. The truth of a physical theory is not decided by heads or tails.”107

“Laws and their causes cannot be observed, they must be conjectured” — Ernest Naville Ernest Naville (1816–1909) was born in Geneva. In 1880 he published La logique de l’hypothèse, a volume begun in 1844 and the fruit of “long years of work.”108 Contrary to Bacon, Naville immediately states that a large number of men can observe all their life without making a discovery,109 and, contrary to Descartes, he

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says they could reason ad infinitum without producing anything but illusions.110 The reason for this is that observation and reasoning are the indispensable conditions for a discovery, but the discovery itself is of a spontaneous nature and always begins in the form of a supposition.111 Although Bacon and Descartes disagreed on the question of method, they committed the same error: they both failed to recognize the role of hypothesis in science.112 Of course, Naville admits, other thinkers “indicated the presence of hypothesis in scientific explanations” (Bernard, Leibig, Chevreul, Whewell); and before all of the latter, Galileo.113 Nevertheless, Naville insists, no one has yet seen the general significance of this fact and pointed out its consequences,114 so that a theory that affirms, without exception, the presence of hypothesis in all aspects of science seems like a new theory to him.115 Science wants to explain the facts, but to do this it is necessary to presuppose their causes. And these presuppositions, or conjectures, or hypotheses116 must be verified on the basis of their consequences.117 The scientific method, Naville often said, is the same in all research and in all of science: observer, supposer, verifier.118 If we have a hypothesis we draw conclusions: a set of conclusions from a hypothesis makes up a system:119 this system must be compared with the facts and, if it conforms to them, takes a place in science under the heading of theory, even if we must not forget that experimental sciences can never leave the domain of contingency.120 Hypothesis is necessary to explain facts, and verification is always verification of some hypothesis. Actually, “the act of presupposition is an advancement of thinking, without which science would forever stagnate; and this advancement is the product of individual spontaneity.”121 Whether the hypothesis comes as a simple flash whose clarity gradually increases or whether it appears in the form of an immediate illumination,122 it can be said that hypothesis is the indispensable factor of science.123 It was Berthelot who said “the world can’t be guessed, it must be observed.”124 Of course, Naville replies, observation is necessary in the verification of hypotheses, but we cannot ignore the fact that “laws and causes

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are not observable and must be guessed.”125 Without hypotheses, there is no science. And this is true as well for mathematics.126 In mathematics, theorems are verified only by reasoning; but before verifying them, they must be conceived, and in no way do they constitute part of the instinctive data of reason. Therefore, hypothesis is an essential factor of the sciences. Naville writes, “The human spirit produces a multitude of useless conjectures, just as the trees of our forests produce a large number of sterile seeds; but hypothesis is the seed of every truth, and rejecting it for fear of abuses is like eliminating seeds because some of them are infertile.”127 Science has always advanced by adopting the “true method,” that is, by using suppositions. There have been and there are epistemological theories that negate this true method, or silently pass over the role of hypotheses, or forbid them, or admit them only in exceptional cases. And so they find themselves out of step with the real development of science.128 But the truth is that the role of hypotheses, both in the mathematical sciences and in those concerning empirical facts, is so obvious that it is surprising that they have been underestimated by logicians as well as philosophers.129 Hypothesis is present everywhere in the construction of science; and we should not forget, Naville points out, that today’s solidly established experimental truths were yesterday’s conjectures and that hypothesis is present in observation itself and in verification.130 The world is immense — Naville writes — and one must know where to look to avoid getting lost in vague and sterile contemplation. This almost always occurs when dealing with preconceptions that one wants to confirm or destroy. Even false hypotheses can be useful if they set off processes of research.131 The same is true for unverifiable hypotheses. “Contemporary physics is dominated by the theory of the force constant; it is a magnificent hypothesis which, due to its very nature, is absolutely unverifiable but is conducive to suppositions, observations and verifications of a multitude of detailed conjectures. The great hypothesis that Descartes erroneously considered a priori have in part been shattered; but before this they gave rise to a large number of observations and contributed greatly to scientific progress.”132

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Hypothesis, however, “does not only direct observation. It affects the primitive element of every external observation; in other words, it affects every perception of the senses. In a great many cases one sees distinctly only what was supposed.”133 The truth is that “the act of hypothesis in observation is so important that without a supposition that is true or influenced by a false supposition, one can be in possession of a fact and not recognize it.”134 This was so, for example, for Priestly who, having obtained oxygen in its pure state, at first took it for carbonic acid. “This error, which astonishes present-day chemists, was due to the fact that Priestly was under the influence of the false theory of phlogiston.”135 The observation is, therefore, tainted by theory. Those who consider themselves pure observers — Naville argues — are guided in the choice of their observations by the general trend of the contemporary science.136 However, if hypothesis enters into the very processes of observation, the hypothetical element also exists in the choice of experimentation and research selected to test the hypotheses formed as solutions to problems.137

“Fact as pure phenomenon without being understood, interpreted and examined in the light of the intellect, can never have scientific value” — Luigi Palmieri Luigi Palmieri (1807–1896) was successor to Galluppi and predecessor to Spaventa at the University of Naples. On November 16, 1880, at the inauguration of the academic year at the University of Naples, he gave a speech: Uso delle ipotesi nelle scienze naturali [The Use of Hypotheses in the Natural Sciences]. It so happens — Palmieri said — that “whenever science has thought it could find a firm basis in the realm of experimental facts it had to ban all hypotheses because they are not in the order of perceptible things.”138 Science, say the positivists, is made up of pure fact, but Palmieri says “first of all I wish the apostles of positive science could be convinced that fact as pure phenomenon without being understood, interpreted and examined in the light of the intellect, can never

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have scientific value; and when the phenomenon is elaborated by the intellect it is impossible not to transcend the boundaries of the purely perceptible.”139 In second place, “the hypotheses concerning electricity, magnetism, caloric and the great poetic hypothesis of Laplace” were proclaimed “in that century which professed the most absolute empiricism.”140 The Copernican hypothesis is the basis of astronomy141; the hypothesis of the existence of ether “is the foundation of modern optics”142; and the hypothesis of Avogadro has become “the cornerstone of modern chemistry.”143 Actually, Palmieri continues, “If I could have a look at all the subjects that deal with nature, from astronomy to geology, from physics to physiology, I could show you how, under the guise of positivism or naturalism, we are often forced to resort to certain divinations called hypotheses […]. And those who believe that science should never resort to any hypothesis are like the person who says that in order to see better is pays to be blind one eye.”144 And isn’t Darwinian theory a hypothesis?145 Hypotheses — the fruit of inspiration, “which can not be taught or learned”146 — give logical connections to the facts, help to arrange them in an orderly manner, and are the true guide to the art of experimentation that can itself negate or confirm the hypotheses, because often a discovery is nothing more than a hypothesis based on observation and is verified by testing.”147 Without hypothesis, science would only be “the numerous odds and ends of unrelated facts” that can not even be connected by Baconian induction.148 Inspiration “will appear not only in art but also in science.”149 If there were no hypotheses, “experimentation would lack the power of the intellect and there would be no way of seeing the logical connection necessary for explaining phenomena and there would be no guide to all experimental testing. Science would lack organization and we would be prevented from arriving at the great universal principles to which human reason inevitably aspires.”150 Hypotheses must be tested. And Palmieri does not want to consign to oblivion “even those that proved to be untrue by testing, because they often give rise to a series of revealing experimental

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studies. False hypotheses are frightening only in medicine because often a diagnosis is a hypothesis based on a certain number of facts and one would wish they were never wrong.”151 Hypotheses must be tested and “the art of experimentation is essentially designed to force nature to respond to the questions we pose, but well-conducted experiments will give us criteria for judging the value of the hypotheses.”152 Consequently, “the true experimental method […] is not the one proclaimed by Bacon and Verulum and by others in our times, but the one taught and applied by Galileo and the Florentine Academy of Cimento and later followed very profitably by the great scholars of the natural sciences in all civilized nations.”153 For Palmieri, as for Naville, the method comes down to these three stages: “to observe, to hypothesize, and to verify.”154 That’s why, Palmieri says, “I […] place hypothesis among the means of investigation and applaud the Swiss philosopher Ernest Naville’s idea to fill the gap found in all the treatises on logic.”155 The method, as Naville envisioned it,156 “is the only legitimate one; it makes a very close connection between the senses and reason, does not clip the wings of ingenuity or prevent reason from discovering the causes and laws of phenomena, and offers a rule for distinguishing true from false hypotheses.”157 Discovery through observation and experimentation of false hypotheses and attempts to improve them means progress in science. Actually, “when a hypothesis that formerly suited a certain order of phenomena is shown, due to the appearance of new facts, to be inadequate, it gives way to another that better corresponds to the needs of new advances in science, but when new hypotheses replace the old ones it is a sign that science has progressed.”158 One way science advances is when hypotheses that were previously unverifiable become verifiable due to the invention and use of instruments (like the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, the barometer, the spectroscope, etc.) “with which […] we have been able to create new organs of perception.”159

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“One constructs when making the hypothesis, while planning the experiments, and when inventing the apparatus.” — Giovanni Antonio Colozza Giovanni Antonio Colozza (1857–1943) was convinced of the unity of the scientific method (“The investigative process is essentially identical for all of the sciences”160) and the fact that “imagination is the sine qua non of progress in every branch of knowledge.”161 In his book L’immaginazione nella scienza (1899), after discussing the various types of imagination (reproductive, constructive)162, he goes on to deal with the role of imagination in scientific research. Scientific research — Colozza maintains — springs from problems. And “a problem is an unknown to decipher that is connected to current knowledge or to a part of current knowledge […].”163 Briefly stated, a problem presupposed knowledge: “a problem […] can only be formulated by adults and enlightened minds.”164 A problem is a flaw in what we consider our knowledge; it is an authentic question for which we do not yet have an answer. A problem, Colozza points out, is not an exercise165 (which is a question for which there is already an answer): “every problem is an investigation proposed to the mind.”166 What must be done to solve problems? To begin with, it is necessary to unleash the imagination that produces hypotheses, supposition or conjecture. The special characteristic of the imagination is “to invent and produce.”167 Hypothesis is a composition; therefore it is a product of the constructive imagination, outside of which it is impossible to suppose anything.”168 Only constructive imagination “has the power to produce indiscriminately both true and false suppositions. The liveliness of the imagination enables us to continually make new suppositions.”169 Hypothesis is fruit of the imagination, but it must be serious and well conceived, in other words plausible and admissible. In a note, Colozza quotes the following passage from Masci’s Logica: “The first condition for admissibility is that the hypothesis not be self-contradictory, that it not contradict other known ascertained principles,

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and that it not contradict the facts it must explain.”170 Moreover, Colozza says, “every hypothesis […] is in harmony with the culture and civilization of the time it appears.”171 This explains “why some suppositions belong to certain periods and certain populations. Like art, religion, politics, morality and other products of the spirit, they are conditioned by necessary antecedents. Ex nihilo nihil.”172 The constructive imagination “renders its appreciable services to all branches of all sciences. There is no science that does not contain hypotheses.”173 There is no need to dwell on the fact that “the lines in mechanics, the figures in geometry, the heavens, atoms, and algebraic signs are all creations.”174 It is true that there are those who, on the strength of Newton’s authority, have denied the role of hypotheses in scientific research. However, Colozza asks, “what is there to say about Newton’s famous statement [Hypotheses non fingo]. Is there any doubt that the hypothesis on gravitation is among the most brilliant and successful hypotheses? In reference to these words of Newton, another writer very rightly said that Newton deluded himself.”175 It is impossible to do experiments if there is no idea or hypothesis to subject to the test of experimentation;176 and “what are these hypotheses if not constructions of our imagination?”177 It is with “hypothetical thought” that “we observe the marvelous phenomena of nature.”178 Of course, in addition to hypotheses presently accepted by science there are also “suppositions that have been universally rejected as false;” they are suppositions that were accepted as true at a certain moment of history and were rejected as false by later experiments and research.179 “The suppositions which are no longer believed by anybody now serve only to give us a picture of the knowledge of the period in which they were made.”180 The fate of our hypotheses is that we must modify, change or abandon them when their results do not agree with ascertained facts.181 Hypotheses must be subjected to the judgment of experiments. And “we know the purpose of experiments; they serve to test and verify the hypotheses. According to Bernard, an experiment is the test of an idea by means of a fact.”182 However, it is clear that every experiment is the fruit of imagination; it is a plan or hypothesis on what will happen under conditions

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that must be established. Before an experiment can be conducted, it must be conceived.183 The means and equipment needed to carry it out”184 must also be conceived and constructed. In conclusion, “one constructs when making the hypothesis, while planning the experiments, and when inventing the apparatus.”185 The job of reason is “to identify the intuition of the imagination as truth or error.”186 The imagination invents; reason selects: “intuiting the truth and then proving if it is really so presupposes two distinct moments of the spirit.”187 Hypotheses can not be deducted from facts; only from hypotheses can facts be explained or deduced;188 and where “the imagination does not foresee illation, reasoning is impossible.”189 Reasoning examines, corrects and discards what is produced by the imagination.190 This is why science is historical, and it is very useful to know about the history of errors191 as well as the history of discoveries,192 because errors can be lurking not only in the hypotheses but also in the experimentation and observation.193

“The keenest minds have always acknowledged that the most important and productive discussion is that on method.” — Augusto Murri “Making a diagnosis — wrote Augustus Murri in Quattro lezioni e una perizia. Il problema del metodo in medicina e biologia [Four Lectures and an Expertise. The Problem of Method in Medicine and Biology] (1905) — is exactly the same as formulating a proposition.”194 “This is so true that unfortunately incorrect diagnoses are anything but rare!”195 A diagnosis is a proposition that should be subject to severe criticism. Actually, “in medicine, as in life, one must […] have a preconception — only one but an inalienable one — that everything that is maintained and appears to be true might be false. One must adopt a strict rule of criticizing everything and everyone before believing and accept as the most important duty to ask ‘why should I believe this?’”196 The primary rule for the clinician, as for any other researcher is. In Murri’s opinion, to doubt everything and everybody because we

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are all fallible and every assertion may be wrong. Since “one of the most serious causes of our fallibility is this tendency of the thinking faculty to inadvertently gather some unproven statements, I think — Murri insists — the benefit of having discredited all arbitrary opinions really seems superior to any other.”197 In agreement with John M. Robertson, Murri says, “a scientific mind […] is a mind attentive to the implications of its knowledge.”198 Since “even today there are false notions in medicine,” vigilance is required “because no metaphysical anomaly has ever appeared without some remote relation to the facts.”199 While judgment is required for the selection of what (if it exists) at the time is a good hypothesis, imagination is needed to construct the hypotheses that will later be tested and judged. Actually, “our imagination is less fertile than nature in devising combinations if phenomena.” Consequently, “since I can not force nature to answer me clearly. I must make hypotheses, or rather all possible hypotheses.”200 In science there are not various methods; there is only one way to solve problems: “There are not two or more methods for reaching the truth, there is only one.”201 This consists of inventing possible worlds and looking among them for one that describes, explains and foresees some piece of the real world. “Creativity and speculation are the prime qualities of the human spirit also in the sciences; but those who think they can be separated from critical discernment are deceiving themselves.”202 Creativity is necessary; there is no science without imagination; and “the keener and more far-sighted” the speculation “the more we will pay homage to genius; however, on condition that the speculations prove to be true and that false or likely ones are not declared to be true.”203 To do research one must be firmly convinced of the need to keep any testable proposition under constant siege. The human spirit, Murri says, is often tempted by an irresistible desire to accept axioms without feeling obligated to test them, especially if they support our wishes; and “it is amazing to consider how pitifully Bacon applied his inductive logic to certain experiments or the number of arbitrary sentences there are scattered about in the writings of Auguste Comte, the modern patron of positivism. Our

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reason is not an infallible device for generating light; strange as it may seem, it is we rationalists who are most suspicious of it. This has already been said by the prince of rationalists: the claim to never make a mistake is an insane idea.”204 We make mistakes because we are human, and only “fools and demigods who think they are invulnerable are adverse to criticism.”205 Actually, the lover of truth “the supreme god of all noble souls,”206 will never mistake criticism for aversion since he knows that “every day an error is corrected, every day a truth is expanded, every day we learn more about what good we can do and what bad we must allow to happen, every day we err less than the day before and learn to hope for improvement the following day.”207 The person who makes no mistakes — says Murri — “does not exist.”208 The important thing is to appreciate errors and learn from them. This is why in all frankness Murri said to his students: “I consider it my duty to also show you errors, so that you know at times how to avoid them and at times that they may be inevitable. If at a later time we come to the conclusion that it is impossible to judge, it would also be a good lesson for all of us in humility.”209 These notes should suffice to give an idea of Murrri’s awareness of methodology in constructing the “logic of hypothesis” and the need for the clinician to be aware of it: “the keenest minds — Murri says — have always realized that the discussion of method is the most essential and the most productive.”210

“Far from exhausting itself in the data of experiment, science is constructed on these data in the free play of the creative activity of the spirit.” — Federigo Ennriques In Problems of Science, Federigo Enriques (1871–1946) says that “it becomes clear that every observation and every experience has scientific value only insofar as it is based on reason; otherwise we must wait for nature to be kind enough to teach us, answering by chance questions we don’t know how to ask or interpret;”211 and in the acquisition of knowledge deductive reasoning acts as a tool

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for transforming hypotheses. In Signification de l’histoire de la pensee scientifique, Enriques says “every scientist knows, a priori, that his conquests only have relative and temporary values.”213 In Enriques’ opinion, an experiment never leads to a definite confirmation of theories, though it can lead to the negation of them and to their later revision, expansion or substitution.214 “Far from exhausting itself in the data of experiment […], science is constructed on these data in the free play of the creative activity of the spirit.”215 In the final analysis, science is development of ideas that are born of preceding ideas to which they are linked.216 Experimentation can demonstrate, as has happened in the history of science, that many of these ideas are false. However, Enriques insists, error must cease “to represent for us something monstrous and a negation of truth; it should be recognized as inseparable from attempts and from mental effort and as sometimes occupying a necessary place on the road to truth.”217 All of this leads to “a new concept of reason” so that we must radically change the idea of Pure Reason as intended by Kant. Reason — Enriques maintain — is no longer seen as an activity that elaborates scenes of possible experiments and expresses its laws in essential universal axioms; but its demands, which have lost all features of the absolute, tend to be satisfied in function of the experiment itself; and it is the latter that definitively confirms the principles. Consequently, “Kant’s Pure Reason seems to be an abstract ideal which glorifies reason as it progresses in the history of scientific thought.”218 In speaking of Enriques, one should not forget Giovanni Vailati (1863–1909), who in the essay La ricerca dell’impossible (1905) writes that the physicist “faced by certain facts works at constructing or testing the various hypotheses that might serve to explain them.”219 In Il metodo deduttivo come strumento di ricerca (1887) writes that “Pasteur rightly defined experiment as an observation guided by preconceived ideas or, in other words, and observation preceded and accompanied by deductive processes.”220 In the second chapter of this book we strayed slightly — but only slightly — from Vienna and Popper. We have gone much farther away in this third chapter because the important themes

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treated deal with a set of problems and solutions present in fin de siècle Vienna and also debated in Germany and in the United States of America as well as in England, France and Italy. However, it is now time to return to the Vienna of Popper.

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Chapter Four Evolutionary Epistemology in Vienna from Ernst Mach to Karl Popper

Donald T. Campbell and the “evolutionary epistemology” of Karl Popper “Professor Campbell’s remarkable contribution is perhaps the one which shows the greatest agreement with my epistemology, […]. In addition, it is a treatise of prodigious historical learning: there is scarcely anything in the whole of modern epistemology to compare with it; certainly not my own work. His historical references are all highly relevant; they are a real treasure house; and they often surprised me greatly.”1 Popper wrote this in reference to Donald T. Campbell’s essay Evolutionary Epistemology, published in the Philosophy of Karl Popper.2 For Campbell evolutionary epistemology is one whose minimal requirement is awareness of and compatibility with man’s status as a product of biological and social evolution.3 Campbell maintains that “evolution — even in its biological aspects — is a knowledge process” and that the natural-selection paradigm “can be generalized to other epistemic activities such as learning, thought, and science.”4 This evolutionary epistemology, Campbell says, has been neglected in the dominant philosophical tradition and “it is primarily through the works of Karl Popper that a natural selection epistemology is available today,”5 Popper’s judgment of Campbell’s essay is echoed by W.W, Bartley III, who goes so far as to say that Campbell’s Evolutionary Epistemology is “the most important contribution”6 to the collection The Philosophy of Karl Popper. Bartley also says, “Prior to 1960, the development of Popper’s thought could have been presented, however unjustly, in an incremental way: his new foundation for

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logic and his work in indeterminism in physics, his contribution to probability theory, all could be presented as elaborations of his early work in deduction and demarcation. The new work in philosophy of biology, however, is not simply incremental: it unifies the whole.”7 Although in Replies to My Critics (1974) Popper writes that the main task of the theory of knowledge is to understand human knowledge in continuity and discontinuity with that of animals,8 in the Preface to the first English edition (1959) of The Logic of Scientific Discovery he had stated that the “central problem of epistemology has always been and still is the problem of the growth of knowledge.”9 Nevertheless, even in 1934 (when The Logic of Scientific Discovery was published in Vienna) it was clear to Popper that the aim of the empirical method “is not to save the lives of untenable systems but, on the contrary, to select the one which is by comparison the fittest, by exposing them all to the fiercest struggle for survival.”10 Thus, when we prefer one theory to others we “choose the theory which best holds its own in competition with other theories; the one which, by natural selection, proves itself the fittest to survive.”11 In 1953, at Peterhouse in Cambridge, Popper gave a lecture entitled Science: Conjectures and Confutations,12 in which he said, there is no more rational procedure than the method of trial and error — of conjecture and refutation: of boldly proposing theories; of trying our best to show that these are erroneous; and of accepting them tentatively if our critical efforts are unsuccessful. […] The method of trial and error is, of course, not simply identical with the scientific or critical approach - with the method of conjecture and refutation. The method of trial and error is applied not only by Einstein but, in a more dogmatic fashion, by the amoeba also. The difference lies not so much in the trials as in a critical and constructive attitude towards error; errors which the scientist consciously and cautiously tries to uncover and refute, by searching arguments including appeals to the most severe

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experimental tests which his theories and his ingenuity permit him to design. The critical attitude may be described as the conscious attempt to make our theories, our conjectures, suffer in our stead, in the struggle for the survival of the fittest. It gives us a chance to survive the elimination of an inadequate hypothesis when the dogmatic attitude would eliminate it by eliminating us.13

W. W. Bartley III and Karl Popper’s “biological turn” in the sixties Popper’s interest in biology was not typical of his last period. I recall — says Bartley — one day in the spring of 1959, as we were walking through Hyde Park together, when Popper discussed, in the most animated and delightful way, the issues between Darwin and Lamarck, and Samuel Butler’s treatment of evolution in Erewhon. It was, so he told me then, a subject that had excited him since he was a young man. Popper’s public discussion of biology is, however, comparatively recent. I believe I can date it quite exactly to the afternoon of Tuesday, 15 November 1960. On that day, the members of Popper’s seminar had assembled as usual around the long table in the old seminar room on the fourth floor of the old building of the London School of Economics. When Popper appeared, he announced that he would abandon the usual format and would read a new paper of his own, that new paper, which spoke of ‘three worlds,’ of biology, and gave qualified support to Hegel’s theory of objective mind, took the members of the seminar off guard. The discussion that followed was more bewildered than heated; and Popper, usually one of the most persistent of men, did not pursue the matter that term. No members of the seminar, perhaps not even Popper, could have predicted that they had just heard the first note in a new development of his thought.14 In 1960, Popper wrote the essay Truth, Rationality and the Growth of Knowledge. Although he confines himself in it to the question of the growth of scientific knowledge, he does mention

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that his remarks are applicable without much change […] to the growth of pre-scientific knowledge also — that is to say to the general way in which men, and even animals, acquire new factual knowledge about the world, the method of learning by trial and error — of learning from our mistakes — seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practiced by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees or by men of science. My interest is not merely in the theory of scientific knowledge, but rather in the theory of knowledge in general.15 The essay Evolution and the Tree of Knowledge, based on the Herbert Spenser lecture given by Popper at Oxford at the end of October 1961, was published with other essays in 1972, in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach.16 In this essay Popper says, “the growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called ‘natural selection’; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses; our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence; a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit. This interpretation may be applied to animal knowledge, pre-scientific knowledge, and to scientific knowledge. What is peculiar to scientific knowledge is this: that the struggle for existence is made harder by the conscious and systematic criticism of our theories.”17 Moreover, while the tree of biological evolution continually develops new branches, the tree of the evolution of knowledge grows in a direction opposite to specialization and differentiation: “it is largely dominated by a tendency towards increasing integration towards unified theories.”18

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Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject dates back to 1967.19 Here too Popper delves into the theme of evolutionary epistemology. “The growth of knowledge — or the learning process — is not a repetitive or a cumulative process but one of error elimination. It is Darwinian selection rather than Lamarckian instruction.”20 However, this method, or logic, directed toward the growth of objective knowledge of World 3, also describes biological evolution: “Animals, and even plants, are problem-solvers. And they solve their problems by the method of competitive tentative solutions and the elimination of error. The tentative solutions which animals and plants incorporate into their behaviour are biological analogues of theories; and vice versa: theories correspond to endosomatic organs and their way of functioning.”21 Science: Problems, Aims, Responsibilities (1963)22, Of Clouds and Clocks (1965), and On the Theory of the Objective Mind (1968) contain further reflections on both evolutionary theory and evolutionary epistemology. This is also true for Two Faces of Common Sense: An Argument for Commonsense Realism and Against the Commonsense Theory of Knowledge (1970) and Conjectural Knowledge: My Solution of the Problem of Induction (1971).”23

On understanding the evolution of evolutionary epistemology The object of all this is to point out the centrality, also stressed by Bartley, of evolutionary epistemology in Popper’s thinking in regard to three problems: a) the evolution of cognitive apparatus from animals to man; b) the Darwinian-type evolution of scientific theories; and c) the continually pressing question — for Popper — of realism.24 Today, however, from a historical prospective one thing that evolutionary epistemology teaches us is that a mutation without a species is just as inconceivable as a theory without a tradition. Consequently, it seems entirely legitimate to insist on seeing what lines of thought and what specific contributions of specific thinkers stem from Popper’s ideas of evolutionary epistemology.

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In Two Faces of Common Sense Popper says, As far as I know, the term ‘evolutionary epistemology’ is due to my friend Donald T. Campbell. The idea is post-Darwinian and goes back to the end of the nineteenth century — to such thinkers as J. M. Baldwin, C. Lloyd Morgan, and H.S. Jennings. My own approach has been somewhat independent of most of these influences, though I read with great interest not only Darwin, of course, but also Lloyd Morgan and Jennings during the years before writing my first book (The Logic of Scientific Discovery).25 There is nothing to object to in Popper’s statement. And there is very little to add to Campbell’s historical analysis of the thinkers before Popper who proposed and more or less profoundly elaborated the theoretical nuclei of evolutionary epistemology. There is little to add even if mention should be made of other thinkers such as J. Ortega y Gasset,26 W. Jerusalem,27 F. Adler,28 H. Gomperz,29 and, above all, Federigo Enriquez and Giovanni Vailati. For example, in his well-known essay Sull’importanza delle ricerche relative alla storia delle scienze [On the Importance of the Inquiry in the History of Science] (1896), Vailati wrote, […]another order of considerations […] has changed our judgement of the importance of historical research even more in the same direction. […] Modern evolutionary theories, which have profoundly influenced even the branches of scientific activity furthest from their original branches, are about to give new, and, I would almost, say more concrete meaning to Leibniz’s famous aphorism: the present is child of the past and father of the future.30

Furthermore, I think that in Campbell’s view more attention than simple mention should be paid to Thomas H. Huxley, who pointed out in a lecture given in April 188, “the scientific spirit is of more valued than its products, a rationally held truth may be more harmful than rational errors. Now the essence of the scientific

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spirit is criticism. It tells us that whenever a doctrine claims our assent we should reply, ‘Take it if you can compel it’. The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.”31 In any case, if we are not speaking of evolutionary epistemology in general but evolutionary epistemology in Popper, I think that the analysis of the evolution of evolutionary epistemology forces us to re-examine in more detail the ideas on that subject that — apart from Boltzmann32 — were continually re-proposed and re-elaborated by Ernst Mach for more than forty years.

“Man and his thought are nothing but a part of nature” — Ernst Mach In The Velocity of Light (1867),33 Ernst Mach traces the history of Galileo’s previous attempts to determine the velocity of light and then maintains that it is clear that “new thoughts do no spring up suddenly.”34 Indeed, he adds, “thoughts need their time to ripen, grow, and develop in, like every natural product; for man, with his thoughts, is also a part of nature.”35 Man and his thoughts are part of nature. The transformation of thoughts is like that that of biological species: “Slowly, gradually, and laboriously one thought is transformed into a different thought, as in all likelihood one animal species is gradually transformed into new species. Many ideas arise simultaneously. They fight the battle for existence not otherwise than do the Ichthyosaurus, the Brahman, and the horse.”36 The development of ideas is a selective development on a par with that of the biological species. Species under the selective pressure of the environment disappear, as do ideas under the selective pressure of proof. And yet both struggle to survive. Moreover, as many animal species long since conquered, the relicts of ages past, still live in remote regions where their enemies

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cannot reach them, so also we find conquered ideas still living in the minds of men. Whoever will look carefully into his own soul will acknowledge that thoughts battle as obstinately for existence as animals. Who will gainsay that many vanquished modes of thought still haunt obscure crannies of his brain, too faint-hearted to step out into the clear light of reason. What inquirer does not know that the hardest battle, in the transformation of his ideas, is fought with himself?37 It took more than two centuries of work, Mach says, to solve the problem of how to measure the velocity of light: “three of the most eminent natural philosophers, Galileo, an Italian, Römer, a Dane, and Fizeau, a Frenchman, have shared its labors.”38 And long periods of patient research were necessary for “countless other questions.” Mach comments as follows: “when we contemplate thus the many blossoms of thought that must wither before one shall bloom, then we shall first truly appreciate Christ’s weighty but little consolatory words: ‘Many be called but few are chosen’.”39 But were the unchosen without merit and should they be forgotten? Many are called but few are chosen: “Such is the testimony of every page of history.” But, Mach asks, “Is history right? Are really only those chosen whom she names? Have those lived and battled in vain who have won no prizes?” In response to these questions, Mach answers, “I doubt it. And so will every one who has felt the pangs of sleepless nights spent in thought, at first useless but in the end successful. No thought in such struggles was thought in vain; each one, even the most insignificant, nay even the erroneous thought, that which apparently was the least productive, served to prepare the way for those that afterward bore fruit. And as in thought of the individual naught is in vain, so, also, it is in that of humanity.”40

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Mach and the Darwinian development of scientific theories In the essay On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought (1883),41 which is a true classic of evolutionary epistemology, Mach states in the first footnote that the idea presented in this essay is neither new nor remote. I have touched upon it myself on several occasions (first in 1867), but have never made it the subject of a formal disquisition. Doubtless, others, too, have treated it; it lies, so to speak, in the air. However, […] it is not my intention to trespass here upon the domain of biology. My statements are to be taken merely as the expression of the fact that no one can escape the influence of a great and far-reaching idea.”42 This “great and far-reaching idea” is Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Mach writes, “Scarcely thirty years have elapsed since Darwin propounded the principles of his theory of evolution. Yet, already we see his ideas firmly rooted in every branch of human thought, however remote. Everywhere, in history, in philosophy, even in the physical sciences, we hear the watchwords: heredity, adaptation, selection. We speak of the struggle for existence among the heavenly bodies and of the struggle for existence in the world of molecules.”43 To put it in Kuhnian terms, Mach sees the theory of evolution as a true par paradigm: “The impetus given by Galileo to scientific thought was marked in every direction; thus, his pupil, Borelli, founded the school of exact medicine, from whence proceeded even distinguished mathematicians. And now Darwinian ideas, in the same way, are animating all provinces of research.”44 Furthermore, in Mach’s opinion, the theory of evolution allows us to view even the progress in the knowledge of nature under a different light. The basic reason for this is that “knowledge too is a product of organic nature”45 and “although ideas, as such, do not comport themselves in all respects like independent organic individuals, and although violent comparisons should be avoided, still, if Darwin reasoned rightly, the general

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imprint of evolution and transformation must be noticeable in ideas also.”46 Thoughts (that is, ideas or theories) are a function of problems; and problems arise when our preceding habitual way of thinking comes up against surprising new facts. “Our customary train of thought demands its rights; the new and unwonted even likewise demands its rights. From this conflict between thought and fact the problem arises; out of this partial contrariety springs the question, ‘Why?’”47 In other words, there is a problem when a thought (or theory) well adapted to certain facts or observations clashes with a new fact that forces it to come up with a new idea or new adaptation of thoughts to facts. Every problem that calls for a new adaptation presupposes a stable cognitive framework. Certainly, Mach says, The out and out Philistine, whose only thoughts lie in the beaten path of his every-day life pursuits, […] has no problems. Everything goes its wonted course, and if perchance a thing go wrong at times, it is at most a mere object of curiosity and not worth serious consideration. In fact, the question ‘Why?’ loses all warrant in relations where we are familiar with every aspect of events. But the capable and talented young man has his head full of problems; he has acquired to a greater or less degree, certain habitudes of thought, and at the same time he is constantly observing what is new and unwonted, and in his case there is no end to the questions, ‘Why?’48 Therefore, “the factor which most promotes scientific thought is the gradual widening of the field of experience. We scarcely notice events we are accustomed to; the latter do not really develop their intellectual significance until placed in contrast with something to which we are unaccustomed.”49 But “the element of wonder never lies in the phenomenon or event observed; its place is in the person observing.”50 When faced with facts and observation in contrast with habitual thoughts the “vigorous mental type”51 of people

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“aim at once at an adaptation of thought that will conform to what they have observed.”52 “Thus does science eventually become the natural foe of the wonderful. The sources of the marvelous are unveiled, and surprise gives way to calm interpretation.”53 Behind even the most familiar ideas there is always a tortuous “historical course,” and there are “essential organic transformations that occurred in the past.” These transformations were necessary to account for facts that have gradually challenged the knowledge and mental approach of the times. What happens is that “ideas that have become very obvious through long experience mount up and must almost fight to survive every time a new fact of experience has to be understood; and this is the beginning of necessary transformation. The method of explaining new phenomena on the basis of hypothesis is founded on this procedure.”54 Is there a method or procedure that can automatically lead to “new intellectual attitudes,” to new hypotheses or theories? Mach does not believe there is such a method: “Hypothesis is […] the product of an artificial scientific method but has developed completely on its own from the beginnings of science.”55 “New intellectual attitudes, which grow freely in the brain of various precursors who combine the ingenuousness of the child with the judgment of the adult, do not tolerate any interference from pedagogues […].”56 New ideas produced in this way are necessary for readjusting conceptual and theoretical frameworks that have been overturned by unexpected new facts. Their value is demonstrated in the broadening of our experience toward new facts and new observation which, if they do not fit with these ideas, lead toward the elaboration of “new intellectual attitudes.” Thus, without ideas facts can neither be described nor explained. Nevertheless, “hypotheses can become harmful and even dangerous to scientific progress,” as they do when they are changed into dogma, when “they are given more credence than the facts themselves and their content is considered more real than the facts,” and when “they are set forth as fixed, inflexible hypotheses, the value of the acquired idea is exaggerated in relationship to the idea that still must be acquired.”57 Therefore, ideas should not be transformed into

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dogmas, but they should also have other characteristics. In fact, “Over readiness to yield to every new fact prevents fixed habits of thought from arising. Excessively rigid habits of thought impede freedom of observation.”58 The fact is, Mach believes, that knowledge grows and “in the struggle, in the compromise between judgment and prejudgment (prejudice) […] our understanding of things broadens.”59 Prejudice is the habitual knowledge inherited from the past: “Habitual judgment, applied to a new case without antecedent tests, we call prejudgment or prejudice. Who does not know its terrible power! But we think less often of the importance and utility of prejudice. Physically, no one could exist if he had to guide and regulate the circulation, respiration, and digestion of his body by conscious and purposive acts. So, too, no one could exist intellectually if he had to form judgments on every passing experience, instead of allowing himself to be controlled by the judgments he has already found. Prejudice is a sort of reflex motion in the province of intelligence.”60 In other words, prejudices are habitual judgments. They are the cultural heritage of a society. Much of the scientist’s resources and considerations are based on prejudice. Moreover, “on prejudices […] reposes most of the conduct of society. With the sudden disappearance of prejudice society would hopelessly dissolve.”61 It would be like the disappearance of structures and functions in the field of biology; life would disappear. Without prejudices, which are the cultural inheritance of the past, society could not exist; and neither could science.62 Of course, old and new prejudices must continually take account of old and new facts. If prejudice is given too much credence over the facts “then tragic complications and catastrophes occur in the practical life of individuals and nations — crises where man, placing custom above life, instead of pressing it into the service of life, becomes the victim of his error.”63 In this case we see that “the very power which in intellectual life advances, fosters, and sustains us, may in other circumstances delude and destroy us.”64 In conclusion, Mach says “Ideas are not all of life. They are only momentary efflorescences of light designed to illuminate the paths of the will. But as delicate reagents in our organic evolution

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our ideas are of paramount importance. […] The transformation of ideas thus appears as a part of the general evolution of life, as a part of its adaptation to a constantly widening sphere of action.”65 Moreover, “we are prepared, thus, to regard ourselves and every one of our ideas as a product and subject of universal evolution; and in this way we shall advance sturdily and unimpeded along the paths which the future will throw open to us.”66

Evolutionary epistemology in The Analysis of Sensations and in Principles of the Theory of Heat Mach’s famous book on the Analysis of Sensations 67 appeared in 1886. In the first chapter he says, Science always has its origin in the adaptation of thought to some definite field of experience. The results of the adaptation are thought-elements, which are able to represent the whole field. If the field of experience is enlarged, or if several fields heretofore disconnected are united, the traditional, familiar thought-elements no longer suffice for the extended field. In the struggle of acquired habit with the effort of adaptation, problems arise, which disappear when the adaptation is perfected, to make room for others which have arisen meanwhile.68 The aim of The Analysis of Sensations is to explain “the concept of ‘sensations’ as common ‘elements’ of all possible physical and psychical experiences, which merely consist in different kinds of ways in which these elements are combined, or in their dependence on one another.”69 For Mach, “colors, sounds, spaces, times are […] provisionally the ultimate elements whose given connection it is our business to investigate. It is precisely in this that the exploration of reality consists.”70 The product of investigating reality is science, whose basic task is the “economical representation of the actual.”71 With this notion “a broad foundation is laid for the

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theory in question, and light is shed upon it from new sides, if, in conformity with the stimulus given by Darwinism, we conceive of all psychical life — including science — as biological appearance, and if we apply to the theory the Darwinian conceptions of struggle for existence, of development, and of selection.”72 In 1896, ten years after having written The Analysis of Sensations, Mach published a volume of almost five hundred pages entitled Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre historisch-kritisch entwickelt.73 Here too he returns to the subject of evolutionary epistemology.74 He says, “This is not the first time that I have referred to the fact that ideas and especially scientific ideas are transformed and adapted in the same manner Darwin supposed for organisms.”75 Mach mentions the first two essays in the preceding pages and points out that he wrote Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargestellt.76 from an evolutionary point of view that sees the development of ideas as a Darwinian development.77 Of course, thoughts are not organisms, but they are “manifestations of organic life”78 and, therefore, transformation and adaptation can also be expected in their development. Mach says, “Spencer applied evolutionistic theory of development to psychology even before Darwin did; and he regarded the whole psychic development as a phenomenon of adaptation. We see scientific ideas become transformed, spread over wider fields, contend with rivals, and triumph over less capable ones.”79 Mach notes that “every learner can observe such a process in his own mind.”80 These processes always originate in problems. And these problems arise when the circle of observations (Beobachtungskreis) taken in and organized by our thoughts is expanded.81 New facts (in contrast to habitual ideas) demand their rights to explanation. “The problem lies in this conflict (Wiederstreit) between thoughts and facts. “In order to solve the problem, the habit of thought (Denkgewohnheit) must be so transformed that it is adapted to both the old and the new cases.”82 Briefly stated, when “the problem comes to full consciousness, and the transformation of thought takes place voluntarily and intentionally we call the process ‘research’.”83 The history of science is a mine where it is possible to see the transformation of ideas and

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theories due to the pressure of new facts.84 For example, who can deny that Newton’s theory based on the seeds sown by Copernicus, Kepler, Gilbert, Hooke, and others illustrates this process?85 The development of ideas dealt with in this way, says Mach, is “only a special case of a universally distributed biological process.”86 And “our whole scientific life appears to us as one side merely of our organic development.”87

Knowledge and error: science develops in a Darwinian way Mach’s epistemological masterpiece Erkenntnis und Irrtum88 (Knowledge and Error) was published in 1905. In it the central problem of epistemology — as it would also be for Popper later on — was the growth of knowledge. Indeed, for Mach the most pressing question was, “By what means has our knowledge of nature actually grown in the past, and what are the prospects for further growth in the future?”89 From the very beginning Mach maintained the ordinary thought, “at least in its beginnings, serves practical ends, and first of all the satisfaction of bodily needs. The more vigorous mental exercise of scientific thought fashions its own ends and seeks to satisfy itself by removing all intellectual uneasiness: having grown in the service of practical ends, it becomes its own master.”90 It is its own master in the sense that for the most part it is no longer intentionally at the service of the aims and practical needs and it can try to solve problems apart from those of life’s needs (except for the “need” to know) even though history teaches us that “As civilization grows, however, so scientific thought reacts on those modes of thought that serve only practical ends: ordinary thought becomes increasingly restricted and replaced by technical thought which is pervaded by science.”91 Consequently logos originates at the service of bios and then becomes basically — or at least for the most part — independent of biological needs.92 However, even though it is no longer at the service of bios, logos develops according to a Darwinian-type process: ideas must adapt to each other (coherence) and they must

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adapt to the facts (problem solving).93 “Nevertheless, it remains always correct that we aim at adapting thoughts to facts and to each other. What corresponds to this in the case of organic development is adaptation of organisms to environment and parts of organisms to each other.”94 Just as biological mutations presuppose an organism, a scientist’s new theories presuppose an entire body of knowledge inherited from the past. In other words, just as biological evolution is advanced by mutation and selection, “science in its development moves among surmises and parables.”95 It is a series of conjectures and refutations.96 Moreover, the link of the scientists with their predecessors helps to consider previously acquired experience and makes science pluralist and unprejudiced.97 It is essential to understand that “the individual enquirer is in the midst of developing science and must start with his predecessor’s incomplete findings which at best he can correct and perfect according to his ideal.”98 The scientist always works within a tradition. A return to a quite naïve point of view, even if it were possible, would afford to one who had shed all the views of his contemporaries not only the advantage of freedom from prejudice but also the drawback of confusion arising from the complexity of the task and the impossibility of even starting any enquiry. If therefore we seem here to be returning to a primitive standpoint in order to conduct the enquiry along new and better paths, this is an artificial simplemindedness that does not give up the advantages gained through long periods of growing civilization but on the contrary uses insights presupposing a fairly high level of thought as to physics, physiology and psychology.99 Just as biological species encounter problems when they clash with an environment that does not fulfill their expectations, or with other species with whom they must even struggle ferociously for survival, or when a mutation is incompatible with other parts of the organism or in some way disadvantageous, in science too — de-

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pending on the time and a certain mind set or particular tradition — we see that “problems arise when thought and fact, or thought and thought no longer agree.”100 “Once the incongruity is clearly recognized and the problem posed, we must seek the solution.”101 Of course “we may prepare the solution of a problem in natural science by eliminating prejudices that stand in the way and lead to blind alleys,”102 but in order to solve problems it is always necessary to have the productive imagination of explanatory hypotheses. Faced with “strange” new facts that present problems, the imagination conjectures and comes up with tentative explanations and “the newer, stranger and more unusual the initial observation so also the surmise.”103 Particularly at the beginning “scientific views arise directly out of popular ones, from which they are at first inseparable and then gradually develop away.”104 Therefore, in Mach’s opinion, “a proposition in natural science […] is of the form ‘if M exists, then N exists,’ where M and N are more or less complicated groups of characteristics of phenomena; one group determining the other.”105 And so hypotheses are useful because they help to discover connections between facts (or combinations of phenomenal characteristics). In fact, “looking now more closely at natural science, we notice that anything not as yet directly ascertainable by observation can become the object of completion in thought, of surmise, assumption or hypothesis. […] The forms of factual laws are often assumed since it would take infinitely many observations, with all interference excluded, to furnish the law. These assumptions or hypotheses relate to the conditions that make a fact intelligible, that is they are explanatory. […] A provisional and tentative assumption that can not yet be established but helps us to understand a range of facts, we call a hypothesis,”106 and it must be tested as soon as possible. Just as in biological evolution we see an exuberance of species that mutate and struggle to survive, the history of science shows us an exuberance of representative life: “a luxuriant fantasy engenders all kinds of abortive ideas before one or the other is recognized as the right means towards simplification and confirmed by experiment.”107 Actually, ideas,

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these excrescences of the imagination, fight for existence by trying to overgrow each other. Countless such offspring and flowers of fantasy must, in view of the facts, be destroyed by merciless criticism, before a single one can develop further and attain some permanence. […] But before we can understand nature we must seize it through fantasy, in order to give these concepts a living and intuitive content. Fantasy must be the stronger, the more remote from immediate biological needs the problem to solved lies.108

A biological argument for realism We are heir to a tradition interspersed with ideas whose inadequate adaptation to each other and to facts creates problems whose solutions require conjectures, which are then tested based on the consequences observed. Proof — or control — in scientific research rejects unsubstantiated suppositions in the same way that during the curse of evolution environmental pressure selects species by eliminating those which are less adapted. Mach says, “Science apparently grew out of biological and cultural development as its most superfluous offshoot. However, today we can hardly doubt that it has developed into the factor that is biologically and culturally the most beneficial. Science has taken over the task of replacing tentative and unconscious adaptation by a vaster variety that is fully conscious and methodical.”109 At this point Mach refers to a phrase of the physicist E. Reitlinger, who used to say “man appeared in nature when conditions were adequate for existing but not for well-being.” Actually, Mach says, “these […] he must create for himself, and I believe he has done so. At least today this holds for material well-being, even if so far unfortunately only for some, but we may hope for better things in the future.”110 After the social (“science is not a personal arrangement but can only exist as a social arrangement”) and after the metaphysical (concerning the order of the universe), the ethical presuppositions of science must be taken into consideration:

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scientific truth can become a valuable instrument for man’s material and spiritual well-being. After all that has been said, it is not odd that Popper, who strongly insisted on realism (in the sense of considering theories increasingly true descriptions of reality), should find persuasive arguments to support realism within evolutionary epistemology. About this, he said, “Starting from scientific realism it is fairly clear that if our actions and reactions were badly adjusted to our environment, we should not survive. Since ‘belief’ is closely connected with expectation and readiness to act, we can say that many of the more practical beliefs are likely to be true, as long as we survive.”111 The connection between truth and success of a theory has been brought to the attention of contemporary thought in the field of evolutionary epistemology in the work of Popper, Lorenz,112 Campbell and others.113 In an interesting essay, Georg Simmel, one of the precursors of contemporary evolutionary epistemology said, “knowing is not first true and then useful, rather it is first useful and then referred to as true.”114 Evolutionary epistemology — whose essential aspects had already been elaborated primarily by Mach (as Popper himself in a certain sense admitted)115 — might have enabled Popper, had he drawn a few more consequences from it, to avoid the mistake of proposing the idea of verisimilitude.116 This proposition was intended to explain that even if it was false, a theory that was closer to the Truth was more true than another theory which was false. However, P. Tichý, D. Miller, J. Harris and A. Grünbaum, among others, have shown that Popper’s theory of verisimilitude is unfounded: if two theories are false, one cannot be more true than another.117 This important theorem could have been discerned in a biological analogy if more had been drawn from the biological model of the growth of knowledge. As a matter of fact, if scientific theories develop like species, and if it is obvious that between two dead species one is not more alive than another, then for two false theories one can not be more true than the other.

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Chapter Five The Vienna fin de siècle against Freud

Popper’s criterion of falsifiability originates in criticism of psychoanalysis Notable in the history of ideas in the twentieth century is the fact that the criterion of demarcation between science and nonscience — Popper’s criterion of falsifiability of scientific theories1 — has its origins in criticism of the “pseudo-scientific pretensions” of Marxism and psychoanalysis. Actually, the problem of the falsifiability of empirical theories runs through all of Popper’s thought. He focused his attention on it from the time of his youth. In fact, from the autumn of 1919, when he was little more than seventeen, he began to deal with the problem of the problem of a criterion to decide whether a theoretical system belongs to empirical science. Therefore, it is useful to cite some autobiographical remarks in which Popper recounts how he came to formulate and solve the problem of Demarkationskriterium. The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, ‘When is a theory true?’ nor, ‘When is a theory acceptable?’ My problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science; knowing very well that science often errs, and that pseudo-science may happen to stumble on the truth. I knew, of course, the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that science is distinguished from pseudo-science — or from ‘metaphysics’ — by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from observation or experiment. But this did not satisfy me. On the contrary, I often formulated my problem as one of distinguishing

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between a genuinely empirical method and a non-empirical or even a pseudo-empirical method — that is to say, a method which, although it appeals to observation and experiment, nevertheless does not come up to scientific standards. The latter method may be exemplified by astrology, with its stupendous mass of empirical evidence based on observation — on horoscopes and on biographies.”2 However, Popper tells us that it was not astrology, but much more important events, that led him to his problem. After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire there was a revolution in Austria and the spread of innovative slogans and ideas and new, often wild theories. Of these theories, the one that most attracted Popper’s attention was Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Alfred Adler’s individual psychology also exerted great influence on Popper’s intellectual development. Although there was a lot of popular nonsense circulating about these theories, above all regarding the theory of relativity, Popper considers himself fortunate to have had an especially good introduction to the study of Einstein’s ideas; and he was impressed by Eddington’s eclipse observations in 1919, which were the first important confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. This was a decisive experience for Popper, but the other three theories mentioned before also were also widely discussed. Popper had the opportunity to have personal contact with Adler and even collaborated with him in his social work among the children and young people of the working-class districts of Vienna where Adler had established social guidance clinics.3 However, Popper says, “It was during the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories — the Marxist theory of history, psychoanalysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, ‘What is wrong with Marxism, psychoanalysis , and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?’”4

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What is truly remarkable is that what concerned the young Popper was not a doubt about the “truth” of Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Adler’s individual psychology (few at that time would have said that they believed in the truth of Einstein’s theory of gravitation). Therefore, at that stage the problem of the truth of the three theories in question did not bother Popper; nor did that of “exactness,” in the sense that he considered physics more exact than sociological or psychological theories. It was not a problem of exactness or measurability but something quite different. Popper felt that these three theories, though posing as science really had more in common with primitive myths than with scientific research. In other words, they were more like astrology than astronomy.5 I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still ‘un-analysed’ and crying aloud for treatment. The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which ‘verified’ the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; and not only in

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the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their ‘clinical observations’. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. ‘Because of my thousandfold experience,’ he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: ‘And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.’ What I had in mind was that his previous observations may not have been much sounder than this new one, that each in its turn had been interpreted in the light of ‘previous experience’, and at the same time counted as an additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it confirm? No more than that a case could be interpreted in the light of the theory. But this meant very little, I reflected, since every conceivable case could be interpreted in the light of Adler’s theory, or equally of Freud’s. I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex) while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this

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fact — that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed — which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.”6 In the case of Einstein, things were different. According to Einstein’s gravitation theory light must be attracted by heavy bodies, like the sun, in the same way in which material bodies are attracted. And this was confirmed in 1919, by Eddington’s expedition. It is clear that what is striking in this case is the “risk” the theory takes. If observation shows that the predicted effect is absent, then the theory is rejected because it is “incompatible with certain possible results of observation,” and, in this case, the results everyone would have expected before Einstein. But this sort of situation “full of risks” is not at all typical of the Marxist theory of history, of the psychoanalysis of Freud, and of the individual psychology of Adler, because theories like these, in Popper’s view, are “compatible with the most divergent human behaviour, so that it was practically impossible to describe any human behaviour that might not be claimed to be a verification of these theories.”7 If there is no “proof” there is no “confirmation.” In life, as in science, proof is the result of risk — of the risk of failure.

Is Freud really more scientific than Homer? These considerations led Popper, in the winter of 1919–1920, to certain conclusions that he re-formulated as follows: “(1) It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations. “(2) Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was in-

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compatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory. “(3) Every ‘good’ scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. “(4) 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. “(5) Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks. “(6) Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of ‘corroborating evidence’.) “(7) Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a ‘conventionalist twist’ or ‘conventionalist stratagem’.) One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”8 At this point, to illustrate what he has said, Popper turns to the various theories mentioned here. In fact, Einstein’s theory of gravitation perfectly satisfied the criterion of falsifiability in the sense that, even if at that time the instruments for measurement did not allow for a completely sure judgment of test results, there was the possibility of refuting the theory itself. This was not the case of astrology, which did not pass the test.

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Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence — so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavourable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophesies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer’s trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.9 All right. Nobody will object that what Popper says is really applicable as far as astrology is concerned. But can we accept the idea that the theories of Marx, Freud and Adler are simply and completely non falsifiable; to put it succinctly, that despite the love and hate — and in any event the prestige — surrounding them, they are on the same level as astrology? Popper’s answer to this question is that, […] the Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx’s analysis of the character of the ‘coming revolution’) their predictions were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable. Thus they gave a ‘conventionalist twist’ to the theory; and by this stratagem they destroyed its much-advertised claim to scientific status. The two psycho-analytic theories were in a different class. They were simply non-testable, irrefutable. There was no conceivable human behaviour which could contradict

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them. This does not mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing certain things correctly: I personally do not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance, and may well play its part one day in a psychological science which is testable. But it does not mean that those ‘clinical observations’ which analysts naively believe confirm their theory cannot do this any more than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in their practice. And as for Freud’s epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id, no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it that for Homer’s collected stories from Olympus. These theories describe some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form.”10

“Marxism became non-science; psychoanalysis was never a science.” In his autobiography, Unended Quest, Popper writes that compared to his encounter with Marxism, the “rather similar type” of encounters he had with Adler’s individual psychology and Freud’s psychoanalysis “were of minor importance.”11 Nevertheless, in Replies to My Critics, published in 1974, when he brings up the difficulties connected with his criterion of demarcation, he once again deals with the subject of the non-scientific nature of psychoanalysis. Of course, Popper says, the criterion of demarcation created by falsifiability “is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But is more than sharp enough to make a distinction between many physical theories on the one hand, and metaphysical theories, such as psychoanalysis, or Marxism (in its present form), on the other. This is, of course, one of my main theses; and nobody who has not understood it can be said to have understood my theory.”12 In any case, here Popper maintains that the situation of Marxism is “very different” from that of psychoanalysis:

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Marxism was once a scientific theory: it predicted that capitalism would lead to increasing misery and, through a more or less mild revolution, to socialism; it predicted that this would happen first in the technically highest developed countries; and it predicted that the technical evolution of the ‘means of production’ would lead to social, political and ideological developments, rather than the other way round. But the (so-called) socialist revolution came first in one of the technically backward countries. And instead of the means of production producing a new ideology, it was Lenin’s and Stalin’s ideology that Russia must push forward with its industrialization (‘Socialism is dictatorship of the proletariat plus electrification’) which promoted the new development of the means of production.13 This is why, Popper argues, “one can say that Marxism was once a science, but one which has been refuted by some of the facts which happened to clash with its predictions.”14 Nevertheless — Popper points out — “Marxism is no longer a science.”15 “It broke the methodological rule that we must accept falsification, and it immunized itself against the most blatant refutation of its predictions. Ever since then, it can be described only as nonscience — as a metaphysical dream, if you like, married to a cruel reality.”16 If this is the case of Marxism, how and why is psychoanalysis “a very different case” from Marxism? Popper replies: It (psychoanalysis) is an interesting psychological metaphysics (and no doubt there is some truth in it, as there is so often in metaphysical ideas), but it never was a science. There may be lots of people who are Freudian or Adlerian cases: Freud himself was clearly a Freudian case, and Adler an Adlerian case. But what prevents their theories from being scientific in the sense here described is, very simply, that they do not exclude any physically possible human behaviour. Whatever anybody may do is, in principle, explicable in Freudian or Adlerian terms. (Adler’s break with Freud

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was more Adlerian than Freudian, but Freud never looked on it as a refutation of his theory).17 In The Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper had said that “the laws of nature might be compared with ‘proscriptions’ or ‘prohibitions’. They do not assert that something exists or is the case; they deny it. They insist on the non-existence of certain things or states of affairs: they rule them out. And it is precisely because they do this that they are falsifiable. If we accept as true one singular statement which, as it were, infringes the prohibition by asserting the existence of a thing (or the occurrence of an event) ruled out by the law, than the law is refuted.”18 If we accept the statement that says that “a piece of ebony — which is wood — sinks in water,” then this falsifies the generalization that states “all pieces of wood float in water.” The theory of J. J. Berzelius said that even though it is fairly easy to transform organic substances into inorganic ones, the opposite operation is impossible except by means of life. But in 1828, F. Wöhler discovered that if ammonium cyanate was heated in a watery solution it became a new composition and produced the well-known organic compound urea. Every falsified theory was falsified by the occurrence of events or facts that it prohibited. The point here is: what does psychoanalytic theory prohibit? What behavior excludes or prevents Freud’s theory or Adler’s? The truth of the matter, says Popper, is that “neither Freud nor Adler excludes any particular person’s acting in any particular way, whatever the outward circumstances. Whether a man sacrificed his life to rescue a drowning child (a case of sublimation) or whether he murdered the child by drowning him (a case of repression) could not possibly be predicted or excluded by Freud’s theory; the theory was compatible with everything that could happen — even without any special immunization treatment.”19 Consequently, both Marxism and psychoanalysis are non-sciences. However, “while Marxism became nonscientific by its adoption of an immunizing strategy, psychoanalysis was immune to start with, and remained so. In contrast, most typical theories are pretty free of immunizing tactics and highly falsifiable to start with. As a rule, they exclude an infinity of conceivable possibilities.”20

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Psychoanalysis as a program of metaphysical research. “Arguability,” Popper writes in Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, “[is determined] by means of empirical arguments, arguments appealing to observation and experiment.”21 But a theory is verifiable by empirical arguments only if it is falsifiable. In Homer, everything that happened outside the walls of Troy verifies the will of the gods of Olympus; and what fact could falsify the Homeric vision of history? What fact can disprove the dialectical (Hegelian and Marxist) vision of history or any other theological concept of history? Therefore, psychoanalysis was never science and this will not change. Popper’s verdict is based on his criterion of falsifiability. Now, however, we know that the criterion of falsifiability (in contrast to the Neopositivists’ principle of verification) is not a criterion of meaning that claims to separate meaningful from meaningless assertions; the criterion of falsifiability is “a proposal for an agreement or a convention,”22 a demarcation point between empirical science and non-empirical theories such as mathematical or metaphysical systems.23 Consequently, there is no need to be concerned with “eradicating metaphysics”24 as the Neopositivists were (when “trying to kill metaphysics by calling it names”25) because “along with metaphysical ideas which have obstructed the advance of science there have been others — such as speculative atomism — which gave aided it. And looking at the matter from the psychological angle, I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science, and which, to that extent, is ‘metaphysical’.”26 In other words, as P. F. Strawson says, “What begins as metaphysics may end as science.”27 The Neopositivists, Popper insists, “have never explained how it can happen that meaningless gibberish can be transubstantiated into sense. In fact, the example of atomism establishes the inadequacy of the doctrine that metaphysics is mere meaningless gibberish.”28 It is clear that the influence of certain “myths” and other

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metaphysical theories on the development of science are certainly not limited to atomism. There are further examples: “The idea of a single physical ‘principle’ or ultimate element (from which the others derive); the theory of terrestrial motion (opposed by Bacon as fictitious); the age-old corpuscular theory of light; the fluid-theory of electricity (revived as the electron-gas hypothesis of metallic conduction).”29 And so, “all these metaphysical concepts and ideas may have helped, even in their early forms, to bring order into man’s picture of the world, and in some cases they may even have led to successful predictions.”30 Of course, Popper stresses, “an idea of this kind acquires scientific status only when it is presented in falsifiable form; that is to say, only when it has become possible to decide empirically between it and some rival theory.”31 However, we should not forget that another unverifiable grand metaphysical theory that strongly influenced science was Descartes’s clockwork theory of the world (as I like to call it because it was based on the doctrine that all physical causation was by push), or, as it may be called, the programme of Hobbes, Descartes, and Boyle, of interpreting the physical world in terms of extended matter in motion. But the latest, and so far the greatest, was the programme of Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, de Broglie, and Schrödinger, of conceiving the world — the atoms as well as the void — in terms of continuous fields. I say ‘was’ because this wonderful programme has been destroyed by some other great physicists.32 Each of these research projects, “[e]ach of these metaphysical theories served, before it became testable, as a research programme for science. It indicated the direction of our search, and the kind of explanation that might saatisfy us; and it made possible something like an appraisal of the depth of a theory.”33 What happened in physics also happened in biology: “In biology, the theory of evolution, the theory of the cell, and the theory of bacterial infection, have all played similar parts, at least for a time.”34 However, what

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interests us here is that in psychology, too, “sensationalism, which may take the form of a kind of psychological atomism (that is the theory that all experiences are composed of unanalyzable ultimate elements, such as, for example, sense data), and psycho-analysis should also be mentioned as metaphysical research programmes.”35 Thus for Popper psychcoanalysis is not a science because it is not falsifiable. Yet, “this does not mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing things correctly: I personally do not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance, and may well play its part one day in a psychological science which is testable.”36

Was Freud a verificationist or a falsificationist? In dealing with the connections between metaphysical theories and science, once again, in the wake of Popper and afterwards, it is worthwhile to consider the idea that although metaphysical theories are irrefutable factually they can be criticized when, for example, the science on which they are based collapses. Metaphysical “research programmes are open to discussion; they may be changed in the light of hopes they inspire or of the disappointments for which they may be held responsible.”37 Generally a metaphysical theory is rational if it is criticizable, and it is criticizable whenever it collides with some piece of World 3 ( a logical theorem, a mathematical result, a scientific theory, another metaphysical idea, etc.) that is well established at the time and that we are not willing to renounce.38 From this point of view, using as an example Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, which he also considered a “great achievement,”39 Popper maintains that “it is more of the character of preDemocritean atomism — or perhaps Homer’s collected stories from Olympus — than of testable science.” Nevertheless he points out that it “certainly shows that even a metaphysical theory is infinitely better than no theory; and it is, I suppose, a programme for a psychological science, comparable to atomism or materialism, or the electromagnetic theory of matter, or Faraday’s field theory, which

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were all programmes for physical science. But it is a fundamental mistake to believe that, because it is constantly being ‘verified’, it must be a science based on experience.”40 “A dangerous dogmatism,” Popper says, “always goes hand in hand with verificationism.”41 However, in the course of research we must try to undermine the theories rather than fondle them if we are interested in scientific progress. Was Freud a verifier or a falsifier? How did he act when faced with a more specific theory that conflicted with facts in his program? To answer these questions, in Postscript Popper analyzes at length Freud’s “great work,” The Interpretation of Dreams. He extracts the central theory of the book that “the meaning of every dream is the fulfillment of a wish;”42 he shows how Freud himself was aware of a great objection: “It does in fact — Freud writes — look as if anxiety dreams make it impossible to assert as a general proposition (based on the example quoted […]) that dreams are wish-fulfillments;”43 he shows how Freud, who asserts that “there is no great difficulty in meeting these apparently conclusive objections,”44 modifies the original thesis as follows: “a dream is a (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish.”45 He points out the fact that Freud repeatedly promises to reveal the latent content of every anxiety dream as fulfillment of desire; but, Popper says, “Yet Freud never carries out his programme; and in the end he gives it up altogether — without, however, explicitly saying so.”46 Basically, in Popper’s view Freud’s approach is not a critical approach: “He nowhere compares his theory with a promising competitor to it, weighing the one against the other, in the light of the evidence; and he never criticizes it: he has got his theory and tries to verify it; and he makes it fit, as long as possible, and — as the example of the anxiety dream has shown — even beyond what he himself thought possible when he first published his great book on The Interpretation of Dreams.”47 Freud was by far the most clear and convincing of the proponents of psychoanalytic theories; but these theories were either non-falsifiable or were dogmatically constructed by means of a verificationist approach. Actually, Popper had already pointed out in The Logic of Scientific Discovery that “it must be left to the

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investigator, especially in the fields of sociology and psychology […] to guard constantly against the temptation to employ new conventionalist stratagems — a temptation to which psycho-analysis, for example, often succumb.”48

Karl Bühler: “The principle of the symbol in psychoanalysis is as elastic as rubber.” Karl Bühler wrote The Crisis of Psychology in 1927. Bühler was Popper’s teacher and one of the intellectuals to whom he owed the most. In the chapter entitled Criticism of Psychoanalysis, Bühler offers a well-argued evaluation of Freudian psychoanalysis: “Freud is competent; he had something to contribute to the science of his time.”49 Bühler says this of Freud despite his awareness of the onesidedness and errors committed by the father of psychoanalysis. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety Freud sometimes speaks disparagingly of philosophers: “I must confess that I am not at all partial to the fabrication of Weltanschauungen. Such activities may be left to the philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to make their journey through life without a Baedeker of that kind to give them information on every subject.”50 However, Freud adds, nothing the philosophers stir up can throw light on the enigma of this world: “The benighted traveller may sing aloud in the dark to deny his own fears; but for all that, he will not see an inch further beyond his nose.”51 Faced with declarations of this sort, which involve the basic coordinates of an impressive and influential research project like psychoanalysis, Bühler maintains that Freud himself “has always devoted himself to forming a concept of the world.”52 Thus Freud, in On Metapsychology became more and more axiomatic and philosophic; and from time to time, as for example in Totem and Tabu, he sang in the dark at the top of his voice. Nor did the thinkers among his disciples, as far as they could follow their master, overlook the discussion of axioms; and they too sang. The only question is who among them used the model of the nightingale and who the frog.53 In any case, Bühler points out, “the

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claim of psychoanalysis […] to understand the totality of the human spirit with its single formula is unjustified.”54 He also thought that Freud treated “too lightly” the questions connected with the Oedipus complex, which was a problem Bühler considered “still unsolved decisively.”55 In 1925, Carl Haeberlin, a physician in Bad Nauheim and psychoanalyst, published Grundlinien der Psychoanalyse. Bühler quotes this book twice: In some of his disciples, even more than in Freud himself, there have been enormous exaggerations in the field of infantile sexuality, excremental eroticism and the like. Around nuclei seen in a completely exact way there has been a movement of imagination that is highly unconventional and repugnant not only from an esthetic but also from a strictly scientific point of view.… Infant analysis, in which the entire sexuality of children is studied and which is the base of so many of [Freud’s] conclusions, has absolutely no value. Almost anything can be studied in children, and the questions asked can prompt their responses. In the child — even in Hans, the four-and-a-half-year-old analyzed by Freud — almost everything can be implied by the question, including not only sexuality but also the symbolic forms that are being sought.56 Bühler describes Haeberlin’s words as “sharp and liberating” and asserts that it is unlikely that “the theoretical scandal” created by Freud’s followers in the field of infantile psychology “will be difficult surpass.”57 The “grand magician” has great influence and uses it “to hold his ‘legitimate’ followers prisoners.”58 Moreover, although Bühler shows great respect for Freud’s theoretical work, he believes that “the psychoanalysts’ concept of symbol has never been defined precisely. Here and there, perhaps, it can be taken as a sign and a function of a sign, but in that case some of the anxiety that the impartial researcher finds in the excessive ‘symbols’ that psychoanalysis looks for in our life would disappear.”59

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Bühler was clear about the point that in psychology, as in other sciences, the first word should go to the creative intuition of the hypothesis, but he also stressed that “strictly disciplined observation should have the last world.”60 Consequently, when faced with the enormous speculation about the symbolic nature of psychic phenomena, Bühler states that the principle of the symbol in psychoanalysis is “as elastic as rubber and stretched in various ways.”61

“The psychoanalytic method is unbridled interpretation.” — Arthur Schnitzler Popper’s attack on psychoanalysis is based on the need for empirical checks: empirical proof that psychoanalytic theory does not seem able to demonstrate. The figure on the horizon of psychoanalysis was the Viennese physician-poet and friend of Freud, Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931). Nevertheless, even for Schnitzler, “with over-interpretation at all cost it is clear that anything can be explained and fitted in.”62 “With regression, displacement and sublimation, psychoanalysis extends the limits of its interpretation so far in the direction of the arbitrary that any proof becomes impossible and any explanation is as legitimate as its opposite. The mere fact that psychoanalysis reaches the unconscious so quickly is a confession of its weakness. It feels that consciousness might disturb or sometimes even disprove it.”63 More specifically, in regard to the Oedipus complex, Schnitzler says that “the story of Oedipus has nothing whatever to do with the so-called Oedipus complex: Oedipus loved his mother without knowing she was his mother.”64 In other words, “the legend should be taken as a mythical symbol of the complete lack of any ties between mother and son (Naturally this too is not intentional. If Oedipus had not been abandoned as a child he would not have fallen in love with Jocasta when he returned!). Oedipus loves Jocasta as a stranger, not as his mother.”65 Psychoanalysis is seductive to both the physician and the patient.66 “Psychoanalytic research arouses ambition dangerously. Things that are absolutely negligible are surrounded by a false

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halo of importance. A totally insignificant man seems interesting to himself; the value given to his dreams exalt him.”67 Schnitzler, it is clear, is aware of the possible harmful effects of psychoanalysis, and he reacts decisively against the determinism applied to the entire life of the psyche: “If faith in the absolute power of the principle of causality were universally and unconditionally imposed, the perfect quietism that followed would progressively destroy every ideal impulse in human society.”68 The truth, in Schnitzler’s opinion, is that […] without our faith in free will the earth would be the theater not only for the most horrible absurdities, but also for the most unbearable boredom. Absence of responsibility negates all need for ethics and blocks it as soon as it is recognized. Without a sense of responsibility the ego would not be the ego and the earth would not be the theater of human comedies and tragedies. It would be transformed into a ridiculous farce of uninhibited drives to command that are personified by chance in one individual or another.69 Clearly, Schnitzler is aware of the negative effects of psychoanalysis on the human personality and often dwells on the lack of rigor in Freudian theory. His main target for controversy was to be the interpretation of dreams.70 “Psychoanalytic method is uncontrolled, sometimes even forced, interpretation up to a certain point where arbitrarily it stops; that point is the sexual sphere. One wonders why it does not continue further in the interpretation, as far as death, God, and so on. Often psychoanalytic method reaches the unconscious without needing to, long before it is right. Sometimes because of mental laziness; other times because of obtuseness or monomania.”71 Moreover, “In enouncing their dogmas, analysts continually refer to the interpretation of dreams, but they make these interpretations on the basis of their dogmas. A typical vicious circle.” 72 Psychoanalytic theories suffer precisely from the lack of empirical proof. A highly vivid imagination creates myriads of possibly stimulating worlds that have no contact with the real

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world: “psychoanalysis makes use of evidence from folklore, prehistory, and myth, but sometimes in a completely arbitrary way.”73 Moreover, “the differentiation in ego, superego and id is clever but artificial”74 ; it is a metaphor, not a psychic reality. “Actually there is no such distinction.”75

“Freud is a metaphysician but doesn’t know it.” — Egon Friedell Egon Friedell (1878–1938) — a Viennese who committed suicide in 1938 — was the author of a monumental work entitled Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit. Popper knew Friedell well. In the 1978 Preface to Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge, Popper cites an excerpt from a letter of his dated June 30, 1932, to “the Viennese Egon Friedell, poet and cultural historian.” The letter describes the Logik der Forschung as “a kind of crisis […] and above all a crisis of physics. He maintains that the crisis is permanent; therefore, if he is right, crisis is the normal state of a highly developed rational science.”76 And so for Friedell, Freud is a metaphysician “but he doesn’t know it.”77 Moreover, “psychoanalysis has one disastrous defect: psychoanalysts.”78 Friedell is convinced that psychoanalysis is the beginning of the slave revolt of the “amoral.” Sooner or later one should psychoanalyze the psychoanalysts. Their vision grows from a desire to dominate the neurotic ‘who tries to subjugate humanity’.”79 Friedell quotes Nietzsche to say that psychoanalysis is “an attack by parasites, vampirism of pale subterranean leeches”; and he sees psychoanalysis as a “grandiose attempt to infect humanity, the vendetta of failures: the entire world must be made neurotic, sexual and fiendish.”80 Psychoanalysis is not a science; it is more like the faith of a sect. Actually, Friedell says, […] psychoanalysis is a sect with all the characteristics of a sect: with rites and ceremonies, exorcisms and cathartic allocutions, oracles and the art of divination, a precise symbolism and dogmatism, secret and Vulgate doctrine, proselytes

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and apostates, priests who undergo trials, and sister sects that excommunicate each other.81 For Friedell, the truth — and this is the heart of the matter — is that “like the whale, which is a mammal but poses as a fish, psychoanalysis is a religion but poses as a science.”82 It is like a pagan religion; “the link between therapy, health and dream interpretation was also present in the ancient religions, for example, in the therapeutic sleep for patients in the temples of Aesculapius. Here, in very seductive tones, we see in action a clairvoyant and poet working for the power of darkness, an ‘Orpheus of the underworld’; we are in the midst of a new worldwide revolt against the Gospel.”83 In Friedell’s opinion, Freud’s pan-sexuality is a statement that cannot be refuted;84 and the dogma that every dream is one of desire is untenable.85 In any case, Friedell’s criticism of psychoanalysis that most interests us is that psychoanalytic theory is not scientific. And it is not scientific because it can not be disproved — because “it […] is completely impossible to convince psychoanalysts of the falsity of a diagnosis since they believe they can avoid all criticism by playing clever conjuring tricks using conceptual traps like ‘ambivalence,’ ‘homosexual,’ ‘repressed,’ and ‘sublimated’.”86 Therefore, Freud is a metaphysician but doesn’t know it; and “psychoanalysis is an irrational system constructed with rational methods, a transcendentalism established by the most determined positivist.”87

“Psychoanalysis is more a passion than a science.”

— Karl Kraus

It was Thomas Szasz, in a book of 1976, who saw the connection between Karl Kraus’s criticism of psychoanalysis and what Karl Popper was writing.88 In the second volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper says he agrees with the “Viennese poet and critic Karl Kraus,” to whom we are indebted for a brilliant formulation of the principle of wise politics that maintains all

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politics is a choice of the lesser evil.89 In reference to the Marxists’ acrobatic dialectic interpretations of history, Popper says, “this dubious art of interpreting the terrible events of history instead of fighting them was forcefully denounced by the poet Karl Kraus.”90 And Karl Kraus was to combat psychoanalysis by demonstrating that it is simply unfalsifiable. The following are some of Kraus’s reflections on psychoanalysis that are like “precipitates” of long chains of epistemological argumentation: The new investigators of the spirit say that everything must be brought back to sexual causes. For example, their method could be described as the eroticism of the father confessor.91 Psychopathology: someone who has nothing recovers best when he is told what sickness he has. Modern psychologists transform the patient into a counselor. He acquires self-knowledge of the unconscious, which is undoubtedly edifying but not equally full of prospects. Instead of being driven away from the hearth of his ills, he is forced to roast there; instead of taking his mind off his suffering he becomes more familiar with it and develops a kind of pride in his symptoms which, under the best of circumstances, puts the patient in condition to undertake psychic cures of others that are no more successful than his. All things considered, this is a method that clearly transforms a layman into an expert much more quickly than what is required to make a sick person well because it counts as a factor in healing the self-observation that is the illness. But it is not a balm for the spirit. The difference between psychiatrists and other mentally disturbed people is a little like the relationships between convex and concave madness. The psychiatrist is to the psychologist what the astrologer is to the astronomer. Astrology has played a role in psychiatric science since ancient times. At one time our actions were determined by the position of the planets. Later the stars of our destiny were located in our

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chest. Then there came the theory of heredity. Now the stars of our destiny are in the breast of our wet nurse; whether the newborn likes it or not, she is crucial to his entire life. We make the sexual impressions of infancy responsible for everything else that happens afterwards. It was commendable to do away with the belief that sexuality does not begin until after high school, but there is no need to exaggerate. Even if the times when science practiced chastity in relationship to the facts of life have past, one should still not uninhibitedly abandon oneself to the pleasure of sexual pursuit. ‘My father,’ sneered the bastard of Gloucester, ‘compounded with my father under the Dragon’s Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous.’ And yet, how pleasant it was to be dependent on the sun, the moon and the stars rather than on the deadly powers of intellectualism.92 Certain psychoanalysis is the profession of lecherous rationalists who trace everything in the world back to sexual causes except their profession.” Psychoanalysis unmasks the poet at first glance. It cannot be fooled and knows precisely the real meaning of the magic horn of the Child. However, it’s time for the birth of a science of the spirit that, when one speaks of sex, reveals that one is really referring to art. I volunteer to drive this coach back to the symbolic! But I would even be content if it were possible to prove to someone speaking of psychology that his unconscious really wanted to say something else. The difference between the old and new school of psychology is that the old became indignant at any deviation from the norm and the new contributed to giving class consciousness to inferiority. If someone steals from you don’t go to the police because they’re not interested or to a psychologist who is only interested because really it is you who did the stealing.93 Your neighbor knows how beauty originates; psychoanalysis also knows how genius is born.94

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A science that knows as little about sex as it does about art has spread the word that the sexuality of the artist is sublimated in the work of art. What a great idea: the function of art is to do away with the brothel! But the brothel has an even more subtle function, which is to eliminate sublimation through a work of art.95 A psychologist knows everything about the origin of The Flying Dutchman: it is ‘from Richard Wagner’s infant fantasy that comes from the child’s desire to be grown up, to do what his father did, to be as big as he is….’ However, since according to the psychologists this is the habitus of the infant self in general — completely aside from the erotic jealously and incestuous thoughts that the baby sucks with the mother’s milk and which are avoided only by using a bottle — psychology still has to answer the simple question of what specific dispositions or impressions prepared Wagner for the birth of The Flying Dutchman. Why is Wagner the only one of his generation who can be called the father of The Flying Dutchman while all the others who had the desire to be big and do what their fathers did had careers as brokers, lawyers, trolley-car drivers, or music critics and only those who dreamed of becoming heroes became psychologists?96 I am the rationalist of the belief in miracles that the psychoanalysts charge so much for.97 At this point every day we see what miracles are wrought by the joining of the commercial spirit and psychology. Now the psychologists have to deal with the poets, who come to be examined after death. This is justifiable since they didn’t manage to create the conditions for humanity to avoid the rise of psychoanalysts. Psychoanalysts: the rabbit swallowed by the boa constrictor simply wanted to find out how it was inside. Psychoanalysis is more a passion than a science because it lacks a steady hand in its research and because passion alone is the only requisite for practicing psychoanalysis.

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The psychoanalyst hates and loves his subject; he envies his freedom and strengths and traces them back to his own defects. He only analyzes because he himself is made only of parts that don’t make a synthesis. He wants to show that the artist is sublimating a disorder because he himself still has it. Psychoanalysis is an act of revenge used by inferiority to assume a dignified attitude and sometimes even a superior one, and the discordance tries to find a common level. Being a doctor is more than being a patient, so today every simpleton tries to cure every genius. Here the illness is what the doctor lacks. Whatever his approach, his attempt to explain genius will not manage to produce anything but proof that he doesn’t have it. But since genius needs no explanation, and an explanation that defends the mediocrity of genius is bad, the only justification for the existence of psychoanalysis is that for the want of something better it can be used to disguise psychoanalysis. There are many sick people, but only a few people know that illness is something they can be proud of. These few are the psychoanalysts. Today those who call themselves men go to psychoanalysts to be aborted. Revelation at the end of a psychoanalytic cure: Well, you can’t be cured. You’re sick. Psychoanalysis is the sickness that thinks it is the cure.98

“Psychoanalysis is a very powerful mythology” — Ludwig Wittgenstein Wittgenstein (1889–1951) wrote: “Freud was influenced by the nineteenth-century idea of dynamics — an idea which has influenced the whole treatment of psychology. He wanted to find some one explanation which would show what dreaming is. He wanted to fine the essence of dreaming.”99 However, Wittgenstein says, “It is

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probable that there are many different sorts of dreams and there is no single line of explanation for all of them. Just as there are many different sorts of jokes. Or just as there are many different sorts of language.”100 Therefore, Freud too let himself be beguiled by essentialism and the power of questions like “What is X?” Nevertheless, what Wittgenstein stressed was the fascination of psychoanalysis, a fascination that makes criticism impossible and thus generates an uncontrollable theoretical hypertrophy. Rush Rhees writes, “Wittgenstein was critical of Freud. But he was also bringing out how much there is in what Freud says about the notion of dream symbolism, for instance, or the suggestion that in dreaming I am — in some sense — ‘saying something.’ He was trying to separate what is valuable in Freud from that ‘way of thinking’ which he wanted to combat.”101 In other words, for Wittgenstein it was not a case of condemning or combating psychoanalysis but rather a need to fight against way of thinking that was immune to criticism and what was essentially a dogmatic way of thinking. “[Wittgenstein] told me that when he was in Cambridge, before 1914, he had thought psychology was a waste of time. […] ‘then some years later I happened to read something by Freud, and I sat up in surprise. Here was someone who had something to say. I think this was soon after 1919.’ And for the rest of his life Freud was one of the few writers he thought worth reading. He would speak of himself — at the period of these discussions — as a ‘disciple of Freud’ and ‘a follower of Freud.’ He admired Freud for the observations and suggestions in his writings, ‘for having something to say’ even where, in Wittgenstein’s view, he was wrong. On the other hand, he thought the enormous influence of psychoanalysis in Europe and America was harmful — ‘although it will take a long time before we lose our subservience to it.’ I spoke about the harm it does to writing when an author tries to bring psychoanalysis into the story. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing worse.’ He was ready to

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illustrate what Freud meant by referring to a story; but then the story had been written independently. Once when Wittgenstein was recounting something Freud had said and the advice he had given someone, one of us said that his advice did not seem very wise. ‘Oh certainly not,’ said Wittgenstein. ‘But wisdom is something I would not expect from Freud. Cleverness certainly; but not wisdom.’ Wisdom was something he did admire in his favorite story writers — in Gottfried Keller, for instance. The kind of criticism which would help him in studying Freud, would have to go deep: and it is not common.102 The purpose of Wittgensteins’s criticism of Freud is to “escape our subordination to psychoanalysis.” The instruments of his criticism are clearly of a methodological nature. In regard to Freudian theory of dreams Wittgenstein says: Freud states that “whatever happens in a dream will be connected with some wish which analysis can bring to light. But this procedure of free association and so on is queer, because Freud never shows how we know where to stop — where is the right solution. Sometimes he says that the doctor knows what the right solution or analysis of the dream is whereas the patient doesn’t: the doctor can say that the patient is wrong. “The reason why he calls one sort of analysis the right one, does not seem to be a matter of evidence. Neither is the proposition that hallucinations, and so dreams, are wish fulfillments.”103 Psychoanalysis, in Wittgenstein’s opinion, offers explanations we are inclined to accept.104 Because of this inclination we surrender the weapons of criticism and no longer keep psychoanalytical theories and explanations under a state of methodological siege: “There is no way of showing,” says Wittgenstein, “that the whole result of analysis may not be ‘delusion.’ It is something which people are inclined to accept and which makes it easier for them to go certain ways. It makes certain ways of behaving and thinking natural for them. They have given up one way of thinking and adopted another.”105 But this “other way of thinking” is a mythical way of thinking. “Analysis is likely to do harm. Because although

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one may discover in the course of it various things about oneself, one must have a very strong and keen and persistent criticism in order to recognize and see through the mythology that is offered or imposed on one. There is an inducement to say, ‘Yes of course, it must be like that.’ A powerful mythology.”106 In order not to be intellectually and morally overwhelmed by this “very powerful mythology,” harsh, relentless criticism must be used. In December of 1945, Wittgenstein wrote the following letter to Norman Malcolm, who had just begun to read Freud: I too was greatly impressed when I first read Freud. He’s extraordinary. Of course he’s full of fishy thinking & his charms & the charms of the subject is so great that you may easily be fooled: He always stresses what great forces in the mind, what strong prejudices work against the idea of psycho-analysis. But he never says what an enormous charm that idea has for people, just as it has for Freud himself. There may be strong prejudices against uncovering something nasty, but sometimes it is infinitely more attractive than it is repulsive. Unless you think very clearly psychoanalysis is a dangerous & a foul practice, & it’s done no end of harm &, comparatively, very little good. (If you think I’m an old spinster — think again!) — All this of course doesn’t detract from Freud’s extraordinary scientific achievement. Only extraordinary scientific achievements have a way these days, of being used for the destruction of human beings. (I mean their bodies, or their souls, or their intelligence). So hold on to your brains.107

“Psychoanalysis is a superstition.”

— Fredrich A. von Hayek

After Wittgenstein, there was his cousin, Fredrich A. von Hayek, a staunch critic of constructivism (or scientism or constructivist rationalism), which professed that all social institutions

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and all moral rules are, in origin and in their transformations, the fruit of deliberate schemes. This view was refuted by Hayek in the name of an evolutionist concept of institutions, ethical norms, and reason itself. “Man did not adopt new rules of conduct because he was intelligent. He became intelligent by submitting to new rules of conduct.”108 Many rationalists — says Hayek — are prepared to label an idea of this sort as superstition without realizing that “man has not only never invented his most beneficial institutions, from language to morals and law, and even today does not yet understand why he should preserve them when they satisfy neither his instincts nor his reasons.”109 In other words, “the basic tools of civilization — language, morality, law and money — are all the result of spontaneous growth and not of design.”110 The great social change was the passage from a “face-to-face” society (composed of groups of known and recognizable members) to an abstract, open society “no longer held together by common concrete ends but only by the obedience to the same abstract rules.”111 And in the last 10,000 years man has developed agriculture, urban dwelling, and the “Great Society.” Before that “he lived for a period at least one hundred times longer in small groups of about 50 hunters who shared the food strictly respecting an order of supremacy within the common territory defended by the group.”112 In its primitive form, the small group had a common goal, a single objective and “an established distribution of means according to a common evaluation of individual merit.”113 Within this group the individual has no freedom: “there was no natural freedom for a social animal […] freedom is a product of civilization.”114 In the little tribe he belonged to for survival, man was not free. “Freedom is an artefact of civilization that released man from the trammels of the small group, the momentary moods of which even the leader had to obey.”115 But the rules of civilization and the Great Society are not the result of deliberate plans; they were not maintained by the awareness that they were more effective. “We have never designed our economic system. We were not intelligent enough for that.”116 We happened upon it. Successful rules accepted by some were then taken up by others and they form the base of the social

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order of the Great Society. However, we did not plan ethics: “cultural selection is not a rational process; it is not guided by reason, but it creates reason.”117 Humanity — Hayek asserts — had hundreds of thousands of years at its disposal to acquire or genetically incorporate the responses needed to preserve a small group of hunters or gatherers; but in order for the Great society to arise men needed to learn new rules, some for the express purpose of “repressing instinctive reactions no longer appropriate to the Great Society.”118 Without adopting the rules of the Great Society, man could in no way build the civilization that manages to sustain the enormous number of people of present humanity. However, “to be able to do so, he had to shed many sentiments that were good for the small band, and to submit to the sacrifices which the discipline of freedom demands but which he hates.”119 Society in the abstract (or the open society or the Great society) “rests on learnt rules and not on pursuing perceived desirable common objects: and wanting to do good to known people will not achieve the most for community, but only the observation of its abstracts and seemingly purposeless rules. Yet this little satisfies our deeply engrained feelings.”120 And it is precisely these feelings or atavistic, tribal instincts that Marx, with his idea of social justice, and Freud, with his idea of liberation from culturally acquired repression, intend to release: the instincts of the savage against the rules of civilization. Our civilization will survive, Hayek believes, only if we learn to avoid the errors of an era of superstition, “chiefly connected with the names of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.”121 People — says Hayek — “will discover that the most widely held ideas which dominated the twentieth century, those of a planned economy with a just distribution, a freeing ourselves from repression and conventional morals, of permissive education as a way to freedom, and the replacement of the market by a rational agreement of a body with coercive powers, were all based on superstitions in the strict sense of the word. An age of superstitions is a time when people imagine they know more than they do. In this sense the twentieth century was certainly an outstanding age of superstition.”122

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“Logical positivism has been trying to show that all moral values are ‘devoid of meaning’, purely ‘emotive’; it is wholly contemptuous” Friedrich A. von Hayek writes, “on the conception that even emotional responses selected by biological or cultural evolution may be of the greatest importance for the coherence of an advanced society.”123 Sociologists of cognition have also tried “to discredit all moral views by the alleged interested motifs of their defenders.”124 Nevertheless, Hayek is ready to admit that the logical positivism of Carnap and the juridical positivism of Kelsen “are far from the worst things that have come out of Vienna.”125 The reason for this is that “through his profound effects on education, Sigmund Freud has probably become the greatest destroyer of the culture.”126 Culturally devastating effects “have come from the endeavor of psychiatrists to cure people by releasing their innate instincts.”127 Hayek believes that in Civilization and Its Discontents Freud seems to have become aware of and concerned about the deleterious effects of his teachings, but one can not remain silent about the fact that “his [Freud’s] basic aim of undoing the culturally acquired repressions and freeing the natural drives, has opened the most fatal attack on the basis of the civilization.”128 The first Secretary General of the World Health Organization was the Canadian psychiatrist G. B. Chisholm. In a work that received ample and prestigious praise, Chisholm himself vindicated “the eradication of the concept of right and wrong that has been the basis of the child training.” According to him, the job of the psychiatrist should be to liberate the human race from the “crippling burden of good and evil” and from the “perverse concepts of right and wrong.”129 Here von Hayek comments once again that morality — since it has no “scientific” basis — is considered “as irrational and its status as the incarnation of accumulated cultural knowledge is not recognized.”130 And now — von Hayek notes sadly — we are reaping the bitter fruit of these ideas. “Those nondomesticated savages, who represent themselves as alienated from something they have never learnt, and even undertake to construct a ‘counter-culture’, are the necessary product of the permissive education which fails to pass on the burden of culture, and trusts to

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the natural instincts which are the instincts of the savage.”131 The situation appeared very disturbing to Hayek. Even though “not all hope is yet lost”132 if one reads the works of Thomas Szasz and H.J. Eysenck or has the opportunity to attend a lecture like the one given by Donald Campell at his inauguration as president of the American Psychological Association — which created a scandal because he asserted that “psychology may be contributing to the undermining of the retention of what may be extremely valuable, social-evolutionary inhibitory systems which we do not yet fully understand.”133

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Chapter Six Karl Bühler and Heinrich Gomperz: Karl Popper’s two Viennese masters

Otto Glöckel and the “reform” of the Austrian school system In 1925, while I was working with neglected children, the city of Vienna founded a new institute of education called the Pedagogic Institute. […] The purpose of the new institute was to further and support the reforms, then in progress, of the primary and secondary schools in Vienna, and some social workers were admitted as students; I was among them. So also were some lifelong friends of mine […] we were enthusiastic for school reform, and enthusiastic for studying […] From my teachers at the Institute I learned very little, but I learned much from Karl Bühler, Professor of Psychology at the University.1 Otto Glöckel wanted to reform the Austrian school system. Popper received his degree in 1928. In 1929 he qualified to teach mathematics and physics in secondary schools and, except for one long stay in England, he taught in secondary school until 1937, the year he left Austria for New Zealand. The 1920s was the period in which the social democrat Otto Glöckel tried to reform the Austrian school system. In 1923 Glöckel published the book Die Österreichische Schulreform2 with the significant subtitle Einige Feststellungen im Kampfe gegen die Schulverderber [Some fixed points in the struggle against the destroyers of the school]. In 1928 he published another book entitled Drillschcule, Lernschcule, Arbeitschule3. These two slim volumes give an impressive picture of the enthusiasm, work and theories of the reform movement.

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Popper’s Vienna School reform, says Glöckel, is not a law, an official order or a party objective. It is: 1. The result and practical application of centuries of research done by first-rate thinkers. 2. Respect for the practical needs of the time in the education of young people. Both these objectives are sought by means of laws, official orders, and collaboration among teachers and parents. There must be a complete transformation of the school, but it should not be all at once. It should be gradual, continual and coherent in order to conserve what is valid. Its objective should be to turn out men of action who are brave, just, morally sound, and eager to work. They should be men who can manage on their own in the world, have the intelligence to understand the cultural values that have already been created, and can create new cultural values. Every child — whether rich or poor — has the right to develop his strengths, abilities and talents (Destruction and definitive elimination of scholastic privilege). Children should go to school willingly (no more convent education no more barracks discipline, no more corporal punishment!); they should study and practice their skills joyfully (The joy of study!) The teacher’s personality will be reflected in a curriculum that establishes educational goals [… ]; he can have success in his difficult task joyfully and with the greatest possible awareness (The joy of teaching).4

Given these premises, it is easy to understand why Glöckel railed against selection based on class, inadequate teacher training, corporal punishment, the impossibility of parents to participate in school life, the basic idea of education before the reform that the child is a bucket to be filled, control of the school by the Catholic church, and so on.5 The new reform — Glöckel maintained — discovers the child, discovers the parents, and discovers the teacher.6 And above all, with the reform pedagogues and psychologists have a voice in the Ministry.7 He continues,

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the entire school reform is based essentially on results of research in the field of child psychology. The child should not be filled with notions. One must make use of the child’s typical abilities and relate to his experiences. (Draw out! Use the child’s experience!) The child observes attentively […]. The teacher motivates the child to communicate what he has observed and uses this information during school hours. School excursions can serve to guide the child in programmed observation so that he is introduced to real life though his own experience.8 Thus, Glöckel says, the accusation that in the reformed school children just go for walks is ridiculous. In that period, the city of Vienna allocated large sums so that the children could have four excursions free of charge. “The child must love his country so,” says Glöckel, “he must learn to know it. No more dry readers but live visual contact!”9 Moreover, for the first five years of school, teaching is not broken up into individual subjects but constitutes a logical whole, so that there is no schedule of lessons. The subjects form a web (Die Gegenstände greifen ineinander). In a single context (Sachgebiet), the children learn to read, write, count, draw — and think! Teaching loses the bad taste of school and becomes alive; the children participate wholeheartedly. Teaching becomes a joy! (Concentration of teaching). Light, air and sun are part of today’s schoolroom!”10 “The child thinks. Every mother is very familiar with the ‘nagging’ questioning of her child, who wants to know the cause of everything and continually asks ‘why?’ This tendency is put to very good use in modern teaching. The child must learn about cause and effect. The child is motivated by an insatiable impulse to do things. Play is the child’s work. Modern education gives children a chance to satisfy this impulse to do in varied ways. Afterwards, what has been done or observed is

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Before the reform, Glöckel says, nothing of this sort was foreseen. The Drillschule or training school, which was the result of a Concordat between the Hapsburg Empire and the Church of Rome (1855), only taught catechism and multiplication tables.12 In the Lernschule or learning school, which was instituted by the reform of May 14, 1869, poetry, grammar, science and mathematical rules were learned by heart. Today we would call this a school to prepare for quizzes,13 and the principal work in this type of teaching had to be done by the teacher. The modern school is a work school (Arbeitsschule) where the student must do research. This new school does not in any way renounce the acquisition of factual information, but the principal objective is acquisition (das Erwerben) of notions and knowledge. When the student leaves school, he will not find himself confused and unprepared if he has to learn new things, because he knows what he must do to acquire the necessary knowledge (observe, make deductions, do research, read books…). The child is educated to respect work. We need men of action!14 Based on these principles, the new curriculum for the elementary school “establishes objectives to be achieved by the teacher during the year, but leaves him or her free as to how to reach them. This permits the teacher to take into consideration the children in his charge. One always starts from the child’s point of view and then does what is necessary for him or her to obtain further knowledge.”15 In the new school, instead of unimaginative, moralizing “readers”, the children are given excellent little books of short stories, fables, sagas, animal tales, and travel experiences that familiarize them with authors like Anzegruber, Stifter, Raimund, Hamerling, Schönheer, Schiller and Goethe.16

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Beside the discovery of the child, says Glöcken, there is the discovery of the parents, who were totally excluded from school life until the decree of April 22, 1919, which provided for parents’ meetings to discuss problems and participate in school life.17 Together with the discovery of the children and their parents, the new school also discovers the teachers, their personalities, their dignity, their role, and their training before and while teaching.18 The new school abolishes instruction as a privilege19 and considers general education the foundation of democracy and a nation’s progress.20 It places boys and girls on the same level21 and does away with torturous examinations. This was the school in which both Ludwig Wittgenstein22 and Karl Popper taught. Wittgenstein attended one of the new teachertraining institutes for a year and subscribed for a certain number of years to two of the periodicals of the reform movement: Die Quelle and Die Schulreform. He had also met Bühler, the theoretician of school reform. Mining, Wittgenstein’s favorite sister, was also involved in the school-reform movement. As we shall see, Popper wrote for the two aforementioned periodicals. He was a student of Bühler, who supervised his dissertation, and received his degree in 1928.

Karl Bühler, theorist of school reform in Austria At the very beginning of his aforementioned and often cited work Die Österreichische Schulreform, Glöckel stated that Austrian school reform was based on a series of studies done by first-rate thinkers for more than a century. Among these thinkers Glöckel names Karl Bühler.23 On page 40 of this text, Glöckel writes that, “The Institute of Experimental Psychology, directed by the famous German specialist Professor Karl Bühler, is a completely new creation of the city (of Vienna). With the assistance of enthusiastic teachers eager to learn, scientific research is being done in child psychology.”24 At that time, Karl Bühler was world famous. He was born on May 27, 1879 in Meckesheim (Baden) and died in Pasadena

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(California) on October 24, 1963. He received a degree in medicine in 1903 and one in philosophy on 1904. From 1907 to 1909 he was one of the most outstanding exponents of the Würzburg School. From 1909 to 1913 he worked in Bonn; from 1913 to 1918 in Munich; from 1918 to 1922 in Dresden; and from 1922 to 1938 in Vienna. In 1938 he was arrested by the Nazis. Later he found asylum in Oslo until 1940 and then emigrated to the United States, where he worked in St. Paul (Minnesota) until 1945 and then in Los Angeles. At the time of the Würtzburg School, the results of his research could be found in publications such as Ueber Gedanken (1907), Ueber Gedankenzusammenhänge (1908), Ueber Gedankenerinnerungen (1908) and Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorgänge (1907, 1908). These studies contain harsh criticism of elementarism and sensism (typical of classical psychology) and establish the principle of globality. Later on, the concept of globality in psychic processes would be treated more explicitly in the essay Die Gestaltwahrnehmungen (1913) and in his last work, Das Gestaltprinzip im Leben des Menschen und der Tiere (1960). One of Bühler’s very successful works was Die Krise der Psychlogie (1927), in which he uses the theory of aspects in an attempt to explain the heated controversies raging in psychology. Two extremely important books of Bühler are Ausdruckstheorie (1933) and Sprachtheorie (1934). Bühler had been an assistant to O. Külpe, who was famous for his attacks on the positivism of E. Mach. As already mentioned, Bühler was one of the most important representatives of the Würzburg School — the school that “represents the first, very united part of the current known as ‘Denkpsychologie’ that, one might say, has reached our times through the work of Selz, Lindworsky, Ach, Duncker, Bruner, Goodnow and Austin.”25 The names of pioneers like Mayer, Ort and Marbe, and later Ach, J. H. Watt, A. Messer and Karl Bühler are associated with this first part of Denkspsychologie, that is, the Würzburg School. In an overview of the first phase of Denkspsychologie, the psychology of thought, A. Messer threw light on the two controversial aspects of the Würzburg School. In the first place, the school was opposed to sensism, according to

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which the fundamental and ultimate elements of psychic life are sensations, either “primary” (present) or “secondary” (recalled images of primary sensations). In second place, it opposed associationism, for which the only way to organize interior experience is by contiguity of impressions experienced in the past.”26 The Würzburg School was anti-associationist and anti-sensist, but pro the theory of “thought without images.” These three fundamental points emphasized the subject’s absolute originality, his activity and the development of his capacities that are not merely associative.27 Külpe’s image of the self is well known: “The monarchic form of our conscience is apparent. The self sits on the throne and governs. It notes, perceives and ascertains what enters its kingdom. It deals with the situation by consulting its experienced ministers, the fundamental principles and norms of its government, acquired information and awareness, and the needs of the moment. Then the self decides to take a stand: to ignore the intruder (sensorial impressions), to give it a useable form, or to react against it.” Külpe adds that when the ego is weakened sensations and images find release in dreams. “Jobs are not assigned to sensations, feelings or images but to a subject, whose spiritual essence is not limited to these matters. Only a subject can act on spontaneously on its own and follow instructions.”28 This convincing revaluation of the importance of the thinking subject and his activity, which characterized Karl Bühler’s thought and was the basis of the Austrian school reform, fits very well into the context of anti-associationist and anti-sensist psychology and epistemology. The child is not a vessel to be filled, Popper would reiterate, but a beacon to be directed. We can certainly say, as did Albino Ronco, that “basically there is only one conclusion to Bühler’s extensive research: thought exists; psychologically it has a distinct nature different from all the phenomena of sensation, imagination, feeling, and the like because it is independent of them. Thinking means designating the ‘place’ every object or thought occupies in a more or less general psychological order.”29 In fact, Bühler’s idea is that “only thoughts can be considered essential components of our thinking.”30 He maintains that “there are

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thoughts without any discernible trace of an imaginative basis.”31 There is, he says, in children “preverbal thought” which they try in some way to express; and there is “superverbal thought,” which is typical of the genius, for whom the meaning of the word is not enough. In principle, Bühler says, every object can be thought of (understood) completely without assistance from the imagination.”32

Three pedagogical essays by Popper Popper was very involved in the school-reform movement. He became involved through Adler, but he also worked with Eduard Burger, the editor of the magazine “Die Quelle.” His first published articles — containing some important ideas of the later Popper — were printed in “Die Quelle” and in “Schulreform.” In these articles, and also in his university dissertation Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (1928) and in his thesis to qualify to teach Gewohnheit und Gesezerlebnis (1927) Popper proceeds in line with the theories of Bühler, Külpe and Koffka.33 Therefore, when Popper, with his anti-associationist and anti-inductive positions, attacks the Viennese neopositivists his attacks — according to W. W. Bartley — can be intended as direct applications of previous attacks by Koffka and Bühler against the associationist psychologists. Also, some of the basic ideas of Popper, including the relevance of the controls in the hypothetical-deductive method — Bartley notices — can be found in the works of his teachers, in particular, those of Heinrich Gomperz. In the paper Ueber die Stellung des Lehrers zu Schule und Schüler, published in the pedagocical review “Schulreform” (1925), Popper defends the idea that education should adhere to life (lebensnah), which was one of the basic principles of school reform.34 He says, “The fundamental attitude of the educator toward the student must be to consider the latter as an individual.”35 It is only with the intervention of factors like experience, habit and reflection that the individual can recognize himself as a certain type of person in relationship to others or to the

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society. Nevertheless, with another person who takes him as an individual he immediately feels like an individual.36 Society sees the individual as something typical, a type such as a laborer, a clerk, a teacher, a politician, etc. And there may be circumstances in which the educator will have to treat the child as a pupil. In these cases the educator will have to do his best to make the child understand it is necessary. But it is clear — Popper says — “that the requirement that education adhere to life must also hold true for the relationship between teacher and pupil so that as a matter of principle the teacher can not consider the pupil from a general point of view but must present himself as a live person to a live person.”37 This is the only way the child will feel secure and come to trust.38 If it ever manages to eradicate ineffectual authoritarianism, “the school will cease being a barrier between pupils and teacher and can become common ground for cooperation among them.”39 Two years later, in 1927, Popper’s illuminating essay Zur Philosophie des Heimatgedankens appeared in the publication “Die Quelle.” It was an introduction to a series of lectures on the concept of native land organized by Eduard Burger’s pedagogy seminar at the Institute of Pedagogy. Awareness of the importance of the concept of native land — Popper says at the very beginning — “comes […] entirely from practice, from the experience of how much child development is connected to the native land.”40 Popper analyzes the concept of native land from the point of view of logic (the concept of “native land” is a concept of relationship “whose subject is a combination of things, people and spiritual content”41 and from the point of view of esthetics (in Kantian terms “the esthetic quality of the native land is the sentimental relationship with it.”42 Love of the native land is expressed in appreciation of its natural beauty and its folk art43), of its ethics (“In contrast with esthetics, which subjectively seems to prefer the customs of its respective native lands, ethics affirms the objective ethical equality of all the moral customs of different countries”44), of the theory of knowledge (it is necessary to understand that valid knowledge is not influenced at all by native land. “Only extreme relativism, as for example that of W. Ostwald, can affirm universal temporal and environmental

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conditioning by the native land of all scientific statements and thus also of the theory of knowledge, but with this [contradictory] affirmation such relativism eliminates itself”),45 of the philosophy of nature (which “has long since abandoned its […] “national” character and become more consistent with its function as science”),46 of the philosophy of culture (“the philosophical-cultural meaning of native land will be clear to us immediately if it clear that every cultural tie indicates a corresponding structure of the ‘native land.’ A cultural tie […] is a feeling of belonging; it is connection to a combination of things where it is almost always possible to identify […] the component of material objects, the personal one, and the spiritual one. We think of a church or a political party: symbols, men, ideas and programs. We think of belonging to a school class: connections to things (places), people, and spiritual content (coming from lessons and training”).47 All of this shows that “in the last analysis every cultural development sinks […] its roots, at least partially, in principles that comes from a relationship with the ‘native land’.”48 In 1931, Popper published another important article in “Die Quelle”. It was entitled Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbstätigkeit49 and dealt with the education of memory. The article harshly criticized the school as learning [Lernschule] and strongly defended the new school as work [Arbeitschcule] but, in the wake of advice contained in Burger’s Arbeitspädagogik, was careful to avoid one-sidedness.50 The old school conceived of the child’s mind as an empty bucket to be filled with the largest possible quantity of knowledge. (As we have seen, the idea of the mind as a vessel was criticized by Popper various times during the development of his thought.)51 For this type of school, Popper says, “memory is nothing but a container for cognitive material. In itself this container has no qualities […]. Its only purpose is to gather material and store it.”52 And the more often the process of putting cognitive material into it is repeated the better the vessel will store it.53 The two characteristics required of memory are fidelity or precision and capacity. “This idea,” says Popper, “obviously means that education which ‘strengthens’ the memory is possible only if

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1) it repeats as much as possible; and 2) it crams as much material as possible into the vessel, which would clearly be the only way to ‘increase’ the ‘capacity’ of the memory.”54 The point of view just described is more or less that of associationist psychology, which is “unfortunately still widespread” even though “the total collapse of associationism can be considered the principal result of psychological research since the turn of the century.”55 Popper adds, “This decisive turning point in the psychology of thought (and memory) had already been foreseen by Kant and the school of Külpe, especially by Bühler and Selz, who reached it through rigorous experimental methodology.”56 The Arbeitschule also considered education of the memory important. “Life,” Popper said, “does not often (but also not so rarely) require of us feats of memory that can not be replaced by consultation.”57 A good memory is necessary in professional activity and for acquiring culture.58 For the Arbeitschule educating the memory means training a function by working with valid content and meaningful material, as is the case, for example, with rhythms or gestalt aspects of events. It is clear that “these meaningful moments are accompanied by understanding of meaning, so that thought too becomes part of the memory process. Memory becomes judicious memory.”59 The difference between mechanical-associationist memory and the type of memory developed by judicious memory by means of mechanization processes through simplification and abbreviation is more or less the same as the difference between the perfect functioning of a good gramophone and the perfect performance of a good pianist.60 August Forel, a famous expert on ants, pointed out that about 7,500 forms of ants have been described. Forel himself described more than 3,000. “However,” Forel confesses, “I have never once tried, either in biology or in systematics, to memorize a name or, in general, any type of data. I do not even know by heart the names of all the species I myself baptized. Why bother? I can always consult the books and collections I have at hand […] The mass of data, facts, numbers and the like are available forever not in our minds but in books.”61 What is important is to remember in which book

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the data can be found. In The Self and Its Brain, while conversing with J. C. Eccles, Popper states: “Very often we remember only that we have read something in a book, that the book is located in a certain place, and how to find it in the book. There is a give and take between brain-stored culture and the external World 3, and it is useful to develop techniques of putting as much as possible into the external World 3.”62 In a note, Popper recalls, after almost fifty years, the statement from August Forel’s autobiography: “What we can put on our shelves we should not put into our brains.”63

Karl Bühler: Popper’s dissertation supervisor Karl Bühler taught psychology at the University of Vienna, but his courses were also attended by students from the Institute of Pedagogy64 and, therefore, he was also the teacher of the young Popper. “At that time,” Popper recalls, “he “was best known for his book The Mental Development of the Child. He had also been one of the first Gestalt psychologists.”65 In 1928, Popper received his degree. Bühler was the advisor for his thesis entitled Zur Methodenfrage der Denkspsychologie.66 From the thesis it is clear that during the years he spent at the Institute of Pedagogy Popper did an impressive amount of reading. It is also clear that Karl Bühler had a great influence on his development. In the Introduction Popper, basing himself on the thinking of Schlick67 (who was on his dissertation committee), states that methodology should not become authoritarian toward the sciences but must understand its procedures, even if its results may later be useful to the sciences.68 In this Popper was in complete agreement with Bühler, who had written in Die Krise der Psychologie (1927) that he did not aim at reforming psychology, but at finding out the axioms of the theory of language.69 In any case, the underlying intent, which is stated in Popper’s work, is “to try to apply the most important methodological results obtained by Bühler to the psychology of thought.”70 This explains why Popper, following Bühler’s thinking, maintains that a scientific description of

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psychological facts is possible only if the “pluralism of the aspects” of these psychic facts is also considered.71 He is referring to the aspect of lived experience, the aspect of behavior, and the aspect of objective creations of the spirit,72 which correspond to the three functions of language pointed out by Bühler (expressive function, signaling function, and descriptive function), which Popper combined with the argumentative function, to be dealt with later. A similar position induced Popper to harshly criticize physicalism as it was proposed, for example by Schlick in his Allegemeine Erkenntnislehre. Schlick held that qualities are completely known only when they can be reduced quantitatively to others. We would be able to know perfectly the life of the mind only when we shift from an introspective psychology to a physiological psychology.73 For Popper, however, the ideal of quantitative knowledge is by no means a valid unconditioned general principal applicable to all the natural sciences, especially to biology and psychology.74 Popper has doubts about the general applicability of the physicalist ideal proposed by Schlick. He uses the example of anatomy. “There is no doubt that to a certain degree this science can not do without physics, but would it be reasonable to expect this science to be reduced to physics because it can supply knowledge?”75 His answer is: Certainly the anatomist of today has no interest in knowing what differential equations can be used to describe the molecular movement preceding scoliosis. It is important for him to recognize the scoliosis for what it is (that is, associate this concept with the anatomic fact) and perhaps also measure it. This measurement is not (according to Schlick) real quantitative knowledge because it does not permit the fact to be expressed by the quantitative conceptual system of physics. Rather than limiting himself to physics, the anatomist will have a much more practical interest in going back to laws, such as in this case, the laws of heredity, which are very far from any regularity of the type found in physics. For a modern-day anatomist it is infinitely more important to develop the theory of heredity and its laws more precisely

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than to apply extremely complicated concepts of physics to anatomical facts.”76 One could offer further examples in sciences like geography and geology. In any case, Popper says, “it is not in the best interest of many sciences to consider reduction to physics the cognitive ideal.”77 Of course Popper is convinced that reduction, for example, of biology to physics would have a “particular importance.”78 Nevertheless — he points out — “today if a philosopher insisted that biology, in order to be considered scientific, had to reduce it laws to laws of physics, biologists would justifiably respond that such a dogmatic postulate might hinder research as much as a premature ‘Ignorabimus’.”79 Moreover, if we take the example of the reduction of light phenomena to electromagnetic ones, we should remember that “to reduce a science or one of its sectors to another, more basic science, that science must have reached a certain maturation.”80 Therefore, says Popper, “if the reduction sought creates difficulty — and not even the most rabid anti-vitalist can deny that this is the case with the biological sciences — there can be only one path to follow and that is to develop even further the science to be reduced. And if this path does not lead to a solution of the difficulties, then perhaps the science is really irreducible.”81 Criticism of physicism reopens the problem of method in the psychology of thought. Analysis of the theses advocated by a long list of authors led Popper, particularly in the wake of Bühler, to confirm that in order to understand the problems of the psychology of thought, it is indispensable to accept the methods of three interrelated aspects of psychology: the aspect of experience, the aspect of behavior, and the aspect of objective creations of the spirit.82 Not only in the wake of Bühler, but also in that of Oswald Külpe and Otto Selz, Popper reached the conclusion that we do not think in images, but that we think in problems and tentative solutions to them. This shows the influence of biological considerations was already apparent in the young Popper.83 It was also apparent by this time that after his criticism of behaviorism and the theory of conditioned reflexes and after becoming aware that associationism

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was insubstantial,84 Popper was turning his back on the psychology of thought to devote himself to the logic of research. The title of his masterpiece in the philosophy of science is The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Karl Bühler and the “three” functions of language In Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, Karl Popper writes of his teacher Karl Bühler: Most important for my future development was his theory of the three levels or functions of language […]: the expressive function (Kundgabefunktion), the signal or release function (Auslösefunktion) and, on a higher level, the descriptive function (Darstellungsfunktion). He explained that the two lower functions were common to human and animal languages and were always present, while the third function was characteristic of human language alone”.85 Actually, in Krise der Psychologie Bühler wrote that animals share with human beings two fundamental functions of the language, while they lack the third one, which is the use of language as description of facts and objects.86 With the representative function the concept of truth comes into play. Popper explains further: 1) The expressive function comes into play to express an inner state: “all animal language is symptomatic of the state of some organism”87; 2) the signaling function is on a higher level than the expressive one since it presupposes it. “Animals, especially birds, give danger signals; and even plants signal (for example to insects); and when our self-expression (whether linguistic or otherwise) leads to a reaction in an animal or in a man, we can say that it was taken as a signal”88; 3) The descriptive function — Popper says — is the one that, according to Bühler goes beyond the animal language and is a peculiarity of the human one. This function presupposes the two previous ones and is the

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one through which assertions that may be true or false come into being — thus introducing criteria of truth or falsity. In this context it should be pointed out that descriptions of events may not be connected, for example, to a warning. This is not so for animals: a bee can only tell the truth; a man can lie. This is an extremely important observation. The language of human beings has the fundamental possibility to choose whether to describe reality correctly or create a story.89 In the beginning, therefore, there was the lie. 4) The argumentative function is a subject Popper used to complete and perfect the scheme proposed by his teacher Bühler. Obviously this function presupposes the descriptive one simply because arguments make references and their target is descriptions: “they criticize description from the point of view of the regulative ideas of truth, content, and verisimilitude.”90 Popper points out that these four are not the only functions of language. There are others such as command, exhortation and advice,91 but what is fundamental for man is the descriptive function of language. If human language is a product of the creativity of many minds, the human mind — Popper tells us — is the product of its products: children without language are hardly human and — certainly — disabled.92 Unlike Hume, Popper is convinced that the self exists. However, he is also convinced that we are not born as selves: “we have to learn to be selves”93; and learning to become persons implies not only close contact with World 2 of other people but also with World 3 of language and theories. As selves, as human beings, we are all products of World 3 which, in its turn, is a product of countless human minds. The theory of functions of language — which Popper inherited from Bühler and included in an evolutionary theory that arrives at human self-awareness — was very important to Popper for several reasons. In his autobiography, Popper says: This theory […] confirmed my view of the emptiness of the theory that art is self-expression. It led me later to the conclusion that the theory of art was communication (that is, release) was equally empty, since these two functions were

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trivially present in all languages, even in animal languages. It led me to a strengthening of my ‘objectivist’ approach. And it led me — a few years later — to add to Bühler’s three functions what I called the argumentative function. The argumentative function of language became particularly important for me because I regarded it as the basis of all critical thought.94 It was from Bühler, therefore, that Popper took the basic elements for his theory of the objective spirit and the distinction among World 1 (of physical objects), World 2 (of the human mind) and World 3 (the world of products of the human mind, especially problems of scientific theories and works of art).95 However, at this point we should not forget — as Fredrich Stadler96 also reminds us — that Bühler was also a point of departure for the antiinductivist and hypothetical-deductive concept of science later proposed by Popper. In the Die Krise der Psychologie, Bühler presents detailed criticism of associationism, and it becomes clear that for him research is furthered by intuition and demonstration, in other words by speculation and testing. The first conjectures are not formed through mere observation. Bühler was convinced, as Popper would be later on, that every observation is sullied by theory. In Kantian terms — Bühler says — systems without facts are empty; facts without systems are blind. According to Bühler, observations always depend on hypotheses and interest in theories. In Die Krise der Psychologie we also find pages devoted to the objective spirit — the direct precursor of World 3 — and the influences of products of World 3 on the very minds that created them.97 We shall see in more detail further on the reasoning behind Bühler’s criticism of the psychoanalysis of Freud. “The principle of symbol in psychoanalysis is as elastic as gum.”98 Bühler’s main accusation against Freud is that psychoanalysis eludes criticism; it is difficult to verify and thus impossible to know whether or not it is wrong. And finally “scientific theories must survive or decay according to their contribution to the progress of research: this is their just destiny.”99

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Heinrich Gomperz: “an excellent Greek scholar greatly interested in epistemology” I was in my second year at the Pedagogic Institute when I met Professor Heinrich Gomperz, to whom Karl Polanyi had given me an introduction. Heinrich Gomperz was the son of Theodor Gomperz (author of Greek Thinkers, and a friend and translator of John Stuart Mill). Like his father, he was an excellent Greek scholar, and also greatly interested in epistemology […] Heinrich Gomperz was also patient with me. He had the reputation of being scathing and ironical, but I never saw anything of it. He could be most witty, though, when telling stories about some of his famous colleagues, such as Brentano and Mach. He invited me from time to time to his house, and let me talk […]. I read all his writings, which were outstanding for their historical approach […]. The problems I discussed with Gomperz belonged to the psychology of knowledge or of discovery; it was during this period that I was exchanging them for problems of the logic of discovery. I was reacting more and more strongly against any ‘psychologistic’ approach, including the psychologism of Gomperz. Gomperz himself had criticized psychologism — only to fall back into it.100 Heinrich Gomperz, son of the illustrious historian of Greek philosophy Theodor Gomperz, was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1873. Among his private tutors was Th. G. Masarik, the future president of Czechoslovakia. In 1891, he enrolled at the law faculty of the University of Vienna. His idea at that time was to take up a profession that would keep him in contact with real life.101 In 1893, however, Gomperz left the Vienna law school to go to Berlin to attend the lessons of ecclesiastical history given by the eminent Protestant theologian and historian Adolf Harnack, “the only man — wrote Gomperz — whom in the full sense of the word, I can recognize, unreservedly and without qualification, as my teacher.”102 Gomperz could never explain satisfactorily, even to himself, why he decided to study ecclesiastical history. “I can only say that I have always considered religion one of the most fascinating objects of study and the Church of Rome as the most wonderful institution

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in history although I have never believed one word of its tenets, or of those of any other religion.”103 For Gomperz, dogma represented an attempt to express feelings and in factual propositions.104 “The great thing about the church is that it has ever been able to give to every type of man what he craved for: magic and superstition to the simple-minded; faith and hope to the poor and the oppressed; mysticism to the fervent; wisdom to the speculative; and excuses and a good conscience to the rich and the powerful.”105 When he returned to Vienna, Gomperz turned from history to classical philosophy and then to philosophy. He took his degree in philosophy in 1896. From 1900 to 1903 he was a lecturer at the University of Berne and from 1905 to 1920 at the University of Vienna, where he was appointed full professor in 1924. Ten years later, in 1934, as the “only non-Nazi University professor,” he refused to join Dolfuss’s “Patriotic Front” and left teaching ahead of time with a pension that barely allowed him and his wife to scrape by.106 In 1935, he was invited by the American pragmatist philosopher F. C. S. Schiller to give a course at the University of Los Angeles. “And so,” recalls Gomperz, “when Austria was annexed in 1938, I naturally decided not to return to my native city.”107 In the summer terms of 1939 and 1940 Gomperz also taught at the University of Oregon, and in the winter term of 1941–1942 he gave a course at the University of Illinois. Heinrich Gomperz died in 1942 in Los Angeles, where until the end of his days he led the “sad life of a scholar in exile” a life that “he had accepted with irony and stoic serenity.”108 Gomperz makes an extremely significant confession at the end of his brief autobiography: The events I had witnessed in Austria impressed me profoundly and have changed my political outlook. I came to the conclusion that a government on which all citizens depend economically is also in a position to dominate them spiritually. Freedom when not backed up by some measure of economic independence is helpless. The idea that the state may take over all the means of production and that freedom of expression will yet be maintained is an illusion.109

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Gomperz’s moral and religious agnosticism was sparked by Alfred Berger, a lecturer of aesthetics in Vienna, then director of the Hamburg theatre and finally director of the Burgtheater of Vienna.110 Richard Wahle, a philosopher and Henirich’s private tutor, was also an influence on him. It was during the oral exam for his degree in philosophy that Gomperz met “the man whom I consider to have been the most original and the most penetrating thinker with whom it has been my privilege to associate: the great Austrian physicist and epistemologist Ernst Mach.”111 Gomperz describes Mach as “the Buddha of science” because, “like the great Hindu Prophet he held ‘no one and nothing dear in this world’ — except insight, and the facts and arguments on which it is based.”112 He was friendly and kind to everyone; “he never seemed interested in any one person more than in another. A man, for him, was a being that had something to say and the only thing important about him was whether what he had to say was wise or foolish, true of false. He appeared to me as the incarnation of the scientific spirit.”113 Franz Brentano was another significant influence on Gomperz, who learned philological interpretations of the texts of the Greek philosophers as well as philosophy from his lessons.114 Obviously one cannot overlook the influence of his father Theodor on Gomperz’s education. Heinrich attributes the greatest debt to his father and teacher in “the intellectual thoroughness and honesty that gives serious thought to every argument and never rest satisfied with any reason or any result just because it is convenient and fits into a preconceived pattern.”115 Heinrich Gomperz as interpreter of the Greek philosophers “The philosopher Heinrich Gomperz remained a classical philologist until the end of his life. His first and last philosophical works dealt with Plato and the pre-Socratic philosophers,”116 wrote Eugen Dönt. Gomperz himself saw a “fundamental difference”117 between his approach to the Greek thinkers and his father’s: “while my father had been supremely interested in all these early thinker

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insofar as they had had – in his judgement – glimpses of ‘the truth’ (‘truth’ being determined by the standards of nineteenth-century science and British empiricism and utilitarianism), my chief aim has been to realize to what extent their ways of looking at nature and at life had been different from ours, and to enter into their minds as completely as possible”.118 Gomperz was a scrupulous philologist and did not disdain using psychoanalytic instruments in his studies on ancient philosophy.119 He knew Freud well and even had his dreams analyzed by Freud himself but “the experiment proved a complete failure”.120 Gomperz was an admirer of Freud’s “creative originality and his psychological penetration” and was convinced that “many of the psychic mechanisms discovered by him really play a remarkable part in our lives and in a few cases I have myself been able to effect surprising ‘cures’ by using some of his methods”;121 but it did not keep him from pointing out the principal defect of psychoanalysis, which was the claim to have identified the source of all our actions and all our behavior (this claim was also made by Marx, Nietzsche and Adler). This single, exclusive source was for Marx money, for Nietzsche power, for Freud sex, and for Adler vanity.122 Beginning in 1891, Gomperz met regularly with a group of friends at the Sokratiker Kreis to discuss politics, economics and science. Among the members of this Circle were the internist Alfred Decastello (Anaxagoras), the physician Leo Haas (Chione), the painter Richard Harflinger (Parrhasius), the musicologist Robert Lach (Teagete), the historian Harold Steinacker (Phaedrus), the chemist Edmund Stiassny (Cleon), the art historian Arpad Weixlgärtner (Agathon) and Gomperz (the Pythagorean Simmia). A few years later, in 1897, Gomperz published an interesting essay entitled Grundlegung der Neusocratischen Philosophie. In the preface, he says: Neosocratic philosophy […] must be the scientific expression of the religious faith of the Socratic school. This school was founded in 1890 by Leo Haas and has flourished since then, its membership increasing slowly but continually.

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However, this school is not a philosophical society, a movement or a sect but rather a community of believers united in the profession of their faith, which might be expressed as follows: For a good man there is no evil either in life or in death.123 Gomperz dealt with Socrates in as many as four essays.124 Socrates, he said, “unknowingly was himself the ideal model of the highest wisdom.”125 And it is not surprising that Gomperz had little sympathy for Plato’s political philosophy; “for him it was conceived by a supporter of the ‘closed’ Greek society.”126 Gomperz dealt with the pre-Socratics in the essay Problems and Methods of Early Greek Science, where he analyzes the model of thought used by these early philosophers to explain the origin and structure of the universe and indicates how the point of departure for preSocratic theories is not experience but analogies based on experience.127 In his study on Heraclitus, Gomperz dwells on the fact that for Heraclitus reality is in a state of eternal movement. Gomperz interprets the fire Heraclitus speaks of as a symbol of the force and energy inherent in this movement.128 Popper was to interpret Heraclitus in a similar way.129 There are other significant points of agreement between Gomperz and Popper. For example, Friedrich Stadler points out that both of them are nominalists130 and, therefore, adversaries of essentialism. However, this aversion to essentialism is not at all the same as an anti-metaphysics position.131 Both Gomperz and Popper were critics of psychoanalysis, though for different reasons and in different ways. Nevertheless, both of them used it in their interpretations of the ancient philosophers.132 Gomperz was a fallibilist and Popper was to become one too. Popper was a critic of inductivism and so was Gomperz.133 Popper was a defender of evolutionary epistemology and Heinrich Gomperz can be considered a precursor of evolutionary epistemology.134 And if Popper was to say that perceptive experiences “can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or rejection of a statement, but a basic statement cannot be justified by them — no more than by thumping the table”135,

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Gomperz would specifiy that propositions like “now it is red” are in any case points of departure and not points of arrival for science. Popper was a supporter of the unity of the scientific method,136 but so had been Gomperz.137 Popper proposed a logic of the situation as a historiographical explanation;138 and we find a rough outline of a logic of the situation in Heinrich Gomperz.139

Heinrich Gomperz: A real scientist is ready to challenge any result Let’s try to examine Heinrich Gomperz’s idea of science more closely. Actually Popper himself maintained that in the two basic problems of the theory of knowledge there is a deductivist concept of science that can be found not only in Duhem but also in Mach and Gomperz, of whom he quotes two works: Zur Psychologie der logischen Grundtatsachen of 1897, and the Weltanschauungslehre, II, of 1909. On January 12, 1934, Gomperz gave a lecture entitled Die Wissenschaft und die Tat at the Philosophische Gessellschaft of Vienna. A few months later the text was expanded and published in Vienna.140 The theme of the lecture was relationships between science and action, which can be seen in three different ways: a) science serves action; it is a means at the service of the will or belief; b) science is totally independent of action and has value in itself; and c) science is the premise of action.141 From Gomperz’s ideas on these relations it is easy to deduce his idea of science. First, in science it is impossible to attain certain truth.142 As far as the natural sciences are concerned — Gomperz says — it well known that “they can only propose hypotheses (Annahmen), which, since they can be ‘contradicted’ (widerlegt) by facts […], can never be definitively confirmed, so that in the best of cases their validity is simply temporary.”143 If the laws of nature are temporary and remain temporary, so are the sciences pertaining to individual facts, “which include the so-called sciences of the spirit, especially the historical sciences.”144 It can be said that propositions for these sciences “actually are also temporary hypotheses and, therefore, need

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confirmation (Bewahrheitung), which can always be granted again, but never definitively.”145 The laws of the natural sciences are hypothetical, and propositions relating individual facts are hypothetical. Moreover, “what we have said about scientific knowledge is even more valid for everyday knowledge (Alltagserkenntnis).”146 If this is how things are, Gomperz says, the scientist “must remain open to every new fact, every objection, and every contrary argument. It is precisely this constant readiness to reconsider every question and discuss every result that represents a true scientific attitude.”147 The joy of the engaged scientist comes from this, it is not the joy of someone who has the truth but that of someone who takes on difficult problems, attempts various solutions, and then compares them.148 In brief, “It is not the desire to know but the yearning to learn that makes the man of science.”149 Moreover, science would no longer be science if it were believed there could be definitive answers to one’s questions.150 Scientific research tests the continual change in problems and theories.151

Heinrich Gomperz’ view of science is clearly deductivist and falsificationist Human action is action with objectives. These objectives — says Gomperz — belong to the sphere of what should be and not to that of what is. Knowing concerns what is, and there is no logical path from what is to what should be. The ultimate objectives of action are conscious desires, blind habit or free choice.152 Science speaks — in a conjectural way — only of what happens and what can happen, not of what should happen.153 Scientific research is constantly questioning results and doctrines and is ready to consider new facts and theories. The scientist is a person who doubts results.154 Consequently, “the scientist as such […] does not know fidelity. To be exact, he is not faithful to people or beliefs; he is faithful only to the truth: amicus Plato, magis amica veritas.”155 The true scientist supports hypotheses “until they are contradicted”156; and science, because of its very nature, is endless, never concluded, a product

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of a continuing debate.157 More often than not this debate concerns — says Gomperz — the nature and justification of so-called inductive generalizations that have been the object of so much thought and discussion in the last two hundred years. “Now, however, we can consider the problem solved. Viktor Kraft solved it in 1925, in his book Grundformen der wissenschaftlichen Methoden, and this solution was elaborated further by Karl Popper in a book in the process of publication. The solution is of the utmost simplicity. It states: there is no rational justification for a generalizing conclusion (Verallgemeinerungschulß).”158 If something happens various times, this does not mean that it will also happen in the future. In other words, “generalization is simply a conjecture.”159 Therefore, science is a web of hypotheses and conjectures that can be contradicted or disproved by facts. When this happens these conjectures require some modification, perhaps some additional hypotheses. In any case, they cannot be considered definitively confirmed, so the researcher must always be ready to accept new facts and question even widely accepted results and well-established hypotheses, to reconsider hypotheses previously rejected, and to think up new ones. What Gomperz describes here is clearly a deductivist and fallibilistic view of science; and at that time this view was also being developed by his student Karl Popper.160 As Popper was to say later on,161 for Gomperz too science is built up by passing from the known to the unknown, from the past to the future.162 Likewise for Gomperz and later also for Popper,163 “science deduces the particular from the general, the fact from the law”164 so that explaining means going from the known to the unknown, from facts to general laws.”165

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Chapter Seven Carl Menger and Karl Popper: The “shortcomings” and “errors” of historicism

Karl R. Popper and Theodore W. Adorno: a recent polemic with ancient roots In October 1961, a conference was organized in Tübingen by the German Sociological Society. The theme was The Logic of the Social Sciences, and the two keynote addresses at the conference were by Karl R. Popper and Theodore W. Adorno.1 Popper emphasized, among other things (such as criticism of the sociology of knowledge, the distinction between scientific values and extra-scientific values), the distinction between theoretical or nomothetic sciences and historical or idiographic sciences, the idea that “psychology is a social science”, the concept that sociology is independent of psychology, the idea of the logic of a situation, the proposal that the task of the social sciences should be the construction of “a theory of desired and undesired unintentional consequences of purposeful actions”, the idea that “the method of the social sciences, like that of the natural sciences, consists of experimentation attempting to solve the problems they started from. Solutions are proposed and criticized.”2 Basically there is only one scientific method and this presupposition unleashes criticism of holism and historicism. On the other hand, “it is completely wrong to believe that the researcher in natural sciences is more objective than the researcher in social sciences. The researcher in natural sciences is as partial as other human beings and is, often, a unilateral and strong supporter of his own ideas. Some of the most eminent physicists of our time have created schools which oppose the new ideas.”3 Actually, the objectivity of science is not the same as the objectivity of the scientist. “What can be called ‘scientific objectivity’ consists in the

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critical tradition which allows the criticism of a dominant dogma. Scientific objectivity is not an individual matter of the single scientists, but is the social matter of their reciprocal criticisms, of their collaborations and conflicts. It depends on the social and political conditions which allow the faculty of criticism.”4 In contrast to Popper, Adorno maintains that since the social sciences are so backward it is useless to expect to fill the gap between the social and physical sciences by methodology5 because “the ideal of the coherent and elegant explanation does not apply to society, which is not itself coherent or susceptible to the categorization that is proper of discursive logic. Society is contradictory yet determinable; it is rational and irrational, systematic and irregular at the same time. The method of sociology must consider this. Otherwise, in the attempt to avoid contradictions, it would end in greatest contradiction: that between its structure and the structure of its object.”6 In Adorno’s view, the method is not indifferent to the object: “methods depend not on methodological ideas, but on their object.”7 True knowledge is knowledge of the whole.8 Consequently, “the abandonment of the idea of sociology as a theory of society is a kind of resignation: we do not conceive the whole because we want to transform it.”9 Sociology, Adorno believes, can not be reduced to administrative research and, in comparison to the understanding of modern society, “empirical inputs are like drops of water on red-hot iron.”10 In brief, “the criticism of positivism consists in the consideration that it avoids the experience of totality and the impulse towards change.”11 Totality and dialectics are the basic categories Adorno uses when viewing society, because society slips through the net of the scientific method. Behind the various verbal agreements, there were, as Dahrendorf points out,12 substantial differences between Popper and Adorno, and these emerged more clearly in the developments brought to the controversy primarily by Hans Albert and Jürgen Habermas.13 In any case, the Tübingen Conference brought to light in a new form and in different contexts the old controversy about the possibility of applying the scientific method to the study of social facts. It also revived in the “Frankfurt” group a series of “historical” objections to

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the idea that there is only one scientific method, which was defended in Tübingen by Popper, who for almost half a century tirelessly attacked the historicism that even before him had been strongly criticized by thinkers like Ludwig von Mises14 and Friedrich von Hayek,15 and before them by Carl Menger. In fact, Carl Menger published an essay against Gustav Schmoller, who was an outstanding representative of the German historical school of economics. The essay, entitled Die Irrtümer des Historismus,16 is Menger’s reply to Schmoller17 who in 1883 had published Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere,18 a harsh criticism of Menger’s book on the method of the social sciences. In order to trace one of the sources of a neverending controversy on the role and method of the social sciences, I shall try to outline the basic lines of the Methodenstreit between Gustav Schmoller and Carl Menger.19

Gustav Schmoller: the urgent need for a history of economic phenomena In 1883, the year Carl Menger published Untersuchungen, Gustav Schmoller wrote a rather detailed and harsh review of it in the “Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkwirthschaft im Deutschen Reich.” Schmoller writes “[…] In Menger’s case I can not keep out of the discussion completely since at least some of his attacks are directed at me personally.”20 In Menger’s work, Schmoller continues, “we are faced with a serious attempt by an astute theoretician of economics to conserve the true method of the social sciences or rather of theoretical economics, an attempt that tries in practice to bring to light and reject the misrepresentations (Verirrungen) of the historical school and claims to reform the present state of economic policy in Germany.”21 But does Menger really manage to save the true method of the social sciences, refute the errors of the historical school, and reform the science of economics in Germany? Schmoller does not seem to have many doubts about this: Menger, he says, does not manage to do this.

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First, Menger makes a distinction between individual knowledge and general knowledge, between the science of phenomena of an individual (historical) nature and that of a general (theoretical) nature. He maintains that without general knowledge or theory it is impossible to give an historical explanation or predict and control phenomena, so he distinguishes between theoretical sciences, historical sciences and practical sciences. Specifically, he says that in the field of economics, the historical sciences are economic history and economic statistics; the practical sciences are economic policy and finance; and the theoretical science is economic theory. In the field of theoretical research Menger then makes further distinctions between the empirical-realistic approach, which leans toward empirical phenomenal laws (of coexistence and sequences of phenomena) that are not strict or “exact” and thus allow for exceptions, and the exact approach, which aims at establishing such strict laws of phenomena and uniformity in the sequence of facts that it does not allow for exceptions (basically it deals with the construction of typical-ideal models). Furthermore, Menger stresses the partiality of all scientific theories: no exact science incorporates universal understanding of even the smallest part of the real world. He also points out that determining individual interest as a basic element in constructing an “exact economics” is not obligated “to teach us to understand, generally and completely, social or human phenomena; it studies a particular aspect, the economic one.”22 This is why, in Menger’s opinion, there is no basis for the charge of “atomism” against the supporters of theoretical economics, a charge that would be based on the fact that the phenomena of economics are traced back to their basic elements and explained by using them. Actually, “the collectivity as such is not a big unified subject who has needs, who works and competes. It is rather a peculiar multiplicity of individual economies.”23 Therefore, the correct path to take is methodological individualism rather than methodological collectivism. These are the fundamental points Menger established in Book I of his Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere. Of course, Schmoller writes, the separation of approaches to knowledge as elaborated by

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Menger “undoubtedly has some justification;”24 but without a descriptive science to provide the preliminary material for a general theory we will only have an arbitrary, abstract economic theory without a solid basis in concrete historical reality. Therefore, “when a science works temporarily by mainly following the descriptive method it is not a question of disregarding theory but rather of laying the necessary basis for it.”25 Schmoller finds disparagement of the historical School unjustified; it would only be justified if “the descriptive material was wrong.”26 Obviously this attention paid to the description of concrete economic phenomena means that Schmoller is particularly hard on the exact approach proposed by Menger. Furthermore, Schmoller says that the distinction between the empirical-realistic approach and the exact approach is the same as the distinction between the inductive method and the deductive method.27 He points out that according to Menger the empirical-realistic approach does not lead to completely rigorous results since “no good observation in itself guarantees the repetition of the case.”28 However, Schmoller objects to this position: “the moment when the observation is quantitatively and qualitatively completed the law of thought (Denkgesetz) leads us think that the same qualitative and quantitative causes will produce the same effect even though this was observed only once. This is the law of thought that he [Menger] proposes as the premise of this exact approach.”29 Certainly, Schmoller notes, once it has been assumed that the latest fundamental elements of economic phenomena (for Menger, these elements would be egoism and private interests) have been understood, all the rest becomes easy because with these simple, fundamental elements the other more complicated facts and events can be explained through deductive reasoning beginning with them.30 But, Schmoller objects, “these simple elements, which are given in some way in mathematics and in certain parts of physics, have not yet been analyzed and clarified — enough to draw conclusions from them — in any of the sciences of thought, feeling and human behavior, and even less in the social sciences.”31 At this point, Schmoller exclaims, “In my opinion, it requires a lot of naiveté, flight from the world, and the mentality of a theoretical scholar

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to see in human needs or greed (Erwebstreib) or private interest the basic elements — in the scientific sense of the term — to use as points of departure.”32 It should be scientific psychology that establishes whether greed and egoism are really the basic elements not to be mistaken with other not-fundamental human forces about which “nothing can be said.”33 Moreover, declaring that some elements — isolated from the others — are simple and fundamental is not a guaranteed operation and may turn out to be false.34 Choosing private interests as a point of departure for an analysis of prices was a good thing that helped us explain the simplest processes of the market,35 but “it would be a mistake to use this as a rule for future research or for studies on all the more complicated economic phenomena. In any case […] it should always be clear that, if you start from hypotheses you only obtain hypothetical propositions which should not be clad in the mantle of rigorous science by the ambiguous term ‘exact.’”36

Gustav Schmoller: a list of Menger’s errors Schmoller’s criticism of Menger does not end here. Schmoller says Menger “separates” and “isolates” the economic aspect of social living by assuming to have identified the simple fundamental elements of this economic aspect. Menger “limits the fundamental task of theoretical economics to the theory of formulating value and price, distribution of income, and the nature of money.”37 But, Schmoller replies, these things cannot be understood without analyzing their relationship to the life of the State and the nation: How can we grasp the principal questions of the economy (Volkswirthschaft) without analyzing the relationships between the State and the economy; what can be said about the relationship between public and private and corporate enterprises, between a family business and a state-run enterprise, without considering the nature of the State? The question of a free economy can only be discussed on the basis of

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a theory of philosophy of law concerning the boundaries of morals, customs, and rights, of individual will and state coercion.38 It is true, Menger admits, that the economy does not take place outside of and without the State: the economy is not in the least staatslos; but, despite this, it claims to deal only with the general nature of economic phenomena and give us a theory of the economic aspect of people’s life.39 This theory, which is a product of the “exact” approach to research and is composed of theorems deduced from presumed fundamental elements of economic life, shows very little respect for the empiric reality.40 But, Schmoller adds, though “much ingenuity and logic is employed in this exactness, to us empiricists who are groping in the dark it seems to be a strange misunderstanding between the doctrine of the general nature of economics and exercises of a scholastic nature that are as false as their premises.”41 There is a further consideration. Menger distinguishes between theoretical economic and practical economics, and asserts that the latter (economic policy and finance) presupposes the former. Here too Schmoller has something to criticize because, in his opinion, “the methodological differences in the treatment of theoretical and practical economics are not fundamental but only of degree.”42 Certainly, political economics and finance should no longer be considered, as in the past, entities bolstered by practical remedies. In order to avoid this, practical political economics must exhibit “the specific development of the German economy and possibly also French and English economies of the last centuries from the point of view of agricultural, industrial and commercial policy by studying the causes and effects of individual cases.”43 Here too, the research “is limited to being essentially descriptive, but perhaps in this way it is just as good, if not better, an instrument for the instruction of future workers as the art that gave advice about free commerce and social policy.”44 In Schmoller’s opinion, Menger’s mistakes are much more serious because, by asserting that the theoretical economist must

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assume a particular space-time stage of the economy as a basis for his theory, “Menger commits the same serious methodological error as that of all the dogmatic old political economics, which is only concerned with the present in Western Europe and which mistakes the characteristics of its time for the general nature of political economics.”45 Schmoller is not perturbed by Menger’s list of the defects of the historical school. He says that, at least in part, he accepts Menger’s criticism. However, these criticisms do not cancel the merit of the historical school, which “closely examined and enriched all of science.”46 Actually, Schmoller believes, that “naturally Menger lacks the instruments to completely understand the basic purpose of and need for the historical school, which means a return to scientific understanding (Erfassung) of reality rather than piling up nebulous abstract images lacking in any reality.”47 Nor did Menger “see that all the most important economic phenomena are too spatially and temporally vast and complex (umfassend) to be understood only through a collectivist approach like the historical or statistical ones.”48 Menger cannot understand these things because he “only ever thinks about the exchange rate, the value, money, etc. and never about the organs and institutions that constitute the backbone of the economic body.”49 Schmoller finds Menger’s idea concerning the spontaneous, unreflective origin of institutions like the state, new localities, language, law or money, neither new nor surprising.50 It is not true, Schmoller says, that the German historical school of economics does not know, as Menger writes, the historical school of law, in which thinkers like Savigny and Niebur support the unreflective genesis of institutions.51 The truth, Schmoller concludes, is that “Menger is an astute dialectician, a logical brain, and certainly not an ordinary scholar; but he lacks both general historical and philosophical training and the natural breadth of a horizon that permits him to see experiences and concepts from all sides.”52 In Schmoller’s opinion, Menger is a limited scholar; he is abstract and from his “limited point of view” presumes to see too much. “With the overly secure air of a schoolmaster, he picks up his rod

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and wants to rap the knuckles of anyone […] who thinks differently from him.”53

Menger’s reply to Schmoller: economic theory cannot be reduced to the history of economic events Schmoller’s attack on Menger was strong. But the counteroffensive was not long in coming. In 1884, the year after the appearance of Menger’s Untersuchungen and Schmoller’s criticism of it in Zur Methodologie der Staats-und Socialwissenschaften, Menger published Die Irrtümer des Historismus in der Deutschen Nationalökonomie.54 The Errors of Historicism in the German Political Economy, an essay in the form of sixteen letters to a friend defending theoretical economics against Schmoller and the other scholars of the German historical school of economics who are groping in the dark “about the methods and aims of research in economics.”55 They have failed completely in their attempt to reform political economics, but this was unavoidable since they assumed that history was the foundation and point of departure of the entire science of economics:56 “an incorrect hypothesis affirming that the union of historical knowledge with political economics would have meant a reform of the latter — and this hypothesis is the false dogma of historicism within our science — and it certainly could not offer a basis for an effective transformation.”57 Reform of a discipline — Menger says — can only come from within by solving its intrinsic problems, not by the intrusion of methods and techniques of other disciplines.58 However, “like foreign conquerors, historians have invaded the territory of our science in order to impose their language and their routines — their terminology and methods — and intolerantly combat any approach to research that does not correspond to theirs.59 In other words, German political economics is dominated by an historicism that resorts to “extreme forms of intolerance,”60 and “contemptible attacks”61 which, Menger says, must be responded to if political economics is to find itself and its

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methods and concepts again.”62 In brief, the intolerance and intellectual terrorism practiced by the historicists must be done away with. Therefore, the aims and methods of political economics must be clearly established. One of the basic errors of the historical school of German economists, in Menger’s opinion, is that “within the field of economics the aim is to overcome any clear distinction between historiography and statistics on the one hand and theory on the other.”63 This happens when “the theoretical aspect of our science is neglected when it really urgently needs to be reformed; and sometimes theoretical research in economics is resisted as if only historical research were justifiably admissible in this field.”64 Moreover, since the historical school is concerned about not deviating from the reality of continually new concrete facts, it opposes, or at least is suspicious of, generalizations, laws and rules and so “also drops the strict distinction between theoretical and practical sciences,”65 in order, once again, to give precedence to historical descriptions of industrial, agricultural commercial, etc. practices. Menger also points out “another basic error”: there are some members of the historical school who do not deny the independent significance of theoretical economics and admit a science of laws of economics alongside history and statistics; but these laws are not at all those of theoretical economics but rather views and schema typical of the philosophy of economic history.66 Political economics cannot be reduced to history, nor can it be distorted in the philosophy of history. It is a science of the laws of coexistence and succession of economic phenomena (for example, the typical relationship describing the effect on price of varying demand and supply, or the assertion that land rental depends on the greater or lesser distance of the property from the market or on its degree of fertility,67 etc.); in other words, a set of scientific laws. This does not mean there can be no economic history or that economic historiography is not useful for checking economic theory. What Menger wants to establish is the primacy of the theoretical: without economic theory, there is no science of economics; and economic historiography and the practical sciences of economics are not possible without laws

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regulating economic phenomena. Furthermore, the philosophy of economic history is not a science.

Carl Menger: the distinction of sciences on the basis of methodology Therefore, the errors of the historical school must be eradicated immediately; first of all by establishing the real objective of research in economics and then determining the various directions and roles (with their different objectives) of the science of economics and examining the diverse relationships between them. The following, according to Menger, are the roles of the science of economics distinguished by their objectives: “Historians and statisticians — the former from the point of view of development and the latter from the prospect of simultaneity — must investigate and represent the facts, destiny and institutions of certain states and populations; while the theoretician in the realm of social and political phenomena should familiarize us with the ‘phenomenal forms’ and ‘laws’ of human facts, not merely concrete manifestations and developments. The researcher working in the area of the social or political and practical sciences must show us the ‘principles’ that enable us to participate successfully in social and political situations, in other words, the principles for achieving certain goals like the concerns of the social economy, the administration of the government budget, and so on.”68 The goals set in research on facts and phenomena in the various disciplines have different aims: the theoretician is concerned with “phenomenal forms of human life and the laws of phenomena (his interest is in relationships typical of human phenomena)”69; the historian and the statistician are interested in “concrete phenomena of human life and concrete relationships in space and time”70; and those working in the practical realm of economics are concerned with “principles that guide actions to achieve specific goals in the realm of social and political phenomena.”71 Menger believes that ignoring these different directions of research is a

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serious error of the historical school, whose love of the concrete stresses the significance of historical and statistical research, neglects laws (or theories) and denies any relevance to the exact aim of the research,72 and then, as if to compensate for its flight from theory, embraces one of those philosophies of history lacking in any cognitive value. Certainly, in distinguishing in economic research between economic theory, the history of economic events, and the practical sciences of the economy Carl Menger did not overlook the relationships among them. The history of economic events (and also primarily actual experience) serves (and in this sense is an auxiliary science) to establish and prove economic laws (at least those produced in the realistic-empirical approach); and the practical approach must pay careful attention to actual situations and to how the events of those situations where it would intervene are intertwined. But — Menger stresses — without theories of economics there can be no explanations of historical economic events or, without the necessary store of laws, hope of foreseeing economic phenomena and intervening effectively on them. Consequently preeminence is given to theory; and neglect, underestimation or even denial of theory in no way means establishing the science of economics but rather scuttling it and misinterpreting the basic purpose of economic research — in other words, denying economics as a science. This is why combining, in one way or another, history, theory and economic practice does not mean furthering the progress of the science of economics as much as causing it to stagnate in a confusion that always damages the theoretical aspect, which is the one that should be taken most seriously. Nor, finally, can the laws of theoretical economics be mistaken for a philosophy of economic history. It would be like mistaking the laws of physiology for a philosophical theory of human destiny. That the history of economics — even if nothing more than as an auxiliary science to economics — is useful and can be justified is uncontestable;73 but “the almost exclusive devotion (Hingabe) to it by learned German economists is so obviously one-sided that it is truly hard to understand how there can be such a different views on

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the subject.”74 In brief, Menger says, “what I am combating is this one-sidedness of the historical school. The cause I am defending is the reestablishment in the area of economics of all the justifiable approaches to human knowledge. I am not one to wear ‘the blinders of the division of scientific work’.”75

Menger: when truck drivers want to pass for architects Overestimation of historical studies in economics caused the members of the historical school to make other serious errors: “I have in mind,” Menger says, “the very widespread opinion among German economists that history should be the only empirical basis (die ausschliessliche empirische Grundlage) of both economic theory and the practical sciences of economics.”76 This idea — Menger maintains — is a glaring error. As a matter of fact, if we look at theoretical economics, those who maintain that the basis is only historical description “overlook, above all, the fact that, in addition to history, the common experience of life (such as the knowledge of motives, aims and circumstances determining success in general as well as that in individual economic activity) is a necessary basis for economic theory.”77 Therefore, not only knowledge of what has been done but also awareness of actual life experiences, knowledge of motivation, aims and the means chosen and employed for economic ends are an indispensable basis for ascertaining economic laws; just as, in addition to reports of past observations, others, especially those of Newton and those who came after him, were taken as a basis for mechanics. Moreover, “history can be considered even less the exclusive basis for the practical sciences of economics than for economic theory.”78 The historicists maintain that description of the “economic objectives pursued in the past”79 is sufficient for those who have to solve practical problems of economics. Except, Menger replies, “it is self-evident that even the most profound knowledge of peoples’ past can not render us capable of intervening appropriately in the economy; it cannot establish principles of effective

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action in keeping with the objective in the field of economics.”80 This is so because — as every administrator and politician dealing with economics matters well knows — in the economic life of a people there continually arise new tasks and problems “that cannot be solved exclusively by turning to the study of the past but can only be solved on the basis of knowledge which goes well beyond simple historic and statistical knowledge and deals with the needs of the present life of the state, the changing concepts of the job of government intervention, the state of the technical sciences. etc.”81 Anyone working in the economy must always deal with new situations and thus know the problem — the problems to solve in the specific, new situation in which the problems have arisen. The logic of continually new situations is never totally illuminated by history, even a very complete one, of past events. Therefore, Menger writes, “the historian, ‘this backward looking prophet,’ can never be the only supplier of criteria in the practical sciences of economics.”82 In his opinion, once again the errors interwoven with the presumptions of the historicists and their one-sidedness become tangible. As a matter of fact, the historicists deal with only one of the auxiliary sciences of economics but the trouble is “they mistakenly think they are practicing political economics.”83 This opinion — Menger concludes — “is comparable to that of a carter who thinks he can pass for an architect because he has transported some stones and sand for the construction.”84 Even if they want to, these carters who want to pass for architects are incapable of understanding anything the architect does. Similarly, within the circle of the historical school even those who have not scorned theory have not, however, managed to understand that “the laws of economic phenomena” are not “laws of development” or “parallelisms of the history of economics;”85 nor have they ever admitted the existence of those “principles” which, in particular situations should inspire action directed toward specific goals.86 Basically, the historicists assume that “history must speak for itself,” so instead of laws that govern economic phenomena they offer only statistical and historical material, instead of principles of practical economics, descriptions of economic behavior.87

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In substituting the collection of statistical and historical material for theory and practice of economics “our discipline undoubtedly reaches the lowest point possible for a social science.”88

Menger: against the anti-naturalistic theses of historicism Social events are always changing; they can be new, unique, complex, possibly non-quantifiable and, in any event, unrepeatable. Therefore, they cannot be studied with the methods of the natural sciences, which employ “inexorable” universal laws that are impossible to use in the social sciences. This is the fundamental postulate of the anti-naturalistic arguments of historicism. It is the reason why there is a mistrust of generalizations for understanding social life or even the idea that generalizations (or laws) are impossible in the social sciences because, among other things, it is impossible to repeat experiments at will. This leads to historical descriptions, the concern to apply them to all objects or events described, the preoccupation with of single concrete forms, and the consequently the indifference to abstract theories and “fantasies” incapable of capturing reality. In The Poverty of Historicism, Popper has shown that the antinaturalistic objections of the “historicists” have missed the point either because they do not understand the nature of the method of the natural sciences or because they do not understand the similar difficulties of the natural sciences. For example, Popper criticizes holism for its theoretical suppositions (more than for its practical presumptions), in the sense that we cannot totally know even the smallest part of the world “since all description is necessarily selective.”89 Moreover, “there does not seem any basis for the plausible historicist assertion that the variability of historical conditions renders the experimental method inapplicable to the problems of society, or for the assertion that, in this point, the study of society is fundamentally different from the study of nature.”90 Finally, the idea that historical generalizations, as opposed to those in physics, are limited to specific historical periods is mistaken: I — Popper

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says — “do not admit that the situation described is in any way peculiar to the social sciences, or that it creates any particular difficulties.”91 The historicist maintains that we must never assume that we have discovered a truly universal law since we cannot be sure whether its validity extends beyond the periods in which we have observed it to hold. This may be admitted, but only in so far as it applies to the natural sciences as well. In the natural sciences, it is clear, we can never be quite certain whether our laws are really universally valid, or whether they hold only in a certain period (perhaps only in the period during which the universe expands) or only in a certain region (perhaps in a region of comparatively weak gravitational fields).92 In opposition to the attempt to dissolve economic theory and reduce the science of economics to descriptions of scattered unique and unrepeatable facts, Menger wanted to reestablish the primacy of the theoretician in investigating and establishing economic facts and, more specifically, laws to explain and predict economic events. What interests the theoretician of economics are types (or typical phenomenal forms) of economic phenomena and typical relationships between economic phenomena. For example, “the phenomena of buying and selling, money, supply and demand, price, capital, and interest are examples of phenomenal forms typical of the economy, while the constant occurrence of certain facts like the reduction of the price of merchandize following an increase in supply, the reduction of prices due to a larger quantity of cash in circulation, a fall in the interest rate because of an considerable accumulation of capital, and so on, are typical relationships between economic phenomena.”93 The study of types and typical relationships, Menger says, is fundamental. “Without knowledge of phenomenal forms we could not understand the myriad concrete phenomena surrounding us or give them any order in our mind. This knowledge is the premise for any broader knowledge of the real world.”94 Consequently, in the first place we must know what

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the economic facts are and then — on a par with all other scientific facts — they can be organized and recognized according to typical predicates: this is true for capital, land rent, interest, price, etc. But studying phenomenal forms or the “general nature” of economic phenomena is not the only task of theoretical economics. It must also study the typical relationships, the laws that interconnect economic phenomena. Without laws there is no explanation: Theoretically we know a concrete phenomenon […] when we recognize this phenomenon as a special case of a certain law regulating the coexistence or succession of phenomena. In other words, we get to know the reasons for the existence and peculiarities of a concrete phenomenon because (above all) we manage to recognize that phenomenon only as a case of the law regulating the phenomenon itself. For example, in the concrete case theoretically we know the increase in land rent, the decrease in the interest rate, and so on, since by using our theoretical knowledge we recognize these facts as particular cases of the law of land rent or interest rates.”95 If laws are necessary for the historical explanation, they are equally necessary for prediction and control of economic facts: Without knowledge of the typical relationships, we would lack both a deeper understanding of the real world […] and also — obviously — any knowledge that goes beyond immediate observation or, in other words, any prediction and control of things. This prediction and indirectly, any voluntary modification of reality, is conditioned by the reality that we have called general.96 Consequently, it is very important to distinguish between the theoretical sciences, historical sciences and practical sciences.97 However, it must be clear that “we shall make our contribution to the construction of theoretical economics by trying to determine what phenomenal forms occur with regularity in economic events: for

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example, determining the general nature of exchange, price, land rental, supply and demand, or the typical relationships between these phenomena like the effect of variation of supply and demand on price, or the increase in population on land rentals, and so on.”98 Economic events cannot be determined, explained or predicted without concepts and theories.99 Thus it is essential not to lose sight of theory, which is the basic error of the historical school, whose members “in the justifiable attempt to overcome the anti-historicism in theoretical economics, ended up sacrificing the theoretical nature of that science and substituting historical research or historiography, for theoretical investigation in general and, in particular, for theoretical investigation maintaining the historical point of view in particular.”100 This is why the distinction between the theoretical sciences, the historical sciences and the practical sciences is not a question of degree (as Schmoller would have it) but of different jobs;101and the job of theoretical economics is fundamental because economic science cannot exist without it. As a matter of fact, “theoretical economics could never be conceived as an historical science or, as some would have it, a practical science.”102 Of course, social phenomena, like natural organisms, show both an individual evolution and a (much slower) evolution of phenomenal forms.103 Theoretical research must take this fact into consideration, but should not completely negate it or reduce it to history. Even single natural organisms and biological species have an evolution, but does this evolution negate anatomy and physiology? The theoretical economists […] can be to take as a basis for study a particularly interesting specific economic condition in terms of time and space and to limit himself to pointing out the modifications that come from the different evolutionary stages of economic events and from conditions in different places, just as a German or French anatomist or a physiologist takes as a basis for explaining the human body the most perfectly developed Indo-German and also takes into consideration the different evolutionary stages so important to anatomy

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and physiology as well as the racial differences, for example of Negroes and Malaysians. A realistic theory of economics applied in this way is not an unattainable ideal but a goal that can be reached by the usual methods of science; but it is also a theory that considers the moment in the evolution of the economy and that of the differences in the local conditions without, however, renouncing its theoretical nature. This would be a realistic theory of economics that also considers the point of view of evolution or, to use a more common though less precise expression, the historical point of view.104 As we have seen, theoretical economics does not disregard historical evolution; quite the contrary (and not considering the fact that historical explanation is impossible without theory). This also happens in the practical sciences of economics. Political economics “is the science of the principles by which the economy can be advanced”;105 without laws or theory it is impossible to have appropriate and effective practice. However, in order to be appropriate and effective it must take into consideration the particular conditions and the specific situation it is dealing with. Therefore, […] a political economist who does not keep in mind the conditions under which particular economic policy goals are reached and arbitrarily rejects certain norms, or maintains that certain institutions, customs, etc. are good under all circumstances, would be comparable to a technician who recommends certain mechanical operations without considering the material to be employed, or the physician who suggests certain remedies without paying attention to the pathological state of the patient, or a general who establishes certain strategic and tactical rules without considering anything else. Political economics can justifiably be defined as the science that teaches us the principles that can be used for applying rules for promoting development to special conditions in the economy.106

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Moreover, “as […] in the case of technology, medicine, or strategy, there is no need to explicitly mention the importance of bearing in mind the peculiarities of the circumstances or even mention them in the case of political economics.”107

The connections between economic history and economic theory: further points of agreement between Menger and Popper This is how Menger, a highly esteemed theoretician, tries to counter attempts to eliminate theory from historiography and eradicate the anti-naturalistic theses of the historicists; in other words, their objections to applying the scientific method to social and economic sciences. His battle against the anti-naturalistic claims of the historicists is based on the unity of the scientific method in the natural and social sciences108 and on the awareness of the preeminence of the theoretician, in the knowledge that without theoretical concepts there is no order in the world of infinite phenomena and without laws it is impossible to explain or predict. Certainly Menger is convinced that it is essential to pay attention to the concrete historical conditions in which the laws for prediction are applied is essential, but this is also true for economics and any other practical science like medicine, technology, or military strategy; and he is convinced that statistical-historical descriptions are an important basis for generalizations of economic theory even though — a conviction expressed later on also by Popper — he denies that history is the only basis for economic theory: “those who try to validate the historical point of view in theoretical economics by no longer basing economic theory not on experience but exclusively on history […] are also in error.”109 This is wrong because even though historical descriptions are a very valuable legitimate basis for theoretical investigation, […] common experience or the observation of individual phenomena of the human economy, which is the same, is indispensable; and, we should immediately add, it is

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.

indispensable that the observation be as extensive as possible; and it is so indispensable that while a theory of economic phenomena, rough though it may be, can be devised without studying the history of economics, no theory at all can be devised without observing individual phenomena. This error is no less serious than one committed by a physicist or chemist who wanted to derive laws of physics or chemistry from general descriptions of nature — even if they were as perfect as those of someone like Humboldt — or that could be committed by a physiologist who wanted to derive a physiology of the human body from ethnographic descriptions.110 Later, Popper was to stress this same point: […] the observational basis of sociology can be given only in the form of a chronicle of events, namely of political or social happenings. This chronicle of political and other important happenings in social life is what one customarily calls ‘history’. History in this narrow sense is the basis of sociology. It would be ridiculous to deny the importance of history in this narrow sense as an empirical basis for social science. But one of the characteristic claims of historicism which is closely associated with its denial of the applicability of the experimental method, is that history, political and social, is the only empirical source of sociology.111 Popper not only concurs with Menger on the idea that historical descriptions are not the only empirical basis of generalizations in the social and economic sciences, but The Poverty of Historicism and Die Irrtümer des Historismus also agree on many other points. For example, Popper is against essentialism: Aristotle, who taught that scientific research must penetrate to the essence of things in order to explain them, founded the school of thinkers whom I propose to call methodological

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essentialists. Methodological essentialists are inclined to formulate scientific questions in such terms as ‘what is matter?’ or ‘what is force?’ or ‘what is justice?’ and they believe that a penetrating answer to such questions, revealing the real or essential meaning of these terms and thereby the real or true nature of the essences denoted by them, is at least a necessary prerequisite of scientific research, if not its main task. Methodological nominalists, as opposed to this, would put their problems in such terms as ‘how does this piece of matter behave?’ or ‘how does it move in the presence of other bodies?’ For methodological nominalists hold that the task of science is only to describe how things behave.112 Indication of the meager comprehension certain representatives of the historical school have of the aims of theoretical research is the fact that they are looking for the essence of economic good, the essence of the economy, the essence of value, of prices, etc.113 Popper supports and defends methodological individualism against methodological collectivism: “The task of social theory is to construct and to analyse our sociological models carefully in descriptive or nominalist terms, that is to say, in terms of individuals, of their attitudes, expectations, relations, etc. — a postulate which may be called ‘methodological individualism’.”114 Furthermore, Popper says: “[…] most of the objects of social science, if not all of them, are abstract objects; they are theoretical constructions. (Even ‘the war’ or ‘the army’ are abstract concepts, strange as this may sound to some. What is concrete is the many who are killed; or the men and women in uniform, etc.).”115 Menger writes: The collectivity as such is not an enlarged subject that has needs, works, trades and competes; it is what is called a ‘social economy’ and thus is not the economic activity of a society in the exact sense of the word. ‘Social economy’ is not a phenomenon analogous to individual economies, to which financial economics also belongs; it is not an enlarged individual economy or something that is in contrast to or

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exists alongside individual economies. In its more general phenomenal form it is a completely distinctive multiplicity of individual economies […].116 In response to the objection that the complexity of social phenomena would prevent investigation of them by conjecture and confutation, Popper says that this idea is a gross mistake 1) because the situation in the social and natural sciences in not different;117 2) because “in fact, there are good reasons not only for the belief that social science is less complicated than physics, but also for the belief that concrete social situations are in general less complicated than concrete physical situations”;118 3) because “the widely held prejudice that social situations are more complex than physical ones seems to arise from two sources. One of them is that we are liable to compare what should not be compared; I mean on the one hand concrete social situations and on the other hand artificially insulated experimental physical situations […] The other source is the old belief that the description of a social situation should involve the mental and perhaps even physical states of everybody concerned (or perhaps that it should even be reducible to them). But this belief is not justified; it is much less justified even than the impossible demand that the description of a concrete chemical reaction should involve that of the atomic and sub-atomic states of all the elementary particles involved (although chemistry may indeed be reducible to physics).”119 In this respect Menger also responded to the objection of complexity maintaining that there is no difference between studies of social phenomena and natural ones.120 Menger, like Popper, distinguishes between “normative” and “descriptive”121 laws and writes that “they are two completely different concepts and things and it is mere chance that they are called by the same name (laws).122 Popper maintains that the explanation of an event requires more than one law123 and so does Menger.124 And just as Popper argued strongly against holism, so did Menger before him.

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Menger as a critic of holism Yesterday, just as today, one of the dogmas of historicism was holism, or the idea that it is impossible to understand a part or aspect of social reality without inserting it into the whole of which it is a part and in which it thrives. In reference to economics, K. Dietzel had written that economic phenomena are incomprehensible if they are not seen as “intimately connected with social and state development”125; K. Knies, just to give another example, had declared that the autonomy of the economic factor or the claim to understand it by separating it from the entire life of the people and the state was “anti-historical and unreal”126; Schmoller wondered “how to understand the main questions of economics without analyzing the relationships between the state and the economy […]”127; and he maintained that economics should examine “psychological and ethical” causes as well as “technical-natural” ones in relation to economic events.128 There is no doubt that economic events must be examined by historians in relationship to other aspects of the life of society.129 However, in no way does this mean that economic theory cannot exist or that it is legitimate to criticize economic theory for not having understood everything about life.130 Menger points out, “there is no exact theory that in itself can give us universal theoretical knowledge of the phenomenal world or a sector of it, not even of a single complicated phenomenon of the real world considered in its entirety.”131 Every exact science, such as, for example, chemistry or mechanics, reveals only a particular aspect of reality. Actually, “no exact science […] contains universal theoretical understanding of even a minimum part of the real world, but […] it teaches us only to recognize a particular aspect of its regularity. Should we, therefore, call chemistry, physics, mechanics, etc. one-sided sciences?”132 Historiography attempts to describe a continually increasing number of aspects of individual facts or events, while “exact theories give us the understanding of some aspects of all the phenomena, so a science can never be called one-sided when it performs its task completely.”133

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Exact theory is selective, but so are empirical generalizations: Phenomenal laws, even when theoretical problems are posed in the most realistic way possible, mean nothing more than that some phenomenal forms regularly follow other phenomenal forms or are consistent with them. Thus, inherent in the very concept of ‘law’ and, indeed, already in the concept of empirical law, there is — for various reasons — an obvious abstraction from the complete empirical reality. This abstraction already exists in the fact that no matter what kind of ‘law’ we have in mind there is a succession or simultaneity of phenomenal forms and not of concrete facts as in history, so a certain degree of abstraction from some characteristics of the real empirical phenomenon is inevitable.134 In other words, when we study a phenomenon we always study it from one point of view or from one perspective, using concepts and laws of one theory, so each time we see only one aspect of it. If we put a man on a scale we are only checking his weight; if we subject him to specific psychological tests we will be able to see, for example, certain features of his personality; physiology will tell us other things, and so will sociology, etc. There is not — and cannot be — one theory that provides everything about a fact or event. It would be an impossible request, like expecting to get from one perspective a drawing of an object from all points of view. It is equally absurd to expect, like Schmoller for example, to strive for a complete description of economic phenomena before formulating laws, because a complete description will never be attained. Must we wait — as Menger points out — for the description of meat prices in Elberfeld, Pforzheim, Mülheim, Hildesheim, Gemmersheim, Zwickau, etc. etc.?135 And since we should consider all aspects of a people’s life, why not also consider all aspects “of the entire universe, since excluding them is an abstraction?”136 Or is, perhaps, the opposite true, that it is impossible to construct economic events without economic concepts and categories and to explain economic facts without economic theories137?

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Menger: against the pro-naturalistic theses of historicism As Popper pointed out, despite their anti-naturalistic theories, the historicists do not completely renounce theoretical claims.138 They think that “large-scale forecasts” are possible,139 and they maintain that these predictions are possible on the basis of knowing the laws that link one period with another — that is, on the basis of the laws of development.140 In their opinion, therefore, “social science is nothing but history”141: “the kind of history with which historicists wish to identify sociology looks not only backwards to the past but also forwards to the future. It is the study of the operative forces and, above all, of the laws of social development.”142 This history would like to be theoretical history showing us the main trends “according to which social structures change.”143 The historicists are interested in the laws of historical development. But, as Popper points out, “trends are not laws. A statement asserting the existence of a trend is existential, not universal.”144 It is also important to stress that “laws and trends are radically different things.”145 Trends and initial conditions should be explained by laws. This is where the historicists err: they “overlook the dependence of trends on initial conditions. They operate with trends as if they were unconditional, like laws. Their confusion of laws with trends makes them believe in trends which are unconditional (and therefore general); or, as we may say, in ‘absolute trends’; for example, in a general historical tendency towards progress — ‘a tendency towards a better and happier state’.”146 Consequently, Popper thinks the main error of historicism is that “its ‘laws of development’ turn out to be absolute trends; trends which, like laws, do not depend on initial conditions, and which carry us irresistibly in a certain direction to the future. They are the basis of unconditional prophecies, as opposed to conditional scientific predictions.”147 Of course there are also those who try to understand the conditions under which trends persist. But, according to Popper, the point is that these conditions are so easily overlooked. There is, for example, a trend towards ‘an accumulation of means of production’ (as Marx puts it). But we should hardly expect it to persist in a population which is rapidly

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decreasing; and such a decrease may in turn depend on extra-economic conditions, for example, on chance inventions, or conceivably on the direct psychological (perhaps biochemical) impact of an industrial environment. There are, indeed, countless possible conditions; and in order to be able to examine these possibilities in our search for the true conditions under which the trend in question would disappear. But this is just what the historicist cannot do. He firmly believes in his favourite trend, and conditions under which it would disappear are to him unthinkable.”148 In Popper’s view, the poverty of historicism is a lack of imagination. And Menger holds that the concept of theoretical economics or even political economics as the science of parallelisms of economic history is the sign of a limited point of view, which can be explained by the fact that the German Historical School developed without contacts with the other scientific debates.”149 It is a very serious mistake to think of economic theory as the same as “philosophy of history.” It would be like confusing the evolution of the organic world “with theoretical investigation in the field of organic phenomena (physiology, for example) or naturalistic inquiry in general.”150 In short – Menger says — it is a very serious error to mistake the presumed laws of economic development for the laws that show how the price of goods depends on the demand and supply, or how the interest depends on the major or minor saving, etc. Such laws cannot be reasonably defined as parallel values of the theoretical development of economics. In other words, the philosophy of history in its many manifestation is not a scientific theory. As Menger writes, different inquiries have been labeled as “philosophy of history”: the study of the constant progress of humanity (Perrault, Turgot, Leroux), the idea that history is the progressive realization of the idea of freedom (Michelet), the study of progressive actualization of the idea of humanity (Herder), the claim that French society is the prototype of human society in general (Guizot), etc. However, it is clear that all these perspectives put together do not form a theoretical research. Even if we conceive the expression “philosophy of economic history” in its widest sense, we could not identify it with theoretical

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economics. The doctrine of evolutionary laws of peoples (Hildebrand), evolutionary laws derived from comparing various histories of peoples (Roscher), and similar things do not constitute at all a science of economic events; they are philosophies of history: pseudo-historiography and pseudo-knowledge.

Chapter Eight Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. von Hayek and Karl Popper: four Viennese in defense of methodological individualism

Karl R. Popper, theoretician of methodological individualism The social scientist — the sociologist, economist or historian, for example — must continually deal with what is called collective concepts (Kollktivbegriffe) such as “society,” “party,” “class,” “state,” “revolution,” “people,” “nation,” and so on. There are two main rival currents of thought on the interpretation of these concepts: methodological individualism and methodological collectivism. And the debate involves three problems: an ontological problem, a methodological problem, and a political problem. 1. The ontological problem: What do these collective concepts really correspond to? The individualists (including B. Mandeville, D. Hume, A. Ferguson, A. Smith, C. Menger, L. von Mises, and F.A. von Hayek) reply that they correspond only to individuals. Only individuals exist and only individuals reason and act. The collectivists (Saint-Simon, Comte, Hegel, Marx, the neo-Marxists, structuralists, etc.), on the contrary, think that collective concepts refer to substantial realities — autonomous bodies that are independent of individuals and, like the “church” or the “army” or the “native land,” take action to shape individuals and make them conform. 2. The methodological problem: Where do social studies — inquiries intended to explain social events and institutions — begin? Since the individualists believe that only individuals exist, they maintain that research on the origins and changes in social events and institutions necessarily must start from the actions of

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individuals (in order to explore, in detail, their unintentional consequences). The collectivists, on the other hand, due to their belief in the reality of collectives, try to discover the laws (of progress and decline, dialectics, and so on) that would govern the origins and development of such collective bodies. 3. The political problem: Is the objective a collective body like the party or the nation, or is it the individual with more freedom and responsibility? If the reality actually is a collective body like the State, it is obvious that individuals are at the service of this body and are, as the collectivists claim, agents for collective objectives. On the contrary, the individualists maintain that the end is the individual, not the State, the class, or the party; and, they claim, if an individualistic concept of society is eliminated there is no justification for democracy. In the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper draws the reader’s attention to the following prospect:1 a) Individualism is opposed to b) Egoism is opposed to

a′) Collectivism b′) Altruism

He comments: “Collectivism is not opposed to egoism nor it is identical with altruism or unselfishness. Collective or group egoism, for instance class egoism, is a very common thing […] and this shows clearly enough that collectivism as such is not opposed to selfishness. On the other hand, an anti-collectivist, i.e. an individualist, can, at the same time, be an altruist.”2 Though very brief, this counteracts the “ethical” objection of those who are hostile to individualism because it would be the same as an egotistical position. Individualism is, on the contrary, a philosophical concept in contrast to collectivism but not to altruism. Individualism maintains that only individuals exist, and they may be either egoists or altruists. What does not exist is society if it is intended as an independent body that exists prior to and is unrestricted by individuals. In 1990, in a conversation with Guido Ferrari, Karl Popper explained more fully:

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Moreover, I’d like to add, if I may, that it is extremely misleading to talk about society. Naturally one can use a concept like society or the social order, but we shouldn’t forget that they are only auxiliary concepts. What really exists are people, good ones and bad ones — let’s hope there aren’t too many of the latter, in any case human beings, some of whom are dogmatic, critical, lazy, diligent or something else. This is what really exists.3 There are men who have ideas and act on them, and their actions have intentional and unintentional consequences. Men exist, “what doesn’t exist is society. However, people believe it exists and so blame everything on society or the social order.”4 So, says Popper, “one of the worst mistakes is to think that something abstract is concrete. This is the worst kind of ideology.”5 The error the collectivists have always made is to replace a theoretical abstract construction with concrete things. Therefore, for Popper, society does not exist. Not even the police exists: “[…] the laws regarding the police can be changed but the police as such can not. The police as such does not exist. Laws can change because they are written down in codes and therefore exist.”6 There are police officers but not the police. The army does not exist either. In The Poverty of Historicism, he says: Most of the objects of social science, if not all of them, are abstract objects; they are theoretical constructions. (Even ‘the war’ or ‘the army’ are abstract concepts, strange as this may sound to some. What is concrete is the many who are killed, or the men and women in uniform, etc.) These objects, these theoretical constructions used to interpret our experience, are the result of constructing certain models (especially of institutions), in order to explain certain experiences […]. Very often we are unaware of the fact that we are operating with hypotheses or theories, and we therefore mistake our theoretical models for concrete things. This is a kind of mistake which is only too common.7

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Actually, Popper adds, “the task of social theory is to construct and to analyse our sociological models carefully in descriptive or nominalist terms, that is to say, in terms of individuals, of their attitudes, expectations, relations, etc. — a postulate which may be called ‘methodological individualism’.”8 There is nothing corresponding in facts to the word society that is different from individuals with certain specific ideas who act according to these ideas. There are really only men — “good ones and bad ones”; what really exists are human beings;9 only they can think and act. From this it follows that “institutions (and traditions) must be analysed in individualistic terms — that is to say, in terms of the relations of individuals acting in certain situations, and of the unintended consequences of their actions.”10 Individuals exist, and it is they who act: “institutions don’t act, only individuals act in or for the institutions,”11 so that what is needed is “to construct a theory of the intentional and unintentional institutional consequences of purposeful actions. This might lead to a theory of the origin and development of institutions.”12 In Popper’s opinion, once these premises have been established, social events can be explained and understood by situational analysis, a research strategy in which a human action — interrelating with other actions of other individuals — is considered an attempt to solve some problem.

Three methodological individualists: Carl Menger, Georg Simmel and Max Weber “If in the end I have become a sociologist […], it is because I wanted to rule out those exercises based on collective concepts. Sociology itself cannot proceed from anything but actions of single individuals. For this reason, sociology must adopt strictly “individualist” methods.”13 Max Weber wrote this in 1920. His individualistic concept is clear; so is his rejection of the claims of “so-called ‘organic’ sociology,” which attempts “to explain social action by starting from the ‘totality’” — for example, from the totality of

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the “economy of peoples” — and then, within it, to interpret the individual and his behavior, similar to how physiology considers the position of a bodily “organ” in the functioning of the organism from the point of view of ‘preserving’ it.”14 Obviously, Weber points out, consideration of the functional aspects of the “parts” of a “totality” may play a useful role “in practical explanation and temporary orientation;”15 but “it also may happen that its cognitive value is overestimated because very detrimental false conceptual realism has been accepted.”16 All this reasserts that collective concepts should be interpreted individualistically, that is, the social sciences must proceed in an individualistic way, from the actions of “a single individuals, of a few individuals, or of many individuals.” Therefore, “even a socialist economy should be included in sociology in virtue of a procedure interpreted ‘individualistically’ — that is, based in the actions of individuals.”17 So much for Max Weber. In 1897 Georg Simmel was already critical of the pernicious illusion whose view of the evolution of the law and other social institutions would lead to thinking of society as an “impersonal being,” independent of individuals.18 According to Simmel, society cannot be considered something “conceived for itself.” “It is certain,” Simmel writes, “that only individuals exist, that human products have a reality apart from men only if they are of natural materials, and that since the creations we are referring to are spiritual, they live only in personal brains […].”19 In Vienna, Carl Menger, the Austrian father of the marginalist theory, had become an advocate of methodological individualism even before Weber and Simmel. Resources are scarce and individuals seek the greatest satisfaction of their needs and desires. Menger believes it is precisely these actions and these individuals that economic theory should take into consideration and adopt as a point of departure. There is nothing else economic theory can do, and since — Menger says — “the collectivity as such is not like a great subject, who has his needs, who works, competes; what we call ‘social economy’ is not the economic activity of a society, strictly speaking: it is not analogous to individual economies and does not exist

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as opposite to individual economies. In its phenomenic form it is a particular multiplicity of particular economies.”20 Therefore, there are no specific realities independent of individuals that correspond to collective concepts used in economic theory — and even more widely in the social sciences. Menger is convinced that the facts of social economics are not the immediate manifestations of the life of a people as such, immediate direct products of its economic activity, but rather the result of the countless efforts of collectivity. Therefore, anyone who wants to arrive at a theoretical understanding of the more complex human phenomena — for example, the phenomena that we call “social economics” — must appeal to the real elements of the individual economies of the collectivity and attempt to understand how social economy derives from individual economies.21 Anyone who insists on following the opposite route, does not understand — Menger claims – the nature of social economy and proceeds through a fictitious method. And, as we shall see later on, Menger shows how the individualistic method works to explain the origins of social rules and institutions, which, in his opinion, can arise in two ways: either in a pragmatic way (as the result of the will of individuals directed toward an objective) or as unintentional results of individual actions that had other objectives (this is an invisible hand mechanism which manages to account for the origins of changes in many social events, even very important ones).22

Ludwig von Mises: “It is only the individual who thinks. It is only the individual who reasons. It is only the individual who acts” Ludwig von Mises was one of those who followed and developed Menger’s teachings, and, in turn, exerted a strong influence on Friedrich von Hayek. Popper knew of Mises in Vienna in 1935, and several months later in London met Hayek.23 Perhaps no one managed to express the fundamental principle of methodological individualism better than Mises: It is only the individual who thinks. It is only the individual who reasons. It is only the individual who acts.”24 Consequently, the course of history is determined by

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individual actions and by the effects of these actions.25 But from the prospect of research methodology, all this means that in science we must always move from individual actions. The idea of a society which works independently from the individual actions is absurd. The fact that one is a member of a capitalistic society, or is a citizen, or is a member of a particular association cannot be shown but through his individual actions.26 This is how methodological individualism applies social studies to observable experience. Experience does not show us things like the “society” or the “nation.” Experience always introduces us to individuals, it makes us listen to their words, read what they write and see their actions. It is merely an illusion to think it is possible to visualize collective unities. The knowledge of such unities is the result of the understanding of the individual actions and the significance that the individuals give to their actions.27 One must continually fight against the temptation to hypostatize and the tendency to attribute substance and real existence to our mental constructs.28 The most striking case of this fallacy is the use of the term society in pseudoscientific schools. Society is not itself a substance, a power, an agent. Society does not exist independently from the thoughts and actions of individuals. As all the other collective unities, it has no proper interests or aims. The tendency to hypostatize collective concepts is the most dangerous enemy for scientific knowledge and helps those political projects that ascribe more dignity to collectivities rather than to individuals, or that conceive individuals as mere abstractions. Instead, everything we can know about society can be achieved only studying the actions of the individuals. Methodological collectivism is a mythological conception based on the idea that human actions are led by mysterious forces.29

Friedrich A. von Hayek: “It is a serious error to treat as facts what are at best vague popular theories” Friedrich von Hayek, like von Mises, believed that the typical element of methodological collectivism is that “it treats social

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phenomena not as something of which the human mind is a part and the principles of whose organization we can reconstruct from the familiar parts, but as if they were objects directly perceived by us as wholes.”30 This deep-rooted philosophical position springs from the fact that “the existence, in popular usage of terms like society or economy is naively taken as evidence that there must be definite ‘objects’ corresponding to them. The fact that people all talk about the nation or capitalism leads to the belief that the first step in the study of these phenomena must be to go and see what they are like, just as we should if we heard about a particular stone or a particular animal.”31 That is why, Hayek rightly affirms, “the error involved in this collectivist approach is that it mistakes for facts what are no more than provisional theories, models constructed by the popular mind to explain the connection between some of the individual phenomena which we observe.”32 It is a serious mistake “that of treating as facts what are no more than vague popular theories.”33 Unfortunately, this mistake — naive realism — “is so deeply embedded in current thought about social phenomena that it requires a deliberate effort of will to free ourselves from it.”34 This is why, it is necessary, once the error of naive realism has been exposed, to resolutely and clearly confirm that “the social sciences do not deal with “given” wholes but their task is to constitute these wholes by constructing models from the familiar elements.”35 “The mistake of treating as definite objects wholes that are no more than constructions, and that can have no properties except those which follow from the way in which we have constructed them from the elements, has probably appeared most frequently in the form of the various theories about a “social” or “collective” mind and has in this connection raised all sorts of pseudo-problems.”36 And, at the same time, the most ruthless social atrocities. An escape from this trap of naive realism — which reifies collective concepts and makes them become things — is to distinguish between motivating or constitutive opinions on the one hand and speculative or explicative concepts on the other.

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Is it the ideas which the popular mind has formed about such collectives as society or the economic system, capitalism or imperialism, and other such collective entities, which the social scientist must regard as no more than provisional theories, popular abstractions, and which he must not mistake for facts? That he consistently refrains from treating these pseudo-entities as facts, and that he systematically starts from the concepts which guide individuals in their actions and not from the results of their theorizing about their actions, is the characteristic feature of that methodological individualism which is closely connected with the subjectivism of the social sciences.37 But these concepts that lead men to action are precisely constitutive ideas: for example, we recognize that the cause of changing opinions toward certain goods is in price changes of those goods; or beliefs or opinions that “lead a number of people regularly to repeat certain acts, for example, to produce, sell, or buy certain quantities of commodities, are entirely different from the ideas they may have formed about the whole of the “society”, or the “economic system”, to which they belong and which the aggregate of all their actions constitutes.”38 Like the natural sciences, social studies requires contact with experience. Motivating or constitutive ideas are, for Hayek, the empirical base of social studies. “It is the so-called wholes, the groups of elements which are structurally connected, which we learn to single out from the totality of observed phenomena only as a result to our systematic fitting together of the elements with familiar properties, and which we build up or reconstruct from the known properties of the elements.”39 It should be emphasized that, “in all this the various types of individual beliefs or attitudes are not themselves the object of our explanation, but merely the elements from which we build up the structure of possible relationships between individuals.”40 All this is the same as saying that individual beliefs and behavior are the “data” of the social sciences,41 so it is not the job of the social sciences to explain conscious action:42

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“this, if it can be done at all, is a different task, the task of psychology.”43 Therefore, Hayek says, the method of the social sciences becomes a “compositive” or synthetic method.44 What are given to the social scientist are “elements from which those more complex phenomena are composed that he cannot observe as a whole.”45 To put it briefly, “for the social sciences the types of conscious action are data and all they have to do with regard to these data is to arrange them in such orderly fashion that they can be effectively used for their task.”46 And for Hayek this task — which is the task of the social sciences — “is done, as we shall soon see, by analyzing the unintentional consequences of intentional human actions.”47

Karl R. Popper: the spontaneous growth of social institutions invalidates both psychologism and the conspiracy theory of society Only individuals reason and take action. This is the cardinal principle of methodological individualism. It is precisely from the actions of individuals, says Popper, that the social scientist must start in order to explain the origins of and changes in institutions and social events. The crucial point here is the awareness that intentional human actions constantly have unintentional consequences. In section 21 of The Poverty of Historicism, Popper says, “the piecemeal technologist or engineer recognizes that only a minority of social institutions are consciously designed while the vast majority have just ‘grown’, as the undesigned results of human actions.”48 This theory, which was only mentioned in The Poverty of Historicism, later became increasingly important in Popper’s thoughts on society and its functioning, especially on the role of the theoretical social sciences. Thus, in the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper — concerned with discovering the fate or real role of institutions in the development of history, in the sense that they are seen as willed by God or destined by Fate or as obedient to important historical trends, etc. — counterpoises to the historicist the gradualist social technologist, who will not forget that the institutions grow similarly to natural organisms. In

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Chapter XIV of the second volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper elaborates on this subject and launches an extensive attack against psychologism, arguing in favor of the autonomy of sociology. Certainly, Popper says, “it must be admitted that the structure of our social environment is man-made in a certain sense; that its institutions and traditions are neither the work of God nor of nature, but the results of human actions and decisions.”49 Nevertheless, “this does not mean that they are all consciously designed, and explicable in terms of needs, hopes, or motives. On the contrary, even those which arise as the result of conscious and intentional human actions are, as a rule, the indirect, the unintended and often the unwanted by-products of such actions.”50 Therefore, only a small number of social institutions are or have been intentionally planned; the majority of them simply grew, or sprung up, as the unintentional result of intentional actions.51 And this is not all, because, Popper states: […] we can add that even most of the few institutions which were consciously and successfully designed (say, a newly founded University , or a Trade Union) do not turn out according to a plan – again because of the unintended social repercussions resulting from their intentional creation. For their creation affects not only many other social institutions but also ‘human nature’ – hopes, fears, and ambitions, first of those more immediately involved, and later often of all members of the society.52 If all this is true — if it is true that most social institutions are not planned and if it is true that even institutions that are planned do not realize the plan as it was conceived — there are two inevitable consequences, according to Popper: the first is that psychologism fails and the second is that the conspiracy theory of society is untenable. According to the doctrine of psychologism, the study of society should be limited to psychology, in the sense that the origins of and changes in all social events and institutions would be explained

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by the intentional actions and projects of individuals.53 But this interpretation of psychologism does not hold up because “it fails to understand the main task of the explanatory social sciences,”54 which is to explain the unintentional, perhaps even unexpected and undesired, consequences of intentional human actions.55 There are innumerable vitally important social institutions and effects of institutions that are not in the least due to intentions, hopes, fears, and conscious projects; and psychologism does not know what to make of them.56 However, the conspiracy theory of society does not hold up either. It maintains that a social phenomenon is explained only if it manages to discover the men or social groups that have planned or conspired to promote it.57 In other words, according to the conspiracy theory, every social event, particular those like war, unemployment, poverty and famine (events that people generally abhor) is always the result of successful direct intervention of powerful individuals or groups, of real conspirators. In Popper’s opinion, this theory is “a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups — sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from — such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.”58 Of course there are also conspiracies, but this does not mean that all social events and institutions are the result of conspiracies. Even if we admit there are conspiracies, we must also acknowledge that “few of these conspiracies are ultimately successful. Conspirators rarely consummate their conspiracy.”59 That the results achieved differ greatly from those sought is so “because this is usually the case in social life, conspiracy or no conspiracy. Social life is not only a trial of strength between opposing groups: it is action within a more or less resilient or brittle framework of institutions and traditions, and it creates — apart from any conscious counter-actions — many unforeseen reactions in this framework, some of them perhaps even unforeseeable.”60 Consequently, it is obvious that “to try to analyse these reactions and to

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foresee them as far as possible is, I believe, the main task of the social sciences. It is the task of analyzing the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions — those repercussions whose significance is neglected both by the conspiracy theory and by psychologism.”61

Karl R. Popper and the task of the social sciences In the 1948 essay Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, Popper, referring primarily to Marxism, criticizes “the doctrine that it is the task of the social sciences to propound historical prophecies, and that historical prophecies are needed if we wish to conduct politics in a rational way.”62 This doctrine, which Popper calls historicism — and of which Marxism is a case — is, in Popper’s view, untenable. One of the reasons for this is that the historicist — and therefore also the Marxist — is incapable of distinguishing between a scientific prediction and unconditional historical prophecy.63 The predictions of science are conditional. “They assert that certain changes (say, of the temperature of water in a kettle) will be accompanied by other changes (say, the boiling of the water).”64 However, the historicist cannot make these conditional predictions because society is not a well-isolated, stationary and recurrent system like the solar system. “These systems are very rare in nature; and modern society is surely not one of them.”65 The solar system and cyclic biological systems, where conditional predictions can be made, are exceptional cases. But “society is changing, developing. This development, in the main, is not repetitive,”66 so it is impossible to make predictions, especially long-range ones. Actually, “the most striking aspects of historical development are non-repetitive. Conditions are changing and situations arise (for example, in consequence of new scientific discoveries) which are very different from anything that ever happened before. The fact that we can predict eclipses does not, therefore, provide a valid reason for expecting that we can predict revolutions.”67 Political prophecy is not a scientific prediction.

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Furthermore, it is not the task of the social sciences to study “the behaviour of social wholes, such as groups, nations, classes, societies, civilizations, etc.”68 Many sociologists consider these social wholes as empirical objects to study in the same way a biologist studies animals and plants. This view, Popper warns, “must be rejected as naive. It completely overlooks the fact that these socalled social wholes are very largely postulates of popular social theories rather than empirical objects.”69 Popper adds, as we have already seen, that another widespread erroneous view is that social events are the results of conspiracies and that the social scientist’s task should be to discover and explain them. This theory doesn’t work because “not all consequences of our actions are intended consequences.” This means that “the conspiracy theory of society cannot be true because it amounts to the assertion that all events, even those which at first sight do not seem to be intended by anybody, are the intended results of the actions of people who are interested in these results.”70 And it is remarkable that many Marxists have completely accepted the conspiracy theory, which “objectively” sees the fatal capitalist conspirator behind every event, especially if it is negative. This is remarkable because “Marx himself was one of the first to emphasize the importance, for the social sciences, of these unintended consequences. In his more mature utterances, he says that we are all caught in the net of the social system. The capitalist is not a demoniac conspirator, but a man who is forced by circumstances to act as he does; he is no more responsible for the state of affairs than is the proletarian.”71 However, “perhaps for propagandist reasons, perhaps because people did not understand it”72 this view of Marx’s has been abandoned and an infinite number of people have taken up “a Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy theory.” It is, Popper points out, “a come-down — the come-down from Marx to Goebbels. But it is clear that the adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to create heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.”73

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What then is the task of the theoretical social sciences if it is not to make historical predictions, if the theory of sociological collectivism is not valid, and if the conspiracy theory does not work? Popper answers this question in familiar language: “the main task of the theoretical social sciences […] is to trace the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions.”74 It is important to note that understanding the unintentional, and possibly undesirable, repercussions of social actions brings the social sciences close to the natural ones. Natural laws can be defined as warnings of a technical nature since they can be formulated as practical technological rules stating what we cannot do.75 The same is true for the social sciences. Examples of these rules in the social sciences are: “You cannot, without increasing productivity, raise the real income of the working population” and “You cannot equalize real incomes and, at the same time, raise productivity.”76 This shows that, although the historicist doctrine is untenable, science and reason can benefit us in practical life by “helping us choose our actions more wisely.”77 In works later than those examined here, Popper substantiates his criticism of the conspiracy theory and the proposition that the basic task of the social sciences is to recognize the unintentional, especially the unwanted, repercussions of certain actions. For example, in the essay Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition, once again he stresses that “we wish to foresee not only the direct consequences but also these unwanted indirect consequences” of human actions;78 “either because of our scientific curiosity, or because we want to be prepared for them; we may wish, if possible, to meet them and prevent them from becoming too important. (This means, again, action, and with it the creation of further unwanted consequences.)”79 Later on, Popper developed the theory of “World 3.” This seems to be no more than a generalization for the entire world of culture — especially for the logical province of World 3, which is made up of problems, theories and scientific argumentation — of results such as the autonomy of sociology and the unwanted consequences of intentional actions. According to Popper, there is a

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World 3 of books in themselves, theories in themselves, problems in themselves, arguments in themselves. A great part of the objective World 3 of theories, books, and arguments is an unintentional product: they are a sub-product of human language. Language itself — Popper argues — is an unintentional sub-product of actions that were aimed at other goals.80

Carl, Menger: “Not all social events are the consequence of explicit contracts or legislation” While Popper maintained that analysis of the unintentional consequences of intentional human actions is the principle task of the social sciences, Hayek believed that the task of the social scientist is completely fulfilled in that analysis. The problems that the social sciences “try to answer,” Hayek says, “arise only insofar as the conscious action of many men produce undersigned results, insofar as regularities are observed which are not the result of anybody’s design.”81 In other words, the task of the social sciences is to explain the unintentional effects of intentional actions. This explains the reason for the autonomy of sociology. In fact, […] if social phenomena showed no order except insofar as they were consciously designed, there would indeed be no room for theoretical sciences of society and there would be, as is often argued, only problems of psychology. It is only insofar as some sort of order arises as a result of individual action but without being designed by any individual that a problem is raised which demands a theoretical explanation.82 Well before Hayek and Popper, in Vienna Carl Menger had stated very clearly that the solution of the most important theoretical social sciences and theoretical economics in particular is strictly connected with the comprehension of social institutions, grown not intentionally but spontaneously.

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Of course, no one can deny that there are social institutions and events that arise from conscious explicit agreements, pacts, or conventions between people. There are social and economic events and institutions that come into being because certain groups of humans want to achieve specific objectives: for example, insurance companies, urban development plans, press agencies, price controls, etc. The fact that there are some social institutions and events resulting from intentional agreements among people has given credence to the belief in a general theory that all social and economic events can be explained as consequences of deliberate collective activity. Menger calls this interpretation, “the pragmatic theory of the origin of social phenomena; it is the explanation of the nature and the origin of phenomena based on the aims, opinions and means of human associations and their representatives.”83 So there do exist social phenomena that originate in agreements among people and we give a pragmatist interpretation to them: we analyse the aims that have guided the people who have created certain institutions or we analyse the means that were available to them. These phenomena — Menger adds — are subjected to pragmatistic- historical examination in so far as in each concrete case we evaluate the real ends of the associations or their representatives in the light of the needs of the associations, while we judge the use of auxiliary means of social activity in the light of the fulfillment of the social needs. Therefore, all this applies to those social phenomena of a pragmatistic origin. But a pragmatistic interpretation of social phenomena cannot explain “a long series” of social phenomena as language, religion, law, State, market and currency. Such institutions are not the result of any agreement or legislation, and this presents a strange, interesting problem, “a curious problem” — perhaps the most curious of all the problems in the social sciences.84 The problem is: “How is it possible that institutions which are so important for collective well-being grow without a collective will or stipulation?” To dispel any doubt about the significance of what he wanted to demonstrate, Menger cites one of the many possible examples, the

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example of social prices of goods. Normally, prices develop without any regulative influence of the State or collective agreement, as a spontaneous result of social evolution.85 It is clear, therefore, that there is a whole series of very important social phenomena that arise spontaneously or non-intentionally. These phenomena belie the universalizing claims of pragmatist theory in the sense that not all social phenomena arise from explicit agreements or positive legislation. If this is the case, it is obvious, Menger believes, that the solution of the most important problems of theoretical social sciences and, in particular, theoretical economics, is narrowly linked to the comprehension of the growth of the institutions which developed in an “organic” way, i.e. in an unintentional and spontaneous way. Carl Menger: examples of institutions arising “organically” Actually, the idea of explaining the nature and development of social institutions as the result of an agreement between individuals or legislation was, says Menger, the first hypothesis for the understanding of social institution. This theory or pragmatist explanation was not realistic, but had the advantage of reducing the comprehension of every institution to the same principle of interpretation. However, hypotheses are not true merely because (certainly to be desired) they are simple and standardized. This is also applies to pragmatistic theory on the origin of social phenomena. For example, even though history shows us that new localities have been formed because a certain number of people of different abilities and professions joined together with the purpose of founding a city, usually new cities arise without a precise general intention. A common intentional will develops only at advanced stages of the collective life: it does not cause the birth of a social institution, but only its perfecting. What was said for new localities also applies to the state. If the theory attributing the origin of the state exclusively to an organic formation is unilateral, it is much more mistaken the idea that States were born through an agreement of powerful people.

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Actually, Menger points out, that institution that we call State is in, its original form, the undesigned result of actions led by individual interests. In the same way, in Menger’s view, it can be demonstrated that other social institutions as language, law, economic institutions were born without an explicit agreement, without legislation, without concern for collective interest, but only by the impulse of individual interests. Other examples are the separation of professions, the division of work, commercial customs, etc. Certainly in the course of social evolution public powers have intervened to create new institutions and change or develop those which arose unintentionally, but at the beginning of society, the creation of institutions was unplanned. Consequently, an explicit willful act for a specific purpose by institutions whose origin was not contemplated — says Menger — means that those institutions are the result of a combined action of both unintended and teleological forces, i.e. of both organic and positive factors.86 Carl Menger: the origin of money Chapter IX of Menger’s Principles of Economics is dedicated to the Theory of Money and a good part of the chapter deals with the origin of money. Actually — says Menger — the fact that one gives to another person a part of his properties and receives back something else is clearly comprehensible. But the fact that in modern societies, thousands of people exchange useful properties with pieces of paper is certainly enormously curious. Menger’s inquiry concerns the nature of those pieces of paper or metal which represent a huge power on markets and the lives of people. Are they desired intentional creations attributable to conventions or legislative acts of men for explicit objectives, or is this also a case of an institution which “grew up” unintentionally as a result of other intentional actions? This is a problem that science must solve.87 The idea that goods become money as a result of an explicit convention or legislative act is not a “basically false” opinion since

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history offers examples of certain good which have been declared to be money by legislation. However, Menger points out that the legislative act did not give to a particular good the status of money, but only the official acknowledgement, while the good was already used as money. In any case, the “pragmatist explanation” of the origin of the social institution of money does not work in all those important cases where money is not clearly the result of legislative acts but was born spontaneously (or organically). In other words, science must explain how, with the development of economic civilization certain goods are raised to the status of money without explicit agreement or legislative act. Menger explains the phenomenon using the following line of reasoning. As long as a simple commerce of exchange (barter) is dominant among a population, every individual tries to exchange excess goods for those needed immediately and refuses those goods not needed or which are in abundant supply. Now, however, in order for a person who brings surplus goods to the market to be able to exchange these superfluous goods with those he wants, he must not only find someone who asks for his goods, but also who can offer him the goods he pursues. But this is precisely what makes a pure barter regime difficult and limited. How can such a drawback to exchange be overcome? What effective remedy could be applied? Everyone could observe that some goods were requested more than others. So, in a nomadic people everyone knows that cattle could be exchanged more easily than other goods, and this made easier to find in return the desired goods, among the many individuals who wanted to acquire cattle. Those who had to offer goods which were less in demand, tended to acquire goods that perhaps they did not really need, but that were more exchangeable. In this way, they did not reach their immediate goal (the good that they needed), but gradually approached to get them. This happened without any agreement or legislative force or concern for collective interest. People tended to prefer goods more comfortable and useful for exchange. The goods which were more safe, lasting and more easily transferable began to be accepted by everyone and were called “money”.

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In conclusion, money did not originate by a legislative act: it was rather the unintended product of the individual actions of a collectivity. This explanation is a typical example of how, with time, it is possible to classify as controllable phenomena which at other times were attributed to religious powers or metaphysical entities.88







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Chapter Nine Hans Kelsen and Karl Popper: Two Viennese Critics of Plato’s Totalitarianism

Hans Kelsen and Karl Popper: critics of Plato, the theorist of the “closed society” Hans Kelsen and Karl Popper were two of Plato’s enemies in Vienna because they were defenders of the open society. First, let’s look briefly at how both Kelsen and Popper defend the open society. Hans Kelsen: “The cause of democracy is lost, if we assume knowledge of absolute truth and achievement of absolute values to be possible.”1 This is easy to understand because “towards the supreme authority of absolute good, the only behavior for those who receive safety from this absolute good is the unconditioned obedience; such an obedience necessarily relies on the belief that the legislative authority knows the absolute good, while common people cannot achieve it.”2 Briefly stated, Kelsen believes that the problem of democracy is one that presupposes a decision about whether or not “knowledge of absolute truth and understanding of the absolute values” are possible.3 Kelsen, a fallibilist in the theory of knowledge and a relativist in the theory of value, points out that “anyone who thinks that absolute truth and absolute values are not accessible for humans necessarily accepts different opinions. Democratic ideas presupposes relativism.”4 This is the basis on which democracy “grants that every political view can be expressed and propagandized through a free competition.”5 It is always on this basis, Kelsen explains, that “majority rule in democracy does not only presuppose an opposition — the minority — but also politically recognizes the opposition and protects it with fundamental rights and fundamental freedom.”6 While autocratic ideology

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assumes possession of absolute truth and absolute, exclusive values are expressed in the divinization of the leader, in the system of democratic ideology the creation of leadership is made rationally. In a democracy, the power of the chief does not have the sacred seal of an absolute value. The chief appears as “chief”’ — Kelsen adds — only for a certain time and according to certain points of view; he is, in everything else, the same as others and is subject to criticism. In an autocracy, the leader seems to have a completely different nature from that of the subjects and, consequently, he counts as a superior being, of divine nature, gifted with magic powers. In an autocracy the leader is imposed; in a democracy the leaders are elected and can be removed. In other words, Kelsen holds that the responsibility of the leaders is a typical feature of real democracy. In a democracy, leaders who don’t pass the test are removed. The principle that those governed are free to criticize and the principle of “passing the test” are the heart of democracy. Democracy without controls is impossible because it destroys itself. Gnoseological fallibilism and ethical relativism are the pillars of Kelsen’s idea of democracy, and they would also be Popper’s. From this point of view it easy to understand Kelsen’s and Popper’s harsh criticism of Plato. Kelsen mentions an “excellent article” by Adolf Merkl7 to stress that while the sophists associated the defense of democracy with their empiricism and ethical relativism, Plato favored an autocratic policy based on the gnosiological presumption of possessing the absolute truth and absolute value.8 This gnoseological contrast between absolutism in the cognitive and ethical field on the one hand and cognitive fallibilism and ethical relativism on the other is where the choice is made between a closed society and an open society, between totalitarianism and democracy, between the rule of law and autocracy. Kelsen illustrates this contrast by citing one of the most dramatic and magnificent passages of the Gospel: In chapter XVIII of the Gospel according to St. John, the following event of Jesus’ life is described. The text is simple and lapidary, and belongs to the most splendid part of the

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whole literature: it can also be considered as a tragic symbol of democracy. In the Easter period, Jesus is accused of proclaiming himself to be the son of God and the king of Judaeans and is taken in front of Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate, to whom Jesus cannot seem other than mad, ask ironically Jesus, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus, filled with his divine mission, answered, ‘You are right in saying that I am the king. In fact, for this reason, I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’ So Pilate, member of a decadent and skeptic society, asks: ‘What is truth?’ Since Pilate, as a Roman, is used to decide with a democratic method, he appeals to the people with a plebiscite: ‘I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?” They shouted back: ‘No, not him. Give us Barabbas.’ The evangelist adds that Barabbas was a bandit.9 Kelsen comments on this passage from the Gospels as follows: “Some believers may object that this anecdote is an argument against democracy, and this objection has indeed some value, under the condition that these believers are as certain of their political truth as the son of God is.”10 Karl Popper. “The expression ‘open society’ does not mean a type of state or a form as government, but rather a kind of society in which individual freedom, non-violence, protection of minorities, defense of weak people are important values.”11 One of the characteristics of an open society is — for Popper — to sustain, other than democracy, the freedom of association and to protect and encourage the formation of free sub-societies. Furthermore, “the magical or tribal or collectivist society will also be called the closed society, and the society in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions, the open society.”12 “An open society (that is, a society based on the idea of not merely tolerating dissenting

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opinions but respecting them) and a democracy (that is, a form of government devoted to the protection of an open society) cannot flourish if science becomes the exclusive possession of a close set of specialists.”13 In a comparison “the closed society is characterized by the belief in magical taboos, while 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 (after discussion).”14 In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper also says: “Democracy cannot be fully characterized as the rule of the majority, although the institution of general elections is most important. For a majority might rule in a tyrannical way. […] In a democracy, the rulers — that is to say, the government — can be dismissed by the ruled without bloodshed.”15 Therefore, the line of demarcation between a democracy and a dictatorship — that is, between an open society and a closed society — is based on the following criterion: in democracy we have the means to change a government without violence, without killing its members.16 Clichés like “democracy means government by the majority” or “democracy means government by the people” are misleading. A majority like the one mentioned above could govern tyrannically; and the people, all the people, the “frenzy” of the people, could choose tyranny. Therefore, there is democracy when there are specific institutions that give to the governed people the possibility to criticize and replace the governors without violence.17 In Popper’s opinion, all of this means that the idea of democracy as government of the people must be replaced by the idea of democracy as judgment of the people.18 But it also means that there is an ineradicable connection between the fallibility of human knowledge and the open society: as soon as we become aware of the fallibility of our knowledge we open up to discussion and recognition of our errors and those of others; we are ready to expect alternatives and criticism, in other words, democracy. This awareness of the fallibility of human knowledge and the impossibility of rationally demonstrating fundamental values definitively19 is the reason for the breakdown of utopian ideas. There are no rational criteria for deciding what

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the perfect society is; the perfect society is the negation off the open society.20 If what has been said holds up, then it is easy to see the inconsistency of the question “who should rule?” With this question, Popper says, Plato “created a lasting confusion in political philosophy.”21 Not “who should rule?” but “how can we control the ones who rule?” is the rational question asked by people who are aware of their own and other’s fallibility and are willing to formulate and maintain rules that allow men of different, perhaps even contrasting, ideas and ideals to live together. Popper replaces the old, rationally plausible (but only in appearance) question “who should rule?” with the question “How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?.”22

Hans Kelsen: Plato, theorist of the supremacy of political will over theoretical knowledge In his essay Die platonische Liebe, Hans Kelsen wrote: “Eros, which played such a large part in Plato’s life and work, is not that feeling that we tend to think of when we speak about love. It is not the physical and psychological attraction which forces two individuals of opposite sex to get together and which is one of the basic laws of our life. Eros is rather an exception to this law.”23 Kelsen explains that democratic equality is hated by homosexual Eros, who sustains radical inequality.24 This is why Kelsen rejects the old argument where Plato is presented as a theoretical thinker completely intent on founding an exact science: Plato was more political than theoretical.25 If not elsewhere, the political nature of his philosophy appears without a shadow of a doubt when he says that the philosopher, and only the philosopher, must govern. Kelsen says that such a principle counts as a legitimation of the political power in general. Those who want to rule shall hold that the supreme object of philosophy is the absolute good, which also includes justice. They have to add that the knowledge of the supreme good is accessible to few people, so that power should not be given

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to the multitude. And they will also add that the activity of governments consists in teaching the virtue to the governed people. So, the relationship of power is reduced to a relationship of teaching, and politeia is legitimated a paideia. Therefore, submission to power is not only submission of the will, but also of knowledge.26 In Letter VII Plato says about his decision to take part in public life: “I postponed action till a suitable opportunity should arise. Finally, it became clear to me, with regard to all existing cities, that they were all misgoverned. And I was forced to say, when praising true philosophy, that it is by this that men are enabled to see what justice in public and in private life really is.”27 Kelsen notices that the proper moment never came, but still Plato held the primacy of the political will on the theoretical knowledge In Plato’s state those who govern are the philosophers — philosophers trained in Platonic philosophy.” For Plato, therefore, the principal task of the state was training of philosophers in his philosophy. The rulers, who have had real philosophical training, are given almost unlimited power. This means that once the best man — that is, the Platonic philosopher — has been empowered, he must rule the state according to his own will, that is through individual decisions taken case by case. In commenting passages of the Laws (I, 13, 644; and VII, 10, 804), Kelsen says, the philosopher-king is the one who is close to God and full of divine knowledge; “he is the only one to know justice” and therefore “he can and must guide his subjects and expect an absolute obedience.” Kelsen notices that this exaggerated will of domination, deriving form the idea of the infallibility of the State, can be found in particular in Plato’s Laws. What is repugnant, Kelsen adds, is not only the cruelty of the proposed punishment but even more the dread of plurality of opinions, in particular, the religious ones.28

Hans Kelsen: Plato bends the “truth” in the interest of the State From the time of his youth Plato had an overwhelming passion for politics, which expressed in eros expresses an insuppressible will

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of power over other men and which professes the submission of truth to justice, seen as the utility of the State. In the ideal State “the interest of the State […] coincides with justice.”29 Kelsen also says that “the maxim that ‘the end justifies the means’ stands out quite clearly as a principle of Platonic political theory; and this maxim is a direct consequence of the primacy assumed by will over knowledge, by justice over truth.”30 For Plato the political point of view was more important than all the others, so that “it is not so essential to know whether what the subjects believe is true as it is to know whether what they believe is useful to the state — whether it is to the interest of maintaining a just order in society.”31 In Kelsen’s opinion, Plato offers clear arguments “for forcing science, poetry, and religion, in their function as producers of ideologies, into the service of the state.”32 Truth is subservient to the benefit of the State; the benefit of the State is justice; and what is just is what is ordered by the government. The government should be made up of philosophers. Philosophers should be kings and they should govern because only they know what Good is and therefore want it. “This belief,” Kelsen Says, “is the ground of the unconditional obedience of subjects upon which the authority in the Platonic State rests.”33 Thus we find that “Plato’s mysticism, the most complete expression of irrationalism, is the justification of his anti-democratic political doctrine; it is the ideology of every autocracy.”34 Both Hans Kelsen and Karl Popper are defenders of the “open society.” This is why they are both enemies of Plato. In their view Plato was one of the staunchest supporters of the “closed society.” Kelsen uses psychology to understand Plato’s construction of the ideal state. Popper also uses psychology to explain how Plato formulated the law of historical development that asserts that every social change is corruption, decadence or degeneration.35 In Popper’s opinion, this law is the foundation of Plato’s totalitarian theory of politics. Therefore, the security and the stability of the State were uppermost in Plato’s thinking. Consequently, Kelsen would says, it is clear that “from the point of view of the interest of the State, religion, art and science are merely products of

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ideology, which can be of vital importance to the State but can also become highly dangerous to its authority.”36 Plato follows the tradition of Athens, Sparta and the other Greek cities where the State had appropriated the religion; and in both the Republic and in the Laws he recognizes religion as a powerful instrument in favor of government policy.37 As is obvious in Laws 909 and 910, Plato attributes such great political importance to religion that he makes it an exclusive object of the State and proposes a kind of State monopoly for the creation [Erzeugung] of religious ideology”38 that religiously consecrates the laws so that they are feared and obeyed.39 Kelsen also says that Plato sees art, especially poetry, as clearly having more political importance than religion; and no one in antiquity would have understood the ideological function of art better than Plato.40 The first step towards the abyss of democracy is when “art is freed.”41 In fact, […] where the artist can create freely according to his will and is not bound by strict laws, where he is only guided by the success his product has with the public, where the public is recognized as judge of the value of the work of art, that is where all of the power of the theater audience must lead to democracy in the State.42 Here Kelsen refers to a passage of the Laws where Plato is worried and points out that as far as music is concerned, “a detrimental power of the theater has taken the place of the aristocracy.”43 Therefore, it is obvious, Kelsen says, that for Plato, “freedom in art goes hand in hand with political anarchy”44 and it is not at all surprising that Plato proposes “to remove all freedom from art — and the same would be true under present circumstances for science.”45 Art should be under the power of the State, “the artist can carry out his work only as a tool — an organ — of the State.”46 Only from this point of view, Kelsen adds, does “the otherwise incomprehensible criticism Plato launches against poetry and even the most admired works of the Hellenic nation become

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comprehensible.”47 This also explains why, in the Republic, Plato deals with evil at its inception: the State should not allow children to hear just any story, so it must control the storytellers.48 Kelsen is harsh: “In Plato’s ideal State there is no place at all for freedom of thought.”49 Moreover, Kelsen adds, Plato justifies the fact that there be no freedom of art in his State and, in general, no freedom of thought since “art — and probably science too if he had spoken of it — should represent or express only Good, Beauty and Truth, except that nobody, other than the government, could be authorized to decide what Good, Beauty, and Truth are.”50 For the rulers, Good, Beauty and Truth are what the government declares they are.51 The long, careful study of the concept of truth in Plato’s writings leads Kelsen to the following conclusions: Plato’s ideal community is more a church than a State, or a state which is a church at the same time and, consequently, a totalitarian dictatorship that extends its power to the realm of thought. Faith in the possibility of such an extraordinary increase and extension of power of the State over its subjects might be considered purely utopian if the history of our times, more than two thousand years after Plato, had not provided us with the example of a political undertaking that with the intention of establishing a completely new social order, not only nationalized (or placed under government control) economic production but also, and above all — as a presupposition of it — the production of thought (das geistige Schaffen), especially public opinion; but this means that it knowingly created a State monopoly for the production of ideology: the dictatorship of the proletariat of Soviet Russia. Precisely because of the measures it adopted — which are repugnant to European sensibilities — it is completely in keeping with the concepts of Plato.52

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Alfred Hoernlé: Would Plato have approved of the national socialist State? The Soviet Republic was not the only country to conform to Plato’s ideas: Nazi Germany also did. In April 1937, Professor Alfred Hoernlé gave a lecture at the University of Johannesburg entitled Would Plato have approved of the national socialist State?53 Hoernlé did not speak of the Italian fascist dictatorship or the Russian communist dictatorship for the simple reason, he says, that he was less familiar with them than the Nazi dictatorship.54 Moreover, he continues, the dictators of those years had pretensions of being philosopher-kings: “men with a Weltanschauung, with a plan for the spiritual safety of their peoples, with an explicit theory of what is good for their peoples; men who justify usage of violence in search of the good that they want to realize.”55 Hoernlé also points out that modern dictators stand to their followers as the Platonic philosopher-kings stand to the lowest classes of the ideal Platonic state.56 Modern dictators try to inculcate their subjects with absolute faith in their wisdom.57 A tyrant is a dictator who has no philosophy or idea of good. He is obeyed because his power creates fear. He is morally corrupt and governed by his uncontrolled desires. A philosopher-king, instead, knows what is good for the state and makes himself the instrument for achieving this noble objective. Since he is master of himself he is capable of governing others.58 Therefore, there are differences between the tyrant and the philosopher-king, even though sometimes the philosopher-king must be transformed into a tyrant.59 In any case, Hoernlé points out, “if we take the word ‘tyrant’ in its strictly Platonic sense, it is evident that the modern dictators, as apostles of a way of life, are much more similar to the king-philosophers than to the tyrants.”60 Therefore, the philosopher-king of the Republic is similar to the modern dictator who pretends to be a leader and is obeyed by his followers in sight of the good he attempts to realize for them. “Plato’s philosopher-kings,” continues Hoernlé, “govern with absolute authority: they do not consult the people; they are not

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elected by the people, they cannot be removed by people because — as we say in the language of modern democracies — they are not ‘responsible’ towards people.”61 Hoernlé concludes that the king-philosophers and their Auxiliars (the two highest classes in Platonic state) are analogous to the modern dictator and faithful Partei (as the Communist Party in Russia, the Fascist Party in Italy, or the Nazi Party in Germany), by which he rules.62 Hoernlé also points out that it is significant that three Nazi intellectuals sought to connect nazi-socialist thought to Platonic reasoning. The first of these intellectuals was Theodor von der Pfordten. In an essay on the Platonic ideal of the civil servant (Beamte), he concludes that there is no salvation for post-war Germany (after the first World War) unless the men who govern it have ideas that can heal the wounds of the war and the peace treaty and dedicate their lives to serving the fatherland with the same devotion and efficiency that Plato attributed to his philosopher-kings.63 This was the thought of one of Hitler’s followers. The correspondence of Plato’s philosopher-kings to the modern “Führer” and “Duce” was also pointed out by Hans F.K. Guenther, an outstanding German theorist of race. In one of his pamphlets entitled Platon als Hueter des Lebens, Guenther interpreted some of Plato’s ideas, especially those in the Republic, in terms of the relevance to the purity of the race and “the dependence of high intellectual and moral qualities on blood or race.”64 H.A. Grunsky, on the other hand, in the essay Seele und Staat, develops the Platonic theme of the similarity of the structure of soul and the State by suggesting unusual applications; and he reaches the conclusion that the national-socialist soul is the only truly sound one and the communist one is the most corrupt.65 Grunsky was appointed professor of Nazi Weltanschaung at the University of Munich. If we believe in the value of individual freedom and the “democratic” organization of society that accompanies it, Hoernlé says, then we must learn the lessons that come from the challenge of the new dictatorships and their “ideologies.” The most important of these lessons is that our faith in democracy must be a real faith, a faith of facts — not of mere words.66

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Karl R. Popper: Plato was Socrates’ Judas Apropos of the significance of pre-Socratic philosophy, Popper says: “The early history of Greek philosophy, especially the history from Thales to Plato, is a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth.” 67 The Pre-Socratics paved the way for a new tradition — the tradition of critical discussion. With them we no longer have — as occurs in all civilizations, especially the primitive ones — a school that imparts to successive generations the doctrine of its founder and preserves it pure and unchanged. The critical tradition arises with Pre-Socratic philosophy. “It is a tradition that allows or encourages critical discussions between various schools and, more surprisingly still, within one and the same school. For nowhere outside the Pythagorean School do we find a school devoted to the preservation of a doctrine. Instead we find changes, new ideas, modifications, and outright criticism of the master.”68 It is a tradition, Popper says, that “can be interpreted […] as a response to the breakdown of the closed society and its magical beliefs. It is an attempt to replace the lost magical faith by a rational faith; it modifies the tradition of passing on a theory or a myth by founding a new tradition — the tradition of challenging theories and myths and critically discussing them.”69 Popper calls “the magical, tribal or collectivist society” a closed society; an open society, he says, is one “in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions.”70 The closed society can be compared to an organism: “Its institutions, including its castes, are sacrosanct — taboo.”71 What caused the disintegration of the closed society? “Perhaps,” Popper says, […] the most powerful cause of the breakdown of the closed society was the development of sea-communications and commerce. Close contact with other tribes is liable to undermine the feeling of necessity with which tribal institutions are viewed; and trade, commercial initiative, appears

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to be one of the few forms in which individual initiative and independence can assert itself, even in a society in which tribalism still prevails. These two, seafaring and commerce, became the main characteristics of Athenian imperialism, as it developed in the fifth century B.C.72 The members of the privileged classes, the oligarchs, considered sea voyages and commerce two highly dangerous activities. It was very clear to them that “the trade of Athens, its monetary commercialism, its naval policy, and its democratic tendencies were parts of one single movement, and that it was impossible to defeat democracy without going to the roots of the evil and destroying both the naval policy and the empire.”73 The relationship between the birth of the critical tradition and the dissolution of the closed society reached its highest point in the figure of Socrates and its greatest opposition in Plato. Characteristic of Socrates’ teaching, Popper believes, are: […] his intellectualism, i.e. his equalitarian theory of human reason as a universal medium of communication; his stress on intellectual honesty and self-criticism; his equalitarian theory of justice, and his doctrine that it is better to be a victim of injustice than to inflict it upon others.”74 The latter doctrine, which is the most important of all, Popper says, “helps us best to understand the core of his teaching, his creed of individualism, his belief in the human individual as an end in himself.”75 Socrates showed “that a man could die, not only for fate and fame and other grand things of this kind, but also for the freedom of critical thought, and for a self-respect which has nothing to do with self-importance or sentimentality.”76 Popper — also says Socrates — had only one successor worthy of him. Plato, his most gifted disciple, betrayed Socrates. Plato was Socrates’ Judas.77

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Plato’s State is “petrified” Popper finds the theoretical basis for Plato’s betrayal of Socrates in a specific philosophy of history — which Plato would use to justify a totalitarian political theory. Plato was born during the long Peloponnesian war, and he was about twenty-four years old when the war ended.78 Popper maintains that, […] from the feeling that society, and indeed ‘everything,’ was in flux, arose […] the fundamental impulse of his philosophy as well as the philosophy of Heraclitus; and Plato summed up his social experience, exactly as his predecessor had done, by proffering a law of historical development. According to this law […] all social change is corruption or decay or degeneration.79 In Plato’s view, this basic historical law is part of a cosmic law that maintains that everything that is generated and everything that is in flux is destined to decay. There is no doubt, Popper says, “that he visualized human history in a cosmic setting; that he believed his own age to be one of deep depravity — possibly of the deepest that can be reached — and the whole preceding historical period to be governed by an inherent tendency toward decay, a tendency shared by both the historical and the cosmic development.80 “However,” Popper says, “Whether or not he also believed that this tendency must necessarily come to an end once the point of extreme depravity has been reached seems to me uncertain. But he believed that it is possible for us, by a human, or rather a superhuman effort, to break through the fatal historical trend, and to put an end to the process of decay.”81 In other words, Plato believed that the law of historical destiny, the law of decay, “can be broken by the moral will of man, supported by the power of human reason.”82 Cosmic law is demonstrated in racial degeneration; racial degeneration leads to moral degeneration; and moral generation causes political degeneration.83 It is obvious that, in the political field it will be possible to interrupt the further progress of corruption by arresting all

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political change.84 This is exactly, in G.C. Field’s view,85 what Plato was fighting for. “He struggled to achieve this objective,” Popper says, “by the establishment of a state which is free from the evils of all other states because it does not degenerate, because it does not change. The state which is free from the evil of change and corruption is the best, the perfect state. It is the state of the Golden Age which knew no change. It is the arrested state.”86 In other words, it is the totalitarian state.

The principles of Plato’s totalitarian politics Popper explains the basic principles of Plato’s politics as follows: A. The strict division of classes; i.e. the ruling class consisting of herdsmen and watch-dogs must be strictly separated from the human cattle B. The identification of the fate of the state with that of the ruling class; the exclusive interest in this class, and in its unity, and subservient to this unity, the rigid rules for breeding and educating this class and the strict supervision and collectivization of the interests of its members.87 Other principles can be deduced from these elementary ones, Popper says. For example: C. The ruling class has a monopoly of things like military virtues and training, and the right to carry arms and receive education of any kind; but it is excluded from participation in economic activities; and especially from earning money. D. There must be a censorship of all intellectual activities of the ruling Class, and a continual propaganda aiming at moulding (sic) and unifying their minds. All innovation in education, legislation, and religion must be prevented or suppressed

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E. The state must be self-sufficient. It must aim at economic autarchy; for otherwise the rulers would either be dependent on traders, or become traders themselves. The first of these alternatives would undermine their power, the second their unity and the stability of the state.”88 This program, Popper states in no uncertain terms, is totalitarian89 and “far from being morally superior to totalitarianism, is fundamentally identical with it.”90

“Justice” and “Truth” at the service of the stability of the State We should not, Popper insists, allow ourselves to be bedazzled by what Plato says about Good, Beauty or love of Knowledge, Truth and Justice. Take, for example, the idea of justice. What did Plato mean by “justice”? Popper’s answer to this question is that in the Republic he “used the term ‘just’ as a synonym for ‘that which is in the interest of the best state.’ And what is in the interest of the best state? To arrest all change, by the maintenance of a rigid class division and class rule.”91 If this interpretation is correct, Popper says, then “we should have to say that Plato’s demand for justice leaves his political programme at the level of totalitarianism; and we should have to conclude that we must guard against the danger of being impressed by mere words.”92 Republic, 433 a: “I believe justice is the requirement we laid down at the beginning as of universal application when we founded our state, or else some particular form of it. We laid down, if you remember, and have often repeated, that in our state one man was to do one job, the job he was naturally most suited for.” Republic, 434 a/b: “But if someone who belongs by nature to the class of artisans and businessmen is puffed up by wealth or popular support of physical strength or any similar quality, and tries to enter our military class; or if one of our

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military Auxiliaries tries to get into the class of administering Guardians, for which he is unfit, and they exchange tools and prestige; or if a single individual tries to do all these jobs at the same time. Well, I think you’ll agree that this sort of mutual interchange and interference spells destruction to our state.” Republic, 434 c/d: “And conversely, when each of our three classes (businessmen, Auxiliaries, and Guardians) does its own job and mind its own business, that, by contrast, is justice and makes our state just.”93 In Plato, the idea of “justice” regards the State. In the Athens of Plato’s time, “justice” basically had the same meaning it has for us today: all citizens are equal before the law.94 However, Popper says, “we mean by justice some kind of equality in the treatment of individuals, while Plato considers justice not as a relationship between individuals, but as a property of the whole state, based on a relationship between its classes. The state is just if it is healthy, strong, limited — stable.”95 The idea of “truth” is similar to that of “justice.” “We cannot doubt,” Popper says, “that Plato subjects the Socratic love of truth to the more fundamental principle that the rule of the master class must be strengthened.”96 Plato’s battle against the egalitarian movement,97 his mistaken identification of “individualism” with “egoism,”98 his idea that the government should be entrusted to the “fully qualified philosopher,” the way he intends to choose political leaders,99 his legitimization of lying and racism,100 and his utopianism and perfectionism101 lead Popper to reinforce the idea that Plato’s political program “is simply totalitarian.” Therefore, Popper says, “the lesson we […] should learn from Plato is the exact opposite of what he tries to teach us. It is a lesson which must not be forgotten. Excellent as Plato’s sociological diagnosis was, his own development proves that the therapy he recommends is worse than the evil he tried to combat. Arresting political change is not the remedy; it cannot bring happiness. We can never return to the alleged innocence and beauty of the closed

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society. Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth […].102 He adds: Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way — we must return to the beasts. […] But if we want to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.103

Chapter Ten The destiny of historical materialism and dialectical materialism in fin de siècle Vienna

K.R. Popper: historical materialism “is simply a false doctrine” Unlike psychoanalysis, Marxism was conceived as science and ended up as — often cruel — metaphysics. This thesis of Popper has already been analyzed. Marxism was born as a science because it made a series of predictions based on facts that could be controlled — and that were, one after the other, systematically disproved. However, this does not prevent Popper from focusing his attention on the dogmatic core of Marxism itself and revealing that historical materialism and dialectics are untenable. Popper says that historical materialism or “economicism” is the idea “that the economic organization of society, the organization of our exchange of matter with nature, is fundamental for all social institutions and especially for their historical development.”1 This claim, Popper points out, […] is perfectly sound, so long as we take the term ‘fundamental’ in an ordinary vague sense, not laying too much stress upon it. In other words, there can be no doubt that practically all social studies, whether institutional or historical, may profit if they are carried out with an eye to the ‘economic conditions’ of society. Even the history of an abstract science such as mathematics is not an exception. In this sense, Marx’s economicism can be said to represent an extremely valuable advance in the methods of social science.”2 It’s not fundamental that the term “fundamental” be taken too seriously; but Marx thought otherwise. Owing to his Hegelian

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upbringing, he was influenced by the ancient distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘appearance’, and by the corresponding distinction between what is ‘essential’ and what is ‘accidental’. His own improvement upon Hegel (and Kant) he was inclined to see in the identification of ‘reality’ with the material world (including man’s metabolism), and of ‘appearance’ with the world of thoughts or ideas. Thus all thoughts and ideas would have to be explained by reducing them to the underlying essential reality, i.e. to economic conditions. This philosophical view is certainly not much better than any other form of essentialism. And its repercussions in the field of method must result in an over-emphasis upon economicism. For although the general importance of Marx’s economicism can hardly be overrated, it is very easy to overrate the importance of the economic conditions in any particular case. Some knowledge of economic conditions may contribute considerably, for example, to a history of the problems of mathematics, but a knowledge of the problems of mathematics themselves is much more important for that purpose; and it is even possible to write a very good history of mathematical problems without referring at all to their ‘economic background’.3 Marxist historical materialism renders the economic aspect of social and cultural facts absolute and metaphysical; it transforms a fact (an aspect of reality that may or may not be present in social and cultural events — or be present to various degrees — or may even depend on an idea) into a metaphysical entity. Historical materialism is a theory that says the order of economic facts is the order of historical facts: “it is the doctrine that all social development depends upon that of economic conditions, and especially upon the development of the physical means of production.”4 But, in Popper’s view, “such a doctrine is palpably false,”5 because “there is an interaction between economic conditions and ideas, and not simply a unilateral dependence of the latter on the former.”6 On the contrary, “we might even assert that certain ‘ideas,’ those which constitute our knowledge, are more fundamental than the more complex material means of production.”7 Popper illustrates this theory of his with the following two mental experiments:

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Imagine that our economic system, including all machinery and all social organizations, was destroyed one day, but that technical and scientific knowledge was preserved. In such a case it might conceivably not take very long before it was reconstructed (on a smaller scale, and after many had starved). But imagine all knowledge of these matters to disappear, while the material things were preserved. This would be tantamount to what would happen if a savage tribe occupied a highly industrialized but deserted country. It would soon lead to the complete disappearance of all the material relics of civilization.8 And, Popper, concludes, it is ironical that the history of Marxism itself furnishes an example that clearly falsifies this exaggerated economicism. Marx’s idea ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ was of the greatest significance down to the eve of the Russian Revolution, and it had its influence upon economic conditions. But with the revolution, the situation became very difficult, simply because, as Lenin himself admitted, there were no further constructive ideas. Then Lenin has some new ideas which may be briefly summarized in the slogan: ‘Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, plus the widest introduction of the most modern electrical machinery.’ It was this new idea that became the basis of a development which changed the whole economic and material background of one-sixth of the world. In a fight against tremendous odds, uncounted material difficulties were overcome, uncounted material sacrifices were made, in order to alter, or rather, to build up from nothing, the conditions of production. And the driving power of this development was the enthusiasm for an idea. This example shows that in certain circumstances, ideas may revolutionize the economic conditions of a country, instead of being moulded by these conditions. Using Marx’s terminology, we could say that he had underrated the power

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of the kingdom of freedom and its chances of conquering the kingdom of necessity.9 Popper also specifies that his criticism of Marx’s “historical materialism” should not be taken as evidence of his preference for Hegelian ‘idealism’ over Marx’s materialism: “I hope — Popper says — I have made it clear that in this conflict between idealism and materialism my sympathies are with Marx. What I wish to show is that Marx ‘s ‘materialist interpretation of history,’ valuable as it may be, must not be taken too seriously; that we must regard it as nothing more than a most valuable suggestion to us to consider things in their relation to their economic background.”10

Max Adler and Ludwig von Mises: two Viennese critics of historical materialism The so-called ‘materialistic concept of history,’ with the crude elements of genius of the early form which appeared, for instance, in the Communist Manifesto still prevails only in the minds of laymen and dilettantes. In these circles one still finds the peculiar condition that they need for a causal explanation of an historical event is never satisfied until somewhere or somehow economic causes are shown (or seem) to be operative. When this however is the case, they content themselves with the most threadbare hypotheses and the most general phrases since they have then satisfied their dogmatic need to believe that the economic ‘factor’ is the ‘real’ one, the only ‘true’ one, and the one which ‘in the last instance is everywhere decisive’.11 This was the heart of Max Weber’s criticism of historical materialism in 1904. Weber believed that “the explanation of everything by economic causes alone is never exhaustive in any sense whatsoever in any sphere of cultural phenomena, not even in the “economic” sphere itself.”12

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Five years before Weber, Eduard Bernstein wrote in The Preconditions of Socialism: It will of course not be maintained that Marx and Engels at any time overlooked the fact that non-economic factors exercise an influence on the course of history. Countless passages from their early writings can be quoted against any such suggestion. But it is a question of degree — not whether ideological factors are acknowledged, but what degree of influence, what historical significance, is ascribed to them. And in this regard, it absolutely cannot be denied that Marx and Engels originally allowed the non-economic factors a much smaller part in the development of society, a much smaller reactive effect on the relations of production, than in their later writings.13 Bernstein tries to transform the determinism inherent in the historical materialism of Marx and Engels into reciprocal conditioning between “economic” factors and “ideological” factors even though he was well aware of the preponderance of the economic ones. “Historical materialism,” Bernstein says, “by no means denies the autonomy of political and ideological forces; it denies only that this autonomy is unconditional and shows that, in the end, the development of the economic foundation of social life — the relations of production and the development of classes — exercises the greater influence on the movement of these forces […]. But in any case the multiplicity of factors remains, and it is by no means always easy to display the connections between them with such precision that it is possible to determine with certainty where, in any particular case, the strongest impetus for the moment lies.”14 Bernstein’s line of reasoning is stressed even more in Max Adler, the Austrian Marxist who wanted to extract as much science as possible from Marxism. In doing this Adler even seems to distort the texts of Marx and Engels. The constantly repeated idea that “the materialistic concept of history considers ideological phenomena a product of the economic situation”15 is a misunderstanding,

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Adler says. In his opinion, things are very different. Actually, he believes “the popular misunderstanding that ideology is a product of the economic situation cannot even literally refer to the texts of Marx and Engels. They do not contain a single passage that states that the material situation produces or affects the spiritual one; there are instead continual references that they are necessarily connected to one another.”16 In short, Adler’s interpretation is that in Marxism there is no “direct causal relationship between economic relationships and so-called ideological phenomena.”17 Productive forces “constitute the ‘vital space’ of the society18 — in no way is this the same as an immediate, direct connection between productive forces and the world of ideas.19 Therefore, historical materialism is — as in the case of Weber — exposed for its metaphysical pretensions or — as in the case of Bernstein and, even more, of Adler — attempts to extract the scientific core. Ludwig von Mises, another Viennese, was less benevolent towards Marxist historical materialism. In Socialism, his famous work from the early twenties, Mises points out that there are two “contradictory” versions of historical materialism. The first “explains thought as a simple and direct development of the economic environment, of the conditions of production, under which men live.”20 According to this concept, “there is no history of science and no history of the individual sciences as independent evolutionary sequences because the setting of problems and their solutions do not represent a progressive intellectual process, but merely reflect the momentary conditions of production.”21 In short, a certain system of society is derived from the productive forces and the means of production. Mises’ criticism of this version is that “it never seems to have occurred to Marx that the productive forces are themselves a product of human thought, so that one merely moves in a circle when one tries to derive thought from them.”22 In the second version of historical materialism “class interest determines thought.”23 Therefore, for Marx, Locke represented the philosopher of the new bourgeoisie in all its forms;24 and for the Marxist Mehring, Schopenhauer “is the philosopher of terrorized philistines[…]; his petty, selfish slanderous methods are

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the intellectual reflection of the bourgeoisie”;25 and Nietzsche is “the philosopher of the other bourgeoisie.”26 Mises maintains that “the best way to disprove this view is to point out the obvious fact that Marx’s economic theory is nothing more than a product of the Ricardo school.”27 Furthermore, “the ideas of modern Socialism have not sprung from proletarian brains.”28

Marx and Engels: dialectical thinkers As early as 1840, not to mention the previous work of Bernhard Bolzano, Adolf Trendelenburg struck at the heart of dialectical theory as it had been formulated by Hegel. Trendelenburg believed that Hegel’s system was built on the confusion between “contradiction” and “contrariness,” on the undue mixing of logical contradiction and real opposition. Real opposition (such as, for example, business conflicts, revolutions, etc.) can only be described with non-contradictory speech and has nothing to do with logical contradictions.29 Marx was aware of Trendelenburg’s lessons, but he did not know of Trendelenburg’s criticism of dialectics. In the second preface to Anti-Dühring, Engels says, “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”30 And in 1913, Lenin said: “Hegelian dialectics, as the most comprehensive, the most rich in content, and the most profound doctrine of development, was regarded by Marx and Engels as the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy.”31 Actually, it is not hard to prove that Marx was a dialectical thinker.32 For our purposes here it suffices to quote a passage from the postscript to the second edition of Capital (1873), where Marx says: I criticized the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectics nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just when I was working at the first volume of

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Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing’s time, namely as a ‘dead dog’. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there in the chapter of the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which the dialectics suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.… In its mystified form, the dialectics became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and glorified what exists. In its rational form it is a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by anything, being in its very essence critical and revolutionary.33 If it can be said that Marx applied dialectics to human history, then Engels extended the dialectics method to all of reality. “An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics.”34 Dialectics, Engels continues, is “a very simple process which is taking place everywhere and everyday, which any child can understand as soon as it is stripped of the veil of mystery in which it was enveloped by the old idealist philosophy.”35 Dialectics is “an extremely general […] law of development of nature, history and thought; a law which, as we have seen, holds good in the animal

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and plants kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history and in philosophy […]. Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”36 So much, briefly, for Marx and Engels. After them, some years ago, I. Fetscher said the Soviet Marxists saw in the so-called Diamat, “the nucleus or, one might say, the sancta sanctorum of their doctrine[…]. The true classic of the Diamat is Friedrich Engels.”37 And Herbert Marcuse maintains that “neither Hegel nor Marx ever developed dialectics as a general methodological scheme. The first step in this direction was made by Engels […] and his notes have provided the skeleton for the Soviet Marxist codification.”38

The destiny of dialectics in fin de siècle Vienna Engel’s two classic writings on dialectical materialism are Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dühring. The latter was written by Engels against Eugen Dühring, who amused himself by making fun of the dialectical method as it was applied by Marx. Dühring says, The Hegelian negation of the negation in default of anything better or clearer, has in fact to serve here as the midwife to deliver the future from the womb of the past […] According to this, the expropriation of the expropriators is, as it were, the automatic result of historical reality in its materially external relations. […] It would be difficult to convince a sensible man of the necessity of the common ownership of land and capital, on the basis of credence in Hegelian word-juggling such as the negation of the negation. […] The nebulous hybrids of Marx’s conceptions will not however appear strange to anyone who realizes what nonsense can be concocted with Hegelian dialectics as the scientific basis.39 Engels felt obliged to “get back at that nuisance Dühring.” At any rate, as he wrote in a letter to Marx dated 28 May, he was well

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aware “of getting entangled in an argument whose outcome was impossible to predict.”40 And Engels was clairvoyant on this point, since the controversy on dialectics has never ceased. For example, within the Marxist movement Karl Kautsky, the prestigious leader of the Second International, in his Der historische Materialismus, tried to replace the theory of dialectics with the theory of interaction between the organism and the environment.41 Max Adler — the Austrian Marxist who tried to establish a scientific foundation for sociology based on neo-Kantian influences, and attempted to extract the scientific nucleus from Marxism by rejecting its metaphysical apparatus — was to affirm with extreme lucidity that if dialectics is understood as “father of everything that happens in conflict among things” then “in this sense dialectics refers to an essential structure of being and […] dialectics is a metaphysics.” However, Adler makes a distinction between this sense of dialectics and anything referring to the contrast that dominates social life and can be described by the social sciences: “Then dialectics in this sense is a part of positive science; only for historical reasons does it bear the misleading name of dialectics so it should be called antagonism.”42 E. Bernstein thought differently from Max Adler. In no uncertain terms he stated that “the great illusion of Hegelian dialectics is that it is never entirely in the wrong. It squints towards the truth like a will-o’-the-wisp towards the light. It does not contradict itself because, on its own account, everything carries its contradiction within itself.”43 Dialectics — Bernstein insists — “is the treacherous element in Marxist doctrine, the pitfall that lies in the way of any logical consideration of things.”44 The great things that Marx and Engels achieved — in Bernstein’s opinion — “were achieved not because of Hegelian dialectics but in spite of it.”45 Another person in fin de siècle Vienna who thought differently from Max Adler was Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. As we have seen, Marx says that in the chapter in Capital on the theory of value he flirted here and there with Hegel’s way of expressing himself. Böhm-Bawerk described Marx’s explanation of the labor-value theory as “a dialectics pastiche,”46 and “dialectics abracadabra.”47 And we should bear in mind that in his Autobiography Rudolf

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Carnap says that most of the scientist philosophers of the Vienna Circle “could not accept certain points, in particular the dialectics in its Marxist form, which we rejected no less than the Hegelian dialectics when it claimed to fulfill the function of logic.”48

Karl R. Popper against Marxist dialectics Dialectics intended as Hegel used the term, Popper wrote, is a theory that claims that something, especially human thought, develops with the features of the dialectical triad: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Popper launched his attack against this concept in his essay What is Dialectics?49 Basically this attack can be summarized in the following points: 1) Although the dialectics triad is certainly a good description of certain steps in the history of thought, especially of certain ideas and theories, it is also true that similar dialectics development can be explained by demonstrating that it proceeds in conformity with the method of trial and error.50 2) In addition to facile parallels, attention should still be paid to the fact that the dialectics method is very different from the scientific one of trials and the elimination of error, for the following reasons: a) the trail and error method deals only with an idea and its criticism and makes no suggestions about its further development other than that criticism — when there are enough theories available — will eliminate the weaker theories from the competition;51 b) interpretation of the development of thought in terms of the trial and error method is broader than that in terms of dialectics because the trial and error method can be applied to situations where from the very beginning a number of different theses are offered independently of one another and not only in such a way that the one is opposed to the other;52 c) in the dialectical method “the thesis produces its antithesis”; but for a proponent of the trial and error method it “is only our critical attitude which produces the antithesis, and where such an attitude is lacking — which often enough is the case — no antithesis will be produced”;53 d) similarly we must

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be careful not to think that it is “the ‘struggle’ between a thesis and its antithesis which ‘produces’ a synthesis. The struggle is one of mind; and these minds must be productive of new ideas: there are many instances of futile struggles in the history of human thought, struggles which ended in nothing”;54 e) and “even when a synthesis has been reached, it will usually be a rather crude description of the synthesis to say that is ‘preserves’ the better parts of both the thesis and the antithesis. This description will be misleading even where it is true, because in addition to older ideas which it ‘preserves’, the synthesis will, in every case, embody some new idea, which cannot be reduced to earlier stages of the development. In other words, the synthesis will usually be much more than a construction out of material supplied by thesis and antithesis.”55 3) Nevertheless, Popper continues, the greatest misunderstandings and confusions arise when dialecticians speak about “contradiction” or “contradictions” in a loose way. They start our from the correct observations that contradictions are of the greatest importance in the history of thought — for criticism consists precisely of focusing attention on a contradiction — and they wrongly conclude that “there is no need to avoid these fertile contradictions. And they even assert that contradictions cannot be avoided, since they occur everywhere in the world.”56 Therefore the dialecticians think they have to reject the noncontradiction principle of classical logic and replace it with new dialectical logic.57 This would be both a theory of the historical development of thought and a logical theory, a general theory of the world.58 However, while we must immediately point out that the term “logic” as it is used in modern studies of symbolic logic has nothing to do with the dialectics described above, we must also say that contradictions are fertile when we are looking to eliminate them in order to change theories in which they have emerged.59 However, if we “decide to put up with contradictions, then contradictions must at once lose any kind of fertility. They would no longer be productive of intellectual progress.”60 Accepting contradictions would mean the end of all scientific activity because from a couple

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of contradictory statements any statement whatever can be validly inferred. It would be possible to deduce all the negations of the assertions of the system within which the contradictions emerged, and thus in the end nothing would be said.61 In brief, accepting contradictions would mean the end of rational criticism, discussion, intellectual progress and science.62 Since metaphorical speech can be dangerously misleading, it would be wise to avoid certain formulations. “For instance, instead of the terminology we have used in speaking of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, dialecticians often describe the dialectics triad by using the term ‘negation (of the thesis)’ instead of ‘antithesis’ and ‘negation of the negations’ instead of ‘synthesis.’ And they like to use the term ‘contradiction’ where terms like ‘conflict’ or perhaps ‘opposing tendency’ or ‘opposing interest,’ etc. would be less misleading. […] In fact, the misuse of these terms has contributed considerably to the confusion of logic and dialectics which so often occurs in the discussion of the dialecticians. Frequently they consider dialectics to be a part — the better part — of logic, or something like a reformed, modernized, logic. […] At present I shall only say that our analysis does not lead to the conclusion that dialectics has any sort of similarity to logic. For logic can be described […] as a theory of deduction. We have no reason to believe that dialectics has anything to do with deduction.63 4) After these observations, Popper sums up as follows: “Dialectics, or more precisely, the theory of the dialectics triad, maintains that certain developments, or certain historical processes occur in a certain typical way. It is, therefore, an empirical descriptive theory, comparable, for instance, with the theory which maintains that most living organisms increase their size during some stage of their development, then remain constant, and finally decrease until they die; or with the theory which maintains that opinions are held first dogmatically, then skeptically, and only afterwards, in a third stage, in a scientific, i.e. critical spirit. Like such theories, dialectics is not applicable without exceptions — unless we force the dialectics interpretations — and like such theories, dialectics has no special affinity to logic.”64

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Thus we immediately see how dialectics theory becomes vague and gives an interpretation that can include all sorts of developments and very different things. For example, Popper proposes a dialectical interpretation that identifies a seed with the thesis and the plant that grows from this seed with the antithesis, and all the seeds which develop from this plant with the synthesis.65 It is obvious that by doing this dialectics proves to be dangerously vague: it does not more than affirm that describing a development as dialectical only means saying that this development occurs in stages, which does not say very much and in the end is nothing but word play.66 5) If we consider a famous example used by Engels,67 the aforementioned vagueness becomes palpable: the negative (-a) multiplied by itself becomes (a2); in other words, the negation of the negations has produced a new synthesis according to the law of higher synthesis. But, Popper says, by assuming that (a) is the thesis and (a-) its antithesis or negation, we see that the negations of the negations is (-(-a)), that is, (a), which is not at all a higher synthesis but identical to the original thesis. “In other words, why should the synthesis be obtained just by multiplying the antithesis with itself? Why not, for example, by adding thesis and antithesis (which would yield 0)? Or by multiplying thesis and antithesis (which would yield -a2 rather than a2)? And in what sense is a2 ‘higher’ than a or -a ? (Certainly not in the sense of being numerically greater, since if a = ½ then a2 = ¼). The example shows the extreme arbitrariness with which the vague ideas of dialectics are applied.”68 6) For Hegel (Encyclopaedia, part I, chap. VI) dialectics is “the universal inexorable power which nothing can resist, however secure and stable it may seem”; similarly for Engels (Antidühring, part I, Dialectics: Negation of the Negation) the negation of the negation is “an extremely general […] law of the development of nature, history and thought, a law which […] holds good in the animal and plant kingdom, in geology, in mathematics, in history, and in philosophy”; and for Marx the main task of sociological science is to show how these dialectics forces are working in history, and

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thus to prophesy the course of history or, as he says in the preface to Capital: ‘it is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic law of the motion of modern society’.”69 But prophecies are not scientific predictions. In Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences Popper criticized “the doctrine that it is the task of the social sciences to propound historical prophecies, and that historical prophecies are needed if we wish to conduct politics in a rational way.”70 7) Thus, thanks to dialectics, Marxism has been transformed into reinforced dogmatism.71 And this is the greatest obstacle to the growth of science. “There can be no scientific development without the free competition of thought — this is the essence of the antidogmatic attitude once so strongly supported by Marx and Engels; and in general there cannot be free competition in scientific thought without freedom for all thought.”72 In conclusion, dialectics became the theoretical basis of what is called “scientific Marxism.” And it helped to turn Marxism into a dogmatic system by preventing the scientific development of which it might have been capable. So Marxism has for decades kept its dogmatic attitude, repeating the same arguments against its opponents as were originally used by its founders. “It is sad,” Popper says, “but illuminating to see how orthodox Marxism today officially recommends, as a basis for the study of scientific methodology, the reading of Hegel’s Logic — which is not merely obsolete but typical of pre-scientific and even pre-logical ways of thinking. It is worse than recommending Archimedes’ mechanics as a basis for modern engineering.”73 Given the undoubtedly disastrous conclusions of his study of dialectics, Popper ends his essay with a warning. In his opinion, “the whole development of dialectics should be a warning against the danger inherent in philosophical system-building. It should remind us that philosophy must not be made a basis for any sort of scientific system and philosophers should be much more modest in their claims. One task they can fulfill quite usefully is the study of the critical methods of science.”74

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Hans Kelsen’s criticism of Marxist dialectics So much for the logical and epistemological criticism of dialectics theory. A logical contradiction is not real opposition, a conflict of interest, or a class struggle. Although dialectics theory wants to be an informative-descriptive theory of historical reality and the development of human history, it must be factually confutable;75 but dialectics is not refutable and, therefore, it tells less about historical reality than it does about the faith of those who propose and defend it. Dialectics theory is not informative because it is not falsifiable. It arises and thrives on the confusion between logical contradiction (which should be avoided if we want what we say to have any meaning) and real contrast (which should be described with noncontradictory theories if we intend to describe conflicts of interest, class struggles, and so on). But things do not end here, since the infractions of dialectics theory are not only logical and epistemological but they also violate “Hume’s law”: it does not distinguish facts from value or identify “processes” and “progress.” Dialectics combines and erroneously identifies the “evolution of history” with the “progressive realization of Good.” But Popper writes in opposition to such confusion, “This dualism of facts and decisions is […] fundamental. Facts as such have no meaning; they can gain it only through our decisions.”76 However, historicism, and thus also Marxist historicism and its “dialectics method,” wants to do away with this dualism. Marxist historicism “is born of fear, for it shrinks from realizing that we bear the ultimate responsibility even for the standards we choose.”77 Historicism relieves one of responsibility: “Like gambling, historicism is born of our despair in the rationality and responsibility of our actions.”78 To sum up: Historicism is “a debased hope and a debased faith, an attempt to replace the hope and the faith that springs from our moral enthusiasm and the contempt for success by a certainty that springs from a pseudo-science; a pseudo-science of the stars, or of ‘human nature,’ or of historical destiny.”79 And this is only one of

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the many points on which Popper agrees with Kelsen. In The Communist Theory of Law, Hans Kelsen says, “Marx and Engels are not the only writers who use a so-called law of evolution as a disguise for a moral-political postulate. Hegel’s philosophy of history and Comte’s positivism are of the same type. Marx’s critique of society and his prediction of communism as the necessary outcome of an evolution determined by causal law are based on a subjective value judgment. But Marx and Engels present it as a science, as an objective truth.”80 Actually, Marx and Engels do not mean to build an ideal of society or an “ideal society,” which would require adequate means to achieve, but rather to discover this ideal society in the evolution of history. However, as Kelsen says, “this scientific discovery is possible only because the allegedly discovered value has previously been projected into reality, the Marxian reality with a double bottom.”81 The truth is that the good, the ends, and an “ideal of society” can not logically be derived from any descriptive theory. But this mistake is another consequence of accepting dialectics theory. “Hegel,” Kelsen says, “denies the opposition […] between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ when he states that the realization of value is immanent to factual development.”82 Marx follows Hegel along this line. He denies the dualism between actuality and value and “presents his revolutionary ethical-political postulates as laws of development resulting from natural need.”83 Kelsen continues, “Hegel’s dialectics has the effect, intended by its author, to open the way for irrational metaphysical speculation. Marx and Engels, it is true, were opposed to Hegel’s metaphysics; but they made abundant use of the new logic of dialectics, which permitted them to say that the state is by its very nature an instrument of the maintenance of exploitation, and at the same time that the state, as the proletarian state, is the specific instrument for the abolition of exploitation; that the proletarian state is a dictatorship and at the same time that it is a democracy; that communism is the realization of individual freedom and at the same time the organization of collective authority; present the theory of socialism as a

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morally indifferent science and at the same time to proclaim in the name of science the true justice of freedom and equality; to assert that there cannot be such a thing as objective science and at the same time to boast of having promoted socialism from a utopian wish to the rank of an objective science.84 Actually, “under the guidance of Hegel’s dialectics logic [Marx] transfers logical contradictions from thinking into being.”85 Being, which is the “development” of history, is automatic “progress” toward Good.

Notes

Notes to Preface 1. K. R. Popper, Unended Quest. An Intellectual Biography, Routledge, London, 2002, p. 99. First published as “Autobiography of Karl Popper” in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Open Court, La Salle (Ill.), 1974. Notes to Chapter 1 1. K. R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson, London, 1983, p. 6. 2. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, London, 2002, p. 8. 3. F. Kreuzer, K.R. Popper, Offenes Gesellschaft-Offenes Universum, Deuticke, Wien, 1982. 4. K. R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. 36. 5. On this significant point of the logical-epistemological concept that we have no criterion of truth, see: a) A. Tarski, The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4, 1944; b) K.R. Popper, Truth, Rationality and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge, in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 1963; c) K.R. Popper, Philosophical Comments on Tarski’s Theory of Truth, in Objective Knowledge, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972; d) K R. Popper, Facts, Standards and Truth in The Open Society and Its Enemies, II, Routledge, London, 1995. We have no criterion for truth, but Popper thinks that we have a criterion for verisimilitude (or approximation to the truth) that allows us the conjectural choice of the most likely theory among those in competition. In highly simplified terms, theory T2 would be more likely (closer to the truth) than another T1 when all the true results of T1 are true in T2 , when all the false results in T1 are true in T2, and when, in addition, other results not obtainable from T1 can be obtained from T2. However, P. Tichý, D. Miller, J. Harris, and others have demonstrated that Popper’s definitions of verisimilitude are unfounded in the sense that when there are two theories — both of which are false — it can be proven that one can not be more probable than the other. This is so because if true results increase in a false theory the false results also increase; and if there are fewer false results there are also fewer true ones. Using an example

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from biology, it would be like saying that of two extinct species one can not be more alive than the other. In any case, the logical criticism of Popper’s definitions of verisimilitude have not been without effect in the contemporary epistemological debate if, for example, Larry Laudan (Progress and Its Problems, Routledge, London, 1977) has maintained that, when you come to think about it, in scientific research we can do without notions of truth and verisimilitude and it is rational to choose the theory which, by solving more problems and problems that are more important at the time, makes more progress. For a first approach to this question, one can consult chapter twelve of my Trattato di metodologia delle scienze sociali, (UTET Libreria, Torino, 1996, pp. 192–219. 6. K. R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. xxxv. 7. Op. cit., p. 218. 8. Ibid. 9. Op. cit., p. 219. On the other hand, still in reference the subject of probability, if the objective of scientific research is the progress and growth of knowledge, then we can not at the same time try to obtain a high probability in the sense of calculating the probabilities. In fact, we prefer theories that say more, theories with a larger amount of empirical information , theories richer in empirical content, logically stronger, theories that have greater power to explain and predict. But theories of this sort are theories that can be subjected to stricter tests by comparing the facts they foresee with the observations made. Therefore, the more a theory says the more it is testable; but the more it is testable the easier it is to negate it and, so it will have less probability of being true. 10. K. R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. 6. 11. K. R. Popper, Science: Problems, Aims and Responsibilities, in Philosophy and Physics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974. In this sense, the researcher is a detective who works by hypotheses — following various trails — and tests of theses hypotheses. Adolf Stöhr spoke of detektive Logik in his book Leitfaden der Logik, Franz Deuticke, Leipzig-Wein, 1905, p. 164. 12. G. Gore, The Art of Scientific Discovery, Longmans Green & Co., London, 1878, p. 27. 13. I. Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, § 57, Cambridge, 1997, p. 106. 14. K. R. Popper, Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Knowledge, cit., p. 222. 15. K. R. Popper, Science: Problems, Aims and Responsibilities, in Philosophy and Physics (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974). 16. Op. cit.

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17. K. R. Popper, Science: Conjectures and Refutations, in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Keegan Paul, London, 1963, p. 47. 18. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Social Sciences, In Search of a Better World, Routledge, London, 1992. 19. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Social Sciences, ripr. in The Search of a better World. Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years, Routledge, London, 1994, p. 65. 20. Ibid. 21. K. R. Popper, Science: Conjectures and Refutations, in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, p. 55. 22. K. R. Popper, Evolution and the Tree of Knowledge, in Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, p. 259. 23. K. R. Popper, Science: Problems, Aims and Responsibilities, in Philosophy and Physics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974 24. Op. cit. On the possibility of negating the empirical basis of science, that is, the basic assertions, see K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., chap. V; on pp. 93–94: “The empirical basis of objective science has thus nothing ‘absolute’ […]. Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the pile deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.” For the “Viennese” controversy on protocols, see F. Barone. Il neopositivismo logico, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1997, 305–350, which considers the concepts of Neurath, Carnap and Schlick. Very relevant to the subject for logical and chronological reasons are the reflections of R. Reininger, Metaphysik der Weirklichkeit, Wien-Leipzig, 1931, pp. 132–134. 25. K. R. Popper, On the Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance, in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., p. 28; cf. also: Science: Conjectures and Refutations, in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., p. 53; and The Bucket and the Searchlight. Two Theories of Knowledge, in Objective Knowledge, cit., p. 346. 26. P. Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Princeton, 1954, p. 23. 27. K. R. Popper, The Problem of Induction, in Replies to My Critics, in P.A. Schilpp, editor, The Philosophy of Karl Popper,Open Court, La Salle (Ill.), 1974, vol. 2, p. 1015. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. K. R. Popper, Science: Problems, Aims and Responsibilities, in Philosophy and Physics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974.

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31. K. R. Popper, The Bucket and the Searchlight. Two Theories of Knowledge, cit. pp. 342-344. 32. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 4. 33. This story told by Russell can be found in A.F. Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1982, p. 14. 34. In reference to Deductive Testing of Theories, see K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit. pp. 9–10. On this subject , cf. E. von Aster, Prinzipien der Erkenntnislehre, Verlag von Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig, 1913, pp. 109–111. For elaboration of the concept of “experiment,” see H. Dingler, Das Experiment. Sein Wesen un seine Geschichte, E. Reinhardt, München, 1928. Dingler is an author whom Popper criticizes for his conventionality. 35. K.R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. xx. On April 11, 1911, during the Fourth International Congress of Philosophy held in Bologna, Leonard Nelson gave a speech in which he sustained the impossibility of the theory of knowledge (Cf. L. Nelson, Die Unmöglichkeit der Erkenntnistheorie, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1911, esp. p. 11 ff. ). For a criticism of Nelson’s position, see K.R. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheories, 1979. All of Chap. V of this book is devoted to criticizing psychologism and transcendentalism in Kant and in Fries and his disciples like Nelson and E.F. Apelt (author of the book Die Theorie der Induction, Verlag von W.Engelmann, Leipzig, 1854). Cf. also L. Nelson, Uber das sogenannte Erkenntnisproblem, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1908. The first part of this work concerns the impossibilitty of the theory of knowledge with the consequent criticism of the evidence, of the biological advantage, etc. seen as epistemological criticism; the second part concerns the problem of the criterion of reason (Hume, Kant, Natorp, Frege, Husserl, Rickert, Lipps, etc); the very instructive third part is dedicated to the history of the theory of knowledge (Kant, Jakobi, Reinhold, Fichte, Beneke and Fries). 36. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., pp. 18–19. That scientific theories are not certainties and — despite the number of confirmations obtained — remain falsifiable (can be negated) is a question of logic: we do not have any criteria of truth, and logically we cannot preclude that the next test might negate a well-corroborated theory. However, that we must try to negate every theory of any kind is a methodological command necessary for scientific progress. In other words: if you want scientific progress, if you aim is to have more and more powerful theories that explain and predict more, then you must try to falsify current theories so that the scientific community feels compelled to find and test a better theory than the preceding one. Thus, from the methodological point of view, the principle of falsifiability is a

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proposal for establishing rules so it “is not ‘scientific’ or more precisely does not belong to empirical science” (K.R. Popper, The Rationality of Scientific Revolutions, in Rom Harré (ed.), Problems of Scientific Revolution, Oxford, 1975, p. 72). The principle of falsifiability can be expressed as a hypothetical imperative asserting what scientists must do if they want to achieve their goal of continually advancing towards better theories. (cf. K.R. Popper, Medawar on Hypothesis and Imagination, in Replies to My Critics, cit., p. 1036). Consequently, since the principle of falsifiability is not descriptive but normative, it is not falsifiable as are empirically testable descriptive assertions (cf. chapter 2 of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., especially p. 36) but it can still be criticized: “If, say, drinking coffee, or the taking of a certain (otherwise harmless) drug, could be shown to stimulate the output not only of scientific theories (reducing, say, the output of theories which are refuted), then this, I admit, would force me to give uo my views” (K.R. Popper, Medawar on Hypothesis and Imagination, in Replies to My Critics, cit., p. 1036). In other words: the principle of falsifiability is not descriptive (it does not describe what the scientists do — or at least what they always do) so it is not falsifiable. But it can be criticized if, for example, one can propose a better means, way or expedient — for example capable of reducing the number of wrong attempts — to arrive at better and better theories. Here too onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit. 37. The question of the relationships between scientific theories (that can be confuted factually) and metaphysical ideas (which can not be confuted factually) has become a rich subject of research in recent decades. The Viennese Neopositivists (M Schlick, R. Carnap, O. Neurath, etc.) maintained, on the basis of the principle of verification, that every metaphysical assertion is a non-sense. Very soon, however, it became clear that this principle was: a) in itself metaphysical; b)self-contradictory; c) and did not take into consideration (explain) even the (universal) theories of science. At Oxford, the analysts of language, driven by the “the principle of use of the “second” Wittgenstein (“don’t look for the meaning [of a word, of an expression], look for its use”), have attempted, rather than to condemn, to understand the uses and functions of different “plays on words” and thus also of metaphysical assertions: metaphysics is a vision that changes the entire intellectual scene (F. Waismann); metaphysics is a “paradox” and tries to say what — according to our usual standards of linguistic categories — could not be said, and therefore metaphysics is “linguistic penetration” (J. Wisdom); metaphysics may be the dawn of science in that “what begins as metaphysics may end as science” (P.F. Strawson), etc. On the other hand, the epistemology of Popper and those who came after him like J. Agassi, J. Watkins, W. Bartley and P.K. Feyerabend has dwelt on the theme of the relationships between falsifiable theories and unconfutable

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metaphysical ideas. The following are some important theses for the question under examination: 1) Semantic thesis: metaphysical theories (about man, history, the universe, etc.) are not at all senseless; 2) Historical thesis: with the growth of basic knowledge, theories that were at first metaphysical (for example, ancient atomism) have become scientific theories; 3) Logical thesis: the aforementioned historical thesis is understandable if attention is paid to the fact that the sphere of possibly true theories is always larger than the sphere of theories that can actually be tested; 4) Methodological thesis (a): to be good empiricists it is necessary to produce more metaphysics; 5) Methodological thesis (b): metaphysical theories are not falsifiable, but they can be criticized on the basis of how, in the attempt to solve the problems for which they were conceived in a given cultural “sphere,” they can collide with other ideas (scientific-naturalistic, logical, mathematical, or even metaphysical theories) which, at the time, people are not ready to renounce. Apropos of these subjects see: K.R. Popper, a) On the Status of Science and of Metaphysics in Conjectures and Confutations, cit.; b) The Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics, in Conjectures and Confutations, cit.; J. Watkins, Three Essays on Science and Metaphysics; J. Agassi, The Nature of Scientific Problems and Their Roots in Metaphysics; W. Bartley, The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics; P. K. Feyerabend, How To Be a Good Empiricist; D. Antiseri, a) Perché la metafisica è necessaria per la scienza e dannosa per la fede, Queriniana, Brescia, 1981; b) Il ruolo della metafisica nella scoperta scientifica e nella storia della scienza, in “Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica,” LXXIV, 1982, pp. 68–108; c) Idee metafisiche e sviluppo della scienza nel razionalismo critico di Karl R. Popper e nell’epistemologia post-popperiana, in Metafisica oggi, Morcelliana, Brescai, 1983, pp. 41–54; G. Boniolo, La fisica che genera metafisica. Un esempio: Prigogine, in Conoscenza scientifica e conoscenza non scientifica, ed by G. Boniolo, Piovan Editor, Abano, 1987, pp. 75–94; and also by G.Boniolo, Metodo e rappresentazioni del Mondo, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 1999, pp. 64–73. 38. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 19. 39. K. R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science. From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1983, p. xxxv. 40. K. R. Popper, The Epistemological Position of Evolutionary Epistemology, in All Life Is Problem Solving, Routledge, London, 1999, p. 56. 41. K. R. Popper, Perchè siamo liberi? Computer, mente, razionalità, 1997, p. 1. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid, cf., also Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 1979, p. XXI. 44. K. R. Popper, Perché siamo liberi? Computer, mente, razionalità, cit., p. 1.

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45. K. R. Popper, Unended Quest: an Intellectual Autobiography, Routledge, London, 1992, p. 91. 46. Op. cit., p. 91. 47. V. Kraft, Die Grundformen der wissenschaftlichen Methoden, HölderPichler-Tempky, Wien-Leipzig, 1925, p. 206. 48. Op. cit., p. 126. 49. Op. cit., p. 112. Apropos of the testability of hypotheses, see op. cit., pp. 154–163. Also see V. Kraft, Weltbegriff und Erkenntnisbegriff, Verlag J.A. Barth, Leipzig, 1912, especially pp. 185–201. 50. H. Gomperz, Die Wissenschaft und die Tat, Gerold, Wien, 1934, pp. 42–43. 51. Op. cit., p. 42 52. Op. cit., p. 9. 53. Cf. for example H. Feigl, The Logical Character of the Principle of Induction, in H. Feigl/ W. Sellars, Readings in Philosophical Analysis, New York, 1949, p. 297: “Induction is essentially different from deductive inference. It can never attain certainty. […] Hume has shown that induction can be proved certain neither on logical grounds nor on the basis of its own success. […] The more advanced factual sciences do not actually proceed by inductive generalization. Their method consists rather in the construction of hypothetico-deductive systems”. In his book, Theorie und Erfahrung in der Physik (G. Braun, Karlsruhe, 1929), Feigl specified that for the word theory he intended “a system of hypotheses or, to be more exact, a hypothetical-deductive system” (Op. cit., p. 13). Theories are systems of general hypotheses whose truth, or more correctly, whose probability Feigl says, “is decided by experiment” (Op. cit., p. 17). Generally “theories precede experimentation” and are tested by observation (Op. cit., p. 30 ff.). Further on, he writes: “Physics theories are hypothetical-deductive systems” (Op. cit., p. 111). Moreover, a distinction should be made between the psychological-historical point of view and the systematical-logical one — today we would say between the context of discovery and the context of justification. While theories like Newton’s “are in no way the result of induction from experimentation, their validity, however, can only be established inductively” (Op. cit., p. 115). Whenever we ask why we accept or reject a theory we immediately see that “it depends only on its inductive power or, in other words, its capacity to include specific factual material”(Ibid.). Thus, theories are not discovered by induction; but their validity is tested inductively (Op. cit., p. 116); and it should be emphasized that “verification can not be decided definitively” (Op. cit., p. 117). “There are no absolutely definitive decisions about the validity of theories. They must always be considered only approximations” (Op. cit., p. 128). 54. In 1925, in his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, Schlick wrote: “All knowledge of reality consists, strictly speaking, of hypothesis. No sci-

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entific truth is in principle secure against the danger that at some time it may be refuted and thus become invalid. Although there are innumerable truths about the real world that no one who is acquainted with them can doubt, none of them can be completely stripped of their hypothetical nature” (M. Schlick, General Theory of Knowledge, Springer Verlag, Wien-New York, 1974, § 41.2, p. 389). The three lessons Schlick gave at the University of London in November 1932 are the subject of Form and Content. An Introduction to Philosophical Thinking where Schlick states that “induction is certainly not a logical process. No validity validity cannot be proved. It cannot even be proved that a proposition informed by induction will be probably true […]. Therefore it is forever impossible to justify induction logically” (M. Schlick, Form and Content, in M. Schlick, Gesammelte Aufsätze, Gerold, Wien, 1938, p. 227) This is all as far as the non existence of a logic of induction is concerned. Schlick explains the hypothetical concept of science in the following clear terms: “Modern science […] is perfectly reconciled with the idea that all its general statements, all its formulations of general laws, must be considered as hypothetical and may have to be revised one day” (Op. cit. p. 233). Schlick see the progress of knowledge bound to this attitude because it is an attitude that “helps the scientist not to be dogmatic and keep his mind open to new ideas” (Ibid.). Therefore the propositions of science are and remain hypothetical: “A proposition about a future fact, or even about a past fact, or about “all” facts of a certain kind (so-called “grand complications”), must in a way, be regarded as hypotheses”(Op. cit., p. 227). In 1934, Schlick published the essay Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis in the fourth issue of the journal “Erkenntnis” (“Erkenntnis,” 4, 1934, pp. 79–93; reprinted in Gesammelte Aufsätze, cit., pp. 289–310. Two other brief notes should be added. In the essay Uber das Fundament der Erkenntnis, Schlick uses the term “ falsification” precisely to indicate the negation of a hypothesis by what he calls “ascertainments. In Form and Content he mentions Mind and the World Order published in 1929 by C. I. Lewis, which, as we shall see later, is a key work in the construction of a fallibilist picture of scientific knowledge (M. Schlick, Form and Content, cit., pp. 211–212). In reference to Schlick as founder and critic of the Wiener Kreis, see the brief mention by William M. Johnston in Chapter 12 of his book The Austrian Mind. An Intellectual and Social History 1848–1938, University of California Press, 1972. Perhaps it is not out of place here to mention that in 1933, another Viennese, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), published Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie (later translated with the title Epistemological Problems of Economics, New York University Press, New York-London, 1981). In the first chapter Mises states that, in the discovery of the laws of phenomena “the decisive step is taken only with the construction of an hypothesis: a proposition

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does not simply emerge from observation and experience […]. The hypothesis is already an intellectual elaboration of experience (Op. cit., p. 9). Since experience is limited to the past, “hypotheses must be continually verified anew by experience (Ibid.). Even though new experiments may induce us to reject empirical propositions, they can not force us to reject or modify “a priori theories” or, we might say, typical-ideal models (Op. cit., p. 23–29). In any case, “nothing is more clearly an inversion of the truth than the thesis of empiricism that theoretical propositions are arrived at through induction on the basis of a presuppositionless observation of “facts”. It is only with the aid of a theory that we can determine what the facts are” (Op. cit., p. 28). What really matters is not the data but “the mind that deals with them” (Op. cit., p. 71). 55. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, Kluwer, Dordrecht, p. 185. 56. Op. cit., p. 173. 57. Op. cit., p. 261. 58. Op. cit., p. 180. 59. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, cit., p. 176. The significant works that Mach cites on these subjects are: Principles of Science by Jevons; Leitfaden der Logik by A. Stöhr; La theorie physique by Duhem; Theorie der Induktion by Apelt; and the works of Whewell, J.B. Stallo, etc. 60. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, cit., p. 178. 61. Ibid. 62. Op. cit., p. 63. Ibid. 64. Op. cit., p. 131. 65. Op. cit., p. 149. 66. Op. cit., p. 135. 67. Op. cit., p. 149. 68. Ibid. In reference to this point, Mach recalls the interesting work of G. A. Colozza, L’immaginazione nella scienza, Paravia, Torino, 1900. New edition, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli-Messina, 1997. 69. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, cit, p. 120. 70. Op. cit., p. 352. 71. Op. cit., p. 353. 72. Op. cit., p. 354. 73. Op. cit., p. 355. 74. Op. cit., p. 356. 75. Op. cit., p. 351 76. Op. cit., p. 84. 77. Op. cit., p. 178. 78. Op. cit., p. 179. 79. Op. cit., pp. 179–180. 80. Op. cit., p. 9.

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81. Op. cit., p. 175. 82. Ibid. 83. Op. cit., p. 178. Italics added. 84. Op. cit., p. 196. It seems to me that this affirmation by Mach contradicts Milic Capek’s interpretaion of him as the defender of the completeness of science (Cf. M. Capek, Ernst Mach’s Biological Theory of Knowledge, in “Synthese,” 18, 1968, pp. 171–191; see, for example, p. 173. According to Capek, on this point Mach would follow Spencer. So that “only if we de-spencerize Mach will the completely actual significance of his biologically oriented epistemology become clear.” To be truthful, there are some sporadic expressions in Mach that could give rise to Capek’s idea (cf. for example, at p. 178, where there is mention of a complete knowledge of the facts). However, not only Mach’s work but the context in which these expressions appear seem to me unequivocally to exclude Capek’s interpretation. My thoughts are confirmed by what T.D. Campbell says on this subject in Evolutionary Epistemology. Campbell cites an observation by Bolzman (Populäre Schriften, Barth, Leipzig, 1905, p. 339) who says: “Mach himself very ingeniously demonstrated that no theory is absolutely true or false and, moreover, that every theory is constantly being tested in exactly the same way as Darwin described for organisms.” 85. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, cit., p. 208. 86. Op. cit., p. 209. 87. Op. cit., p. 222. 88. Op. cit., p. 210. Popper too believes that the method of science is unique. Apropos, see my book Teoria unificata del metodo, Liviana, Padova, 1981. 89. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, cit., p. 214. 90. Op. cit., p. 207. 91. Op. cit., p. 208. 92. Op. cit., p. 358. 93. Ibid. In reference to Mach, see: Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher, Reidel, Dordrecht, New York, 1970; A. D’ELIA, Ernst Mach, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1971; J. A. Agassi, Mach on the Logic of Enquiry, in “Philosophia,” 8, 1978, reprinted in J. Agassi, The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics, Open Court, La Salle (Ill.),. 1988, particularly pp. 30–32. Notes to Chapter 2 1. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, London, 2002, cit. p. 7 fn. 2. J. von Liebig, Über Francis Bacon von Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung, Literarish-artistiche Anstalt der J. G. Cottaschen Buchhandlung, München, 1863.

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3. Op. cit., p. 1. 4. Op. cit., p. 2. On page 55 Liebig says that men like Leonardo, Paracelsus and Gilbert had contested Scholasticism long before and more effectively than Bacon. 5. Op. cit., pp. 2–3. 6. Op. cit., p. 3 ff. 7. Op. cit., p. 20. 8. Op. cit., p. 21 ff. 9. Op. cit., p. 28. 10. Op. cit., pp. 27–28. 11. Op. cit., p. 30. 12. Op. cit., p. 32. 13. Op. cit., p. 33. 14. Op. cit., pp. 35–38, especially p. 37. 15. Op. cit., p. 38. 16. Op. cit., pp. 38 ff. 17. Op. cit., p. 45. 18. Ibid. Here Liebig is referring to passage 1,124 of Bacon’s Novum Organum. 19. Op. cit., p. 46. 20. Op. cit., p. 47; and on p. 56 Liebig once again points out that Bacon’s inductive concept is in itself false and of no use in the natural sciences. 21. Op. cit., p. 47; see also p. 48. 22. Op. cit., p. 48. Though it is completely false, Bacon’s concept, Liebig says, was very successful. “The main feature of productive ideas — he says — can often be recognized by the fact that they are contrary to the mainstream ideas of their time and that often they are opposed for a long time before they are accepted. The most outstanding example of this is the reception of Newton’s new doctrine in England: forty years after the first edition of his immortal work, the system of Descartes was still taught in English universities as the only truth; as long as he lived, Newton never saw a defender of his doctrine at Cambridge, where he had taught so long” (Op. cit., p. 33). Not until 1718, did Samuel Clarke “manage, through subterfuge, to have Newton’s ideas enter the lessons of the professors at English universities in the form of notes to a manual of Cartesian physics (Op. cit., pp. 33–34). This was not true for Bacon’s ideas: they took over without difficulty since, in Liebig’s opinion, they were neither true, nor new nor productive. They were only “in harmony with the popular ideas of the ignorant masses” (Op. cit., p. 34). Paolo Rossi (in his book Francesco Bacone: dalla magia alla scienza, Laterza, Bari, 1957, p. 16; English translation by Sacha Rabinovitch: Francis Bacon. From Magic to Science, London, Routledge, 1968, p. xiv) says Liebig’s condemnations of Bacon are “biased and radical.”

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23. J. von Liebig, Über Francis Bacon von Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung cit., p. 49. 24. J. von Liebig, Induktion und Deduktion, Im Verlag der Königl. Akademie, München, 1865; Italian trans. by D. Antiseri, Induzione e deduzione, in “Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine,” 1,4 (1983), pp. 67–71. 25. Op. cit., p. 68. 26. Ibid. 27. Op. cit., p. 70. 28. Op. cit., p. 71. 29. Ibid. 30. See K.R. Popper: 1) Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, Mohr, Tübingen, 1994; 2) Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, edited by W. W. Bartley, III. 31. H. Hertz, Die Prinzipien der Mechanik, 1894; English translation by D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley: The Principles of Mechanics, Macmillan, London, 1899, p. 1. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Op. cit., p. 2. 35. Op. cit., p. 2. 36. Op. cit., p. 2. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Op. cit., pp. 2–3. 41. Op. cit., p. 3. 42. Op. cit., p. 2. On page 4, Hertz writes that mechanics can lead to various axioms, and thus we obtain various images of things: “and these images we can test and compare with each other in respect of permissibility, correctness, and appropriateness.” 43. Op. cit., p. 8. 44. Op. cit., p. 9. 45. Op. cit., p. 11. 46. Op. cit., p. 36. Hertz proposed this hypothesist and fallibilist image of science in 1894. Seven years before, in 1887, J.M. Rigg published in “Mind” the essay The Place of Hypothesis in Experimental Science where he maintained that hypothesis is “the most important part of the inductive process” (p. 556) which “consists in framing an hypothesis […]; the hypothesis, when framed, is tested by attempting to deduce the phenomena from it with the help, if necessary, of experiments to test the adaptability of the theory to special cases. This last process is sometimes called verification, and no doubt in a certain relative sense it is so. Verification, in the sense of strict proof, it certainly is not, since even the hypothesis stands

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the test its absolute truth is not thereby established. The principal use of the process commonly known as verification is not to verify, but to disprove. It is a criterion rather of error than of truth. […] It may not be possible for us to attain absolute truth by means of hypotheses” (pp.558–559). Moreover, when we do research, as in physics for example, principles like that of uniformity or immutability of the law “are indispensable to physics, but they are not empirically verifiable; the only verification of which they are susceptible is just their indispensability. They are principles of the possibility of physical science”(p. 561). 47. K. R. Popper, Science: Conjectures and Refutations, in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2004, pp. 44–46. 48. K. R. Popper, Unended Quest, Routledge, London, 1992, p. 129. 49. Op. cit., p. 132. 50. K. R. Popper, Einstein’s Influence on My View of Science: an Interview, in Einstein: the Man and his Achievement, ed. by G.J. Whitrow, British Broadcasting Corporation, London, 1967, p. 23. 51. Op. cit., pp. 23–24. Scientific criticism is different from philosophical criticism; “it is not an attack upon the proof or the justification of a scientific theory, but an attack upon the theory itself; not an attack on the claim that the theory can be shown to be true, but an attack on what the theory itself tells us – on its content or its consequences.”(Op. cit., p. 24.). 52. Op. cit., p. 25. 53. Op. cit., p. 26. 54. Ibid. 55. Op. cit., p. 27. 56. Op. cit., p. 25. 57. Ibid. 58. A. Einstein, The World as I See It, English translation by Alan Harris, Lane, London, 1935. 59. A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years, Thames and Hudson, London, 1950, p. 96. 60. A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, Cambridge University Press, 1938, p. 5. 61. A. Einstein, The World as I See It, cit, p. 133. 62. Op. cit., p. 136. 63. A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, cit, p. 310. 64. A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years, cit, p. 78. 65. Ibid. 66. A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, cit., p. 312. 67. A. Einstein, The World As I See It, cit., p. 180. 68. A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years, cit, p. 96. 69. A. Einstein, The World As I See It, cit., p. 172. 70. Ibid.

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71. A. Einstein, Induktion und Deduktion in der Physik in “Berliner Tageblatt”, 25th December 1919. 72. F. A. von Hayek, The Theory of Complex Phenomena, in The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy. Essays in Honor of K:R: Popper, ed. by M. Bunge, The Free Press, New York, 1964, p. 334; reprinted in F.A. von Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London-Henley, 1967, p. 24. 73. Ch. S. Peirce, The Fixation of Belief, in Chance, Love and Logic, Routledge, London, 2000, p. 15. 74. Op. cit., p. 11. This clearly shows that Pierce believed the truth of our propositions is not reduced to their usefulness. 75. Ch. S. Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, in Chance, Love and Logic, Routledge, London, 2000, p. 54. 76. Op. cit., p. 60. 77. Ch. S. Peirce, Collected Papers ed. by. Ch. Hartshorne and P.P. Weiss, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1965. 78. Ch. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 1.65. 79. Op. cit., 4.431. 80. Op. cit., 5.145. This is one of the meanings of the concept of induction proposed by Pierce. In my opinion, it is the most pertinent one in Peirce’s philosophy of science. For a different definition, see op. cit., 2.636. 81. Op. cit., 5.189. 82. W. B. Gallie, Peirce and Pragmatism, Greenwood, Westport, 1975, p. 99. 83. K. R. Popper, Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, Mohr, Tübingen, 1994. 84. E. Freeman and H. Sholimowski, The Search for Objectivity in Peirce and Popper, in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Open Court, La Salle, Ill., 1974, pp. 464 ff. See especially pp. 513–515. 85. Op. cit., p. 467. 86. See C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 5.590–604. 87. E. Freeman and H. Sholimowski, The Search for Objectivity in Peirce and Popper, cit., p. 467. 88. Cf. K. R. Popper, Replies to My Critics, in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, cit., p.1065. 89. Ibid. 90. E. Freeman and H. Sholimowski, The Search for Objectivity in Peirce and Popper, cit., p. 479. 91. Ibid. 92. Ch. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, cit., 1.141. 93. Op. cit., 1.142. 94. Op. cit., 1.147. 95. Op. cit., 1.141.

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96. Op. cit., 1.149. 97. Op. cit., 1.171. 98. Op. cit., 7.206. 99. Op. cit., 7.131. 100. Op. cit., 7.219. 101. Op. cit., 5.145. 102. Op. cit., 3.374. 103. C. I. Lewis, Mind and the World-Order. Outline of a Theory of Knowledge, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1929, p. 230 (reprinted by Dover Publications, New York, 1956). 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 106. Op. cit., p. 233. 107. Op. cit., p. 234. 108. Op. cit., p. 259. 109. Op. cit., p. 281. 110. Op. cit., p. 302. 111. Op. cit., p. 302. 112. Op. cit. pp. 302–303. 113. Op. cit., p. 302. 114. Op. cit., p. 340. In the essay Experience and Meaning (in “Philosophical Review,” 43, 1934, p. 137) Lewis said: “no verification of the kind of knowledge commonly stated in propositions is ever absolutely complete and final.” Notes to Chapter 3 1. W. Whewell, History of Scientific Ideas, J. Parker and Son, London, 1858, vol. 1, p. 26. On page 66, Whewell writes: “Experience must always consist of a limited number of observations. And, however numerous this may be, they can show nothing with regard to the infinite number of cases in which the experiment has not been made. […] Experience cannot, indeed, offer the smallest ground for the necessity of a proposition.” History of Scientific Ideas originally appeared as the first part of The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, London, 1840. 2. Op. cit., p. 29. See also p. 30. 3. Op. cit., p. 29. 4. Ibid. See also p. 48. On the important questing concerning “facts” of science as “constructs” of the scientists, see pp. 42–45. 5. Op. cit., p. 30. 6. Ibid. 7. W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, cit., vol. 1, pp. 54–55.

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8. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 49. This is the central theme of Whewell’s thought so it recurs often in his work. 9. W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, cit., vol. 2, p. 47. 10. Op. cit., p. 35. 11. Op. cit., p. 39. See also p. 471. 12. Op. cit., p. 49. 13. W. Whewell, History of Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, cit., p. 313. 14. W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, vol. 1, cit., p. VIII. 15. Op. cit., pp. 467-468. 16. W. Whewell, History of Inductive Sciences, cit., p. 2; cf. also p. 478. 17. W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, cit., p. 238. 18. Op. cit., p. 79–80. 19. Op. cit., p. 469; and pp. 73-74. 20. W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, cit., p. 1; and p. 389. 21. W. Whewell, a) The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, cit., vol. 1, p. 40; b) On the Philosophy of Discovery, cit., p. 305. 22. W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, cit., vol. 1, p. 471. 23. Op. cit., p. 94. 24. In reference to the influence of Kant’s ideas on Whewell’s — an influence which Whewell openly admitted — it should, nevertheless, be stressed that while for Kant categories have a natural character (they are fixed and therefore not subject to revision), Whewell, who was interested in the development of science, sees the “historicity” (and thus the change, revision and substitution) of ideas. 25. For John Stuart Mill’s criticism of Whewell’s ideas, see J.S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, III, Routledge, London, 1996; Whewell’s first response to Mill in the publication Of Induction, with Expecial Reference to Mr. J. Stuart Mill’s System of Logic, 1849; see also Chapt. XII of The Philosophy of Discovery, cit. On the controversy between Mill and Whewell see: S. Marcucci, L’ “idealismo” scientifico di William Whewell, Istituto di Filosofia, Università degli studi, Pisa, 1963, pp. 230 ff.; G. Lanaro, La teoria dell’induzione in William Whewell, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1987, pp. 142 ff.; H. I. Walsh, Whewell and Mill on Induction, in “Philosophy of Science” (1962); E. Strong, William Whewell and John Stuart Mill: Their Controversy about Scientific Knowledge, in “Journal of the History of Ideas” (1955). 26. Apropos of this judgment, cf. R. Blanché, Le rationalisme de Whewell, Paris, 1935, pp. 78–79. For example, the idea of the relationship that Whewell sees between metaphysical ideas and scientific ones

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is very valuable. “The difference between those who make discoveries and those who indulge in useless speculation is that the researchers of the first kind have a good metaphysics, while those of the second kind have a bad one “ (W. Whewell, The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, cit., vol. 2, p. 473). Briefly stated, Whewell believed that behind important scientific discoveries there are important, enlightening metaphysical ideas, as is easily demonstrated in the work of Newton or Faraday. Outstanding results in scientific research are obtained, in Whewell’s opinion, not so much by eliminating the metaphysical as by substituting good metaphysic for bad (for the development of scientific knowledge) metaphysics. On this subject also see D. Antiseri: Il ruolo della metafisica nella scoperta scientifica e nella storia della scienza, in “Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica ,” LXXIV, 1 (1982), pp. 68–108. On the timeliness of Whewell, see G. Lanaro, La teoria dell’induzione in William Whewell, cit., pp. 13–14. Lanaro’s consideration are greater value because he intentionally avoided “any undue modernization.” In his essay Hypothesis and Imagination, (in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, cit., p. 285) P. B. Medawar writes that the concept that sees scientific theories as hypothetical-deductive systems is an idea that Popper carefully explained and strongly defended. But, Medawar says, “quite a large part of it had been propounded at the level of learned discourse rather than of critical analysis by William Whewell […] in 1840.” In Replies to My Critics (in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, cit., p. 1036) , Popper states that Medawar’s tribute to William Whewell is merited. 27. J. F. W. Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, ,Longmans, London, 1830. Hershel said that “the immortal countryman Bacon” was responsible proclaiming the “grand and fertile” principle and developing the idea that “the whole of natural philosophy consists entirely of a series of inductive generalizations, commencing with the most circumstantially stated particulars, and carried up to universal laws, or axioms, which comprehend in their statements every subordinate degree of generality, and of a corresponding series of inverted reasoning from generals to practicals, by which these axioms are traced back into their remotest consequences, and all particular propositions deduced from them” (Op. cit., p. 104). On the basis of inductive generalizations it is possible to formulate “bold hypothesis” (Op. cit., p. 198) capable of “particularizing” these generalizations, the truth of which can be tested by extracting their consequences and comparing them with facts (Op. cit., p. 199). 28. K. Pearson, The Grammar of Science, Adam and Charles Black, London, 1892, 19002; 19113 (from which I quote): “The unity of all science – Pearson says – consists alone in its method, not in its material”(Op. cit., p. 12); and “disciplined imagination has been at the bottom of all great

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scientific discoveries” (Op. cit., p. 30). In fact, “all great scientists, have in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries”(Ibid.). The imagination used by poets and novelists was also used by scientists like Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin (Ibid.). The discovery of a theory or formula on which groups of facts are hung “is the work, not of the mere cataloguer, but of the man endowed with creative imagination”(p. 31) The discovery of a law is, thus, a distinctive function of the creative imagination (Op. cit., p. 31; cf. also p. 87). However, this imagination must be disciplined (Op. cit., p. 31) in the sense that a law — once it has be formulated , often the work of what appears to be inspired genius — “must be tested and criticized by its discoverer in every conceivable way” (Op. cit., p. 31 and p. 55). In agreement with Victor Cousin, Pearson says that “it is such criticism […] which is, indeed, the very life-blood of science” (Op. cit., p. 31). Criticism is based on “facts” which should be seen as “constructions” (p. 40): a fact is a very complex group of properties (Op. cit., p. 40). Science progresses by means of criticism which replaces theories with theories that draw on more facts (Op. cit., p. 97 and p. 99). 29. G. Gore, The Art of Scientific Discovery on the General Conditions and Methods of Research in Physics and Chemistry, Longmans Green and Co. London, 1878. In his book, which clearly shows the influence of the ideas of W. Whewell, Gore states from the very beginning that “there is no royal road to discovery” (Op. cit., p. 7). In fact, “the finding of new of scientific truths is a tentative process, and no man can unerringly divine the secrets of nature”(Ibid.) Scientific research requires an extraordinary degree of invention, imagination and reasoning power. It is a difficult task. Actually, “the discovery of new knowledge is, of all facts, the most allied to creation. The ancients classed inventors with gods” (Op. cit., p. 10). It is the brain that generates ideas, even if we no not yet know how (Op. cit., p. 36). In any case, in agreement with Whewell, Gore maintains that all the great discoveries depend on the combination of exact facts with clear ideas (Op. cit., p. 83). Facts are the basis of our scientific knowledge and its application, and “a single fact may overturn the boldest theory” (Op. cit., p. 83), but we must keep in mind two things: first, that the facts of science are something that has been elaborated and, second, that facts in nature are often different from the ideas that we have made from them (Op. cit. pp. 83–85). In other words: “no proposition can be proved to be universally true by means of experience alone, because experience is finite”(Op. cit., p. 88; cf. also p. 146). Nor is “the age of an opinion […] sufficient proof of its truth” (Op. cit., p. 101). On the other hand, if it is true that “man’s mind is a mirror of nature,” it is also true that it is “a mirror full of defects” (Op. cit., p. 102), and mistakes due to various situations and causes are frequent in the course of research and in the

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history of science (Op. cit., pp. 105–141) : but recognizing , avoiding or correcting a mistake “it is often a condition of success in research” (Op. cit., p. 105).In fact, “to form hypotheses, and then employ much labour and skill in refuting, if they do not succeed in establishing them, is a part of the usual process of inventive minds.” (Op. cit., p. 364). The difficulties and risks in the choice of a fertile subject (Op. cit., pp. 372–377); the advantages of variety in experimentation (Op., cit., pp. 382–384); the importance of measurement (Op. cit. pp. 387–396); the explanation of results (Op. cit., pp. 447–452); the importance for the discovery of new or improved instruments (Op. cit., pp. 470–486); the importance in later research of previous discoveries (Op. cit., pp. 182–189); and the environmental and psychological conditions that favor research (Op. cit., pp. 240 ff.) are only some of the interesting subjects treated finely and with ample examples by Gore, who also deals with the “principle of science” or “general truths,” foremost among them the origin of the universe (Op. cit., pp. 158 ff.) 30. J. Tyndall, On the Scientific Use of Imagination, Longmans, London, 1870. Tyndall says that among its numerous advantages, research in physics makes us understand the real value and the good employment of imagination, a marvellous faculty that, if left to itself completely uncontrolled, leads us into a forest of confusion and errors, but when “properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of the human being, the source of poetry and scientific discovery (Ibid.); imagination is the instrument without which neither Newton, Davy nor Columbus would have achieved their discoveries. Research is a struggle, and in this struggle we pierce the obscurity of the world of the senses. With the aid of what the Germans call Anschauungsgabe (intuition) and Einbildungkraft (power of imagination). There are those who underrate the role of the imagination in scientific research, but actually, Tyndall stresses, when limited and directed by strong reason, the imagination becomes the most powerful tool in physical discoveries. Newton’s passage from an apple falling to the ground to the moon attracted by the earth is a work of the imagination, just as the theory of evolution is the result of flights of the imagination. The truth is that without this ability our knowledge of nature would be reduced to pure classification of coexistence and successions. The effects of the imagination ( that is, hypotheses) musts be guided by and subjected to the rigor of reason: and this means that their test is carried out on their observed consequences. Moreover, if there is no contradiction between the deductions that we infer from hypotheses and nature, then we can say that this complex and creative unity, in which reason and imagination are tied together make us enter a world which is not less real than the world of the senses and which is suggested and justified by the world of the senses.

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31. W. S. Jevons, Elementary Lessons in Logic, Macmillan, London, 1870. In reference to the “theory of Jevons,” see G. Eheymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens. J.A. Barth, Leipzig, 1905, pp. 255–263. 32. W. S.Jevons, Elementary Lessons in Logic, cit., p. 257. 33. Op. cit., p. 258. 34. Op. cit., p. 259. To confirm what was said, Jevons refers to “historical examples” such as the discoveries of Newton and Pascal; he scientific method, Jevons says, (In Pure Logic, Macmillan, London, 1890 ), is reduced to the following four stages: preliminary observation, hypothesis, deductive reasoning, verification. 35. W. S. Jevons, Elementary Lessons in Logic, cit., p. 273. 36. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science. A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method. Macmillan, London, 1873; 18772 (from which I quote) p. 504. 37. The fact is, says Jevons (in Pure Logic), that inductive reasoning is really done by creating or imagining laws. Inductive reasoning, Jevons believes, is done by “inventing or imagining laws” or hypotheses, the results of which are then subject to test; and whenever deductions are in contrast with observations, those hypotheses are probably wrong and we should look for new ones (Ibid.). Inductive reasoning, that is, the invention of hypotheses to be tested on observed consequences, is done, in Jevons opinion, both in science and in everyday life (Op. cit.). 38. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, cit., p. 509. 39. Ibid. 40. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, cit., p. 513. 41. Ibid. As an example of a vague theory that can not be tested, Jevons cites the theory of vortexes, which “did not present any mode of calculating the exact relations between the distances and periods of the planets and satellites; it could not, therefore, undergo that rigorous testing to which Newton scrupulously submitted his theory of gravity before its promulgation” (Ibid.). 42. Ibid. 43. Op. cit., p. 592. 44. Op. cit., p. 518. 45. Op. cit., p. 516. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Op. cit., p. 518. 49. Ibid. Cf. on this point the instructive considerations in R.Simili, Logica, metodo e scienze in Gran Bretagna [Logic, Method and Science in Great Britain] (1860–1930), Loescher, Torino, 1986, pp. 49–51. 50. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, cit., p. 586.

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51. Ibid. 52. Op. cit., pp. 586–587. 53. Op. Cit., p. 587. Jevons finds a persuasive example of tenacity in sustaining a hypothesis that would later be victorious in Faraday’s research on the connection between magnetism and light. This research is a vivid example of tenacity to sustain favorite theory until the results of experimentation speak clearly against accepted concepts (pp. 57–588). Proliferation of theories and tenacity to sustain them were also dealt with by K.R. Popper, I. Lakatos, and P.K. Feyerabend. On the basis of what Jevons has said so far, I do not think that Poppers judgement of Jevon’s point of view is justified (in Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge) when he says that Jevon’s point of view is intermediate and attempts to characterize the empirical-scientific method as a connection of deduction and induction. 54. See E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothèse, Baillière, Paris, 1880. 55. C. Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, English translation by H. C. Greene, Schuman, 1949, p. 2. 56. Ibid. Here he specifically mentions the unicity of the scientific method, a theme to which he would often return. Cf. also S. Poggi, Il positivismo, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1987, p. 124. 57. C. Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, cit., p. 3. Paul Bert, who was Bernard’s student, writes that “the bold, though somewhat disorderly, experimentation of the celebrated physiologist [Magendie, who was Bernard’s teacher], his merciless criticism, and his skepticism about even his own discoveries made a profound, and one might say, creative impression on the spirit of the young Claude Bernard.” Cf. P. Bert, Preface to C.Bernard, La science expérimentale, Ballière, Paris, 1878, p. 17 58. C. Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, cit. p. 26. 59. Ibid. 60. Op. cit. p. 27. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. On p. 28 Bernard also writes: “The experimenter’s mind differs from the metaphysician’s or the scholastic’s in its modesty, because experiment makes him, moment by moment, conscious of both his relative and his absolute ignorance. In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of thing, will be hidden from him forever and that he can know only relations.” See also p. 223: “One of the greatest obstacles to the free and universal movement

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of human knowledge is the tendency that leads different kinds of knowledge to separate into systems. […] Systems therefore strive to enslave the human mind”. See also p. 221: “To find truth, men of science need only stand face to face with nature, and in following experimental medicine, question her with the help of more and more perfect means of investigation. In this case, I think that the best philosophic system consists in not having any.” 65. Op. cit., p. 82. 66. Op. cit., p. 81. 67. Op. cit., p. 42. On the same page: “Great men have been compared to giants upon whose shoulders pygmies have climbed, who nevertheless see further than they. This simply means that science makes progress subsequently to the appearance of great men, and precisely because of their influence. The result is that their successors know many more scientific facts that the great men themselves had in their day. But a great man is, none the less, still a great man, that is to say, — a giant”. 68. Op. cit., p. 222. 69. Op. cit., p. 30. 70. Op. cit., p. 50–51. 71. Ibid. The idea of falsifying theories and that of progress in science could not have been expressed better. 72. C. Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, cit., p. 41. As Mirko D. Grmek says, Bernard “knew how to change ideas as if they were clothes, without any sentimental attachments to the past. As a theorist of “fallibility,” he was even more an eager adept and practicing sacrificer of theories” (M.D. Grmek, Raisonnement experimental et recherches toxicologiques chez Claude Bernard, Droz, Genève, 1973). 73. C. Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, cit., p. 40: “The idea, in a word, is the motive of all reasoning, in science as elsewhere.” 74. Op. cit., p. 33. On p. 35: “There can be no method for making discoveries, because philosophic theories [cannot] give inventive spirit and aptness of mind to men, who do not possess them”. 75. Bernard (Op. cit., p. 33) writes: “If facts necessarily gave birth to ideas, every new fact ought to beget a new idea”. 76. Op. cit., p. 34. 77. Op. cit., p. 47. 78. Op. cit., p. 48. 79. Ibid. Bernard was a firm believer in deduction and also convinced that the idea of empirical testability is precisely what acts as a demarcation between scientific ideas and non-scientific or metaphysical ones. Indeed, Bernard writes (Op. cit., p. 33): “If we made an hypothesis which experiment could not verify, in that very act we should leave the experimental

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method to fall into the errors of the scholastics and makers of systems.” Apropos of “metaphysics and science “in C. Bernard, see the informative pages by M. Baldini, Theoria e storia della scienza, Armando, Roma, 1975, pp. 154–157. From what has been said in these pages about Bernard, the proximity of Bernard’s ideas and Popper’s is immediately apparent. P.B. Medawar, in his essay Hypothesis and Imagination (in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Open Court, La Salle (Ill.) 1974, vol. 1, p. 288) refers to Bernard as one of the most perspicacious supporters of the method of conjectures and confutations. In Replies to My Critics (in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, cit., vol. 2 p. 1030), Popper writes: “Medawar’s contribution made me read Claude Bernard’s Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine and I am immensely grateful for this.” In Popper’s opinion, Bernard was not only “a great and revolutionary scientist,” but also a keen theorist of science who, with “his fascinating examples” has demonstrated that the use of bold hypothesis in science is the rule and not the exception in the work of the scientist. In reference to Bernard, in addition to the mentioned fundamental work by Grmek, see M. Di Giandomenico, Filosofia e medicina sperimentale in Claude Bernard, Adriatica Editrice, Bari, 1968; the essay by F. Nuzzaci, Claude Bernard e Gaston Bachelard: degli ostacoli della conoscenza scientifica in “Il Protagora,” 5 (1984); and the collection of essays Claude Bernard, Bertani, Verona, 1982. 80. H. Poincaré, La science et l’hypotèse, Flammarion, Paris, 1902; reprinted 1968. English translation: Science and Hypothesis, Scott, London, 1905. 81. H. Poincaré, La valeur de la science, Flammaarion, Paris. 1905. 82. H. Poincaré, La valeur de la science, cit., pp. 218–219. 83. Op. cit., p. 221 ff. 84. Op. cit., p. 233. 85. Op. cit., pp. 231–232. 86. Op. cit., p. 233. 87. Ibid. 88. H. Poincaré, La science et l’hypothèse, cit., p. 157. 89. Op. cit., 165 90. H. Poincaré, Science et mèthode, Flammarion, Paris, 1912, p. 308. 91. H. Poincaré, La science et l’hypothèse, cit., p. 165. 92. Ibid. 93. Op. cit., p.p. 75–76. 94. P. Duhem, La théorie physique: son object et sa structure, Marcel Rivière, Paris 1914. English translation by Philip P. Wiener: The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Princeton University Press, 1954. 95. P. Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, cit., p. 3. 96. Op. cit., p. 3. 97. Op. cit., p. 19.

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98. Op. cit., pp. 20–21. 99. Op. cit., p. 21. 100. Op. cit., p. 23. 101. Op. cit., p. 23. 102. Op. cit., p. 26. 103. Op. cit., p. 177. 104. Op. cit., p. 185. 105. Op. cit., p. 187. 106. Op. cit., p. 200. 107. Op. cit., p. 190. 108. E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothese, Baillière, Paris, 1880; Alcan, Paris, 1895. The idea that hypothesis is central and pervasive in scientific research Naville came to Naville “in a simple flash” in 1844 , while he was studying the philosophy of Bacon (see, E. Naville, Mémoires sur le livre du chancelier Bacon “De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum,” Genève 1884). “Twenty years later, in 1864, the problem came to my attention again during metaphysical studies. Since my point of view on this matter had been further developed and clarified, it was subjected to the judgment of those present at one of m y public courses. I maintained that in ordinary texts on logic and in the major part of the treatises on method, the truly active principle of scientific progress was overlooked; and I sensed I had made a discovery “ (E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothese; cit., p. xiii) 109. Op. cit., p. XIII. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. Op. cit., p. XIV. 114. Ibid. 115. Ibid. 116. Op. cit., p. 1; p. 6; cf. also Le méthode et le programme de la philosophie, in «Bibl. Univ.», October, 1884, p. 73. 117. E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothèse, cit. p. 2. 118. Ibid. 119. Op. cit., p. 7. 120. Op. cit., p. 10. 121. Ibid, cf. also pp. 203-210 (Psychologie de l’hypothèse). 122. Op. cit., p. 11. 123. Ibid. 124. Op. cit., p. 12. 125. Ibid. 126. Op. cit., pp. 24-28. 127. Op. cit., pp. 13-14. Cf. also La méthode et le programme de la philosophie, cit. p. 21.

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128. E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothèse, cit., p. 14. 129. Op. cit., p. 54. 130. Op. cit., pp. 59-67. 131. Op. cit., p. 60. 132. Ibid, See also my essay, Il ruolo della metafisica nella scoperta scientifica e nella storia della scienza, in “Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica”, LXXXIV, 1. 133. E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothèse, cit., p. 62. 134. Op. cit., pp. 62-63. 135. Op. cit., p. 63. 136. Op. cit., p. 66. 137. E. Naville, La logique de l’hypothese, cit. 138. L. Palmieri, Uso delle ipotesi nelle scienze sociali, in “Annuario della RegiUniversità degli Studi di Napoli,” Academicc Year 1880–1881, Napoli, 1881, p. 83. [All the quotations from Palmieri’s works have been translated into English for this edition] 139. Op. cit., p. 84. 140. Ibid. 141. Op. cit., p. 85. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid. On this point, see also what Palmieri writes in Fisica sperimentale e fisica terrestre, Stamperia Editrice del Fibreno, Napoli, 1860, 1, pp. 4–5: “Often the greatest finds were first simple hypotheses in the minds of the discoverers that were later marvelously ascertained by experience.” 145. L. Palmieri, Uso delle ipotesi nelle scienze naturali, cit. p. 85. See also p. 86. 146. Op. cit., p.86 and on p. 88: “wings are not for everybody, only for the genius who often mocks the rules and constrictions of the pedants during his flights.” 147. Op. cit., p. 86. 148. Op. cit., p. 87. 149. Ibid. 150. Op. cit., p. 88. 151. Op. cit., pp. 89–90. 152. Op. cit., p. 90. 153. Op. cit., pp. 90–91. In the aforementioned volume Fisica sperimentale e fisica terrestre, p. 5, Palmieri says: “The method to which modern physics owes its glory is the one introduced by Galileo and called hypothetical experimental and where experience and reason work together as opposed to the mere inductive empiricism of Verulum’s philosophy.” 154. L. Palmieri, Uso delle ipotesi nelle scienze naturali, cit., p. 91.

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155. Op. cit., p. 94. 156. Like Naville, Palmieri maintains that hypothesis does not only serve as a guide to observation but that it also, “in an almost inexplicable way, even enters the Baconian or inductive process” (Op. cit., p. 91). 157. Op. cit., p. 91. 158. Op. cit., p. 93. 159. Op. cit., p. 91. In Fisica sperimentale e fisica terrestre (p. 6) we also read: “the physics of the ancients, who lacked means to experiment, was all hypothetical and speculative, but it was also full of uncertainties. However, when they could discard arbitrary and unfounded opinions by using the criteria of experimentation, science advanced more rapidly. Observation consisting of surprising nature in action and stealing the secret of it workings is undoubtedly very useful; but experimentation almost always forces nature to reveal its mysteries since it is at the mercy of appropriate devices and is asked a question it can not decline to answer. 160. G. A. Colozza, L’immaginazione nella scienza. Appunti di psicologia e pedogogia. Ditta G. B. Paravia e Comp., Torino-Roma-Milano-Firenze-Napoli, 1899.p. 15. [All the quotations from Colozza’s works have been translated into English] 161. Ibid. 162. Op. cit., pp. 15–51. 163. Op. cit., p. 55; pp. 217 ff. 164. Op. cit., p. 55. 165. Op. cit., pp. 61–64; p. 246. On the distinction made by Colozza between problem and exercise, see my Teoria e pratica della ricerca nella scuola di base, La Scuola Ed., Brescia, 1985, pp. 177–195; esp. pp. 190–191. 166. G. A. Colozza, L’immaginazione nella scienza, cit., p. 248; cf. also p. 260. 167. Op. cit., pp. 68–69. 168. Op. cit., p. 69. 169. Ibid. 170. Op. cit., p. 70. The citation comes from Masci, Logica, p. 131. 171. G. A. Colozza, L’immaginazione nella scienza, cit., p. 70. 172. Op. cit., pp. 70–71. And “one need only look into the history of science to have proof of its facts” (p. 71). 173. Op. cit., p. 74. 174. Op. cit., p. 88. 175. Op. cit., pp. 76–77. 176. Op. cit., pp. 80–81. 177. Op. cit., p. 81. 178. Ibid. 179. Op. cit., p. 82.

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180. Op. cit., p. 83. 181. Op. cit., p. 79. 182. OP. cit., p. 89. 183. Op. cit., p. 90. 184. Op. cit., p. 90. Cf. also pp. 90–91, where Colozza illustrates how sometimes the instruments are already available and must only be used. 185. Op. cit., p. 97. 186. Op. cit., p. 127. 187. Ibid. 188. Op. cit., pp. 130–131. 189. Op. cit., p. 137. 190. Ibid. Cf. also p. 79. 191. Op. cit., pp. 273 ff. 192. Op. cit., pp. 271 ff. 193. Op. cit., p. 103. 194. A. Murri, Quattro lezioni e una perizia. Il problema del metodo in medicina e biologia, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1905, reprinted 1972, p. 41. 195. Ibid. 196. Op. cit., 19. 197. Op. cit., pp. 22–23. 198. Op. cit., p. 23. 199. Op. cit., p. 31. 200. Op. cit., p. 70. 201. OP. cit., p. 32 202. Op. cit., p. 20. 203. Op. cit., p. 71. 204. Op. cit., pp. 19–20. 205. Op. cit., p. 87. 206. Op. cit., p. 7. 207. Op. cit., pp. 44–46. 208. Op. cit., p. 46. 209. Op. cit., p. 152. 210. A. Murri, Pensieri e precetti, eds. A. Gnudi and A. Vedrani, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1924. 211. F. Enriques, Problems of Science, trans., K. Royce, Open Court, Chicago, 1914; orig. ed. Problemi della Scienza, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1906, repro 1926, p. 73; pp. 86-87. 212. Op. cit., p. 117. 213. F. Enriques, Il significato della storia del pensiero scientifico, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1936, p. 3. 214. F. Enriques, Per la storia della logica, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1922, pp. 236-237.

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215. F. Enriques, Causalità e determinisno nella storia della scienza, Atlantica, Roma, 1946, p. 103. 216. F. Enriques, Il significato della storia del pensiero scientifico, cit., p. 11. 217. Op. cit., p. 12. 218. F. Enriques, La théorie de la connaissance scientifique de Kant à nos jours, Hermann, Paris, 1938. Apropos of F. Enriques’ theory of science see: O. Pompeo-Faracovi, Introductory essay to the Italian edition of F. Enriques, La teoria della conoscenza scientifica da Kant ai giorni nostri, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1983, pp. 1–44; C.F. Manara, Il contributo di Enriques alla matematica contemporanea, in Federigo Enriques. Approssimazione e verità, Belforte Editorie, Livorno, 1982, pp. 25–42; N. Badaloni, Logica della filosofia della scienza in Federigo Enriques, in Approssimazione e verità, cit., pp. 71–106; and P. Rossi, Federigo Enriques storico della scienza, in Approssimazione e verità, cit., pp. 55–70. 219. G.Vailati, La ricerca dell’impossible (1905) reprinted in Il metodo della filosofia, ed. by F. Rossi-Landi, Laterza, Bari, 19672 , p. 181. 220. G.Vailati, Il metodo deduttivo come strumento di ricerca (1887), reprinted in Scritti, vol. 2. Ed. M. Quaranta, A. Forni Editore, Bologna, 1987, p. 25. Notes to Chapter 4 1. K. R. Popper, Replies to My Critics, in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. P.A. Schilpp, La Salle (Ill.), 1974, vol. 2, p. 1059. It should be mentioned that this essay by Campbell is connected to a previous work of 1960 entitled Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes, in “Psychological Review,” 1960, vol. 67, 99. 380–400. 2. D. T. Campbell, Evolutionary Epistemology in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, cit. vol. 1, pp. 413–463. 3. D. T. Campbell, Evolutionary Epistemology, cit., p. 413. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. W. W. Bartley III, The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Part 1: Biology and Evolutionary Epistemology, in “Philosophia” (Philosophical Quarterly of Israel), vol. 6, n.3–4; Sept.-Dec. 1976, pp. 467–468. 7. Op. cit., p. 466. 8. K. R. Popper, Replies to My Critics, cit., p. 1061. 9. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, London, 2002, p. XIX. 10. Op. cit., p. 20. Italics mine. 11. Op. cit., p. 91. Italics mine.

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12. The lecture was originally published under the title Philosophy of Science: a Personal Report in British Philosophy in Mid-Century, edited by C.A. Mace, Allen and Unwin, London, 1957, reprinted in K. R. Popper , Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2002. 13. Op. cit., pp. 68–69. Italics mine. 14. W. W. Bartley III, The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Part 1: Biology and Evolutionary Epistemology, cit., p. 465. 15. K. R. Popper, Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Knowledge, in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., p. 216. 16. K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972. 17. K. R. Popper, Evolution and the Tree of Knowledge, in Objective Knowledge, p. 261. 18. Op. cit., p. 262. 19. This essay was read on August 25, 1967 at the Third International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. It was originally printed in the Acts of the Congress (Amsterdam, 1968, pp. 333–373) edited by B. Van Rootselaar and J.F. Staal. 20. Op. cit., p. 144. 21. Op. cit., p. 145. 22. K. R. Popper, Science: Problems, Aims, Responsibilities, in Proceedings of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, vol. 22, 1963, n. 4, part 1, pp. 961–972. 23. These last four essays were published in Objective Knowledge. In reference to our subject see primarily pp. 206–255 (of On Clouds and Clocks); pp. 153–169 (of On the Theory of the Objective Mind); pp. 32–105 (of Two Faces of Common Sense); and pp. 1–31 (of Conjectural Knowledge: My Solution of the Problem of Induction). 24. On this point see primarily K. R. Popper, Two Faces of Common Sense, in Objective Knowledge, cit., pp.32–105. 25. Op. cit., p. 67. For the works mentioned by Popper, see: J. M. Baldwin, Development and Evolution, Macmillan, New York, 1902; C.L. Morgan, The Law of Psychogenesis, in “Mind,” 1, 1892, 81; H.S. Jennings, The Behaviour of Lower Organisms, Columbia University Press, New York, 1906. 26. See, for example, by J. Ortega y Gasset, Ideas y creencias (1940). Reprinted: Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1976. 27. Cf. W. Jerusalem , Einleitung in die Philosophie, W. Braumüller, Wien-Leipzig, 1923, spec. p. 83 and ff., where Jerusalem presents a “biological tract on the process of knowing and, in particular, the concept of truth.” Also of great interest is the essay by R. Goldscheid, Die Organismen als Oekonomismen, published in the Festschrift für Wilhem Jerusalem, W. Braumüller, Wien-Leipzig, 1915, pp. 81–99. Goldsheid considers

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biology the propelling science. He states that “life has become the central concept of research” and that Jerusalem was always involved in “giving a biological basis to his philosophy and connecting life and thought […].” 28. Cf. F. Adler, Wozu brauchen wir Theorien?, in “Der Kampf,” March 1909; reprinted in F. Adler, Die Erneurung der Internationale. Aufsätze aus der Kriegszeit, with a Preface by K. Kautsky, Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung: Ignaz Brand, Wien, 1918, p. 193 and ff. Adler clearly describes trial and error procedure p. 198; and on p. 197, in the wake of Mach, he describes a theory as a limitation of our future expectations. 29. Cf. H. Gomperz I shall limit myself to mentioning only Die Wissenschaft und die Tat, Gerold, Wien, 1934. This essay shows clear evidence of an evolutionary concept of science — a concept connected to anti-inductivism, to the falsifiability of scientific theories and the incompleteness of science, and to the critical attitude of the scientist. 30. G. Vailati, Sull’importanza delle ricerche relative alla storia della scienza (1896), reprinted in G. Vailati, Il metodo della filosofia, edited by F. Rossi-Landi, Laterza, Bari, 1967, pp. 46–47. In this essay we find, explicit, meaningful references to Mach (pp. 51, 63, 64). On pp. 63–64, referring to Mach — in note 17 — Vailati says: The history of mechanics shows us a series of intellectual conflicts, the most interesting of which are not those that have taken place among scientists but rather those that have involved contrasting ideas that were pondered by the investigators who contributed to the progress of science. (Mach, Die Mechanik, 2nd ed., p. 420). The prevailing points of view in these conflicts were always those that best satisfied the needs of the situations involved. We see the results in the imposing structure of modern mechanics are due to the accumulation of effects of this kind of selection and to the important changes and succeeding adaptations that the structure of the theories had to go through under its influence.” See also F. Enriques, Problems of Science, cit. 31. T. H. Huxley, The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species (1880). Reprinted in Darwiniana: Essays, Macmillan, London, 1893, p. 229. 32. On trial and error method see L. Boltzmann, Die Bedeutung von Theorien ((1890), now in L. Boltzmann, Populäre Schfriten, ed. E. Broda, Vieweg, Baunschweig-Wiesbaden, 1979, pp. 54–58. The task of theory, Boltzmann says, is to construct an image of the world. And theory has “imagination for its cradle and intelligence to observe (der beobachtende Verstand) as its mentor” (op. cit., p. 55). History also teaches us that testing of theories has become more and more rigorous, so by becoming more “faithful to nature “ theory has “conquered the world […] and as theoretical research becomes more abstract it becomes more powerful” (op. cit., p. 56). Therefore, “one is almost tempted to say that, completely apart from its spiritual mission, theory is also the most practical thing

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possible, in certain aspects the quintessence of praxis […] “ (op. cit., p. 57). Moreover, “theory is far removed from overestimating itself; its weaknesses are a part of its very nature; it finds its own mistakes, just as Socrates gave greatest importance to awareness of the flaws in his own knowledge” (Ibid.). As far as evolutionary epistemology is specifically concerned, one need only cite passages from two of Bolzmann’s works. “We consider the brain as a device, an organ for the construction (Herstellung) of images of the world. Due to the great usefulness of these images of the world for conserving the species according to Darwnian theory, in humans this organ has developed to its highest powers, like the neck of the giraffe and the beak of the stork” (L. Boltzmann, Ueber die Frage nach der objectiven Existenz der Vorgänge in der unbelebten Natur, in Populäre Schriften, cit. p. 111). In the essay Ueber eine These Schopenhauers (1905), now in Populäre Schriften, cit., Boltzmann’s theory is very challenging: “In my opinion, the salvation of philosophy will come from Darwin” op. cit., p. 251). And how can we explain what in logic is called the laws of thought? Boltzmann’s answer is “these laws of thought are nothing more than inherited habits of thinking. (erebte Denkgewohnheiten) in the Darwinian sense” (op. cit., p. 252). “These laws of thought can be defined as a priori, because, due to the experience of the species over the centuries, they have become innate in the individual. Therefore, Kant made a logical blunder in considering them infallible in all cases. However, if we look at things from the prospective of Darwin’s theory this blunder is perfectly clear. Only what was sure was inherited; and what was wrong was eliminated so that these laws of thought seemed to be infallible and it was even believed that experience should be judged by them […]. But I contest that our laws of thought are absolutely perfect. They do not behave any differently from all the other inherited habits” (op. cit., p. 253). On Boltzmann’s evolutionary epistemology, see Ich bin, also denke ich. Die Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie, F. Deuticke, Wien, 1981, which contains conversations of F. Kreuzer with Englebert Broda and Rupert Rield. On Boltzmann see pages 24 ff. Popper’s reference to Boltzmann’s and Mach’s evolutionary epistemology can be found in Offene Gesellschaft-offenes Universum, F. Dueticke, Wien, 19832, pp. 47–48. This book also contains an interesting conversation between F. Kreuzer and K. R. Popper. On p. 47 Popper states: “It is strange but we find evolutionary epistemology in both Mach and Boltzmann. It is incongruent in Mach, but it is there.” On page 48 he says, “[…] there are many considerations in Mach that fit in very well with evolutionary epistemology but not with Mach’s view of the world […].” 33. E. Mach, The Velocity of Light (1867), first published in E. Mach, Zwei populäre Vorträge über Optik, Leschner und Lubensky, Graz, 1867; reprinted in E. Mach, Populär-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, J.

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A, Barth, Leipzig, 1896; English trans. by T. J. Mc Cormack under the title Popular Scientific Lectures, The Open Court Publishing company, La Salle , Illinois 1943. I cite this version. 34. Op. cit., p. 63. A good theory needs time to develop. Therefore, as Imre Lakatos recently pointed out, we should not allow a theory to die of a childhood illness. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Op. cit., pp 64–65. 39. Op. cit., p. 65. 40. Ibid. 41. E. Mach, Ueber Umbildung und Anpassung im naturwissenschaft-lichen Denken (1883), Hartleben, Wien 1884; reprinted in E. Mach, Populär-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, 1896; I cite from the afore-mentioned English translation. 42. Op. cit., p. 214. Italics mine. It is very important to point out that Mach presents the central nucleus of evolutionary epistemology as something that is neither remote nor new. This is relevant for two reasons: 1) Mach – whose ideas influenced all aspects of Viennese culture and other cultures as well (cf. F. Stadler, Vom Poistivismus zur wissenschaftlichen Weltaufassung, Löcker, Wien-München, 1982; and see also the opinion of F. Kreuzer, in E. Broda, R. Riedl and F. Kreuzer, Ich bin, also denke ich, cit., p. 22 — for whom “Lenin thought Mach in Vienna was more important than the Tsar in Moscow) — did not hesitate to present his ideas as part of a tradition; 2) while many others present their ideas — which tranquilly circulate in the tradition which formed them — as a dazzling new gift from the gods to their minds. But this should not detract from the value and significance of authentic rediscoveries of former ideas or ideas from other traditions. 43. E. Mach, On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought, cit., pp. 216–217. 44. Op. cit., p. 217. Basically Mach’s view is that Darwin has opened a new road and “It will devolve upon the specialists of the future to determine the relative tenability and fruitfulness of the Darwinian ideas in different provinces.” (Ibid.) 45. Op. cit., p. 217. 46. Op. cit., pp. 218–219. Italics mine. 47. Op. cit., p. 223. We should mention here the chapter on “Problems” in Mach’s book Knowledge and Error, which we shall speak of later. 48. E. Mach, On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought, cit. p. 223. 49. Op. cit., pp. 223–224.

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50. Op. cit., p. 224. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Op. cit., p. 227. 55. Ibid. 56. Op. cit. p. 226 57. Op. cit., pp. 227–228. We will also find in Popper emphasis on this typical epistemological obstacle that occurs when a theory is transformed into dogma. Cf., for example, K. R. Popper, 58. E. Mach, On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought, cit., p. 232. Here it would be interesting to compare these of ideas of Mach with the basic ideas of H.G. Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. For a similar position, see K. R. Popper, Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2002. pp. 161–180. 63. E. Mach, On Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought, cit., p. 233. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Op. cit. p. 235. 67. E. Mach, Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, G. Fischer, Jena, 188; 2nd ed. 1900; 3rd ed. 1901: 4th ed. 1922. English trans. by C.M. Williams, The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical, Dover Publications, New York, 1959. 68. Op. cit., p. 31. 69. Op. cit., p. xl. 70. Op, cit., pp. 29–30. 71. Op. cit., p. 49. 72. Op. cit., pp. 49–50. 73. E. Mach, Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre, historisch-kritisch entwickelt, J.A. Barth, Leipzig, 1896; 2nd ed. 1900; Principles of the Theory of Heat, translated from the 2nd edition 1900 by T.H. Mc Cormack, D. Reidel Co., Dordrecht, Holland, 1986. I cite from the second edition. 74. The chapter of Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre dedicated to the evolution of ideas is entitled Umbildung und Anpassung im naturwissenschaftlichen Denken (Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought) and it repeats almost exactly the essay in the aforementioned Populär-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen. 75. Op. cit., p. 350.

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76. E. Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargesteellt, Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1883; English trans. of 6th ed. by T. McCormack, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1960. 77. E. Mach, The Principles of the Theory of Heat, cit., p. 350. 78. Op. cit., p. 351. 79. Op. cit., pp. 351–352. 80. Op. cit., p. 352. 81. Op. cit., p. 353. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 84. Op. cit., p. 356. 85. Op. cit., p. 354. 86. Ibid. 87. Op. cit., p. 358. 88. E. Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung, J. A. Barth, Leipzig, 1905; English trans. of the 5th ed. 1926 by T. J. Mc Cormack and P. Foulkes, Knowledge and Error, Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry, Reidl, Dordrecht, Holland-Boston, 1976. 89. Op. cit., p. 11. On the problem of the growth of science in Popper, see H. Skolmowski, Karl Popper and the Objectivity of Scientific Knowledge, in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, vol. 1, cit., p. 483 ff. 90. E. Mach, Knowledge and Error, cit., p.2. 91. Ibid. 92. Cf., Chapter 5 of Knowledge and Error. 93. Op. cit., p. 2. 94. Op. cit., p. 223. On this subject see also the chapter Adaptation of Thoughts to Facts and to Each Other, pp. 120–133. 95. Op. cit., p. 181. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Op. cit., p. 9. 99. Op. cit., pp. 9–10. On this subject see also the aforementioned essay by Popper on tradition (note 62). 100. Op. cit., p. 185. 101. Ibid. 102. Op. cit., p. 193. 103. Op. cit., p. 171. 104. Op. cit., p. 172. 105. Op. cit., p. 195. 106. Op. cit., p. 173. On this point Mach mentions the work of P. Biedermann, Die Bedeutung der Hypothese, Dresden, 1894, where on p. 10, he says: “Hypotheses are those presuppositions formed in view of the facts

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[…].” Biedermann also says that what is called hypothesis in scientific terms is called supposition in ordinary language. Mach comments “In all circumstances we can speak of integration of facts in representation or in thoughts; and if this occurs intentionally or with awareness the term supposition or conjecture is more suitable.” 107. Op. cit., p. 214 108. Op. cit., p. 77. 109. Op. cit., p. 361. 110. Ibid. 111. K. R. Popper, Two Faces of Common Sense, cit., p. 69. 112. See the fundamental work by K. Lorenz, Die Rückseite des Spiegels, Piper Verlag, München, 1973. English trans. by R. Taylor, Behind the Mirror, Methuen, London, 1977; and also the more recent and shorter one: Leben ist Lernen, Piper Verlag, München, 1981. For a review of the themes of evolutionary epistemology, see Die Evolution des Denkens, ed, by K. Lorenz and F. M. Wuketits, Piper Verlag, München, 1983. On the evolutionary epistemology of K. Lorenz, see also: F.M. Wuketits, Konrad Lorenz; R. Riedl, Leben als kenntnisgewinnender Prosess bei Konrad Lorenz, in Entwircklung der Evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie, ed. by R. Riedl and E. M. Bonet, Verlag der Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, Wien, 1987, pp. 47–57. For a broader view of evolutionary epistemology, see, Die Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie, Bedingungen, Lösungen, Kontroversen, ed, by. R. Riedl and F. M. Wuketits,Parey, Berlin-Hamburg, 1987. 113. See, for example, A. Einstein, Die Gesetze der Naturwissenschaft und die Gesetze der Ethik (1950), in Aus meinen späten Jahren, Ullstein, Frankfurt/M.-Ber1in, 1990, p. 55. 114. G. Simmel, Ueber eine Beziehung der Selektionstheorie zur Erkenntnistheorie, in Archiv für systematische Philosophie,” 1895, 1 vol., n.1; On a relationship between the theory of selection and epistemology English trans. by Irene Jerison, in Learning, Development and Culture, ed. by H.C. Plotkin, J. Wiley, New York, 1982, p. 69. 115. K. R. Popper, The Open Universe. An Argument for Indeterminism, Routledge, London, 2000. 116. K. R. Popper , a) Truth, Rationality and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge, in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2002, pp. 291–338; b) Philosophical Comments on Tarski’s Theory of Truth, in Objective Knowledge, cit.; c) Two Faces of Common sense: An Argument for Commonsense Realism and Against the Commonsense Theory of Knowledge in Objective Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979. d) Facts, Standards, and Truth, in Appendix to vol. 2 of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge, London, 1999, pp. 369–396; e) Supplementary Remarks in Objective Knowledge, cit.

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117. For a lucid account of the criticism of P. Tichý, J. Harris, D. Miller and A Grünbaum to Popper’s ideas of verisimilitude, see also A. O’Hear, Karl Popper, Routledge, London, 1982; M. Pera, Popper e la scienza sulle palafitte, Laterza, Bari, 1980, p. 132 ff.; D. Antiseri, Trattato di metodologia delle scienze sociali, UTET, Torino, 1996, pp, 196–204. Notes to Chapter 5 1. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, London, 2002, Chapter IV. 2. K. R.Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2002, p. 42. 3. Op. cit., pp. 44–45. 4. Op. cit., p. 45. 5. Ibid. 6. Op. cit., pp. 46–47. 7. Op. cit., p. 46. 8. Op. cit., pp. 47–48. 9. Op. cit. pp. 48–49. 10. Op.cit., p. 50. In a conversation with H.J.Dahams and F. Stadler, Popper recalls his conversation with Edgar Zilsel, who was, like Popper, “critically interested” in psychoanalysis, and maintained, among other things, that the psyche and the unconscious were “much richer” than the psychoanalysts had ever admitted (Cf. F. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1997, p.528). Popper spoke with Zilsel about psychoanalysis and Adler more than once. “I shall never forget — Popper said in 1991 — that Zilsel’s judgement on these subjects was very sensible and reasonable.”(Ibid). 11. K. R. Popper, Unended Quest, Routledge, 2002, p. 38. 12. K. R.Popper, Replies to My Critics, in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. by P.A. Schilpp, La Salle (Ill.) 1974, p.984. 13. Op. cit., pp. 984–985. 14. Op. cit., p. 985. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 48. 19. K. R. Popper, Replies to My Critic,. cit., p. 985. 20. Ibid. 21. K. R. Popper, Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery: Realism and the Aim of Science, ed. by W.W.Bartley, III, London, Routledge, 1983. 22. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 15.

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23. Op. cit., p. 16. 24. Op. cit., p. 14. 25. Op. cit., p. 16. 26. Ibid. 27P. F. Strawson, Construction and Analysis, in The Revolution in Philosophy, Macmillan, London, 1967, p. 118. 28. K. R. Popper, Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit. p. 192. 29. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., pp. 277–278. 30. Op. cit., p. 278. 31. Op. cit., p. 278. 32. K. R. Popper, Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit. p 192. 33. Op. cit., p. 193. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. Italics added. 36. K. R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, cit. p. 49. 37. K. R.Popper, Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 193. 38. For and initial account of the ideas of Popper and other post-Popper epistemologists on the question of the connections between scientific and metaphysical theories, see note 37 of Chapter 1. 39. K. R. Popper, Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 172 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Hogart, 1981, vol. IV, p. 134. 43. Op. cit., p. 135. 44. Ibid. 45. Op. cit., p. 160. 46. K. R. Popper, Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 165. Popper’s careful philological proof against the Freudian theory of dream interpretation is on pp. 166ff. 47. Op. cit., p. 167. 48. K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., p. 62. As the preceding pages make clear, Popper’s criticism of psychoanalysis is based on the request for control of psychoanalytic theories — an empirical control that these theories did not seem to demonstrate or that, in any case, the psychoanalysts seemed to avoid. In keeping with Popper’s view but independent of him or sometimes following him, many contemporary epistemologists have continually touched the sore spot of the untestability of psychoanalytic theories. For example, after an examination of the

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“three fundamental categories” of proof advanced by psychoanalysts (clinical data, experimental results obtained in psychological laboratories, and anthropological information) Ernest Nagel concludes in his essay on Methodological Problems of Psychoanalytic Theory that “a possible rejoinder to the difficulties I have been raising is that despite the dubious character of the evidence for Freudian theory, it is the only theory we do possess that explains in a systematic way an extensive domain of important phenomena. To such a comment I can only reply that this is indeed most unfortunate if true, but that nonetheless the imaginative sweep of a set of ideas does not confer factual validity upon them. I do not minimize the importance of having some theory, even a dubious one, if it helps to open fresh areas of investigation and if it is a source of fruitful ideas for the conduct of controlled inquiry. I certainly acknowledge the great service Freud and his school have rendered in directing attention to neglected aspects of human behaviour, and in contributing a large number of suggestive notions that have leavened and broadened the scope of psychological, medical and anthropological inquiry. But on the Freudian theory itself, as a body of doctrine for which factual validity can be reasonably claimed, I can only echo the Scottish verdict: Not proven.” (E. Nagel, Methodological Issues in Psychoanalytic Theory, in Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy: A Symposium, New York, 1964, p. 55). So much for Nagel. Sidney Hook points out that “a subject is usually regarded as unscientific if in principle no observable state of affairs could falsify its claims, so that by ad hoc modifications its assertions can be made compatible with any state of affairs whatsoever.” (S. Hook, Science and Mythology in Psychoanalysis, in Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy: A Symposium, New York, 1964, p. 214) Hook goes on to say that “it was in order to pinpoint the discussion on the possibility of falsifying one of the central doctrines of psychoanalysis that I asked the psychoanalysts present to describe what kind of evidence they were prepared to accept which would lead them todeclare in any specific case that a child did not have an Oedipus complex” (Ibid.) Hook waited forty years for an answer to his question. He was given one by Dr. Arlow (See J.A. Arlow, Psychoanalysis as Scientific Method, in Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy: A Symposium, cit, pp. 201–211), but Sidney Hook writes: “as grateful I am to Dr. Arlow for his patient attempt to reply to my query, I must confess that I still am not satisfied that I understand from his account in what circumstances the behaviour of a nonidiotic child would be necessary and sufficient evidence that he had not achieved the oedipal phase of development”. (S. Hook, Science and Mythology in Psychoanalysis, cit., p. 219). Moreover, “Freud somewhere says that ‘before the problem of the creative artist, analysis must lay down its arms’. It must lay down its arms, I believe, not because the mysteries

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of creation are necessarily beyond explanation, or outside the scope of a material determination. It must lay down its arms because the monistic dogma of psychoanalysis is palpably inadequate to account not only for the varied achievements of creative artists and philosophers and scientists but also for the work of poetic mythologists like Freud himself” (Op. cit. p. 223).In Arthur Pap’s opinion “the word ‘unconscious’ cannot appear in any genuine causal explanation, whether rigorously deterministic or probabilistic, whether in terms of the postulates of a rigorous theory of human behavior or, more modestly, in terms of pragmatically reliable empirical generalizations, because their function is only to mark, not to solve, a problem of explanation.” (A. Pap. On the Empirical Interpretation of Psychoanalytic Concepts, in Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy: A Symposium, cit, p. 288); “Freud and his followers are concerned with explanations of pathological behaviors in terms of motives […] hence not with causal explanations (Ibid.) Briefly stated, “to give an explanation in terms of latent attitudes in the typical psychoanalytical meaning of ‘unconscious’ is the same as stating that for the most part up to now psychoanalysis has been a pre-theoretical science” (Op. cit., p. 287). H. J. Eysenck’s harsh criticism of psychoanalysis is well known. According to him, psychoanalysis is essentially non scientific and should be judged in terms of belief and faith rather than n terms of proof and verification (H. J. Eysenck, Uses and Abuses of Psychology, 1953). Actually, Eysenck believes that we can not prove Freud’s hypotheses on the ‘couch’ any more than we can judge between the rival hypotheses of Newton and Einstein by going to sleep under an apple tree. The serious fact is that Freudian theories are difficult to refute because when a deduction made through psychoanalytic hypotheses can not be verified, it is always possible to maintain that the deduction is based on an erroneous understanding of the hypotheses and that another ‘interpretation’ might have predicted the facts verified experimentally. Thus Freudian hypotheses are truly invulnerable; they are too vague to lead to deductions that have a certain credibility. Therefore they are neither scientific or useful. Of course, many aspects of Freud’s contribution to psychology are extremely important, but there are also many negative aspects. The task of scientifically oriented psychology must be to eliminate the latter without losing the former. While Geoffrey Gorer pointed out the need to be wary of “words of power” in psychoanalysis (“inferiority complex,” “paranoid,” “sadistic,” etc.) (G. Gorer, Psychoanalysis in the World in Psychoanalysis Observed, Charles Rycroft, Coward-McCann, New York, 1967, pp. 29–30.), Peter B. Medawar concludes as follows in a decidedly critical essay on the presumed explanatory power of psychoanalytic theories: “We recognize [Freud’s] enlargement of the sensibilities of physicians, his having opened up a new area of human speculation, his freeing us

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from the confinements of prudery and self-righteousness, etc. There is some truth in all of this. There is some truth is psychoanalysis too, as there was in Mesmerism and in phrenology (e.g. the concept of localization of function in the brain). But, considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do” (P. B. Medawar, The Hope of Progress, Methuen, 1972, p. 68). Psychoanalysis is “one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought” (Ibid.). On pages 63–64 Medawar, speaking about psychoanalytic conferences writes: “But where shall we find the evidence of hesitancy or bewilderment, the avowals of sheer ignorance, the sense of groping and incompletness that is commonplace in an international congress of, say, physiologists or biochemiusts? A lava-flow of ad hoc explanation pours over and around all difficulties, leaving only a few smoothly rounded prominences to mark where they might have lain. “In reference to the developments in psychoanalysis in Vienna between the two wars, see F. Hacker, Die Entwicklung der Psychoanlyse in der Zwischenkriegszeit, in Das geistige Leben Wiens in der Zwischenkriegszeit, ed. by N. Leser, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Wien, 1981, pp. 133–142. The pages following Hacker’s essay (Op. cit., pp. 144–161) are devoted to a Symposion on the phenomenal flourishing of so many prestigious intellectuals in Vienna between the two wars. Participants in this discussion were: I. Ackerl, K. Adler, l. Brodil, F. Engelmann, E. Glaser, F. Hacker, C.G. Hempel, W. Huber, M. Jahoda, N. Leser, V. Matejka, R. Münz, P. Neurath, A. Pfabigan, L. Reichhold, M. Schneider, and K. Wolf. 49. K. Bühler, The Crisis of Psychology, Italian trans. La crisi della psicologia, Armando, Roma, 1978, p. 205. In any discussion of the Viennese critics of psychoanalysis, mention should at least be made of the “alternatives” to psychoanalysis that had been advanced in Vienna for the treatment of mental illness. As Bruno Bettleheim says: “Wagner von Jauregg, who followed Krafft-Ebing as head of psychiatry at the University f Vienna, and who as such was Freud’s chief while he taught there, discovered the malaria treatment of general paresis and the fever treatment of the same disease; for this he won in 1927, the first Nobel Prize in medicine that was awarded for a psychiatric discovery. His work can justly be seen as the beginning of chemical treatment for mental illness. In the same direction, Manfred Sakel, another Viennese physician, discovered in 1933 the insulin-shock treatment for schizophrenia. It is almost astonishing to note that all modern methods of treatment for mental disturbances — psychoanalysis, chemical treatment, and shock treatment — were brought into the world within a few decades in one and the same city.” (B. Bettleheim, Freud’s Vienna and Other Essays, Knopf, New York, 1990, p. 4.) Moreover, “Freud […] was not the only innovator in Vienna who brought a change in our view of sexuality in general and sexual perversions sin

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particular, and the treatment of insanity. For example, Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing […] first gave a name to paranoia and brought it into common discourse. His clinical account of sexual pathology showed in a lively way the many forms the sexual drive may take, years before Freud undertook his studies of sex. Krafft-Ebing’s most important work, Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1866, revolutionized the world’s ideas about sexual perversions, a subject completely ignored by scientists up to that moment. His book led to the decriminalization of sexual perversions in Austria, long before such a sensible view spread to other countries. Krafft-Ebing led the way to an era of changed attitudes toward sexuality in Vienna and Austria, and in a sense he prepared the environment that made Freud’s work possible.”(Op. cit., pp. 3–4). 50. S. Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety in The Penguin Freud Library Vol. 10, London, Penguin, 1979, p. 247. 51. Op. cit., p. 249. 52. K. Bühler, The Crisis of Psychology, Italian trans. La crisi della psicologia, cit., p. 173. 53. Ibid. Bühler continues: “Today, among naturalists, it is no longer a disgrace to be of a philosophical mind; and it does not take much more for a philosophy of medicine to be written somewhere. When we in psychology concern ourselves with the purity of the axiomatics, basically we are not doing anything different from what is happening around us, for example, in mathematics, in theoretical physics, in biology and in all the sciences of the spirit.” 54. Op. cit., p. 175. 55. Op. cit., p. 184. 56. C. Haeberlin, Grundlinien der Psychoanalyse, 1925, p. 387. 57. K. Bühler, The Crisis of Psychology, Italian trans. La crisi della psicologia, cit., p. 185. 58. Ibid. 59. Op. cit., p. 220. 60. Op. cit., p. 31. 61. Op. cit., p. 173. 62. A. Schnitzler, Sulla psicoanalisi [On Psychoanalysis], ed. Luigi Reitani, Mondadori, Milano, 1990, p. 8. Bruno Bettleheim reminds us that Freud himself described Schnitzler as “his alter ego.” Cf. B. Bettleheim, Freud’s Vienna and Other Essays, cit., p. 13. Here one is tempted to say: amicus “Freud,” magis amica veritas. 63. A. Schnitzler, Sulla psicoanalisi, cit., p. 8. 64. Op. cit., p. 9. 65. Ibid. 66. Op. cit., p.14. 67. Op. cit., pp. 15–16.

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68. Op. cit., pp. 25–26. 69. Op. cit., p. 25. 70. Cf. L. Reitani, Postfazione to A. Schnitzler, Sulla psicoanalisi, cit., p. 123. 71. A. Schnitzler, Sulla psicoanalisi, cit., p. 16. 72. Op. cit., pp. 16–17. 73. Op. cit., p. 17. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. K. R. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, Tübingen, Mohr, 1994. 77. E. Friedell, Kulturgeshichte der Neuzeit, München, 1931, p. 1517. 78. Op. cit., p. 1518. 79. Ibid. This and other of Friedell’s criticisms of Freud are in “Krausian style.” In reference to this, Thomas Szasz wrote: “It is likely that his [Friedell’s] opinions on the matter were influenced by Kraus.” Cf. Th. Szasz, Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, Routledge, 1977, p. 70. 80. E. Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, cit., p. 1518. 81. Op. cit., pp. 1518–1519. 82. Op. cit., p. 1519. 83. Ibid. It should be borne in mind that Friedell’s criticism of psychoanalysis is laced with anti-semitism. 84. Op. cit., p. 1420. 85. Op. cit., pp. 1520–1521. 86. Op. cit., p. 1521. 87. Op. cit., p. 1523. The untestability of psychoanalysis was examined in 1931, a few years before Friedell, by Oswald Bumke. Cf. O. Bumke, Die psychoanalyse. Eine Kritik, Julius Springer, Berlin, 1931, pp. 5, 9; and p. 16: “psychoanalysis is neither natural science nor simply science.” Cf. also p. 50 ff. Among the Viennese opponents of Freud, William M. Johnson includes, in addititon to Kraus and Friedell, the Catholic anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954). Cf. W.M. Johnston, Oesterreichische Kultur-und Geistesgeschichte, cit., p. 256. 88. Th. Szasz, Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, cit., pp. 72–73. In the Introduction to the anthology Analisi espistemologica del marxismo e della psicoanalisi published in 1974 (Roma) Popper’s criticism of psychoanalysis was considered close to that of Kraus and Wittgenstein. See also my Introduction (especially pp. 26–80) to L. Wittgenstein, Lettere a Ludwig von Ficker [Letters to Ludwig von Ficker], Italian trans., Armando, Roma 1974. In the interesting V chapter of his book Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986, Edward Timms points out that “Kraus’s interest in psychoanalysis is one of the most interesting aspects of his work in the decade between 1905 and 1914.

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His view passes through four phases: the adversary of moral hypocrisy enthusiastically approves of Freud’s candid approach to sexuality, his wise observations on jokes, and his astute interpretation of dreams; next the skeptical author of aphorisms looks more critically at the methodology of psychoanalysis and the problems of applying it; later the defender of artistic integrity launches an attack against the pathological writings of Freud’s disciples; and finally psychoanalysis itself is condemned as one of the destructive ideologies of the contemporary age.” (E. Timms, Karl Kraus Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Hasburg Vienna). More than one scholar has seen Kraus’s criticism of psychoanalysis as his vendetta against Fritz Wittels — who, on January 12, 1910, had presented to the Psychoanalytic Society an essay entitled The “Fackel” Neurosis. On the famous meeting of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society at which Wittel presented his essay on Kraus, see Th. Szasz, Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, cit., pp. 31 ff. Incidentally, “Die Fackel” was the magazine in which, from 1899 to 1936, in 922 issues, Kraus exposed “corruption wherever he saw it”(A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973, p. 68). It was “the delight and torment of the Viennese public” (Ibid.). Among others it parodied Hermann Bahr and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the operettas of Franz Lehar, Franz Werfel and Maxmilian Harden; it also criticized police corruption, Theodor Herzel’s zionism, the unnecessary cruelty of the first world war, and the press. In the first twelve years of his magazine, Kraus had the collaboration of notables like Peter Altenberg, Egon Friedell, Else Lasker-Schüler, Adolf Loos, Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schönberg. From November 1911 on, Kraus wrote all the other issues of the magazine by himself, except for one issue in 1912 where there was a contribution by August Strindberg. In any case, to return to Kraus’s criticism of psychoanalysis, Janik and Toulmin noted that “Kraus’s attacks on psychoanalysis were […] something more than the effect of personal antipathy, because he believed psychoanalysis was bringing further change to the balance in relationships between man and woman, between reason and imagination, and between the conscious and the unconscious, thus aggravating the crisis of society and distancing man from his ‘origins’ and ‘imagination.’ “I would rather return to childhood with Jean Paul than with Sigmund Freud,” Kraus added, “since Jean Paul considered infancy the period in which the imagination enlivens everything one does, while for Freud infancy is nothing but a series of crises leading to frustration. Kraus feared that the psychoanalytic approach to life, with its continual reference to adjustment to society, threatened the artist” (Op. cit., p. 77). 89. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies,Routledge, 1999, vol. II, p. 334. On the political stance of Kraus it is useful to consult A. Pfabigam, Karl Kraus und der Sozialismus, Europaverl, Wien, 1976.

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90. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, cit., vol. II, p. 337. 91. K. Kraus, Spruche und Wiedersprüche, Die Fackel, Wien, 1924. 92. Op. cit. 93. Op. cit. 94. Op. cit., p.270. 95. Op. cit., p. 286–297. 96. Op. cit., pp. 297–298. On the irrefutability of forensic psychiatry see K. Kraus, The Case of Louise von Coberg, in TH. Szasz, Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, cit., pp. 131–132. 97. K. Kraus, Spruche und Wiederspruche, cit. 98. Op. cit. 99. L. Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Ed. by C. Barrett, University of California Press, p. 48. 100. Op. cit., pp. 47–48. 101. R. Rhees, Preface to L. Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, cit., p. 41. 102. Op. cit., pp. 41–42. 103. L. Wittgenstein, Op. cit., p. 42. 104. Op.. cit., p.43 105. Op. cit., pp. 44–45 106. Op. cit., pp. 51–52. 107. N. Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oxford, New York, 1984, p. 39. 108. F.A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Routledge, 1982, vol. III, p. 163. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. 111. Op. cit., vol. III, p. 164. 112. F.A. von Hayek, Atavism in Social Justice, in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1978. 113. Op. cit. 114. Op. cit. 115. F.A.von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Routledge, 1982, vol. III, p. 163. 116. Op. cit., p. 164. 117. Op. cit., p. 166. 118. Op. cit., p. 164. The so-called innate morality of our instincts is solidarity, altruism, group and similar decisions — and the actions that come from it “are not […] sufficient to sustain our present extended order and its population.” Evolved morality — savings, private property, and so on — “is what has created and sustains the extended order […] This morality stands between instinct and reason, a position that has been obscured by

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a false dichotomy of instinct versus reason.(F.A. von Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, in The Collected Works of F. A. von Hayek, Routledge, 1988, vol. I, p. 70. 119. F. A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, cit, vol. III, p. 168. 120. Ibid. 121. Op. cit., pp. 175–176. 122. Op. cit., p. 176. 123. Op. cit., p. 173. 124. Ibid 125. Op. cit., p. 174. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid 129. G. B. Chisholm, The Re-Establishment of a Peace-time Society, in “Psychiatry,” vol. 6, 1964. Cited by F.A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, cit., vol. III, p. 174. 130. F. A. von Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, cit., p. 52 and p. 67. 131. F. A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, cit., vol. III, p. 174. 132. Op. cit., p. 175. See also, F.A. von Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, cit, p. 126. 133. D. T. Campbell, On the Conflicts Between Biological and Social Evolution, in “American Psychologist” December 30, 1975, p. 1120. Cited by F.A.von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, cit., p. 175. Another author, Eric Voegelin, — German in origin by in many ways Viennese in training — criticized psychoanalysis by considering it a form of gnosticism, on a level with Marxism, communism, and national socialism. Philosophy, Voegelin writes, “springs from the love of being; it is man’s loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it.” Gnosis, on the other hand, “desires dominion over the being.” “By Gnostic movements we mean such movements as progressivism, positivism, marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, and national socialism”. Cf. E. Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, Regnery, Chicago, 1968, p. 42 and pp.83–84. Before Voegelin, in 1931, Karl Jaspers wrote that “Marxism, psychoanalysis and racism are the widespread darkness that humanity has plunged into” (J. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig, 1931, p. 142). Later on Jaspers stressed that “from the scientific point of view, didactic analysis has no value as a methodically unexceptionable source of knowledge, even if the experiences that take place in it may be of interest to science. On the contrary, didactic analysis must appear worthless to reason.” (K. Jaspers, Der Artz im technischen Zeitalter. See also K.Jaspers, Reply to My Critics, in The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, P.A. Schilpp, ed. Tudor, New York, 1957, pp. 806–808).

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1. K. Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Biography, London, Rutledge, 2002, pp.80–81. 2. O. Glöckel, Die Österreichische Schulreform, Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Wien, 1923. 3. O Glöckel, Drillschule, Lernschule, Arbeitschule,Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Wien, 1928. 4. O. Glöckel, Die Österreichische Schulreform, cit., pp.3–5. 5. Cf. O. Glöckel: a) Drilleschule, Lernschule, Arbeitsschule, cit., pp. 3–13; b) Die Österreichische Schulreform, cit., pp. 11–15. 6. O. Glöckel, Die Österreichische Schulreform, cit., pp. 11–15. 7. Op. cit., p.11. 8. Op, cit., p.12. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. O. Glöckel, Drilleschule, Lernschule, Arbeitscule, cit., pp. 6–7. 13. Op. cit., pp.8–10. 14. O. Glöckel, Die Österreichische Schulreform, cit., p.13. 15. O. Glöckel. Die Österreichische Schulreform, cit., p. 13. 16. Ibid. 17. Op. cit., p.14. 18. Ibid.. 19. Op. cit., pp.19–20. 20. Op. cit., p. 10. 21. Op. cit., pp. 16–17. 22. On Wittgenstein as an “elementary school teacher” see: a) W. W. Bartley, Wittgenstein, Quartet, London, 1974; b) D. Antiseri, Introduzione, in L. Wittgenstein, Dizionario per le scuole elementari, Armando, Roma, 1978 (Wörterbuch für Volfsschulen, Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien, 1977) 23. O. Glöckel, Die Österreichische Schulreform, cit., p. 5. Cf. on the same subject F. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1997, pp. 580–581. On the relationship between “school reform” and the Viennese univeristy see, F. Stadler, Studien zim Wiener Kreis, cit., pp. 580–589. 24. O. Glöckel, Die Österrichische Schulreform, cit., p. 40. 25. A. Ronco, La scuola di Wurzburg, Pas Verlag, Zurigo, 1963, p. 14. 26. Cf. A. Messer, Einführung in die neuere Psychologie des Denkens, in “Neue Jahrbücher für Pädagogik,” 17, 1914, pp. 338–348 and pp. 408– 417. 27. Cf. A. Ronco, La scuola di Wurzburg, Pas Verlag, Zurigo, 1963, p. 14.

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28. O. Külpe, Über die moderne Psychologie des Denkens, in “Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst, und Technik,” 6, 1922, coll.1089–1090, and coll.1091. 29. A. Ronco, La scuola di Wurzburg, cit., p.94 30. K. Bühler, Tatsachen und Probleme zu einter Psychologie der Denkvorgänge, I: Ueber Gedanken, in “Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie,” 9, 1907, p. 317. 31. Op. cit., p. 318. 32. Op. cit., p. 321. 33. Besides the three pedagogical essays discussed in this chapter, Popper also wrote for “Die Quelle” a long series of brief — and some very brief — reviews (and sometimes simply information) on articles about general psychology, educational psychology, school policy, teacher-training, physical education, individual psychology, psychoanalysis, etc. Cf. “Die Quelle,” 82, 1932, nos. 3 (pp. 301–303); 7 (pp.580–582); 8 (pp. 646–647); 9 (pp. 712–713); 10 (pp.778–781); 11 (pp. 846–849); 12 (pp.930–931). 34. K.R. Popper, Ueber die Stellung des Lehrers zu Schule und Schüler, in “Schulreform,” 4, 1925, p. 204. 35. Op. cit., p. 206. 36. Ibid. 37. Op. cit.,, p. 207. 38. Ibid. 39. Op. cit., p.208. 40. K. R. Popper, Zur Philosophie des Heimatgedankens, in “Die Quelle,” 77, 1927, p.899. 41. Op. cit., p. 904. 42. Ibid. 43. Op. cit., pp. 904–905. 44. Op. cit., p.906. “From good German to citizen of the world” — this was one of the slogans of “Austrian school reform”. 45. Op. cit., p. 907. 46. Op. cit., p. 908. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. K. R. Popper, Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbstätigkeit, in “Die Quelle,” 81, 1931. 50. Cf. E. Burger, Arbeitspädagogik, Engelmann, Leipzig, 1923, p. 166: “Take what is good wherever it is, test everything, and keep the best.” 51. An example: K.R. Popper, The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of Knowledge in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979, pp. 341–361. 52. K. R. Popper, Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbstätigheit, cit., p. 610.

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53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Op. cit., p. 611. 58. Ibid. 59. Op. cit., p. 613. 60. Ibid. 61. A. Forel, Der Weg zur Kultur, p. 66; cit. by K.R. Popper, Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbstätigkeit, cit. p. 611. 62. K. R. Popper, in K.R. Popper and J.C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, cit., p. 504. 63. Ibid. 64. For the Institute of Pedagogy of Vienna see G. Benetka, Psychologie in Wien. Sozial und Theoriegeschichte des Wiener Psychologischen Instituts 1922-1938, WUW Verlag. Wien, 1994. On Bühler see, BühlerStudien, edited by A. Eschback, vol. 2, Frankfurt/M. 1984. Cf. A. Wellek, Karl Bühler 1879–1963, in “Archiv für die Gesamte Psychologie,” 116, 1964 and also V. Fadrus, Professor Dr. Karl Bühlers Wirken an der Wiener Universität, in “Wiener Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Psychologie, Pädagogik,” 1959, pp.3–25. 65. K. R. Popper, Unended Quest, Routledge, London, 2002, pp. 81–82. 66. K. R..Popper, Zur Methodenfragen der Denskpsychcologie. Dissertation eingerichtet Erlangung des Doktogradesder philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Wien, Sommersemmester, 1928. A copy of Popper’s thesis is available at the Universitäts.Bibliotek of Vienna. It is an 84-page work divided into three parts: 1. Der Pluralismus der Aspekte; 2. Kritik des Physikalismus; 3. Die Bedeutung der Aspekte für die Denkspsychologie. 67. M. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, Springer, Berlin, 1925. English translation: General Theory of Knowledge, Open Court, Chicago (Ill.), 1974. 68. K. R. Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkspsychcologie, cit., pp. II–V. 69. K. Bühler, Krise der Psychologie, cit. 70. K. R. Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkspsychologie, cit., p. v. 71. Op. cit., pp. 1–5. 72. Op. cit., p. 47. 73. M. Schlick, General Theory of Knowledge, Open Court, Chicago (Ill.), 1974. 74. K. R. Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkspsychologie, cit., p.10. 75. Op. cit., pp.11–13. 76. Op. cit., pp. 11/13–14.

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77. Op. cit., p. 14. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Op. cit., p. 17. 81. Ibid. 82. Op. cit., p. 46 ff. 83. Op. cit., p. 79. 84. K. R. Popper, Unended Quest, cit., p. 85. 85. Op. cit., p. 82. 86. K. Bühler, Krise der Psychologie, cit. 87. K. R. Popper, Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject, in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, cit., p. 119. 88. K. R. Popper in K. R. Popper and J.C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, cit., pp. 58–59. 89. K. R. Popper, The Place of Mind in Nature. 90. K. R. Popper, Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject, in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, cit., p. 120. 91. K. R. Popper and J.C.Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, cit., p. 58. 92 K. R. Popper, The Place of Mind in Nature. 93. K. R. Popper and J.C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, cit. p. 109. 94. K. R, Popper, Unended Quest, cit., p. 82. 95. K. R. Popper and J.C.Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, cit., pp. 36–38. See also by K. R. Popper: a) Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject, in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, cit., pp.119–122; b) K.R. Popper, Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem, Routledge, 1994, pp.41–46. In Epistemology without a Knowing Subject, Popper mentions Plato, Hegel, Bolzano and Frege among the philosophers who firstly theorized the World 3 (op. cit. p.119–122). In On the Theory of the Objective Mind, Popper states: “some philosophers have made a serious beginning towards a philosophical pluralism, by pointing out the existence of a third world. I am thinking of Plato, the Stoics, and some moderns such as Leibniz, Bolzano, and Frege” (p.153). In Knowledge and the BodyMind Problem, Popper states:”My own theory of world 3 has a long and interesting prehistory […]. Of the long list of names of philosophers who held some theory similar to world 3 — Hesiod, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides; Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus; Leibniz, Bolzano, Frege; perhaps Husserl — I will mention only three: Plato, Bolzano, Frege.” (p.49) In Epistemology without a knowing subject, Popper mentions Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre of the 1837 (vol.I, par.19, p.18) and Frege’s Über Sinn und Bedeutung of the 1882. Among the forerunners of the idea of a World 3, Popper does not mention Georg Simmel who, we think, should have been included. In the chapter The Subject and The Object of Hauptprobleme der Philosophie, (Goschen, Leipzig, 1910) Simmel

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theorizes the realm of the ideal contents, a realm which is not subjective nor objective. Such contents — Simmel says — have value and meaning only in themselves and cannot be in the form of the subjectivity nor in the form of the objectivitiy. This third realm, he continues, consists of what, in hegelian terms, can be conceived as the objective spirit. The discovery of such a third realm was made by Plato and was a real contribution to the solution of the subject-object problem. 96. F. Stadler, Heinrich Gomperz und Karl Popper im Kontext des Logischen Empirismus, in Heinrich Gomperz, Karl Popper und die Österreichische Philosophie, edited by M. Seiler and F. Stadler, GA Amsterdam-Atlanta, 1994, p. 11. This essay, with some changes, is the tenth chapter of F. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis, cit., pp. 489–499. 97. K. Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie; ital. trans. La crisi’ della psicologia, cit., p. 31. 98. Op. cit. 99. K. Bühler, Die Axiomatik der Sprachwissenschaften, Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1969. 100. K.R. Popper, Unended Quest, cit., pp. 82–84. There is no reason to believe that Popper’s judgement of psychologism when speaking of Gomperz should be applied to the work of Gomperz. See K.F. Kiesow, Das sprachtphilosophische Werk von Heinrich Gomperz, in “Allgemeine Zietschrift für Philosophie,” 15, 1990. On Gomperz in the context of Austrian philosophy, it is useful to consult R. Haller, Heinrich Gomperz und die osterreichische Philosophie, in Heinrich Gomperz, Karl Popper und die Österreichische Philosophie edited by M. Seiler and F. Stadler, Rodopi, Amsterdam-Atlanta, 1994; and in the broader historical context , Theodor Gomperz, Ein Gelehrtenleben im Bürgertum der Franz-Joseph Zeit, edited by R. A. Kann, Verlag des österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, 1974. 101. H. Gomperz, Autobiographical Remarks, in H. Gomperz, Philosophical Studies, edited by D.S. Robinson, with an introduction by Ph. Merlan, The Christopher Publishing House, Boston, 1953, p. 16. 102. Op. cit., p. 17. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 106. Op. cit., p. 24. 107. Ibid. 108. F. Stadler, Heinrich Gomperz und Karl Popper im Kontext des logischen Empirismus, cit. p. 7. 109. H. Gomperz, Autobiographical Remarks, cit., p. 24. Also useful is the brief article by G. Oberkofler, Heinrich Gomperz un der Sozialismus, in “Zukunft,” 13–14, 1972. Above all, see the essay by O. Pfersmann,

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Rechts — und Sozialphilosophe bei Heinrch Gomperz, in Heinrich Gomperz, Karl Popper und die österreichische Philosophie, cit., pp. 95–118. 110. H. Gomperz, Autobiographical Remarks, cit., p. 17. 111. Op. cit., p. 18. 112. Ibid. 113. Ibid. 114. See E. Dönt, Heinrich Gomperz und die griechische Philosophie, in Heinrich Gomperz, Karl Popper und die österreichische Philosophie, cit., p. 71. 115. H. Gomperz, Autobiographical Remarks, cit., p. 19. 116. E. Dönt, Heinrich Gomperz und die griechische Philosopie, cit. p. 69. 117. H. Gomperz, Autobiographical Remarks, cit., p. 20. 118. Ibid. 119. Cf. H. Gomperz, Freuds Bedeutung für die Geisteswissenschaften, in “Medizinische Klinik,” XXVIII/1, Wien-Berlin-Prag, 1931, p. 872. See K.R. Fischer, Heinrich Gomperz und die Psychoanalyse, in Heinrich Gomperz, Karl Popper und die österreichische Philosophie, cit., pp. 83–93. 120. H. Gomperz, Autobiographical Remarks, cit., p. 20. Cf. also p. 21. 121. Op. cit., p. 21. 122. Op. cit., p. 27. 123. H.Gomperz, Grundlegung der Neusokratischen Philosophie, Franz Deuticke, Leipzig-Wien, 1897, p. 1. This is meant in the specific sense that very great interior liberty can exist in conditions where there is no exterior political-social freedom. The Sokratkier Kreis should not be confounded with the Gomperz Kreis, a circle similar to the Vienna Circle, organized by Gomperz with regular meetings held on Saturdays at his house in Grünbergstrasse 25. Among the participants at the meeting were Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, Viktor Kraft, Otto Neurath, Olga HahnNeurath, Arne Naess, Heinrich Neider, and Edgar Zilsel. Karl Popper also attended these meetings, even if in a conversation with H. J. Dahms and F. Stadler, he says he always met Gomperz privately (Popper und der Wiener Kreis, Aus einem Gespräch mit Sir Karl Popper [1991], in F. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis, cit. p. 529). Discussions at the meetings of the Gomperz circle were on “general philosophical themes, from metaphysics to the sciences of the spirit, as well as on the limits of the logical analysis of language” (F. Stadler, Studien zim Wiener Kreis. cit., p. 493). It is interesting to note that at the meeting of January 12, 1929, Gomperz and Carnap discussed the concept of “sense”; on May 24, 1930, at a meeting also attended by Bühler and Hahn, Franz Krömer introduced the discussion of Heidegger’s Being and Time. The discussion was continued on June 14th of the same year. There were other meetings with speakers

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like Hahn and Neuralth and Gomperz himself. At the meeting of December 13, 1932, the discussion was Schlick against Popper (Op. cit., p. 501). 124. H. Gomperz: a) Die Socratische Frage als geschichtliches Problem, in “Historische Zeitschrift,” vol. 129, 1924, pp. 377–423; b) Die Anklage gegen Sokrates in ihrer Bedeutung für die Sokrates-forschung, in “Neue Jahrbücher,” 3, 1924, pp. 129–173; c) Psychologische Beobachtugen an griechischen Philosophen (Parmenides-Sokrates), in “Imago,” X/1, 1924, pp. 1–92; d) Sokrates Haltung vor seinen Richtern, in “Wiener Studien,” 54, 1936, pp. 32–43. 125. H. Gomperz, Psychologische Beobachtugen an griechischen Philosophen, in “Imago,” 10, 1, 1924, p. 50. 126. E. Dönt, Heinrich Gomperz und die griechische Philosophie, cit., p. 77. 127. H. Gomperz, Problems and Methods of Early Greek Science, in “The Journal of the History of Ideas,” vol. IV, 2, April 1943, pp. 161–176; reprinted in H. Gomperz, Philosophical Studies, cit., p. 79. 128. H. Gomperz, “Heraklits Einbeitslehre” von Alois Patin als Ausgangspunkt zum Verständnis Heraklits, in “Wiener Studien,” 43, 1924, pp. 115–135. See also by H. Gomperz, Heraklitus of Ephesus, in H. Gomperz, Philosophical Studies, cit., pp. 88–107. 129. K. R. Popper, a) Back to Presocratics, in Conjectures and Refutations, cit. pp.136–153; b) The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge, London, 1962, vol.I, pp.203–209. 130. F. Stadler, Heinrich Gomperz und Karl Popper im Kontext des logischen Empirismus, cit., pp. 17–18. On the subject of nominalism, see H. Gomperz,Weltanschauungslehre, 2; Noologie, Eugen Diederisch, Jena, 1908, pp. 167 ff. For Popper’s defense of nominalism see K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, cit., vol.I, pp.10–34. 131. See K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., pp. 28 ff.; and H. Gomperz: a) Ueber Sinn und Sinngebilde, cit., p. 61; b) Autobiographical Remarks, in Philosophical Studies, cit., pp. 22–23, where Gomperz writes: “What I do not agree with in ‘Logical Positivism’ is its tendecy to ban all speculation on issues which at present do not seem to admit of a decision based on experience, and still more its opposition to t notion that reality is something wonderful and mysterious”. 132. Cf. what Popper writes about Heraclitus and Plato in K.R. Popper, The Open society and Its Enemies, pp. 33–34 and 39–41. 133. See K.R. Popper, Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., vol 1. 134. See H. Gomperz, Weltanschauunglehre. 1. Methodologie, Eugen Diederichs, Jena-Leipzig, 1905, p. 9. 135. K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, London, 2002, p.105.

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136. See K.R. Popper: a) Science: Aims, Problems and Resposibilities, cit, b) On the Theory of the Objective Mind, cit., p.185 c) The Open Society and Its Enemies, cit., vol.II, pp.230–233. 137. For example, H. Gomperz, Die Wissenschaft und die Tat, cit., p. 9. 138. Cf. on the subject K.R. Popper: a) On the Theory of the Objective Mind, cit., pp.178–179; b) Poverty of Historicism, Kegan Paul, London, 1957. 139. H. Gomperz, Interpretation. Logical Analysis of a Method of Historical Research, Van Stockum & Zoon, The Hague, 1939, pp. 15 ff. 140. H. Gomperz, Die Wissenschaft und die Tat, cit., 1934. 141. Op. cit., pp. 7–11. 142. Op. cit., p. 8. 143. Op. cit., p.9 144. Ibid. 145. Ibid. 146. Ibid. 147. Op. cit., p. 10. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid. 150. Op. cit., p. 13. 151. Op. cit., pp. 15 ff. 152. Op. cit. p. 19. 153. Op, cit., p. 22. 154. Op. cit., p. 27. 155. Op. cit., p. 29. 156. Op. cit., p. 30. 157. Op. cit., pp. 32 ff. 158. Op. cit., p. 42. 159. Ibid. 160. Cf. H. Rutte, Zu Heinrich Gomperz: “die Wissenschaft und die Tat,” in Heinrich Gomperz, Karl Popper und die \österreichische Philosophie, cit. p. 20. 161. Cf. K.R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science, in Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, edited by W. W. Bartley, Hutchinson, London, 1983. 162. H. Gomperz, Ueber Sinn und Sinngebilde. Verstehen und Erklären, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 1929, p..2 163. K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit., pp. 38–39, and Realism and the Aim of Science, in Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery, cit. 164. H. Gomperz, Ueber Sinn und Sinngebilde. Verstehen und Erklären, cit., p. 3. 165. Ibid.

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1. K. R. Popper, Die Logik der Sozialwissenschaften; Th. W. Adorno, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, in Th. W. Adorno u. a., Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, hers. von H. Maus und F. Fürstenberg, Luchterhand Verlag, Neuwied-Ber1in, 19702. 2. K. R. Popper, Die Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, cit., p. 105. 3. Op. cit., p. 112. 4. Ibid. 5. Th. W. Adorno, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, cit. p. 126. 6. Ibid. 7. Op. cit., p. 130. 8. Op. cit., p. 127. 9. Op. cit., p. 48. 10. Th. W. Adorno, Soziologie und empirische Forschung, in Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, cit., p. 83. 11. Th. W. Adorno, Einleitung, in Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, cit. p. 22 12. R. Dahrendorf, Anmerkungen zur Diskussion der Referate von Karl Popper und Theodor W. Adorno, in Der Positivismustreit in der deutschen Soziologie, cit. p. 146. 13. Cf., 1. Habermas, Analytischen Wissenschaftstheorie und Dialektik, in Der Positivismustreit in der deutschen Soziologie, cit., H. Albert, Der Mythos der totaler Vernunft, in Der Positivismustreit in der deutschen Soziologie, cit. For an analysis of the controversy between Hans Albert and Jürgen Habermas, see my Introduction to the Italian edition of H. Albert, Difesa del costituzionalismo critico [Plädoyer fur kritischen Rationalismus], Armando, Roma, 1975, particularly pp.39–51. 14. L. von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics, English trans., New York University Press, New York and London, 1981, pp. 5–7; 8–9¸72–74; 99–101; 107; 121–124; 132–134. 15. F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, Free Press, London, 1964. 16. C. Menger, Die Irrtümer des Historismus in der deutschen NationalOekonomie, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien, 1894; repr. in C. Menger, Gesammelte Werke, ed. by F. A. von Hayek, vol. 3, J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 1970; repro also by Scientia Verlag, Aa1en, 1996. 17. G. Schmoller, Zur Methodologie der Staats-und Social-wissenschaften, in “Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirthschaft im Deutschen Reich,” VII, 1883, pp. 239 (976)–251 (987). 18. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, Duncker und Humblot, Leipzig, 1883.

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19. It is essential to note here that Gustav Schmoller is certainly the most outstanding representative of what was called the “Young German School of Economics.” However, the German school included other important thinkers. In Leben, Werke und Zeitalter des Thukidides (a work that appeared in Gottingen in 1842), W. Roscher (1817–1894) says he considers politics “doctrine of the evolutionary laws of the state.” He continues: “I believe I can trace back those evolutionary laws by comparing the histories of the populations I know.” Roscher repeated this idea the following year (1843) in Grundriss zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft nach geschichtlichen Methode, where he points out that the historical method is characterized by an effort to “trace back to evolutionary laws the identical elements in the different evolutions of populations.” In 1854, Roscher published System der Volkswirtschaft, in which he proceeds to carry out the program set out in Grundriss. Even though this program focused on specific developments of economic phenomena in certain populations, in substance it is “an organicistic interpretation of economic life based on metaphysics. Thus the objective of the historical school seemed to be to demonstrate the organic concept of all aspects of social development as necessary manifestations of a fundamental essence on a plane above that of individual existence” (P. Rossi, Lo storicismo tedesco contemporaneo, Einaudi, Torino, 1956; 1979, p. 260). Roscher’s is no longer theoretical economics, but, with the approval of Carl Menger, “a philosophy of economic history” (C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., pp. 220–222.). In fact, in System der Volkswirtschaft, Roscher states that the science of economic-social activity is “the doctrine of evolutional laws of the economy and the economic life a people.” In brief, Roscher’s philosophicalmethodological concept is a criticism of the universal “abstract” laws of theoretical economics in the name of historical, concrete developments of economic phenomena organistically understandable in the whole life of a people, which proceeds according to laws that are valid for all populations. It is a concept that contains in se — using two concepts of Popper — the antinaturalistic and pronaturalistic theories of the Historical School of Economics in Germany. Antinaturalistic theories: the laws of theoretical economics are abstract; they can not explain intrinsically new, complex, concrete phenomena that are unique and unrepeatable and can only be understood as part of the totality of interrelationships that make up the life a people taken as a whole, similar to the life of an organism or a species. Pronaturalistic theories: if the abstract laws of theoretical economics are incapable of explaining unique, unrepeatable, new historical events that are not atomisitically separable from the whole — with the risk of not understanding what is actually happening

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— these events can, nevertheless, be rationally understood within the framework of valid laws of development for the parallel histories of all peoples. We find these theories present, in various combinations and with different emphasis, in the representatives of the historical school of economics. Two other famous representatives of the German historical school of economics are Bruno Hildebrand (1812–1878), who was decidedly against the “individualism” of Smith, and Karl Knies (1821–1898), who also opposed the search for “abstract laws” of economics. The German historical school of economics dominated German economic thought for about forty years. This domination began in 1843, with the publication of Roscher’s Grundriss, and continued — in the opinion of E. Roll — until 1883, the year Menger’s Untersuchungen was published. Menger’s book includes a detailed picture of the origins and development of the historical school of German economists and points out the important difference between the Historical School and the direction of the research of Burke and von Savigny. 20. G. Schmoller, Zur Methodoldogie der Staats-und Socialwissenschaften, in “Jahrbuch für Gessetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich,” VII, 1883, p. 239 (975). 21. Op. cit., pp. 239–240 (975–976). 22. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit.. 23. Op. cit. See also the discussion of Menger in E. von Philippovich, Ueber Aufgabe und Methode der Politischen Ökonomie, Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung von J.C.B.Mohr Freibuurg i.B., 1886, p. 27ff. 24. G. Schmoller, Zur Methodologie der Staats-und Socialwissenschaften, cit., p. 241 (977). 25. Op. cit., pp. 241–242 (977–978) 26. Op. cit., p. 242 (978), 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. Actually, Menger says: “The only logical rule for ascertaining theoretical truth which is validated (as far as possible) not only by experience but also undoubtedly by our mental structure and is therefore of the greatest importance to the exact approach to theoretical research, is defined by the words ‘whatever is observed even in a single case must, under the same circumstances, repeat itself,’ or — and it is essentially the same — under the same circumstances, because of the power of our mental system due, necessarily, to phenomena strictly typical of a particular species, there must follow phenomena likewise strictly typical of a particular species. Under identical circumstances phenomena A and B must always be followed by a phenomenon that is strictly typical of C , provided that A and B are considered strictly typical and even if this suc-

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cession of phenomena has been observed only in one case” (C.Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere). 30. G. Schmoller, Zur Methodologie der Staat-und Socialwissenschaften, cit., p. 243 (979). 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Op. cit., p. 244 (980). 38. Ibid. Schmoller cites Sigwart, who wrote: “From the very beginning, the individual (das Einzelne) must be considered as part of a whole and treated in relationships that can be observed in this context.” 39. Op. cit., p. 244 (980). 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Op. cit., p. 246 (982). 43. Op. cit., pp. 245–246 (981–982). 44. Op. cit., p. 246 (983). 45. Ibid. 46. Op. cit., p. 247 (983). 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Op. cit., p. 249 (985). 51. Op. cit., p. 250 (986). 52. Op. cit., p. 251 (987), 53. Ibid. 54. C. Menger, Die Irrtümer des Historismus in der Deutschen NationalOekonomie, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien, 1884 (reprinted by Scientia Verlag, Aalen, 1996). I cite from this latter edition, shortening the title of Die Irrtümer des Historismus. 55. Op. cit., p. III. 56. Op. cit., p. IV. 57. Op. cit., pp. IV–V. 58. Op. cit., pp. V–VI. Nevertheless, Menger points out (p. V) that in economics it is possible to use — advantageously — results from other disciplines if it is really necessary and they are significant for the science of economics itself: “This holds when it concerns the results of historical research just as it does for those of statistics, psychology, logic or technical sciences.”

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59. Op. cit., p. VI. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Op. cit., p. 12. 64. Op. cit., p. 13. 65. Ibid. 66. Op. cit., p. 14. 67. Cf. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., p. 13; see also pp.127-128. 68. C. Menger, Die Irrtümer des Historismus, cit., p. 17. 69. Op. cit., pp. 16–17. 70. Op. cit., p. 17. 71. Op. cit., p. 18. In 1889 Menger returned to the question of the division of the sciences with greater commitment in the essay Grundzüge einer Klasssifikation der Wirtschaftwissenschaften, in “Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik,” vol. XIV, 1889. 72. C. Menger, Die Irrtümer des Historismus, cit., pp. 18–19. As we already know, the aim of the exact approach in economics research is not “to understand social phenomena in ‘their first empiric reality’ but rather to help us understand ‘the economic side’ of the empiric reality.” 73. Op. cit., pp. 29–30. 74. Op. cit., pp. 31–32. 75. Op. cit., p. 35. On the need for theories that explain and predict in Menger and in Popper, see my essay Fatti, teorie e spiegazioni in C. Menger and K. Popper, in “Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine,” II, 1984, pp. 44–60. 76. C. Menger, Die Irrtümer des Historismus, cit., p. 42. 77. Op. cit., p. 43. 78. Op. cit., p. 44. 79. Op. cit., p. 45. 80. Op. cit., p. 44. 81. Op. cit., pp. 44–45. 82. Op. cit., p. 45. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid. 85. Op. cit., p. 48. 86. Op. cit., pp. 48–49. 87. Op. cit., pp. 49–50. 88. Op. cit., p. 50. 89. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1961, p. 77. 90. Op. cit., p. 96.

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91. Op. cit., p. 100. 92. Op. cit., pp. 102–103. 93. Op. cit., pp. 4–5. 94. Op. cit., p. 5. 95. Op. cit., p. 17. 96. Op. cit., p. 5. 97. Op. cit., pp. 5–7 (At the end of quotation: Op. cit., p. 33). 98. Op. cit., pp. 12–13. 99. In regard to these important subjects, see also the comments in L. von Mises, Sociology and History in Epistemological Problems of Economics, cit., p. 71 ff. On page 99 von Mises holds that history cannot be imagined without theory. See also F.A.von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, cit, and J. Schumpeter, Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie, C.L. Hirschfeld, Leipzig, 1912, p. 47. 100. (At the end of quotation): p. 22. 101. Op. cit., pp. 28-29. 102. Op. cit., p. 29. 103. Op. cit., pp. 101–102. 104. Op. cit., pp. 109–110. 105. Op. cit., p. 132. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Cf. in reference to what Popper writes about the unity of the scientific method in Menger, K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit, p. 131. 109. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit. (At the end of quotation): p. 121. 110. Op. cit., p. 123. 111. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., pp. 38–39. 112. Op. cit., pp. 28–29. 113. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, Dunker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1883, pp. 6–7. 114. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 136. 115. Op. cit., p. 135. Apropos of methodological individualism, cf. F.A.von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, cit.; J. Schumpeter, Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie, cit., chapter. VI, pp. 88–98. See also K. Pribram, Die Entstehung der individualistischen Sozialphilosophie, C. L. Hirschfeld, Leipzig, 1912, especially chapter 4 dealing with the Scottish moralists and Mandeville, Hume and Smith.

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116. C, Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit. In reference to methodological individualism in Menger, see: R. Cubeddu, Il liberalismo della Scuola austriaca: Menger, Mises, Hayek, Morano, Napoli-Milano 1992, p.204 ff.; L. Infantino, L’ordine senza piano, NIS, Roma, 1995, pp. 141–159; D. Antiseri and L. Pellicani, L’individualismo metodologico, Angeli, Milano, 1992, pp. 27–30. 117. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 139. 118. Op. cit., p. 140. 119. Op. cit., pp. 139–140. 120. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit. 121. See K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, cit., chapter V. 122. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., p. 94. 123. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 118. 124. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., pp. 256-257. Actually, Menger explains the idea of multiple laws in reference to prediction. “Practical sciences of whatever type are not generally based exclusively on only theoretical science; on the contrary, usually their theoretical basis is made up of many theoretical sciences. The theoretical basis of surgery and therapy is not only anatomy but also physiology, mechanics, chemistry, etc. And mechanics and mathematics are also the theoretical basis of technological chemistry. The same holds for the practical sciences of economics, which are based completely, but not necessarily exclusively, on economic theory.” 125. K. Dietzel, Die Volkwirthschaft und ihr Verhältnis zu gesellschaft und Staat, Frankfurt a M., 1804, p. 52 126. K. Kniess, Die politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geshichtlichen Methode, Braunschweig, 1853, p. 29 and p. 109 ff. 127. G. Schmoller, Zur Methodolgie der Staat-und Socialzissenschaften, cit., p. 244 (980). 128. G. Schmoller, Ueber einige Grundfragen des Rechtes und Volkswirthschaft, Jena, 1875, p. 42 ff. 129. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., p. 65. 130. Op. cit., p. 64. 131. Op. cit., p. 65. 132. Ibid. 133. Op. cit., p. 67. 134. Op. cit., p. 68.

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135. C. Menger, Die Irrtümer des Historisismus, cit., p. 38. 136. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., p. 69. 137. In reference to these subjects, see: L. von Mises, Sociology and History in Epistemological Problems in Economics, cit., p. 71 ff.; p. 99 ff.; F.A. von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, cit. 138. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 35. 139. Op. cit., p. 37. 140. Op. cit., p. 41. 141. Op. cit., p. 45. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. J. Schumpeter was clear about the idea that a trend is not a law in his Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der teoretichen Nationalökonomie, cit., p. 45. 144. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit., p. 115. 145. Op. cit., pp. 115–116 146. Op. cit., p. 128. 147. Ibid. 148. Op. cit., pp. 129–130. “The historicist — Popper adds – continuously upbraids those who cannot imagine a change in their little worlds; yet is seems that the historicist is himself deficient in imagination, for he cannot imagine a change in the conditions of change.” 149. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere. For criticism of historicism within the Austrian School, it is useful to consult R. Cubeddu, Tra Scuola austriaca e Popper, ESI, Napoli, 1996, pp. 55– 62. 150. Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., p. 127. Notes to Chapter 8 1. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge, London, 1999, vol. I, p. 100. 2. Op. cit., Ibid. For a clear view of the differences between individualistic and collectivist concepts in social philosophy in the period that goes from the Middle Ages to Adam smith, see K.Pribram, Die Entstehung der individualistischen Sozialphilosophie, C.: Hirschfeld, Leipzig, 1912, pp. 1–18. On Pribram, see W.M. Johnston, Oesterreichische Kultur-und Geistesgeschichte. cit., pp. 90–92. See also R. Kerschagl, Einführung in die Methodenlehre der Nationalökonomie, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien-Leipzig, 1925, particularly pp.66–114.

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3. K. R. Popper, La scienza e la storia sul filo dei ricordi, Interview by Giulio Ferrari, Jaca Book-Edizioni Casagrande, Bellinzonza, 1990, pp.24–25. 4. Op. cit., p. 25. 5. Ibid. For similar considerations, see M.N. Rothbard, Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Cato Institute, San Francisco, 1979, pp. 57–61; and A.W.Green, The Reified Villain, in “Social Research,” 35, 1968, p.656. 6. K. R. Popper, La scienza e la storia sul filo dei ricordi, cit., p. 25. 7. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, London, 1989, pp. 135–136. 8. Op. cit., p. 136. On the logic of the situation and methodological individualism in Popper, see the critical remarks by A.M. Petroni, Introduzione to the anthology K.R. Popper, Il pensiero politico, Le Monnier, Firenze, 1981, pp. 64–76. In the essay L’individualismo metodologico in L’analisi della politica, A. Panebianco ed., il Mulino, Bologna, 1989, p. 144, Petroni maintains that “some of Popper’s weakest pages are devoted to the principle of rationality.” Of this essay by Petroni see, in particular, pp. 144–146. 9. K. R. Popper, La scienza e la storia sul filo dei ricordi, cit., pp. 24– 25. 10. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, cit, vol. II, p. 324. 11. K. R. Popper, Die Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, cit., p. 12. 12. Ibid. On the differences between the positions of Popper and Hayek it is useful to consult K.J. Scott, Methodological and Epistemological Individualism, in Modes of Individualism and Collectivism, J.O’Neill ed., Heinemann, London, 1973, pp. 215–220; N.P. Barry, Hayek’s Social and Economic Philosophy,Macmillan, London, 1979, pp. 39–41. 13. From a letter by Max Weber to R. Liefmann (1920); cit. by R. Boudon, 14. M. Weber, 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Op. cit., p. 16. 18. G. Simmel, Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent, in “L’annèe sociologique,” 1987. 19. Op. cit. 20. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., pp. 86–87. 21. Op. cit., p. 87. 22. Op. cit., pp. 84–85. 23. K. R. Popper, The Communist Road to Self-Enslavement, in “Cato Policy Report,” May-June 1992, vol. XIV, n.3, p.10.

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24. L. von Mises, Socialism, Liberty Classics, Indianapolis, 1981. 25. L. von Mises, Human Action. A Treatise on Economics, Hodge, London, 1949. 26. L. von Mises, The Task and Scope of the Science of Human Action, in Epistemological Problems of Economics, New York University Press, New York-London, 1981, p. 43. 27. L. von Mises, Human Action. A Treatise on Economics, cit. 28. L. von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., Kansas City, 1978, p. 78. 29. Op. cit., pp.78–82. 30. F. A. von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science. Studies on the Abuse of Reason, Liberty Press, Indianapolis, p. 94. 31. Op. cit., pp. 94–95. 32. Op. cit., p. 95. 33. Ibid. 34. Op. cit., p. 96. 35. Op. cit., p. 98. 36. Op. cit., p. 100–101. 37. Op. cit., p. 64. 38. Op. cit., p. 63. 39. Op. cit., p. 67. 40. Op. cit., p. 68. 41. Op. cit., p. 68. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Op. cit., p. 67. In note 4 on p. 67, Hayek says “I have taken the term “compositive” from a manuscript note of Carl Menger, who, in his personal annotated copy of Schmoller’s review of his Methoden der Sozialwissenschaften (Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung etc, nf 7 [1883], p . 42), wrote it above the word deductive used by Schmoller. Since writing this I have noticed that Ernst Cassirer in his Philosophie der Aufklärung (1932, pp. 12. 25.341) uses the term compositive in order to point out rightly that the procedure of the natural sciences presupposes the successive use of the “resolutive” and the “compositive” technique. This is useful and links up with the point that, since the elements are directly known to us in the social sciences, we can start here with the compositive procedure.” However, R. Cubeddu disagrees with Hayek. He says (Sul tema dell’individualismo metodologico, in “Il Politico,” LIV, 2, 1989, p. 325) that the correlation between the use of the term “compositive” in Menger and the “resolutory ,” “compositive” method that Cassirer speaks of would be misleading because it “would imply that Menger’s ‘compositive method’ is related to the method of the modern natural sciences. However, in Menger’s text there is an obvious influence of Aristotelian philosophy.”

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45. F. A. von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science, cit., p. 66. 46. Op. cit., p. 68. 47. Ibid. 48. K. R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, cit. p. 65. On p. 65 see fn 1: according to Popper, the two theories that respectively assert that social institutions either are ‘designed’ or grow spontaneously are typical, on the one hand, of the theoreticians of the Social Contract and, on the other, of their critics, such as David Hume. 49. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, cit., p. 93. 50. Ibid. The easiest way to understand the meaning of the idea of unintentional consequences of an action is to use an example: “If a man wishes urgently to buy a house in a certain district, we can safely assume that he does not wish to raise the market price of houses in that district. But the very fact that he appears on the market as a buyer will tend to raise market prices. And analogous remarks hold for the seller”(Op. cit., p. 96). Menger mentions this example in passing, but Popper returns to it several times. For example, see his essay Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., p. 452. . 51. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2. cit., p. 91. 52. Op. cit., pp. 93–94. 53. Op. cit., p. 90. 54. Op. cit., p. 94. 55. Op. cit., p. 93. 56. The inability of psychologism to offer explanations was well understood by Marx. Says Popper, “To have questioned psychologism is perhaps the greatest achievement of Marx as a sociologist. By doing so he opened the way to the more penetrating conception of a specific realm of sociological laws, and of a sociology which was at least partly autonomous.” (op. cit., p. 88; see also Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, in Conjectures and Refutations, cit. p. 452). In any case, Popper says “my arguments against psychologism should not be misunderstood. They are not, of course, intended to show that psychological studies and discoveries are of little importance for the social scientist. They mean, rather, that psychology – the psychology of the individual – is one of the social sciences, even though it is not the basis of all social science. Nobody would deny the importance for political science of psychological facts such as the craving for power, and the various neurotic phenomena connected with it. But ‘craving for power’ is undoubtedly a social notion as well as a psychological one: we must not forget that, if we study, for example, the first appearance in childhood of this craving, then we study it in the setting of a certain social institution, for example, that of our modern family. (The Eskimo family may give rise to rather different phenomena.)” (K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2., cit., pp. 97–98).

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57. Op. cit., p. 95. 58. Ibid. Cf. on the same subject K.R. Popper, Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2004, pp. 460–461. 59. K.R. Popper, The Open society and Its Enemies, vol.2., cit., p. 95. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. We can understand that this task is essential for the social sciences if we think that “an action which proceeds precisely according to intention does not create a problem for social science (except that there may be a need to explain why in this particular case no unintended repercussions occurred).” (Op. cit. p. 96) 62. K. R. Popper, Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, cit., p. 452. 63. Op. cit., p. 454. 64. Op. cit., p. 456.. 65. Op. cit., p. 457 66. Ibid. Of course, Popper points out that in so far as the development of society is repetitive “we may perhaps make certain prophecies. For example, there is undoubtedly some repetitiveness in the manner in which new religions arise, or new tyrannies; and a student of history may find that he can foresee such developments to a limited degree by comparing them with earlier instances, i. e. by studying the conditions under which they arise. But this application of the method of conditional prediction does not take us very far” (ibid.) because in the history of society situations and conditions change. Since the changing of conditions and their combinations are not predictable, neither are their effects. 67. Op. cit., pp. 457–458. 68. Op. cit., p. 459. 69. Ibid. Actually, Popper adds, “while there are, admittedly, such empirical objects as the crowd of people here assembled, it is quite untrue that names like ‘the middle-class’ stand for any such empirical groups.” 70. Op. cit., p. 460. 71. Ibid. Popper says (in The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. II, cit., p. 323) that for the idea that Marx conceived of social theory as the study of the unintentional repercussions of almost all our actions, he is indebted to K. Polanyi “who emphasized this aspect of Marxism in private discussions (1924).” 72. K. R. Popper, Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, cit., pp. 460–461. 73. Op. cit., p. 461. 74. Op. cit., p. 460. Note that once again Popper clarifies this idea of the unintentional repercussions of intentional human actions with the example of the man who wants to buy a house and so, by appearing on the market, involuntarily raises the price of the house.

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75. Op. cit., p. 461. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. K. R. Popper, Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition (1948) in K. R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, cit. p. 167. 79. Ibid. 80. K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972. The idea of unintentional consequences of intentional human actions was then extended to the products of world 3: these too have unexpected consequences, which is obviously true also for scientific theories. In Unended Quest, Routledge, London, p.26, Popper says, “there is an infinity of unforeseeable nontrivial statements belonging to the informative content of any theory, and an exactly corresponding infinity of statements belonging to its logical content. We can therefore never know or understand all the implications of any theory, or its full significance.” In a certain sense, we never know what we are talking about. A similar situation is presented in the hermeneutics of Gadamer at the beginning of the history of effects (Wirkungsgeschichte); Cf. H.G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Mohr, Tübingen, 1960. English trans. by G. Barden and J. Cumming, Truth and Method, Sheed, London, 1975. 81. F. A. von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science, cit., pp. 68–69. 82. Op. cit, p. 69. 83. Op. cit., pp. 164–165. 84. Op. cit., p. 163. 85. Op. cit., pp. 172–178. 86. C. Menger, Grundsatze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, Braumuller, Wien, 1871, p. 250 ff. 87. C. Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere, cit., p. 172. 88. See R. K. Merton, The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action, in “American Sociological Review,” 1936, pp. 894–904. It is interesting that in this important essay, which is almost completely overlooked by sociologists and methodologists of the social scientists, Merton also cites Vico and Bossuet. Notes to Chapter 9 1. H. Kelsen, Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie, Tübingen, 1929, p. 100. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Op. cit., p. 102. 5. Ibid.

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6. Op. cit., p. 102. 7. Merkl, Demokratie und Weltanschauungslehre, in “Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht,” vol. II, p. 71 ff. 8. H. Kelsen, Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie, Tübingen, 1929, p. 100. 9. Op. cit., p. 103. 10. Op. cit., p. 103. 11. K. R. Popper, Die Zukunft ist offen, Piper, München, 1985. 12. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge, London, 1999, vol. I, p. 173. 13. K. R. Popper, The Myth of the Framework, 1994, p. 110. 14. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 202. 15. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. II., cit., pp. 160–161. 16. K. R. Popper and H. Marcuse, Revolution oder Reform, Kösel-Verl, München, 1971. 17. Cf. B. Magee, The New Radicalism, London, 1962. 18. Cf. in reference to this see K.R. Popper, All Life is Problem Solving, Chaps. 7, 9,10, 11, 14, 15, 16. Routledge, London, 1999. 19. K. R. Popper, The Open society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit. chapter V. 20. Cf. K. R. Popper, Utopia and Violence in Conjectures and Refutations , Routledge, London, 2002, p. 477 ff. 21. K. R. Popper, The Open society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 120. 22. Op. cit., p. 121. 23. H. Kelsen, Die platonische Liebe, in “Imago. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalytische Psychologie, ihre Grenzgebiete und Anwendungen” vol. XIX, 1933. English translation by G. Wilbur: Platonic Love, in “The American Imago”, 3 (1942), pp. 3–110. In the course of a conversation with HansJoachim Dahms and Friedrich Stadler on August 31, 1991, at Popper’s home in Kenley (Surrey), Popper recalls having met Kelsen through Julius Kraft. Popper was going to England and Kelsen gave him a letter to deliver to Hayek. This is how Popper was able to meet Hayek personally. Popper admits to being concerned,”though not very,” with Kelsen’s Doctrine of law, and finally came to the conclusion that he could not accept it. In Popper’s opinion, Kelsen’s doctrine of law was not acceptable because it was applicable to everybody. (Cf. F. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis, cit., p. 543). Stadler mentions to Popper “Kelsen was also concerned with the so-called crisis of democracy.” And Popper replies: “Under Hitler’s influence he revised all his theories. And I met him again in America” (Ibid.). When H. J. Dahms points out to Popper that he cites one of Kelsen’s essays (Platonic Love) which appeared in the magazine “Imago” in the Open Society, Popper replies he was unaware of it. Stadler

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points out that in both the essay published in “Imago” and also in other writings Kelsen dealt with Plato and specifically with the origins of totalitarian thought. Dahms notes that “in Austria there had already been thinkers who were critical of Plato” (Op. cit., pp. 543–544). 24. H. Kelsen, Platonic Love, cit. 25. Op. cit. 26. Op. cit. 27. Plato, Letter VII, 325, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters. Trans. by B. Jowett. Princeton University Press, 1961. 28. H. Kelsen, Platonic Love, cit. 29. H. Kelsen, La justice platonicienne, in “Revue philosophique de la France et de l’ètranger”, 57 (1932). English translation: Platonic Justice in What is Justice? University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971, p. 95. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. The reference to Plato is Laws II, 7–9. 32. Op. cit., p. 96. 33. Op. cit., p. 109. 34. Ibid. 35. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., pp. 35–39. 36. H. Kelsen, Die platonische Wahrheit, cit., p. 190. 37. Ibid. 38. Op. cit., p. 191 39. Ibid. Kelsen refers to Laws VIII, 839. 40. H. Kelsen, Platonic Justice, cit.., p. 96. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Laws 700 and 701 a. 44. H. Kelsen, Die platonische Wahrheit, cit., p. 194. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Plato, Republic II, 377. 49. H. Kelsen, Die platonische Wahreit, cit., p. 195. 50. Op. cit., p. 196. 51. Op. cit., p. 197. 52. Ibid. 53. A. Hoernlé, “Would Plato have approved of the national-socialist State?” In Plato, Popper, and Politics, ed. by R. Bambrough, W. Heffer, Cambridge, 1957, pp. 166–172. 54. Op. cit., p. 167. 55. Ibid. 56. Op. cit., p. 168.

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57. Ibid. 58. Op. cit., p. 169. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Op. cit., p. 170. 62. Ibid. 63. Op. cit., p. 178 64. Op. cit., p. 179. 65. Op. cit., p. 180. 66. Ibid. 67. K. R. Popper, “Back to the Presocratics,” in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., pp. 148–149. 68. Op. cit., 150. 69. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit. p. 188. See also the ideas developed by Popper in the essay Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., p. 120 ff. 70. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 173. 71. Op. cit., p. 174. 72. Op. cit., p. 177. 73. Ibid. 74. Op. cit., pp. 189–190. 75. Op. cit., p. 190. 76. Op. cit., p. 194. 77. G. Ryle. Review of K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in “Mind,” vol. 56, 1947, p. 169. 78. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 18. 79. Op. cit., p. 19. 80. Op. cit., p. 20. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 84. Op. cit., p. 21. 85. G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, Oxford University Press, London, 1930, p. 91. 86. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 87. Op. cit., p. 86. 88. Op. cit., pp. 86–87. 89. Op. cit., p. 87. 90. Ibid. 91. Op. cit., p. 89. 92. Ibid. 93. Plato, The Republic, London, Penguin, 2003, pp.137–139. English transl. by Desmond Lee.

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94. Op. cit., p. 91. 95. Op. cit., p. 90. 96. Op. cit., p. 143. 97. Op. cit., pp. 95ff. 98. In the political field, Plato sees the Greatest Evil in the individual. To think, Popper observes with bitterness that “this attitude, anti-humanitarian and anti-Christian as it is, has been constantly idealized. It has been interpreted as humane, as unselfish, as altruistic, and as Christian” (K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 104). Plato identifies individualism with egoism (Op. cit., pp. 99–106). In Popper’s view, Plato’s criterion of morality is the interest of the State (Op. cit., pp. 107–120). This is, in fact, the collectivist, tribal and totalitarian theory of the State; what is good is what is in the interest of my group, my tribe or my State (Ibid.). This is exactly Plato’s theory. “I…will give the laws…” (Laws, 923 b). Popper’s conclusion is that Plato “is concerned solely with the collective whole as such, and justice to him is nothing but the health, unity, and stability of the collective body” (K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, cit., p. 106 ). 99. Op. cit., p. 121. 100. Op. cit., pp 141ff. and pp. 148ff. 101. Op. cit., pp. 157ff. 102. Op. cit., p. 200. 103. Op. cit., pp. 200–201. Notes to Chapter 10 1. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge, London, 1999, vol. 2, p. 106. 2. Op. cit., pp. 106–107. 3. Op. cit., p. 107. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Op. cit., pp. 107–108. 9. Op. cit., p. 108. 10. Op. cit., p. 110. 11. M. Weber, “Objectivity” in Social Science and Social Policy, in The Methodology of Social Sciences, 1949, pp. 68–69. 12. Op. cit., p.71. 13. E. Bernstein, The Preconditions of Socialism, Cambridge University Press, trans. by H. Tudor, 1993, pp. 15–16. 14. Op. cit., pp. 16–17.

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15. M. Adler, Lehrbuch der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung, vol. 1, Berlin, 1930, p. 151. 16. Op. cit., p. 152. 17. Ibid. 18. Op. cit., p. 172. 19. Ibid. 20. L. von Mises, Socialism, LibertyClassics, Indianapolis, 1981, p. 314. 21. Op. cit., pp. 314–315. 22. Op. cit. p. 315. 23. Ibid.. 24. K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1971. 25. K. Mehring, Die Lessing-Legende, 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1909, p. 422. 26. Op. cit., p. 423. 27. L. von Mises, Socialism, cit, p. 316. 28. Op. cit., p. 317. 29. A. Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 18702 (1st ed. 1840); repr., Olms, Hildesheim, 1964. Apropos of this subject, bear in mind Bolzano’s sharp criticism of Hegelian dialectics: cf. B. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre (1837), reprpinted Meiner, Leipzig 1929–31, vol. IV, pp. 647–656. Bolzano thought that dialectic demonstrations were “nothing more than artificial plays on words” (Op. cit., p. 656.) 30. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1954, p. 17. 31. V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, in Marx, Engels, Marxism, 1951, p. 23. 32. A clear description of Marx as a dialectical thinker can be found in the interesting essay by N. Bobbio, La dialettica in Marx, in Studi sulla dialettica, ed. by N. Abbagnano, Taylor, Torino, 1958, 19692. 33. K. Marx, Postface to the Second Edition of Capital, 1990, Penguin, London, vol. I, pp. 102–103. 34. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, cit., p. 37. 35. Op. cit., pp. 187–188. 36. Op. cit., p. 195. 37. I. Fetscher, Der Marxismus. Seine Geschichte in Dokumenten, München, 1962. 38. H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, New York-London, 1958, pp. 137–138. 39. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, pp. 179–180. 40. Cf. F. Engels, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Correspondence, 1934. 41. K. Kautsky, Der historische Materialismus, Berlin, 1927, pp. 130– 132. 42. M. Adler, Dialektik oder Metaphysik, in “Der Kampf,” 5, 1911–1912, pp. 78–85; reprinted in Marxistische Probleme, J.H.W. Dietz, Stuttgart, 1913, p. 76 ff. In addition to the aforementioned article, also see by Adler, Die Dialektik des Werdens, in “Der Kampf,” 5, 1911–1912, pp. 122–127. These two articles are also reprinted in M. Adler, Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. by N.

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Leser and A. Pfabigan, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Wien, 1981, respectively on pp. 443–450 and pp. 451–456. In the journal “Der Kampf,” 1, 1908, pp. 256–264, there also appears the article Marx und die Dialektik. In reference to the influence of Kantian philosophy on Adler, see the essays in M. Adler, Kant und der Marxismus. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Erkenntniskritik und Theorie des Sozialen, E. Laub’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 1925; reprinted with a Preface by N. Leser, Scientia Verlag of Aalen, 1975. On Adler, see A. Pfabigan, Max Adler (Introduction), in M. Adler, Ausgewählte Schriften, cit., pp. 9–17. In reference to Austrian Marxism, see: E. Glaser, Im Umfeld des Austromarxismus, Europaverlag, Wien-München-Zürich, 1981; N. Leser, Austromarxistisches Geistes-und Kulturleben, in Das geistige Leben Wiens in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Wien, 1981, pp. 9–17; and more briefly W.M. Johnston, Oesterreichische Kulturund Geistesgeschichte, cit., pp. 112–124. 43. E. Bernstein, The Preconditions of socialism, 1993, p. 46. 44. Op. cit., p. 36. 45. Op. cit., p. 46. 46. E. von Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System, Kelley, New York, 1949. 47. E. von Böhm-Bawerk, Kleinere Abhandlungen über Kapital und Zins, in Schriften II, 1968. 48. R. Carnap, Intellectual Autobiography, in: P. A. Schillp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, 1963, p. 24. Later on, B. Russell would maintain that dialectics is the most fanciful belief that Marx inherited from Hegel (Cf. B. RussellL, Unpopular Essays, 1995, p. 23) For criticism of dialectics by men of science, see what A. Einstein thought (Cf. B. Hoffman, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel, 1973); and see J. MonodD, Chance and Necessity, 1972. 49. K. R. Popper, What is Dialectics?, in “Mind,” 1940; reprinted in Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, London, 2002, pp. 419–451. 50. Op. cit., p. 419. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Op. cit., p. 424. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Op. cit., p. 425. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Op. cit., p. 425. 60. Op. cit., p. 425. 61. Ibid. 62. Op. cit., p. 433.

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63. Ibid. Cf. for similar critical argumentation H. Kleinpeter, Die Erkenntnistheorie der Natuurforschung der Gengenwart, cit., pp.99–100. 64. K. R. Popper, What is Dialectics?, cit., p. 433. 65. Op. cit., p. 434. 66. Ibid. 67. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, cit., p. 189. 68. K. R. Popper, What is Dialectic?, op. cit., p. 434. 69. For references to Engels and Marx, see F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, cit., pp. 149, 150, 151; K. Marx, Capital, 1990, vol. 1, p. 92. 70. K. R. Popper, Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences, in Conjectures and Refutations, cit., p. 452. 71. K. R. Popper, What is Dialectics?, cit., p. 449. 72. Op. cit., p. 450. 73. Op. cit. pp. 450–451. 74. Op. cit. p. 451. 75. Op. cit., p. 445. 76. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2 , cit., pp. 278–279. 77. Op. cit., p. 279. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. H. Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law, London, Stevens & Sons, 1955, p. 43. On Kelsen’s criticism of Marxism, see L. Colletti, Tramonto della ideologia, Laterza, Bari, 1980, pp. 89–161. 81. H. Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law, cit, p. 45. 82. H. Kelsen, Sozialismus und Staat, 1965, p. 21. 83. Ibid. 84. H. Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law, 1955, p. 50. 85. Op. cit., p. 18.