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What Popper Said About Heraclitus

 


Karl Popper, renowned as the inventor of falsificationism in the philosophy of science, also popularized the term "the open society," of which George Soros nowadays makes a lot of use. 

Early in his book THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, Popper has admiring things to say about the pre-Socratic philosophers. He identifies their views with the open society of which Periclean Athens is a paradigm. He has a particular fondness for Heraclitus. 

Popper was especially fond of the idea that life is a river into which we cannot step twice. Popper takes this, along with certain other Heraclitean bon mots, as meaning that (in Popper's words now) "all matter, like fire, is a process." 

This, Popper think, put philosophy off to a promising start. It is this start that was unfortunately shut down by Spartan victory and Plato's codification of that victory in his dialogues. 

I don't believe this. I believe much that Popper has to say, but he is using Heraclitus as a place holder here. His heart is in a double negative rather than the positive. 

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  1. HenryOctober 9, 2020 at 10:04 PM

    Christopher, would you please explain your last sentence? What double negative and what positive?

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    1. ChristopherOctober 9, 2020 at 10:09 PM

      The "open society" is the positive I have in mind here. Popper focuses entirely on its enemies, though, and spends all his effort showing that the enemies of the open society are wrong, rather that what the open society is and what that is good.

      My point is that the Heraclitus passage seems like an exception to that, a bit in which Popper is talking about the open society and its intellectual friends. But he heart isn't in it.

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