BOOKS
501
astrology or reading chicken entrails. Much of Stove's effort in this mat–
ter was expended in attacking what he saw-quite rightly-as the
source of this silliness, namely Karl Popper's view that while we can
refute theories, we can never have any reason to think that a theory is
true or, more
to
the point, that we can never have any reason to think
that one theory is more likely to be true than another. (Popper also held
that we have no grounds whatsoever to suppose that our past experi–
ence is any guide to the future, an affront not only to scientific reason–
ing but to common sense.) Popper's view has of course been enormously
influential, and although its star has waned in philosophy of science, it
continues to be an article of faith for the intellectual in the street, not
to
mention the countless third-rate lecturers who were nuzzled at its
bosom.
The first part of Kimball's collection brings together three articles on
this topic, including the deadly "Cole Porter and Karl Popper: The Jazz
Age in the Philosophy of Science," an article that caused apoplexy
amongst Popperians, including Popper himself, when it first appeared in
1985.
Kimball has also included an extract from Stove's brilliant and
irreverent book
Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists
(recently
re-released under the title
Anything Goes: The Origins of the Cult of
Scientific Irrationalism) .
This book has achieved a legendary status in
philosophy of science circles, and is another work that enrages Popperi–
ans-not least for its delicious and penetrating
bans mots-whose
devo–
tion to Popper borders on the religious.
In these essays Stove engages in a hilarious and devastating analysis
of how the ridiculous views of Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyer–
abend (as well as the lesser-known Imre Lakatos) ever managed to find
such a wide acceptance amongst the intelligentsia. In particular, he
shows how various linguistic devices made these views seem plausible.
One of the simplest such devices was to place words like "knowledge,"
"discovery," "fact," "prove," "confirm," "objective," and "truth" in
scare quotes . A Popperian, for example, might say that through science
we have come to "know" that the "law" of gravity is a "fact." Pop–
per's philosophy, though, entails that we do not know-and cannot
possibly know-any such thing. But the presence of the words "know"
and "fact," even in scare quotes, deflects attention away from this con–
sequence of Popper's theory. Stove points out, however, that once the
implications of Popper's views are presented straightforwardly, no one
will take them seriously for a moment, as they are clearly ludicrous.
But Popper and Kuhn have never presented their views non-evasively.
J.
L.
Austin's phrase, "There's the bit where you say it, and the bit where
