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The Logic of Scientific Discovery

 

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The Logic of Scientific Discovery



 
 
Logik der Forschung is a 1934 book by Karl Popper
Karl Popper

Knight Bachelor Karl Raimund Popper Order of the Companions of Honour, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics....
. It was originally written in German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
, but reformulated in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 by Popper himself some years later, to be published as The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959. This forms the rare case of a major work to appear in two languages, both written by the author instead of being translated. Sir Peter Medawar
Peter Medawar

Sir Peter Brian Medawar, Order of Merit, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society was a Brazilian-born Lebanon-United Kingdom scientist best known for his work on how the immune system rejects or accepts tissue transplants....
 called it "one of the most important documents of the twentieth century." In it, Popper argued that science should adopt a methodology based on falsification
Falsifiability

Falsifiability is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment....
, because no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a single experiment can contradict one.






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Logik der Forschung is a 1934 book by Karl Popper
Karl Popper

Knight Bachelor Karl Raimund Popper Order of the Companions of Honour, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics....
. It was originally written in German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
, but reformulated in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 by Popper himself some years later, to be published as The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959. This forms the rare case of a major work to appear in two languages, both written by the author instead of being translated. Sir Peter Medawar
Peter Medawar

Sir Peter Brian Medawar, Order of Merit, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society was a Brazilian-born Lebanon-United Kingdom scientist best known for his work on how the immune system rejects or accepts tissue transplants....
 called it "one of the most important documents of the twentieth century." In it, Popper argued that science should adopt a methodology based on falsification
Falsifiability

Falsifiability is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment....
, because no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a single experiment can contradict one. Popper holds that empirical theories are characterized by falsifiability.

The German version is currently in print by Mohr Siebeck (ISBN 3-16-148410-X), the English one by Routledge
Routledge

Routledge is a publisher of non-fiction academic books and journals. It was acquired in 1997 by, and is thus now an imprint of, the Taylor & Francis Group, which is a sub-division of Informa PLC, a company based in the United Kingdom with offices worldwide....
 publishers (ISBN 0-415-27844-9).

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