In 1945 Karl Popper left Christchurch and moved to the London School of Economics where he became the Professor of Logic and Scientific Method.
His main course was Introduction to Scientific Method and he delivered a series of fifteen lectures on this topic for a decade or so through the 1950s. Mark Notturno became the editor of Popper’s work and one of his tasks was to convert the transcripts of the lectures into a publishable form. The recordings included questions and answers, and the usual false starts and half sentences of the spoken word, so the idea was to create an “ideal type” of each lecture, drawing on the best parts of the ten copies that were available for each lecture.
As described in the Introduction, the publication stalled but it is now possible to read the first three lectures on line. Introduction with links to the lectures.
The first lecture on Values began with a welcome from Popper who warned the students. “I am getting old…my English is deteriorating with age…I am getting more and more inclined to ramble…and I am not a good lecturer either”.
In fact he was a captivating lecturer, speaking without notes, inviting and responding to interjections, inserting asides about his projects and references to significant developments events in science at the time. That was all edited out unless it related specifically to the content of the lecture.
On the function of lectures he said “Lectures are sometimes enjoyable, sometimes boring, but always, in a certain sense, unimportant. The important thing is the work that you are doing yourself.”
On the real aim of a university education. “I believe that someone is well-educated only if he realizes in great detail how little he knows. And I think that this is really very important. I think that a man who has the feeling that he knows a lot is somehow badly educated. Yes, one can know a lot…but the main point, at least with regard to pure knowledge, is to recognize the many open problems that lurk in all the knowledge that we have achieved. Without that l would say that you are not really educated…And the more we know and the more our knowledge grows, the more modest we should become about all those things that we don’t know.”
Thanks to Mark Notturno!
If only the fools we have in the science community preaching the Great Global Warming Racket would be more “modest (about) all those things we don’t know.”
This should apply to the left leaning fools we have in our parliaments, too.
But they’re not worth the scum I pick off the bottom of my boots after a walk through a paddock full of steers to bother about.
Come September 14, if not sooner, they’ll be given a lesson on who’s really in charge, although I suppose the damage in great measure has been done.
Ant
2 Feb 13 at 8:50 pm
That is some incredible writing. I’m smiling as I read it; depth of thought in simple language, just wonderful.
Driftforge
2 Feb 13 at 9:26 pm
The ABC’s Robin Williams used to love reminiscing about Popper, but the scientific method went missing somewhere along the line.
blogstrop
2 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
Williams should have actually read Popper, that might have helped.
Poor Old Rafe
2 Feb 13 at 10:29 pm
Professor of Logic and Scientific Method.
Now that’s a chair worth its salt. Do professors still have positions like this?
John Mc
2 Feb 13 at 11:28 pm
blogstrop-it’s less that the scientific method went missing although that is true but that the social sciences have been allowed to gain ascendancy over the hard sciences. And the current push is that all hard science has to be experiential. It doesn’t count if you are reading what others have done.
I don’t think Popper would be surprised. He saw what was going on at LSE and knew precisely where Karl Mannheim was taking education. Unfortunately that set up the modern university to be corrupted in its hard sciences through research grants coming in through its social science and schools of education. All quite intended as some documents I found from the Cold War laid out. What we are seeing on CAGW and K-12 all over the world is just the ultimate playing out.
Thanks Rafe for the links. It makes me sad all the places in the world where the accreditors are insisting no more lecturing.
Robin
3 Feb 13 at 8:20 am
That wasn’t as abstruse as I thought it would be.
Popper antagonist Kuhn reckoned that normal science advanced collectively through groups of specialists acting as arbiters or gatekeepers adhering to a dominant paradigm which shifts due to some mysterious sociological and psychological factors. It sounds like the flock or swarm behaviour of birds and fish. Kuhn’s view could equally apply to any number of pseudosciences.
It explains why CAGW enthusiasts rely on the weight of numbers and the demands of ‘post-normal’ science as justification for draconian CO2 mitigation measures.
The IPCC science dominant paradigm hasn’t advanced a jot since FAR in 1990, in fact it has gone backwards, and doesn’t look like shifting anytime soon.
manalive
3 Feb 13 at 3:07 pm
Well, I have given those a first pass ; ‘skimmed’ rather than read, if you will.
Any idea when the following chapters will be available?
Driftforge
3 Feb 13 at 8:31 pm
That depends on Mark Notturno. I hope he releases the lot.
Rafe Champion
3 Feb 13 at 9:56 pm