On The Logic of Scientific Discovery from Popper

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to elucidate some aspects of Karl Popper's logic of research and place it in the philosophical discussion of scientific discovery. A closer look into his proposal reveals that his work, in the light of recent literature, does point into the direction of some fundamental mechanisms which fall under the study of discovery. The argument for this claim is twofold: one the one hand, when a finer analysis of contexts of research is done, it seems that Popper's logic may be considered as part of the context of discovery, and on the other hand, his account on the growth of knowledge by the method of conjectures and refutations, is in accordance with the "Friends of Discovery" mainstream, at least is so far as the work of Herbert Simon is concerned.