Karl Popper was a philosopher who is known for his theory of falsifiability, which states that a scientific theory can never be proven to be true, but can only be disproven.
Popper was born in Vienna, Austria on 28 July 1902. He studied at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1928. In 1929 he moved to New Zealand where he lectured at Canterbury University College and Otago University. He returned to Austria in 1934 and joined the faculty at the University of Vienna where he became Director of the Institute for Logic and Philosophy of Science until the Anschluss in 1938 when he fled to New Zealand again.
In 1945 Popper became professor of logic and scientific method at the London School of Economics where he remained until 1959 when he accepted a chair at Stanford University. He is also known for his work on evolutionary epistemology, which aims to explain how knowledge grows over time through a process of conjecture and refutation rather than pure induction or deduction alone.
Pilosopher is probably best known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method, in favour of empirical falsification: A theory should not be accepted unless it is able to be tested, and if it can be disproved by observation or experiment then it should be rejected. This view contrasts strongly with inductivism, which maintains that theories are confirmed by their ability to explain observations, even if they have not yet been tested.
