Philosophers · 哲學家 · The 1900s to Today
Karl Popper 波普 · Karl Raimund Popper
A cabinetmaker’s apprentice and schoolteacher from Vienna who held that we never know anything for certain, that we learn by finding our mistakes, and that a free society is one that can correct its own.
一位來自維也納的木工學徒與小學教師；他主張我們從來不能確定地知道任何事，我們是靠著找出自己的錯誤來學習的，而一個自由的社會，就是一個能夠糾正自身錯誤的社會。
- Born 出生
- July 28, 1902, Vienna
- Died 去世
- September 17, 1994, London
- Early work 早年工作
- Road worker, cabinetmaker’s apprentice, volunteer in Adler’s children’s clinics, schoolteacher
- Taught at 任教
- Canterbury College, New Zealand, 1937–45; London School of Economics, 1946–69
- Main works 主要著作
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Conjectures and Refutations (1963)
- Known for 特點
- Falsifiability, fallibilism, the open society
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
Vienna, 1919 1919 年的維也納
Karl Popper was born in Vienna in 1902, the son of a lawyer whose library held ten thousand books. The family was of Jewish origin and had converted to Lutheranism. The collapse of the Austrian empire in 1918 ruined them. Popper left school at sixteen and attended university lectures as a guest. For a few months in 1919 he called himself a Communist. In June of that year he took part in a demonstration at which the police shot dead eight unarmed young socialists. He was horrified by the deaths, and then by the thought that the theory he had accepted treated such deaths as a necessary cost on the way to a revolution that it claimed to know was coming. He had taken the claim on trust. He decided never again to accept a theory uncritically.
卡爾・波普 1902 年生於維也納；他的父親是律師，書房裡有一萬本書。這個家庭有猶太血統，已改宗路德會。1918 年奧地利帝國崩潰，他們家也破產了。波普十六歲離開學校，以旁聽生的身分到大學聽課。1919 年有幾個月，他自稱共產主義者。那年六月，他參加了一場示威；警察在那場示威裡開槍，打死了八個手無寸鐵的年輕社會主義者。這些死亡讓他驚駭；隨後讓他驚駭的是這個念頭：他所接受的那個理論，把這樣的死亡當作通往一場革命的必要代價，而這個理論宣稱自己「知道」那場革命將會來臨。那個宣稱，他是憑信任接受的。他決定，再也不要不加批判地接受任何理論。
The same year gave him the contrast described in the lesson on science. His friends admired Marx, Freud, and Adler because their theories explained everything. Einstein’s theory had just risked everything on one eclipse. Popper worked for a time in Adler’s clinics for poor children, and once described to him a case that did not seem to fit his theory. Adler explained it at once, without having seen the child. Asked how he could be so sure, he replied, “Because of my thousandfold experience.” Popper said that he could not help answering: “And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.”
同一年，給了他「科學」那一課裡描述的那個對比。他的朋友們仰慕馬克思、佛洛伊德與阿德勒，因為他們的理論解釋了一切。愛因斯坦的理論，才剛剛把一切都押在一次日食上。波普在阿德勒為貧童開設的診所裡工作過一陣子；有一次，他向阿德勒描述了一個看起來不符合阿德勒理論的案例。阿德勒連那個孩子都沒見過，就立刻把它解釋了。波普問他怎麼能這麼有把握；他回答：「因為我有一千次的經驗。」波普說，他忍不住回了一句：「而加上這個新案例，我想，您的經驗變成一千零一次了。」
The other side of the world 世界的另一邊
He tried manual work, building roads and then learning cabinetmaking, and was not good at either. He qualified as a schoolteacher, took a doctorate in psychology in 1928, and taught mathematics and physics in a secondary school. At night he wrote a book on the theory of knowledge. A shortened version was published in 1934 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It argued against the philosophers of the Vienna Circle that science is marked off by falsifiability and that induction plays no part in it. The Circle’s members recognized its quality and treated him as their official opposition.
他試過體力勞動：先是修路，然後學做家具；兩樣都做不好。他取得了小學教師的資格，1928 年拿到心理學博士，在一所中學教數學與物理。夜裡，他寫一本關於知識論的書。它的一個縮短的版本，在 1934 年以《科學發現的邏輯》為名出版。它反對維也納學圈的哲學家，主張科學是由可否證性劃出界線的，而歸納在其中不起任何作用。學圈的成員認出了它的份量，把他當成他們的「正式反對派」。
By then it was clear what was coming for people of Jewish descent in Austria. In 1937 he took the first academic post he could find abroad, a lectureship at Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand. Hitler annexed Austria the following year. Sixteen of Popper’s relatives died in the Holocaust. He could not serve as a soldier, and wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies as what he called his war effort. It attacked Plato, Hegel, and Marx as the intellectual sources of the closed society, and defended democracy on a modest ground: it is the one form of government that allows the rulers to be dismissed without bloodshed. The manuscript was finished in 1943, rejected by a string of publishers, and came out in London in 1945.
到那時候，奧地利有猶太血統的人將會面臨什麼，已經很清楚了。1937 年，他接下了他在國外找得到的第一個學術職位：紐西蘭基督城坎特伯里學院的講師。隔年，希特勒併吞了奧地利。波普有十六位親戚死於大屠殺。他不能當兵，就寫了《開放社會及其敵人》，把它稱為自己對戰爭的貢獻。這本書攻擊柏拉圖、黑格爾與馬克思，說他們是封閉社會的思想源頭；並且以一個樸素的理由為民主辯護：它是唯一容許統治者不流血地被撤換的政體。手稿在 1943 年完成，被一連串的出版社拒絕，1945 年在倫敦問世。
London 倫敦
The book made his name, and in 1946 he moved to the London School of Economics, where he taught for twenty-three years. His seminar was famous and feared. Students were invited to read a paper and were seldom allowed past the first paragraph before he began to take it apart. Colleagues remarked that the author of The Open Society ran a rather closed seminar, and that the great advocate of criticism did not much enjoy receiving it. Several of his ablest pupils, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend among them, became critics of his theory of science.
這本書使他成名；1946 年，他轉到倫敦政治經濟學院，在那裡教了二十三年。他的研討課又出名、又令人害怕。學生受邀宣讀論文；很少有人能讀過第一段，他就開始把它拆開了。同事們評論說：《開放社會》的作者，主持的是一個相當封閉的研討課；而這位批評的偉大倡導者，並不太樂於接受批評。他最有才華的幾位學生，其中有伊姆雷・拉卡托斯與保羅・費耶阿本德，成了他的科學理論的批評者。
He was knighted in 1965 and went on writing for another thirty years, on probability, on quantum mechanics, on evolution, and on the relation of mind and brain. Working scientists valued him more than most philosophers did. The biologist Peter Medawar called him incomparably the greatest philosopher of science there has ever been. He died in London in 1994, at ninety-two, and was still writing in his last year.
他在 1965 年受封爵士，之後又寫了三十年：談機率、談量子力學、談演化，也談心靈與大腦的關係。實際在做研究的科學家，比大多數哲學家更看重他。生物學家彼得・梅達沃說，他是有史以來最偉大的科學哲學家，無人能比。1994 年，他在倫敦去世，享年九十二歲；最後一年，他還在寫作。
- 1902Born in Vienna生於維也納
- 1919Breaks with Marxism; hears of Einstein’s eclipse test與馬克思主義決裂；聽說愛因斯坦的日食檢驗
- 1928Doctorate in psychology取得心理學博士
- 1934The Logic of Scientific Discovery《科學發現的邏輯》
- 1937Emigrates to New Zealand移居紐西蘭
- 1945The Open Society and Its Enemies《開放社會及其敵人》
- 1946Joins the London School of Economics到倫敦政治經濟學院任教
- 1963Conjectures and Refutations《猜想與反駁》
- 1965Knighted受封爵士
- 1994Dies in London在倫敦去世
The central idea · 核心觀念
We learn from our mistakes 我們從錯誤中學習
Popper’s philosophy has one idea at its center, and he applied it everywhere. All our knowledge is conjecture. No theory, however well tested, is ever established as true. What we can do is find out that a theory is false, and by eliminating error come closer to the truth. He called this view fallibilism. It is not skepticism. He believed that there is a truth to be approached and that science has in fact approached it. What he denied is that we can ever know that we have arrived.
波普的哲學，中心只有一個觀念；而他把它用在每一個地方。我們所有的知識都是猜想。沒有任何理論，不管經過多麼充分的檢驗，曾經被確立為真。我們能做的，是查出一個理論為假；並且藉著排除錯誤，更接近真理。他把這個看法稱為「可錯論」。它不是懷疑論。他相信有一個可以逼近的真理，並且相信科學事實上已經逼近了它。他否認的是：我們有任何時候能夠「知道」自己已經到了。
The same reasoning gives his politics. If no one can be certain, no one is entitled to remake a society according to a plan that cannot be questioned. He distinguished two ways of reforming. Utopian engineering begins from a picture of the perfect society and reshapes everything to fit it, and since its aim lies far ahead, it has no way of learning from its failures and every reason to silence those who point them out. Piecemeal engineering attacks particular evils, such as hunger, disease, or a bad law, one at a time, watches what happens, and corrects course. An open society is one whose institutions make this possible. They protect criticism and allow the government to be changed. He summed up the attitude behind both science and democracy in one sentence: “I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.”
同樣的推理，給出了他的政治主張。如果沒有人能夠確定，就沒有人有資格依照一個不容質疑的計畫去重造一個社會。他區分了兩種改革的方式。烏托邦式的工程，從一幅完美社會的圖像出發，把一切都重新塑造得合乎它；而因為它的目標在很遠的前方，它沒有辦法從自己的失敗裡學習，並且有充分的理由讓指出失敗的人閉嘴。零碎的工程，則是一次對付一項具體的惡，例如飢餓、疾病或一條壞法律；它觀察發生了什麼，然後修正方向。一個開放社會，就是制度使這件事成為可能的社會。這些制度保護批評，並且容許政府被更換。他用一句話概括了科學與民主背後共同的態度：「我可能是錯的，你可能是對的；而經過一番努力，我們也許能更接近真理。」
I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.我可能是錯的，你可能是對的；而經過一番努力，我們也許能更接近真理。
His definition of the rationalist attitude. He adds that it is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. 這是他對「理性主義態度」的定義。他補充說：那是一種願意聽取批評的論證、並且從經驗中學習的態度。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
Scientists do not work that way 科學家不是那樣工作的
In 1962 Thomas Kuhn published a study of how science has actually changed. He found that most scientists, most of the time, are not trying to refute anything. They work inside an accepted framework, solving the puzzles it sets, and when an experiment disagrees with the theory they blame the experiment or themselves. A theory is given up only when a rival is ready to replace it, and the change looks less like a logical refutation than like a conversion. If Kuhn is right, Popper described how science would proceed if scientists were perfectly rational critics, and it is done by people.
1962 年，湯瑪斯・孔恩發表了一項研究，探討科學實際上是怎麼改變的。他發現：大多數的科學家，在大多數的時候，並沒有在設法駁倒任何東西。他們在一個被接受的框架之內工作，解決它所設下的謎題；當一個實驗與理論不一致的時候，他們怪的是實驗，或者怪自己。一個理論只有在有對手準備好取代它的時候，才會被放棄；而那個改變看起來不太像邏輯上的反駁，倒比較像一次改宗。如果孔恩是對的，那麼波普描述的是「假如科學家是完全理性的批評者，科學會怎麼進行」；而科學是由人來做的。
Popper replied that Kuhn’s “normal science” exists and is a danger. A scientist who never questions his framework is a technician who has been badly taught. The reply concedes the facts and stands on the ideal. A second objection goes deeper. If a theory that has passed a hundred tests is no more likely to be true than an untested one, as Popper insisted, it is hard to see why we should rely on it when we build an aircraft. Popper said that we should prefer the best-tested theory, and his critics have never been satisfied that he could explain why without letting induction back in.
波普回應說：孔恩所謂的「常態科學」確實存在，而它是一種危險。一位從來不質疑自己的框架的科學家，是一個被教壞了的技術員。這個回應承認了事實，而站在理想上。第二個反駁更深。如果像波普堅持的那樣，一個通過了一百次檢驗的理論，並不比一個沒被檢驗過的理論更可能為真；那就很難看出，我們造飛機的時候為什麼該倚賴它。波普說，我們應該優先選擇受過最充分檢驗的理論；而他的批評者始終不滿意：他並沒有說明為什麼，除非讓歸納從後門回來。
How we know · 史料
The paradox of tolerance 寬容的悖論
The passage of Popper’s most often quoted today is a footnote. In it he states what he calls the paradox of tolerance: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.” If a society extends tolerance even to those who are intolerant, and is not prepared to defend itself against them, the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. He concludes that a tolerant society must claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
今天波普最常被引用的一段話，是一個註腳。在裡面，他陳述了他所謂的「寬容的悖論」：「無限的寬容，必然導致寬容的消失。」如果一個社會連對不寬容的人也給予寬容，而不準備抵禦他們，那麼寬容的人就會被消滅，寬容也隨之消滅。他的結論是：一個寬容的社會，必須主張「不寬容不寬容者」的權利。
The footnote is quoted by people who wish to silence opinions they dislike, and what Popper wrote is narrower than that use. He says in the next sentences that as long as intolerant views can be answered by argument and kept in check by public opinion, suppressing them would be most unwise. The right to suppress applies to those who refuse to meet argument with argument and who teach their followers to answer it “by the use of their fists or pistols.” The line he draws is between speech and violence, close to where Mill drew it (Big Questions A27). Where exactly it falls in a given case is the question the footnote leaves open, and it is still argued over.
引用這個註腳的，是那些想讓自己不喜歡的意見閉嘴的人；而波普寫的比那種用法窄得多。在接下來的幾句裡，他說：只要不寬容的觀點還能用論證來回應、還能被輿論制衡，壓制它們就是極不明智的。壓制的權利，適用於那些拒絕以論證回應論證、並且教導追隨者「用拳頭或手槍」來回應論證的人。他劃的那條線在言論與暴力之間；很接近彌爾劃的地方（大哉問 A27）。在一個具體的情況裡，它到底落在哪裡，是那個註腳留下來沒有回答的問題；而人們至今仍在爭論。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Popper and the Buddha 波普與佛陀
Popper’s account of the rational attitude has a close counterpart in the early discourses. The Buddha told a brahmin that anything accepted on faith, on tradition, or even on careful reasoning may turn out false, and that a wise person will therefore say “Such is my faith” and will not add “This is the only truth, anything else is futile.” He told the Kālāmas to test teachings by their results. He compared disputing philosophers to blind men, each of whom has felt one part of an elephant and takes it for the whole. In all of this the fault lies in how a view is held. Popper said the same of scientific theories. Dogmatism, for him, is a way of holding a belief so that no experience can count against it.
波普對「理性態度」的說明，在早期的經典裡有一個很接近的對應。佛陀告訴一位婆羅門：憑信仰、憑傳統、甚至憑仔細的推理所接受的任何東西，結果都可能是假的；所以一個有智慧的人會說「這是我的信仰」，而不會加一句「只有這個才是真的，其他都是虛妄」。他告訴卡拉瑪人，用結果來檢驗教法。他把爭論的哲學家比作盲人：每個人都摸到了象的一部分，就把它當成全部。在這一切裡面，毛病都出在「一個見解是怎麼被持有的」。波普對科學理論說了同樣的話。對他來說，獨斷是一種持有信念的方式：使得沒有任何經驗能算作對它不利。
The two differ over certainty. Popper held that the search has no end and that no one, however wise, gets beyond conjecture. The Buddha claimed to have come to the end of the search. He spoke of knowing and seeing directly, and held that others could do the same. A follower of Popper would say that this is one more claim to be tested and that no inner experience can certify itself. A Buddhist would reply that the knowledge in question is practical. It is like knowing that a fire has gone out, and it is checked by whether greed, hatred, and confusion still arise. The tradition does treat the path as an experiment, and in that it agrees with Popper. Where it parts from him is in holding that the experiment can be completed (Dharma and Western Philosophy D18).
兩人在「確定性」上不同。波普主張，這場追尋沒有終點；沒有任何人，不管多有智慧，能超出猜想。佛陀宣稱自己走到了追尋的盡頭。他談到直接的知與見，並且主張別人也做得到。一位波普的追隨者會說：這只是又一個有待檢驗的宣稱；而沒有任何內在的經驗能為自己作保。一位佛教徒會回答：這裡所說的知，是實踐上的。它像是知道一堆火已經熄了；而查核它的辦法，是看貪、瞋、癡是否還會生起。這個傳統確實把修行的道路當作一場實驗；在這一點上，它與波普一致。它與他分開的地方，在於它主張這場實驗是可以做完的（佛法與西方哲學 D18）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
L. fallere ‘to deceive’
The view that any of our beliefs may be mistaken and that none is beyond revision.
一種看法：我們的任何一個信念都可能是錯的；沒有哪一個是不可修正的。
Showing a theory to be false by an observation that contradicts it.
用一個與理論矛盾的觀察，顯示它為假。
Popper’s name for his philosophy: holding theories open to criticism instead of trying to justify them.
波普為自己的哲學取的名字：讓理論開放接受批評，而不是設法證成它們。
A society whose institutions allow criticism and peaceful change of government.
一種社會：它的制度容許批評，也容許政府和平地更換。
Reform by small, testable steps aimed at particular evils.
以小而可檢驗的步驟、針對具體的惡來進行的改革。
In Popper’s sense, the belief that history follows laws that allow its course to be predicted.
照波普的用法：相信歷史遵循著某些法則，因而它的進程可以被預測。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What does Popper mean by fallibilism?
2. On what ground does Popper defend democracy?
3. What was Kuhn’s main objection to Popper?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (1963), chapter 1 ↗The lecture in which he tells the story of 1919. The link is to an overview of his work. 他講述 1919 年那段經歷的那場演講。連結是他的著作概述。
- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) ↗Volume 1 on Plato, volume 2 on Hegel and Marx. The paradox of tolerance is in a note to chapter 7. 第一卷談柏拉圖，第二卷談黑格爾與馬克思。寬容的悖論在第七章的一個註裡。
- Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (1976) ↗Short, readable, and the best introduction to the man. 短、好讀；是認識這個人最好的入門。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Karl Popper” ↗With a careful section on the criticisms. 其中有仔細討論各種批評的一節。