Popper and Kuhn: A Different Retrospect

Abstract

Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn were friends of science because they shared some values—the value of science for humanity, especially. My thesis is that their different accounts of science could not save it from its belittlers. They failed in their defense of science unknowingly, because of what they did not do. They did not defend an Enlightenment opinion that happens to be true—namely, that a new theory of induction of the seventeenth century can be applied successfully to gain knowledge. They opposed the opinion that the “experimental philosophy” of the Royal Society in London can sometimes produce affirmative knowledge of fundamental principles, even if that sort of event is rare and hard to pull off.