Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise Of Evolutionary Epistemology

Michel ter Hark delved deeply into the Popper papers in order to find the origins of the philosopher's most important ideas: deduction v. induction, evolution through trial and error elimination or demarcation between science and pseudoscience (falsifiability). He found the basics of Popper's philosophy in psychology and pedagogy (Popper's early research fields), and more specifically in the theories of the Würzburg school of psychology (Carl Bühler and Otto Selz).The Würzburg school of psychology and Otto SelzThe Würzburg school was a reaction against the school of 'association psychology' (Wundt, Ebbinghaus), for which knowledge was a matter of sensations and their associations.Selz, however, objected that 'naked' elementary sensations don't exist. Human activities are embedded in existing (also innate) structures. They produce reactions on internal and external conditions, which constitute 'try-out behavior' (solving problems by trial and error) based on partial insights (anticipations, a priori knowledge).In other words, Selz defended a hypothetical deductive approach (embedded in an existing environment) against induction (blind associations and repetitions).Selz and PopperIn matters of education, the method of the 'association school' was mainly based on memorization, while the Würzburg school stressed self-activity. The first method saw memory as a bucket (storage) of knowledge, while in the second method the mind is a searchlight exploring the surroundings and creating insights (Selz). For Popper, these points of view represent the same difference as between 'a gramophone record and a pianist'.The Selzian notion of embedded (re)actions formed the basis for Popper's ideas of deduction and evolution through trial and error elimination. For Popper, all human knowledge is hypothetical and fallible, drawn from our mind and from the repertoire of knowledge dispositions (mostly innate) we already have.The three worlds systemIn order to safeguard the objectivity of knowledge, Popper differentiated our universe in three worlds: the physical world, the mind (subjective mental phenomena) and the products of the mind (language). This point of view is based on Bühler's language theory, which consists of symptoms (expressions of feelings), signs (to influence the behavior of others) and descriptions (= objects and facts in the objective world).PhysicalismA major poblem for Popper was what he called 'physicalism', which in fact constitutes a fusion of his worlds 1 & 2 (at least).Moritz Schlick believed that consciousness can be completely known if we succeed in transforming introspective psychology into physics of the brain. This 'physicalism' was further developed by Herbert Feigl who argued that mental processes are identical with physical processes in the brain. But Popper believed that a reduction of psychology to physics is not attainable and, above all, not practical. A more viable form of reduction would be the investigation of the relation between psychology and biology.Addendum (LR)Of course, everything in the universe is basically physics.But, remarkably, in his brilliant but controversial book 'The Life of the Cosmos', Lee Smolin resurrects Popper's biological proposition: 'physics are not mathematics, but biology. Cosmology is a question of natural selection. This selection happens via black holes, where new universes are created with slightly different random new values for the parameters of the standard model in physics. There are no eternal laws, only worlds which are the result of random and statistical processes of self-organization.'This is a very bold conjecture indeed.A book for all those who are familiar with Popper's work. It gives new insights into the genesis of Popper's ideas, which he didn't mention in his autobiography 'Unended Quest' .

In "Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology" by Michel ter Hark argues that many of Popper's ideas about evolutionary epistemology were inspired by the writings of the psychologist Otto Selz. Far from being a later add on evolutionary epistemology was important in Popper's philosophy from the start. Also, despite Popper's claims that he came up with some of his ideas as early as 1919, he was still an inductivist as late as 1928. Who is Otto Selz? I hear you cry. He was a psychologist who proposed not only that people and animals decide what to do by trying out ideas and rejecting them if they don't work out, but also said that science works that way. Popper's contribution was to use these ideas to come up with a new epistemology. Michel ter Hark explains all this much better than I just did with lots of quotes and historical context, and if you want to know about it you should read the book.A quick critical comment: on p. 152, ter Hark argues that Popper's epistemology rests on his psychology rather than the other way around. I am not convinced that this is true, for if all I had was the theory that people do in fact create knowledge through conjectures and criticism, I could still say "but really they ought to create knowledge by induction." But if I have a logical argument to the effect that this is impossible I can no longer make that argument. So it seems to me that having good psychology is dependent on having good epistemology rather than the other way around.Something good about the book: Chapter 6 prompted me to have another look at "The Self and Its Brain" (co-written with neuroscientist John Eccles) in which Popper allegedly endorsed Cartesian dualism according to philosophical legend. Actually, his position is a lot less clear than that, not least because he states at the start of the book that he is not offering an ontology, and also because in Section 48 he explicitly trashes Descartes' theory of mind. Popper sometimes endorses a dualist position as when he critically discusses Ryle's book "The Concept of Mind", saying that if Ryle disagrees with the two worlds theory (the physical and mental worlds) presumably the three worlds theory is even worse, but he is not a Cartesian dualist. (Popper's three worlds are the physical world, the world of mental states and the world of objective knowledge.) As ter Hark points out, the question of the merits and problems of Popper's philosophy of mind should be re-examined."Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology" by Michel ter Hark is historically interesting and philosophically provocative.