Karl PopperThinkers

Democracy is not about asking who will rule but about the ability to vote a bad government out of office.

Evolution is (insofar as by evolution we mean natural selection) is not a testable scientific theory, but rather a metaphysical research program.

Falsification is the idea that, at the heart of the scientific method, science does not proceed by the slow and uncertain process of induction (i.e. Finding confirming instances of a conjecture) but via bold, risky, sudden, and definitive falsifying conjectures, such as the discovery of one white swan which discredits the inductive notion that all swans are white.

Historicism is, for Popper, the (flawed) idea that there are historical laws, and that such laws allow for a science of history involving prediction and explanation of historical events. . . . He argues that the best they can do is provide general interpretations.

Immanuel Kant's central practical doctrine was to always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your end.

Knowledge is problematic and tentative guesses about what may be true. It results from selective pressures from the real world in which our guesses come into contact with the environment through a process of trial and error.

Knowledge is totally independent of belief or anyone's claim to know. Knowledge is knowledge without a knower, it is knowledge without a knowing subject.

Martin Heidegger is a devil who behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, Husserl, and had a devilish influence on Germany. One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.

Nazism | national socialism is a hateful idea that achieved something like a victory in defeat because it succeeded in degrading the moral standards of our Western world, allowing more violence and brutal force in this world than would have been tolerated even in the decade after the first World war (1947).

Nazism | national socialism's greatest victory over us is that civilization may ultimately destroy itself with the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to develop.

The Paradox of tolerance is the idea that in the name of tolerance, we ought not tolerate the intolerant.

The Paradox of tolerance is the idea that tolerance for the intolerant will destroy tolerance.

Philosophy of science is about finding a solution to the problem of demarcation, the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science.