Talk:Karl Popper

Mensa

An anecdote involving Karl Popper: When he was invited to join Mensa, he said that whatever his intelligence was, it wasn't so low as to make him want to sit around with people whose only attribute was they the did well on IQ tests. Does anyone have a source for this? 81.224.194.22 12:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's a second- or third-hand source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/may/11/art1 —98.88.128.238 22:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Attributed

"The question is not how to get good people to rule; the question is how to stop the powerful from doing as much damage as they can to us." Can anybody find a decent reference? 85.76.4.237 06:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I have seen something similar: "(...) it forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?". The Open Society And Its Enemies (1966, 5th ed. Chapter 7 Section I)

New Quote

I think the following can be included: "No kind of determinism, whether it be expressed as the principle of the uniformity of nature or as the law of universal causation, can be considered any longer a necessary assumption of scientific method...". The Open Society And Its Enemies (1966, 5th ed. Chapter 13)

Misattribution

This: "You will never know how much you have done for me. When I was in New Zealand, out of the world and buried by all my philosophical colleagues, you remembered me. It was through you that I came back into the world. It was through you (and Ernst Gombrich) that The Open Society was published, after a period (before you interfered) which led...me almost to despair. And when I came to the LSE [London School of Economics], through you, you gave me so much encouragement and help....There cannot be, ever, equality or reciprocity between you and me. I never could do anything for you, and it is extremely unlikely that I ever shall." is claimed to be a quote about Popper. actually, it is a quote from Popper, he is addressing Hayek. 109.149.210.242 15:53, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Explains nothing

Several sources attribute something like this to Popper, but I have not found a citation. If there is no response in a reasonable time, I will be so bold as to add this to the misattributions (there being no category for the doubtful): 'if a theory explains everything, it explains nothing". TomS TDotO (talk) 18:31, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

all problems are either Clocks or Clouds

Popper wrote a paper Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man where he claims that problems (or systems) can be likened to either clocks or clouds. This seems like an important quote to add. Lbeaumont (talk) 14:55, 4 November 2023 (UTC)