Karl Popper

Karl Popper

Karl Popper was a major figure in a group of philosophers known as logical positivists. Born in 1902, this contemporary Austrian philosopher was born and educated in Vienna and went on to later teach in both New Zealand and at the London School of Economics. He had a broad range of interests but it was his inquiring mind that led him to investigate various ideologies that would eventually ignite his commitment to political moderation, tolerance and liberalism. However, it is in the philosophy of science that Popper has made his major contributions.

Popper authored several books with his first being The Logic of Scientific Discovery and the most notable being The Open Society and Its Enemies. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper "defined scientific statements as ones which deny that something logically conceivable is actually realized" (Urmson & Rée, 1995, p. 252). The Open Society and Its Enemies is mostly criticism of social philosophers while still reflecting on the logic of science. This is important to note because while Popper was considered part of this group of logical positivists, he actually distanced himself from the others, rejecting the positivist label preferring logical empiricists instead. Karl Popper rejected the philosophy of inductive empiricism. With his rejection of this inductive method of the empirical sciences came the principle of falsifiability criterion in which Popper says the absence of contradictory evidence solidified the theory. This also means that even though something can be proven through scientific evaluation, there are still things that can take place that could change the result. By poking holes in inductivism to support his own theory, he never really proved much of anything except that not everything could be explained and certainty was not attainable.

When we look at the human mind and apply this philosophy to how one would view God and the Bible it is easy to see how Karl Popper`s philosophy contributes to the Christian faith. Scriptures such as Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (NIV), would indeed agree with Popper’s philosophy if we consider “the things we do not see” as the works of God to those of the Christian faith or that “the things we do not see” as the contradictory evidence that can change a scientific result. 2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we live by faith, not by sight” (NIV), is another example the bible gives us whereby Christian faith believes that it is always the evidence we cannot see or determine that gives us the result.

Of course there is also logical reasoning and historical facts that determine that what the bible says is truth and that the foundations of Christian faith are solid but it is never that which is questioned or doubted. Popper’s philosophy allows the believer to grasp the concept of faith in a scientific way.