Popper, Karl

Karl Popper (1902–1994), along with Thomas Kuhn, was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Popper was initially trained as a schoolteacher (mathematics and physics) but eventually earned a PhD from the University of Vienna in 1928. Popper left his native Austria in 1937 under the threat of Nazi anti-Semitism and relocated to the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Eventually, Popper joined the London School of Economics, where he served as professor of the philosophy of science until his retirement. While a positivist, Popper saw himself as a critical rationalist and philosophically tied to the work of Kant. For educators and educational leaders particularly, Popper's work relates to research methodology, empirically based best practices, leadership theory, and the ongoing process of change.

In his work, Popper provided a means of demarcation between those theories that were scientific and those that were unscientific. He felt that creativity and imagination were the foundation of scientific theory development and rejected induction as the basis of theory development. Popper felt that while observational and experimental data could be employed to evaluate theories, they cannot form theoretical foundations.

For Popper, falsification was the ultimate criterion by which any theory could be identified as scientific. His position was that theories could not be verified but simply tentatively refuted via corroboration of data. Those theories that are compatible with data or that have been modified to accommodate the available data are unscientific in nature. Only those that could be falsified were to be considered scientific.

Popper contended that subject matter was irrelevant and argued for the approach of active problem solving in science. He was a serious critic of those who employed the “sociology of knowledge” to further a given ideology. For him, only the problems to be solved and the individual's desire to solve them should be the primary focus of professional activity. His position was that the problem-solving process formed a feedback loop in which the initial problem was addressed by a trial solution. The effect of the trial solution to the problem was then examined via an error elimination process. The resulting situation following the error elimination process became a new problem to address. This process described by Popper forms the basis for Deming's Plan-Do-Study-Adjust Cycle. For Popper, philosophy was active engagement with profound problems rather than a semantic discourse.

Popper's work also addresses change and the change process. In regard to this issue, he adopted an evolutionary view. As with his problem-solving process, Popper felt that change occurred via a process of successive adjustments based upon feedback. He contended that tradition, culture, and history all play a significant role in the change process and that no person is capable of initiating or developing anything independent of the work or influence of others. Popper also felt that the extensive, subtle relationships of each individual influenced his or her personal actions and that no plan was sufficiently encompassing to allow for the actions of each individual within a system. Therefore, the complex issues, institutions, and organizations of our society re-created or re-formed themselves carte blanche but could be gradually changed over time and in stages as knowledge progresses. It is within this framework that Popper argues for creativity and intuition over science to provide the foundation of meaningful, significant change.

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