[lit-ideas] Re: Verging on Popper
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 22:25:14 +0100
The veracity of Gopnik's entertaining account may be doubted on many levels and
on many points, even if there is a grain of truth in some of them.
For example, Popper may well have said something to the effect that there are
two reactions when you do someone a good turn - some people never forget the
good turn and some people never forgive it (most people will sadly recognise
the type who never forgive it): though this thought would be plausibly one
Popper would hold, I doubt this idea is original to Popper - it may have been
borrowed from Freud. But, in Gopnik's telling, any sensible context to this
utterance is removed (the likely context is Lakatos, Popper's sucessor at LSE,
and, as Popper was to make clear in Schilpp, an utterly unreliable guide to
Popper's philosophy who was posing as its great exegesist and indeed as
surpassing "Popper1, Popper2 and Popper3" with a Hegelian blending of Popper
and Kuhn); and it becomes merely one of many strange declarations by Gopnik's
Popper. Yet the fact is Popper simply did not speak by way of strange,
uncontextualised declarations but made every effort to
speak with the utmost clarity and simplicity, and Gopnik's Popper is not a
very credible reconstruction of what it was like to have a conversation with
Popper - though it plays to the gallery of what the public might conceive a
philosophical sage to sound like.
The idea that Popper repudiated any suggestion that he had ever received any
useful criticism is dubious in the extreme, as in Popper's writings he has
accepted many criticisms as useful and even as correct. Gopnik's encounter was
around 1974 (afair) and around that time both Tichy and Miller had
independently shown that Popper's formal definition of 'verisimilitude' was
flawed: Popper was present when Tichy first presented his paper, and Popper
immediately accepted Tichy's demonstration of the flaw - though he begged to
differ on Tichy's conclusion that the flaw showed Popper's definition was
worthless, replying that he did not think anything that gave rise to such a
valuable refutation should be thought worthless. In the light of this, it
cannot be credible that Popper seriously denied his work was ever subject to
useful criticism - and either Gopnik is making this up in typical journalist
fashion (it makes for something more striking than the truth)
or misrepresenting (or perhaps Popper was simply pulling the leg of an
insufferable young fool who clearly had the ethics of a budding journalist and
not those of a person interested in serious discussion - which would tend to
show how perceptive Popper was as to Gopnik's basic character).
Dnl
Ldn
On Monday, 21 July 2014, 20:57, Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
in a e piece authored by Adam Gopnik, we learn of Popper's general outlook on
science, that anxiety is the motor engine of scientific progress. If you want
liberty, you want "a tradition of seeking out criticism."
Gopnik then goes on to recount a visit ("pilgrimage," no less) he'd made to
Pop's cottage in Penn, Buckinghamshire. Popper hands Gopnik two books on his
(popper's) method that's out, and he (Gopnik) axes how's it to receive so much
ciritique?
"All of my students are attacking me now. Three of my students, all of them I
helped to get positions, to get chairs, and they know this, and still they
attack me personally. You know, when you do things for people there are two
types of reactions. There are those who cannot forget you for it and those who
cannot forgive you for it. Do you see?"
He returned to thumbing through the book by Johansson. "He has read nothing of
mine, of course. He will then attack this imaginary Popper. Since he already
knows what is contained in my works, he need not read them, you see."
"Tell me," I said, "what criticism have you received in your career that has
helped you—that you regard as really useful?"
He stared off for a long moment. "None," he said. "I have never received any of
this kind of criticism." He looked away again. "Come. Let us go into the
house."
<...>
...and it goes on.
Cheers!
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