(Falsificationism is Popper’s response to the ‘verificationism’ espoused by the Vienna Circle, which met in Popper’s home city in the years before World War Two.) It is a view which portrays the scientist as having to exercise certain virtues: creativity and imagination in the formulation of theories and hypotheses, as well as in devising experiments with which to test them critical rationality in the assessment of theories and other claims the toleration required to recognise that other peoples’ theories could be rivals to your own. The best you can ever do is rule it out as false. On this view, it is impossible to demonstrate, with certainty, that any given hypothesis is true that is, to ‘verify’ it conclusively. Popper’s contribution to the philosophy of science is his doctrine of ‘falsificationism’, according to which science proceeds by formulating hypotheses and attempting to falsify them by experimental tests. So, what did Popper mean by ‘the open society’? A good way to answer the question is with reference to his work in the philosophy of science, for which he is just as well known as he is for his work in political philosophy. It is because they (supposedly) fall into the latter category that Popper chooses to discuss the particular philosophers on whom he focuses. But, to leave it there would be to miss the book’s main point, for on another, deeper, level it is, as its title states, a defence of the ‘open society’ against its ‘enemies’. For the most part, Popper concentrates on Plato and Marx, although there is a short chapter on Heraclitus and several chapters on Hegel. On one level, you can treat it quite straightforwardly, as a critical work of philosophy which deals, in detail, with the main ideas of certain political philosophers. The Open Society is a book with several related objectives. A subsequent encounter with a text by which one was first impressed some years previously is usually an interesting experience, and I was curious to see what I would make of it this time round. It was the former anniversary which recently provided me with an occasion to re-read Popper’s great classic. It is now one hundred years since the birth of Karl Popper, and almost sixty since the first appearance of The Open Society and its Enemies. SUBSCRIBE NOW Articles ‘The Open Society’ Revisited Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies.
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