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30 THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL WORKSbetter testable, for we can make our tests more precise and moresevere.(CR: 256)The passing of such tests will, as we know, not prove that the theory istrue, or even probable, but only that it has been confirmed orcorroborated. For Popper prefers to substitute the notion ofcorroboration for that of probability, as the latter seems to him gravelycompromised with the inductivist view of science he is seeking toundermine.Popper later came to feel that his solution to the demarcation problemwas still rather too formal and non-realistic, since it is always possibleto find a way of avoiding empirical refutation. At the same time, he wasaware of the importance of not giving in too quickly to criticism, so thatthe theory would have enough room to develop its potential. But whilehe thus partly reinstated the dogmatic approach upon which he hadpreviously passed final sentence, he felt it necessary, on the other hand,to extend the critical method to the empirical base itself—that is, to theobservational propositions that serve as the means of testing. Criticismsmade during the 1960s by various exponents of the ‘new philosophy ofscience’ were certainly not without a role in widening Popper’s horizonin this way. As we shall see shortly, one result was that he could go onto develop a ‘metaphysical’ doctrine such as the one of the threeworlds.THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTIONApart from solving what since Kant has been the central problem of thetheory of knowledge—that is, the problem of distinguishing sciencefrom non-scientific knowledge—the new criterion of demarcationprovides the starting-point for a reformulation and resolution of theproblem of induction. Popper already came to this conclusion around1927, having worked on it for some four years (OK: 1, 29), but he onlymade it public in 1933 in a letter to Erkenntnis entitled ‘Ein Kriteriumdes empirischen Charakters theoretischer Systeme’, later included as anappendix in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (LSD: 312–314).The problem addressed in this text was the contrast between our wishempirically to ground the laws of nature expressed in universalpropositions, and the impossibility of justifying non-singular statementson the basis of experience. Popper consistently maintained that: