Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

traverses the centuries to discuss the great Germandialectician, G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831), and contemporarydevelopments relating to Marxism andfascism. Popper characterises the Biblical Jews as aclosed society whose ‘tribal’ identity came morefrom whom they opposed than what they stood for.From that standpoint, Christianity’s universalismrepresented an important step toward the opensociety. However, like Plato’s position, it containedthe seeds of historicism, which have becomeespecially dangerous in the modern period ashistoricist visions of scientific progress are attachedto secular versions of Providence. Here Hegel ismade to stand for all the authoritarian movementson the right and the left that have exploited thistendency. In contrast, when Popper looked for aversion of his falsificationist scientific ethic inpolitical philosophy, he found it in the decidedlyanti-historicist, existentialist Christianity of the‘Danish Socrates’, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55),whose works had been translated into Germanduring Popper’s youth.However, Popper’s scientific existentialism wasgiven a distinctive spin in Britain, where BertrandRussell anointed Popper his successor as knighterrant of liberal and rationalist values. It is worthstressing both the philosophical and the politicalsides of Popper’s assumption of Russell’s mantle.28