National Post

On Popper and swans

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Re: ‘An iconoclast and a skeptic’: You’ve never heard of Karl Popper, but we need his ideas, especially in B.C. Michael Ignatieff asserts that “... the very idea of the open society is under attack everywhere.” The problem with the statement, “All swans are white,” is that it claims to apply everywhere, yet we now know that it does not. But as Karl Popper points out, absolutist claims have their risks.

Karl Popper’s book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, does address the question of political universali­sm, which has its origins in the writings of Plato. But as we should be very wary about universali­st (and absolutist) claims in science, absolutism in politics is downright dangerous.

Soviet science and politics were built on absolutist norms that proved vulnerable to falsificat­ion, and while proportion­al representa­tion nurtures consensus, what is consensual can prove illusory.

The seeming whiteness of swans, is because of complex real-world conditions. In a blue light, “white” swans appear blue. But the blueness of a swan is not just about physics, it is also about psychology, or how individual­s convert energy in the environmen­t into the very personal experience of “seeing light,” and how that experience is made meaningful by our beliefs. Gordon Watson, Rocky Mountain House, Alta.

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