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Reason or Revolution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Karl R. Popper
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Extract

I will begin by telling some of the history of the book and of its misleading title. In i9601 was invited to open a discussion on “The Logic of the Social Sciences” at a congress of German sociologists in Tubingen. I accepted, and I heard that my opening address would be followed by a reply from Professor Theodor W. Adorno of Frankfurt. It was suggested to me by the organizers that, in order to make a fruitful discussion possible, I should formulate my views in a number of definite theses. This I did: my opening address to that discussion, delivered in 1961, consisted of twenty-seven sharply formulated theses, plus a programmatic formulation of the task of the theoretical social sciences. Of course, I formulated these theses so as to make it difficult for any Hegelian and Marxist (such as Adorno) to accept them; and I supported them as well as I could by arguments. Owing to the limited time available, I confined myself to fundamentals, and I tried to avoid repeating what I had said elsewhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , November 1970 , pp. 252 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1970

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References

(1) Maus, H. and Fürstenberg, F. (eds), Soziologie (Berlin, Luchterhand, 1969)Google Scholar. Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen

(2) Popper, K. R., The Open Society and its Enemies (London 1945), fifth edition 1969Google Scholar.

(3) Id.The Poverty of Historicism (London 1957, and later editions).

(4) Id. What is Dialectic?, Mind, XLIX (1940), pp. 403 sq. Reprinted in Conjectures and Refutations (London 1963), third edition 1969.

(5) (Wien, Julus Springer, 1934). English translation: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, Hutchinson, 1959)Google Scholar.

(6) The Open Society…, op. cit. (1969), II, p. 215.

(7) The Poverty…, op. cit. (1957), p. 155.

(8) Conjectures…, op. cit. (1969), especially chapter IV.

(9) Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, 2Google Scholar. Aufl., 1872, »Nachwort«. (In some later editions, this is described as “Preface to second edition”).

(10) The phenomenon of normal science only normal science was discovered, but not criticized, by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn is, I believe, mistaken in thinking that ‘normal’ science is not only normal today but always was so. On the contrary, in the past—until 1939—science was almost always critical, or ‘extraordinary’; there was no scientific ‘routine’.

(11) Op. cit.

(12) 12th June 1970, p. 45.

(13) See my book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, op. cit. (1959), new appendix 1.

(14) Albert, H., Traktat über die krititische Vernunft2 (Tübingen, Mohr, 1969)Google Scholar.