Karl Popper
Austrian-British philosopher of science whose criterion of falsifiability—a theory is scientific only if it can be proven false—transformed the philosophy of science. The Open Society and Its Enemies was a powerful attack on totalitarianism and its philosophical roots in Plato and Marx. He was the most influential philosopher of science of the 20th century.
Works
- The Logic of Scientific DiscoveryPhilosophical framework for scientific method rooted in falsifiability
- The Open Society and Its EnemiesCritique of totalitarianism and defense of open liberal democratic society
- Conjectures and RefutationsEssays on scientific progress and how knowledge is generated through criticism
- Objective KnowledgeEpistemological theory of how objective knowledge emerges from subjective experience
- The Poverty of HistoricismCritique of historical determinism and prediction in social sciences