"Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what……" — Karl Popper
"Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence-so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophecies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable."
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Karl Popper
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119 Quotes by Karl Popper
Karl Popper has 119 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Science is not a system of certain, or -established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a…
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I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as…
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It is a myth that the success of science in our time is mainly due to the huge amounts of…
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The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and…
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Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
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It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and…
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The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is,…
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Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp.…
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The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its…
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Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with…
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In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to…
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It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only…
See all 119 quotes by Karl Popper »
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