Critical Rationalism Resources
2013
HOT OFF THE PRESS! Amazon e books
Other recent publications.
After the Open Society, eds Shearmur and Turner. Very important, previously unpublished material from the Popper archives.
And a book by Philip Benesch
This book examines Karl Popper’s attempt to develop a political theory that draws upon Socratic fallibilism and commitment to ethical autonomy while preserving progressive sociological insights and commitment to activism. Philip Benesch argues that Popper’s critique of Marxist theory is largely an endeavor to separate its progressive-activist core from its positivist and uncritical-rationalist entanglements. The author defends Popper against the charges of positivism and scientism leveled by the Frankfurt School, among others. Although he is in no sense an apologist for Popper’s commentary on the classical tradition of philosophy, Benesch contends that Popper’s philosophical contribution is of classical breadth and significance and that it continues and advances “the great Conversation” that is the substance of the classical tradition.
Philip Benesch is Associate Professor of Political Science at Lebanon Valley College, Pennsylvania.
Purposes of the list.
This list of resources was first compiled in 2005 after circulating an email message to a list of people from the Popper Centenary Conference in Vienna, plus others known or suspected to be interested in the work of Karl Popper and critical rationalism. It was updated in 2007 and 2008.
Moving from email to the on-line format means that the list can be updated continuously and it is accessible to people who are not on my mailing list. Please send corrections and additions to rchamp AT bigpond DOT net DOT au
References and links to reviews of the proceedings of the 2002 conferences (Vienna, Christchurch etc) will be especially welcome.
The resource aims to serve a number of functions:
To list the major “standing sites” such as the Popper Web and the Critical Rationalist site.
To signal new books, articles and other resources.
To pre-publish the proceedings of conferences (with permission).
To signal “work in progress” in case there is scope for the exchange of ideas in their preliminary form, long before publication in the normal course of events.
Other: notices of forthcoming events, deaths etc.
One of the possible additions that comes to mind is a directory of courses on Popper and critical rationalism. I suspect that this would not be lengthy.
On line resources, email discussion groups, web sites, blogs etc.
Bill Hall's site Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations. This web site provides access to earlier papers on the application of Popperian epistemology to organizational knowledge management.
Joe Firestone's sites.
Other Firestone sites
The Questia Online Library of Books and Journals has a huge range of resources including the full text of four Popper books (Poverty, OSE, C&R, Unended Quest).
2013 additions
By Philip Benesch
This book examines Karl Popper’s attempt to develop a political theory that draws upon Socratic fallibilism and commitment to ethical autonomy while preserving progressive sociological insights and commitment to activism. Philip Benesch argues that Popper’s critique of Marxist theory is largely an endeavor to separate its progressive-activist core from its positivist and uncritical-rationalist entanglements. The author defends Popper against the charges of positivism and scientism leveled by the Frankfurt School, among others. Although he is in no sense an apologist for Popper’s commentary on the classical tradition of philosophy, Benesch contends that Popper’s philosophical contribution is of classical breadth and significance and that it continues and advances “the great Conversation” that is the substance of the classical tradition.
Philip Benesch is Associate Professor of Political Science at Lebanon Valley College, Pennsylvania.
2012 additions
David Harper "How Entrepreneurs Learn: A Popperian Approach and its Limitations". The section on limitations turns out to be a defence of the Popperian approach from criticisms!
A new blog by Curt Doolittle in defence of capitalism and especially private property using Popperism and Austrian economics.
2011 additions
Roger James, Retreat to Reason, an introduction to Popper, on line.
Defence of Fallible Apriorism. Paper by Rafe Champion, in press. This paper argues that the best way to develop the economics of von Mises is along the lines of “fallible apriorism” rather than the strong program of apriorism advocated by Rothbard and his followers. This position is supported by Popper’s epistemology which can be described as “conjectural apriorism”. Barry Smith presented his views as a part of the Aristotelian framework that he detected in Menger’s work. This framework is practically identical to the “metaphysical research program” that Popper developed in dialogue with the physicists.
The outcome of the Popper/Smith program is a form of methodological monism that supports the main lines of the causal realist program initiated by Carl Menger.
Bartley "The Popperian Harvest" summary on line.
Bartley on the psychological antecedents of Popper and Wittgenstein and their school teaching activities on line.
Bartley on Biology versus the Philosophy of Physics on line.
Bartley against the analytical philosophers' division of knowledge on line.
2010 additions
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.
Edited by Zuzana Parusnikova and Robert S Cohen, Springer, 2009.
The new CRITICAL RATIONALISM blog, incorporating the resources of the Critical Rationalism website.
Nicholas Maxwell What's Wrong With Science? Pentire Press, London, second edition 2009. Paperback, 290 pp.
Swann, J. (2009) Learning: an evolutionary analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41 (3), pp. 256-69 (available from 23-01-08 as OnlineEarly Article doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00410.x).
Swann, J. (2009) Popperian selectionism and its implications for education, or ‘What to do about the myth of learning by instruction from without?’ In: Z. Parusniková and R. S. Cohen (eds) Rethinking Popper. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, pp. 379-88.
Swann, J. (2009) Popperian epistemology and the curriculum: the legacy of Tyrrell Burgess. Higher Education Review, 42 (1), pp. 9-16.
Swann, J. (2008) Student-initiated curricula: a cornerstone of learning for democracy. In: Yearbook of the Institute of History ‘G. Barit’, Cluj-Napoca Series Humanistica, Romanian Academy, Branch of Cluj-Napoca. Bucharest: Romanian Academy Publishing House, pp. 43-52.
Gurol Irzik, Philosophy Department, Bogazici University - "Critical Rationalism" in Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, Eds S. Psillos and M. Curd, Routledge, 2008, pp.58-66.
2008 additions
Books
N. Maxwell, From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities (London: Pentire Press, 2007), second edition, revised, new introduction and three new chapters.
Raphael Sassower, "Popper's Legacy: Rethinking Politics, Economics and Science" (2006, but not listed previously).
Papers
Nicholas Maxwell, “Karl Raimund Popper”, in P. Dematteis, P. Fosl and L. McHenry (eds.) British Philosophers, 1800-2000 (Columbia: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2002), pp. 176-194.
____________, “The Enlightenment, Popper and Einstein”, in Y. Shi et al. (eds.) Knowledge and Wisdom: Advances in Multiple Criteria Decision Making and Human Systems Management (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2007), pp. 131-148.
____________, “Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Aim-Oriented Empiricism”, Philosophia 32/1-4, (2005), pp. 181-239.
_______, “Philosophy Seminars for Five-Year-Olds”, Learning for Democracy, 1/2 (2005), pp. 71-77 [reprinted in Gifted Education International, 22/2-3 (2007), pp. 122-127].
_______, “Practical Certainty and Cosmological Conjectures”, in M. Rahnfeld (ed.) Is there Certain Knowledge? (Leibzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006), pp. 44-58.
_______, “From Knowledge to Wisdom: The Need for an Academic Revolution, London Review of Education, 5/2 (2007), pp. 97-115 [reprinted in R. Barnett and N. Maxwell (eds. Wisdom in the University (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 1-19].
_______, “Do We Need a Scientific Revolution?”, Journal for Biological Physics and Chemistry, 8/3 (September 2008).
Gurol Irzik, "Critical Rationalism" in Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science (eds.) S. Psillos and M. Curd, Routledge, 2008, pp.58-66.
Notices of Centenary Papers
A short review of the Canterbury (NZ) papers. Phillip Catton and Graham Macdonald (eds) Karl Popper: Critical Appraisals.
Alain Boyer's French review of both the Vienna and Canterbury proceedings.
Projects
Feyerabend-Popper correspondence. At the Humboldt University of Berlin there is a project to compile the Feyerabend-Popper correspondence. (The project is not limited to letters from Feyerabend and Popper, but includes other letters about them, such as by Kuhn, Feigl, Pap and others).
For futher information contact Eric Oberheimer: oberheime@PHILOSOPHIE.HU-BERLIN.DE
Reports
A 2007 issue of the French periodical Philosophia Scientiae contains a record of the Colloque Karl Popper: Philosophe de Vingtième Siècle, which was held at the Sorbonne in December 2002. there are articles by Alain Boyer, David Miller, Elie Zahar, Jarrett Leplin, Léna Soler, Philippe de Rouilhan, and Thomas Chabin.
The proceedings of a meeting held in Cesena in 1994 were issued in 2006 as Mario Alai & Gino Tarozzi}, editors, Proceedings of the Conference Popper Philosopher of Science}, Rubbettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli.
Also in progress are the proceedings (in Romanian) of the Popper Centenary Congress held in Bucharest in 2002.
Recent and forthcoming publications by a Popperian philosopher of education:
SWANN, J. (forthcoming, 2007) The myth of learning by instruction from without. Higher Education Review, 40 (1).
SWANN, J. (forthcoming, 2007) Teaching for a better world: the why and how of student-initiated curricula. In: D. Aspin and J. Chapman (eds) Values Education and Lifelong Learning: Philosophy, Policy, Practices. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
SWANN, J. (2006) How to avoid giving unwanted answers to unasked questions: realizing Karl Popper's educational dream. In: I. C. Jarvie, K. Milford and D. Miller (eds) Karl Popper: A Centenary Assessment, Volume III - Science. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, pp. 261-70.
SWANN, J. and BURGESS, T. (2005) The usefulness of Karl Popper's selectionist theory of learning for educational practice. Learning for Democracy, 1 (3), pp. 7-22.
SWANN, J. (2005) Education research and the chimera of secure knowledge. Higher Education Review, 38 (1), pp. 32-47.
A forthcoming review of the proceedings from Karl Popper 2002 Centenary Congress, University of Vienna:
PRATT, J. (forthcoming, 2007) One of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century (a review of I. C. Jarvie, M. Milford and D. Miller (eds) (2006) Karl Popper: A Centenary Assessment, Volume I: Life and Times, and Values in a World of Facts; Volume II: Metaphysics and Epistemology; Volume III - Science. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate). Higher Education Review, 40 (1).
Popperians may also be interested in:
HELEY, L. (2007) Rehabilitating reason (a review of D. Miller (2006) Out of Error: Further Essays on Critical Rationalism, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate). Higher Education Review, 39 (2), pp. 89-90.
A report from Bill Hall. The publications are available on line at his website
Most of the following works on organizational knowledge, organizational autopoiesis and the basis of knowledge in autopoiesis have a strong basis of Popperian epistemology. Warning - purists may not agree with the resulting paradigms, where I have used and interpreted Popper's ideas as an evolutionary biologist rather than as a philosopher. Note: If your browser doesn't like embedded links, I can resend this with the links in plain text.
Nousala, S., Hall, W.P., John, S. 2007. Transferring tacit knowledge in extended enterprises. IKE'07- The 2007 International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering, Las Vegas, Nevada, June 25-28, 2007. [Preprint available on request].
Dalmaris, P., Tsui, E., Hall, W.P., Smith, B. 2007. A Framework for the improvement of knowledge-intensive business processes. Business Process Management Journal. 13(2): 279-305. [paper]
Hall, W.P. 2006 Emergence and growth of knowledge and diversity in hierarchically complex living systems. Workshop "Selection, Self-Organization and Diversity CSIRO Centre for Complex Systems Science and ARC Complex Open Systems Network, Katoomba, NSW, Australia 17-18 May 2006. [Revision 4, 3 November 2006 - MS Word, 607 KB] Note: this is the key theory paper. It is currently under review for the journal BioSystems.
Hall, W.P. 2006. Emergence and growth of knowledge and diversity in hierarchically complex living systems: genesis of a theoretical framework. Workshop "Selection, Self-Organization and Diversity CSIRO Centre for Complex Systems Science and ARC Complex Open Systems Network, Katoomba, NSW, Australia 17-18 May 2006. [PowerPoint, 54 KB]
Hall, W.P. 2006. Emergence and growth of knowledge and diversity in hierarchically complex organised systems: genesis of a theoretical framework. University of Melbourne Department of Information Sciences Research Seminar - 13 October 2006. [PowerPoint 614 KB]
Dalmaris, P., Hall, W.P., Philp, W. 2006. The time-value of knowledge: a temporal qualification of knowledge, its issues, and role in the improvement of knowledge intense business processes. KMAP 2006 The Third Asia-Pacific International Conference on Knowledge Management. Hong Kong, Dec. 11-13, 2006.
Hall, W.P. 2006. Tools extending human and organizational cognition: revolutionary tools and cognitive revolutions. Sixth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations, Prato, Italy, 11-14 July 2006. International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management 6, 10 pp. [peer reviewed paper, 178 K]
Nousala, S. 2006. Tacit knowledge networks and their implementation in complex organisations. PhD Thesis. School of Aerospace Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. RMIT University.
Dalmaris, P. 2006. A framework for the improvement of knowledge-intense business processes. PhD Thesis. Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney.
The Joe Firestone report.
There's a good bit of research being done in Knowledge Management that involves developments of Critical Rationalism and Evolutionary Epistemology.
Joseph M. Firestone, Riskonomics: Reducing Risk By Killing Your Worst Ideas (forthcoming, 2008)
Joseph M. Firestone, Risk Intelligence Metrics: An Adaptive Metrics Center Industry Report, KMCI Online Press, 2006. Available at: http://www.adaptivemetricscenter.com/riskintelligencemetricsamcreport.html
Joseph M. Firestone and Mark W. McElroy, "Doing Knowledge Management", The Learning Organization, 12, no. 2 (April, 2005), 189-212 (Winner of 2006 Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence as the outstanding paper of 2005 published by The Learning Organization Journal).
William P. Hall, "Biological Nature of Learning in the Learning Organization," The Learning Organization, 12, no. 2 (April, 2005), 169 - 188.
Deborah Blackman, James Connelly, and Steven Henderson, "Does Double Loop Learning Create Reliable Knowledge?" The Learning Organization, 11 (2004), 11-27
Peter Dalmaris, William P.Hall, and Wayne Philp, "The Time Value of Knowledge"
available at: http://www.futureshock.com.au/docs/Thetimevalueofknowledge.pdf
Peter Dalmaris, A framework for the improvement of knowledge-intense business processes, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Technology, Sydney, February 2006 available at:
http://www.futureshock.com.au/docs/PhDDalmarisPub.pdf
In addition, my frequent collaborator and co-author, Mark W. McElroy has a Ph.D. Dissertation in process at the University of Groningen on Sustainability and Knowledge Management that will develop certain aspects of CR further as well as a paper scheduled for publication very soon:
Mark W. McElroy, René J. Jorna, and Jo van Engelen, "Rethinking Social Capital Theory". Further details on this publication will be available soon. However, this paper contains an account of a further development of the Buhler/Popper Theory of language functions developed by Mark and I jointly.
Finally, a lot of additional research involving William P. Hall, Richard Vines, Luke Naismith, Susu Nousala, Steve Else, Peter Dalmaris and others using Popper's ideas on evolutionary epistemology continues.
Work in progress.
The Hall Group
Vines, R., Hall, W.P., Naismith L. Exploring the foundations of organisational knowledge. actKM Conference, , Australian National University, Canberra, 23-24 October 2007 (Accepted) [preprint available on request]
Hall, W.P., Dalmaris, P., Else, S., Martin, C.P., Philp, W.R. Time value of knowledge: time-based frameworks for Valuing knowledge. 10th Australian Conference for Knowledge Management and Intelligent Decision Support Melbourne, 9 - 11 December 2007 (Submitted) [preprint available on request]
Martin, C.P., Philp, W.R., Hall, W.P. Temporal convergence for knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management (Submitted).
Nousala, S., Miles, A., Kilpatrick, B., Hall, W.P. Building knowledge sharing communities using team expertise access maps (TEAM). International Journal of Business Systems Research. (Submitted)
Application Holy Wars: A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge. This is a part finished hypertext book project that was put aside while I developed the theoretical basis for the things I wanted to say about organizational knowledge. Approximately 3/5ths of the project was completed (but will be rewritten before formal publication. I expect to resume work on the book later this year or next.
