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Knowledge Without Authority (Popper, 1960)

Karl Popper

Popper, Knowledge Without Authority, 1960, In: Popper Selections, D. Miller (ed), Princeton University Press, 1985

JLJ - Knowledge must exist if people exist with schemes for 'going on' or making sense of their world. Each age revises the existing schemes, which came literally from previously revised schemes. It's revised schemes all the way back - perhaps to an ancient ancestor who merely grunted in awe of the rising sun, and was misinterpreted by someone nearby who thought he was a wise sage, explaining how it was that the sun rose. Knowledge deemed good enough is grasped and used in the process of living, and knowledge deemed to be incorrect is not used, revised, replaced, or modified. People compile knowledge perhaps from instinct, like squirrels compile nuts.

p.47 books are largely made from other books

p.50 But what, then, are the sources of our knowledge? The answer, I think, is this: there are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority.

p.52 I propose to replace... the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?'

p.54 There are no ultimate sources of knowledge... every source, every suggestion, is open to critical examination.

p.55 Knowledge cannot start from nothing - from a tabula rasa - nor yet from observation. The advance of knowledge consists, mainly, in the modification of earlier knowledge. Although we may sometimes, for example in archaeology, advance through a chance observation, the significance of the discovery will usually depend upon its power to modify our earlier theories.

p.55 Neither observation nor reason is an authority.

p.55 Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems

p.57 What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all human knowledge is human: that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes: that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach.