Better Our Hypotheses Die For Our Errors

The Open Society Is One In Which Men Have Learned To Be To Some Extent Critical Of Taboos, And To Base Decisions On The Authority Of Their Own Intelligence.

Propose Theories Which Can Be Criticized. Think About Possible Decisive Falsifying Experiments-crucial Experiments. But Do Not Give Up Your Theories Too Easily-not, At Any Rate, Before You Have Critically Examined Your Criticism.

Almost Everyone... Seems To Be Quite Sure That The Differences Between The Methodologies Of History And Of The Natural Sciences Are Vast. For, We Are Assured, It Is Well Known That In The Natural Sciences We Start From Observation And Proceed By Induction To Theory. And Is It Not Obvious That In History We Proceed Very Differently? Yes, I Agree That We Proceed Very Differently. But We Do So In The Natural Sciences As Well.

A Rationalist, As I Use The Word, Is A Man Who Attempts To Reach Decisions By Argument And Perhaps, In Certain Cases, By Compromise, Rather Than By Violence. He Is A Man Who Would Rather Be Unsuccessful In Convincing Another Man By Argument Than Successful In Crushing Him By Force, By Intimidation And Threats, Or Even By Persuasive Propaganda.

A System Is Empirical Or Scientific Only If It Is Capable Of Being Tested By Experience. These Considerations Suggest That Not The Verifiability But The Falsifiability Of A System Is To Be Taken As A Criterion Of Demarcation... It Must Be Possible For An Empirical Or Scientific System To Be Refuted By Experience.