Friday, July 18, 2014

Our impatience to better the lot of our fellows

Three quotes from Karl Popper.
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit. - The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1992), p. 44

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous — from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. - The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) Preface to second edition

Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them. - In Search of a Better World (1984)
I was trying to find a succinct formulation of his insight that we cannot know something to be true (all knowledge is contingent on further evidence), but that we can know something to be wrong (all you need is a single contradictory fact to a proposition to disprove it.)

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