caption death_date death_place religion birth_place era school_tradition influences influenced image_size nationality main_interests notable_ideas birth_date image article_title name region
karl popper c. 1980s 17 september 1994 london , united kingdom lutheranism -lrb- baptised -rrb- vienna , austria-hungary 20th-century philosophy critical rationalism liberalism socrates vienna circle hayek tarski selz russell campbell burke mill hume lycophron wächtershäuser aristotle descartes kant schopenhauer hegel kierkegaard einstein virtually friedman lakatos feyerabend soros miller agassi bartley gombrich jarvie dahrendorf all levinson gellner munz magee lorenz shearmur medawar dimitrakos albert gellner philosophy dirk verhofstadt taleb deutsch eccles penrose of science since the 1930s hayek 240px austro-british epistemology philosophy metaphysics philosophy of mind origin of life interpretation of rationality quantum mechanics philosophy of science logic social and political bold view of the growth of knowledge propensity interpretation open society hypothesis cosmological pluralism modified essentialism axiomatization of probability active darwinism spearhead critical model of evolution truthlikeness objective hermeneutics the paradox of tolerance rationalism critical dualism -lrb- of facts and standards -rrb- negative utilitarianism falsificationism evolutionary trial and error 28 july 1902 karl popper.jpg karl popper
 sir karl popper western philosophy
karl popper

sir karl raimund popper -lrb- 28 july 1902 -- 17 september 1994 -rrb- was an austrian-british philosopher and professor .
he is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century .
popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method , in favour of empirical falsification : a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven , but it can be falsified , meaning that it can and should be scrutinized by decisive experiments .
if the outcome of an experiment contradicts the theory , one should refrain from ad hoc manoeuvres that evade the contradiction merely by making it less falsifiable .
popper is also known for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism , `` the first `` non-justificational philosophy of criticism '' in the history of philosophy . ''
in political discourse , he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he came to believe made a flourishing `` open society '' possible .
his political philosophy embraces ideas from all major democratic political ideologies and attempts to reconcile them : social democracy , classical liberalism .
