Karl Popper - Scientific Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

View all Karl Popper Quotes
In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

Karl Popper
It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions... 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. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it.

Karl Popper
Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.

Karl Popper
I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme...

Karl Popper
I shall certainly admit a system as 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…It must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.

Karl Popper
The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

Karl Popper
The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.

Karl Popper
Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.

Karl Popper
Scientific theories, if they are not falsified, for ever remain hypotheses or conjectures.

Karl Popper
The hope of getting some argument or theory to share our responsibilities is, I believe, one of the basic motives of "scientific" ethics.

Karl Popper
A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.

Karl Popper
Only a man who understands science (that is scientific problems) can understand its history... Only a man who has some real understanding of its history (the history of its problem situations) can understand science.

Karl Popper
It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.

Karl Popper
I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of a purely speculative kind, and sometimes even quite hazy; a faith which is completely unwarranted from the point of view of science...

Karl Popper
Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.

Karl Popper
Every "good" scientific theory is one which forbids certain things to happen; the more a theory forbids, the better it is.

Karl Popper