Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

Comte’s authoritarian vision by arguing thatpositivism could be used to rationalise public life bymaking standards of argument logically andempirically transparent. This had already been apolicy advocated by Mill’s godfather, JeremyBentham, the founder of utilitarianism. Afterwards,positivism took hold as an ideal in the morepolitically liberal parts of Europe, notably Austria.The logical positivists of the Vienna Circle weresingle-minded in trying to design a language thatwould reveal the forms of evidence and inferenceunderwriting knowledge claims in such a way thatany ordinary citizen could decide whether tobelieve them. However, more than half a centuryafter Mill, these ‘neo-positivists’ faced an uphillstruggle from both a growing dispersion ofscientific effort and a growing gap between expertand lay knowledge. As a confirmed socialist, Popperwas very sympathetic to the positivist struggle tohold all knowledge claims accountable to a publiclyaccountable procedure. Popper’s disagreement withthe positivists is best captured in their respectiveattitudes toward the role of logical deduction inscience. It was in this context that Popperformulated his so-called falsifiability principle, bywhich he claimed to ‘demarcate’ science frompseudo-science.Popper disagreed with the positivists over what24