Popperian Growth of Knowledge¶

A critical-rationalist model in which inquiry advances from problems through bold conjectures, attempted error elimination, and successor problems rather than through inductive accumulation or final verification.

Version: v1 · 2026-09-28 · History
Domain-specific #: 7667
Domain group: Humanities
Origin domain: Philosophy
Subdomain: Philosophy of Science → Philosophy
Aliases: Growth of Knowledge, Popper's Growth of Knowledge

Core Idea¶

Popperian Growth of Knowledge is a critical-rationalist account of how inquiry advances: begin from a problem, propose conjectural solutions, expose them to severe criticism and empirical tests, eliminate detected errors, and inherit new problems from what survives and fails.^[1] Knowledge grows through this open-ended transformation of the problem situation rather than through final proof or the mechanical accumulation of positive observations.

The qualification “Popperian” is essential. “Growth of knowledge” in ordinary language could mean any increase in facts, skills, publications, database records, or social distribution. Karl Popper used the phrase for a distinctive epistemological and methodological problem. The node concerns that account, not every process in which someone learns more.

Problems are primary. Inquiry does not begin from neutral observations waiting to be generalized; it begins because expectations, theories, aims, or practices encounter difficulty.^[2] What counts as relevant evidence is partly shaped by the problem and the conjectures under consideration. This does not make observation arbitrary, but it rejects a purely inductivist picture in which theory is read directly from repeated cases.

Conjectures are tentative explanatory or problem-solving proposals. They may be imaginative and need not be derived from the evidence they are meant to explain. Their epistemic standing depends not on pedigree but on exposure to criticism: consistency checks, comparison with alternatives, consequence derivation, empirical tests, and attempts to find where the proposal fails.

Error elimination is selective. A criticism can reveal contradiction, failed prediction, explanatory inadequacy, ad hoc protection, or conflict with better-tested background knowledge. Eliminating a proposal, assumption, or formulation narrows the field, but it does not prove the remaining theory true. A survivor is provisionally preferred because it has withstood specified criticism and solves the current problem better.

Falsifiability supplies a central methodological constraint for empirical science.^[3] A scientific theory should prohibit some possible observations and therefore risk failure. A claim compatible with every conceivable outcome cannot receive empirical criticism of the relevant kind. Yet falsifiability is not the whole growth model: problem selection, competing conjectures, auxiliary assumptions, test design, criticism, and successor problems all matter.

Actual tests address systems of claims. When a prediction fails, logic alone does not identify which theory, auxiliary assumption, instrument claim, or initial condition is responsible.^[4] Critical inquiry must diagnose the failure rather than treat one anomalous reading as an automatic algorithm for rejection. Popper's normative emphasis on risky testing remains, while later philosophy of science highlights the complexity of its application.

Corroboration is not confirmation as accumulated probability of truth.^[5] In Popper's usage, a theory can be corroborated by surviving serious tests, but corroboration reports a testing history under specified conditions.^[6] It does not authorize induction from past survival to guaranteed future success.

The account is fallibilist. Even successful theories may contain error, face new domains, or be replaced by explanations with greater scope, precision, or problem-solving power. Rationality resides in keeping claims criticizable and improving them, not in securing an unrevisable foundation.

Popper often described a schematic sequence: an initial problem, tentative theories, error elimination, and new problems.^[7] The successor problem is not merely the original question repeated. Tests and criticism can expose unexpected phenomena, conflicts between aims, limitations of concepts, or questions about the testing apparatus. Growth changes what investigators can ask.

The relation to truth requires care. Critical rationalism is not satisfied by arbitrary change or by a sequence of falsities. Popper treated truth as a regulative aim and developed the idea of verisimilitude, or truthlikeness, to explain rational progress between false theories.^[8] Formal accounts of verisimilitude have faced important objections and revisions. The growth pattern should therefore not be reduced to a settled numeric measure of closeness to truth.

Growth is not guaranteed. Communities can ignore anomalies, suppress criticism, repeat fashionable claims, or generate changes that solve no important problem. The model supplies methodological norms and an explanatory framework; it is not a historical law that every later theory is better.

Nor is every rejection progress. A criticism may be mistaken, a test underpowered, a measurement invalid, or a rival worse. Error elimination must itself remain open to criticism. The recursive character is important: methods for testing theories can be tested and revised.

The social organization of inquiry can support or obstruct the pattern. Public argument, reproducible tests, access to evidence, plural conjectures, and institutions tolerant of criticism make error detection more likely. Nevertheless, the Popperian account is a philosophical model of knowledge growth, not a complete sociology of science or a metric of publication volume.

Structural Signature¶

Sig role-phrases:

the problem situation — an explanatory gap, conflict, or failed expectation that organizes what inquiry must address.
the competing conjectures — tentative solutions proposed without requiring that they be inductively derived from prior observations.
the criticizable consequences — logical or empirical implications that expose each conjecture to possible failure.
the tested claim system — the central theory, auxiliaries, initial conditions, and instrument claims that jointly generate a prediction.
the severe criticism — conceptual comparison, consistency checking, or empirical testing capable of discriminating among proposals.^[9]
the failure diagnosis — localization of a detected defect within the tested system rather than automatic rejection of one isolated theory.
the selective error elimination — removal or revision of conjectures or auxiliaries that fail the relevant criticism.
the provisional survivor — a better-tested solution retained without conversion into final verification or guaranteed truth.
the successor problem — the transformed question field produced by what the criticism reveals, eliminates, or leaves unresolved.
the fallibilist recursion — continued openness of theories, tests, and error diagnoses to further criticism and revision.
the epistemic-growth boundary — the distinction between problem-transforming critical inquiry and mere accumulation, chronology, or publication growth.

What It Is Not¶

Not any increase in information, learning, or publication. The Popperian account requires a problem to be transformed through competing conjectures, criticism, and selective error elimination; accumulating facts or outputs without that critical sequence does not instantiate it.
Not induction from repeated observations to a verified law. Conjectures need not be derived from observations, and even extensive survival under testing yields provisional corroboration rather than deductive or inductive certainty.^[10]
Not automatic rejection after one anomalous result. A test bears on a system of theory, auxiliaries, initial conditions, and instrument claims, so criticism must diagnose which component failed instead of mechanically naming the central conjecture.
Not falsifiability by itself. Exposure to possible empirical failure is a central constraint, but the larger model also requires a problem situation, rival conjectures, criticism, error elimination, provisional survival, and successor problems.
Not a historical law that later theories are always better. Inquiry can suppress criticism, retain error, or change without solving the organizing problem; growth is a fallibilist methodological achievement, not an inevitable chronology.
Not a settled numerical measure of truthlikeness. Truth or improved explanation may orient criticism, but the growth pattern does not supply an uncontested scalar for ranking how close every surviving theory is to truth.

Scope of Application¶

Popperian Growth of Knowledge belongs to critical-rationalist epistemology and philosophy of science. A habitat qualifies only when inquiry can be reconstructed through a problem, competing conjectures, criticizable consequences, attempted error elimination, provisional survival, and a successor problem; ordinary increases in information or output do not enter the map.

Scientific methodology. It frames how empirical theories should expose themselves to risky tests and how survival under such tests yields corroboration without verification.
Comparative theory appraisal. It organizes comparison among rival explanations by asking what each forbids, what criticism discriminates between them, and which detected errors a successor removes.
History of scientific inquiry. It supports case reconstruction when the record identifies the initial problem, the tested claim system, the criticism actually applied, the revision or rejection, and the changed problem field; chronology alone is insufficient.
Research-program design. It guides the design of conjectures, measurements, and tests intended to reveal rather than insulate error, provided the Popperian normative commitments are explicit.
Analysis of failed tests. It applies where philosophers or methodologists distinguish failure of a central theory from failure of an auxiliary assumption, initial condition, or instrument claim.
Institutional conditions of criticism. It can assess whether public argument, reproducibility, plural proposals, and access to evidence make error detection possible, while stopping short of a complete sociology or metric of science.

Clarity¶

Naming Popperian Growth of Knowledge separates epistemic progress from the mere accumulation of observations, publications, or accepted claims. It makes “the evidence supported the theory” an incomplete report: the relevant account must identify the problem, the competing conjectures, the risky outcome each excluded, the criticism actually applied, and the error eliminated. It also keeps corroboration distinct from verification—surviving a severe test changes a conjecture’s comparative standing without proving it true.

The concept further clarifies what can be learned from failure. A failed prediction bears on a tested system that includes auxiliaries, instruments, and initial conditions; it does not mechanically name the central theory as the culprit. The sharper methodological question is therefore: what problem did this test transform, which conjectural component did the criticism expose, and what successor problem now organizes inquiry?

Manages Complexity¶

Popperian Growth of Knowledge compresses a sprawling history of observations, theories, experiments, objections, and revisions into a recurrent problem cycle: problem situation, competing conjectures, explicit risk, criticism or test, selective error elimination, provisional survival, and successor problem. An analyst tracks which problem organizes the inquiry, what each conjecture forbids, how severe the attempted criticism is, which component of the tested system is revised, and what new difficulty follows. That smaller state makes qualitatively different outcomes readable: a conjecture can be eliminated, retained without verification, altered because an auxiliary failed, or superseded because a rival solves the problem while creating a more demanding one. A mere rise in publications or accepted statements falls outside the cycle unless it changes this critical problem structure.

The cycle does not compress away the judgment involved in applying it. Experiments test networks of theory, auxiliaries, initial conditions, and instrument claims, so a failed prediction does not mechanically identify the error; test severity and the comparison class must be reconstructed. Institutional suppression of criticism, mistaken objections, shifting aims, and contested judgments of explanatory improvement also require historical and sociological detail. The model orders those complications around criticizable conjectures and transformed problems, but it neither guarantees progress nor supplies a scalar measure of truthlikeness.

Abstract Reasoning¶

The first move is diagnostic: reason from a failed consequence back to the tested system rather than directly to the central theory. The investigator inventories the conjecture, auxiliary assumptions, initial conditions, instrument claims, and inferential steps that jointly produced the prediction, then asks which revision best explains the failure while preserving the rest of the problem situation. A contradiction or failed measurement licenses criticism; it does not mechanically identify the defective component.

The second move is test selection. From two or more conjectures, derive outcomes they forbid or predict differently and choose a test that exposes those differences under conditions capable of revealing failure. A result that eliminates one conjecture changes the comparison set; survival under a severe test raises a theory's provisional standing but does not entail its truth or future success. If every observed result was already compatible with the proposal, the episode supplies little Popperian error-elimination leverage even if much data were collected.

The third move is ordered reconstruction. Trace the sequence from an initial problem through tentative solutions, criticism, selective revision, and the successor problem created by the result. This lets a historian or methodologist distinguish growth from mere chronological replacement or accumulation: the later state counts as Popperian progress only when the criticism transforms what must next be explained or tested. Because tests and criticisms are themselves fallible, the same sequence can be applied recursively to the method used to diagnose the error.

Knowledge Transfer¶

Within philosophy of science, Popperian Growth of Knowledge transfers literally across analyses of physical, biological, medical, and social-scientific inquiry when the same methodological sequence is preserved: reconstruct the problem situation, identify competing conjectures and what each risks, examine the criticism or test, localize the error within the tested system, and trace the successor problem. Historical case study, experimental design, and theory comparison can share those diagnostics and interventions even when their subject matter differs. The vocabulary of falsifiability, corroboration, auxiliaries, fallibilism, and truth-oriented criticism remains constitutive throughout.

Beyond that home, the honest transfer is (B) shared abstract mechanism with an (A) analogy boundary. Engineering diagnosis, software testing, policy trials, and organizational learning may co-instantiate the broader parent Inquiry by proposing solutions, exposing them to possible failure, revising them, and generating new questions. What does not travel automatically is Popper's epistemology: empirical falsifiability as a demarcating constraint, corroboration without verification, the asymmetry between universal theories and counterinstances, and the regulative concern with truth or verisimilitude. Calling any iterative improvement “Popperian” is therefore analogy unless those commitments organize the practice; otherwise the transferable lesson should be named as Inquiry rather than as the domain-specific account.

Examples¶

Canonical¶

Consider a textbook critical-rationalist reconstruction in which an unexplained observation creates a problem and two conjectures account equally well for the observations already in hand. One conjecture also forbids a result that the other permits. Investigators design a test capable of producing that result, check the assumptions connecting the apparatus to the prediction, and observe the forbidden outcome. The first conjecture is therefore rejected or revised; the second is retained because it has survived this specified criticism, not because the result verifies it. The test also exposes a new question—why the surviving account works under the tested conditions but not yet under a neighboring range—so inquiry ends with a transformed problem rather than a final answer. This deliberately schematic case captures Popper's problem–conjecture–criticism sequence without attaching it to an unverified historical episode.

Mapped back: The unexplained observation establishes the problem situation, and the two proposals are the competing conjectures with different the criticizable consequences. The discriminating test supplies the severe criticism and the selective error elimination; retaining the other account only provisionally makes it the provisional survivor. The newly exposed range question is the successor problem, while the refusal to call survival verification preserves the fallibilist recursion.

Applied / In Practice¶

A philosophy-of-science analysis of a failed experiment can use the model as a diagnostic practice. Suppose a prediction depends jointly on a central theory, a calibration equation, an assumption about initial conditions, and a detector's response. When the measured value conflicts with the prediction, the analyst does not announce that the central theory has been mechanically falsified. Instead, the analyst reconstructs which components generated the prediction, asks what independent checks bear on the calibration and detector, compares rival repairs, and identifies the component whose revision best explains the failure. A corrected instrument assumption may allow the central theory to survive while creating a new methodological problem about the detector's valid operating range. This is Popperian analysis only if the repair remains exposed to further criticism; merely protecting a preferred theory with an untestable excuse would not count.

Mapped back: The theory, calibration, initial conditions, and detector together form the tested claim system. Independent checks and rival repairs constitute the severe criticism, while locating the defective instrument assumption is the failure diagnosis rather than automatic central-theory rejection. Revising that assumption performs the selective error elimination, and the detector-range question becomes the successor problem; the demand that the repair remain testable enforces the epistemic-growth boundary.

Structural Tensions¶

T1: Explanatory boldness versus exposed risk.

A bold conjecture can unify a wide problem field and generate informative consequences, but breadth alone is epistemically cheap if the proposal is insulated from outcomes that would count against it. Narrower claims can be tested precisely while contributing little explanatory reach. Critical-rationalist inquiry therefore seeks conjectures ambitious enough to transform the problem and articulated enough to risk selective failure, without equating maximal vulnerability with maximal value. Diagnostic: Does the conjecture extend explanation while specifying consequences that could genuinely discriminate it from rivals, or does either ambition or testability survive only by sacrificing the other?

T2: Severe criticism versus fallible failure diagnosis.

Inquiry must expose conjectures to criticism capable of revealing error, yet an empirical failure bears on a system that includes the central theory, auxiliaries, initial conditions, instruments, and inferential links. Treating every anomaly as automatic refutation invites premature rejection; indefinitely relocating error to auxiliaries shields the central conjecture from risk. Error elimination remains rational only when the diagnosis itself is criticizable and competing repairs are compared. Diagnostic: Has the failure been severe enough to matter and localized through independent checks, or is the theory being either discarded mechanically or protected by ad hoc reassignment of blame?

T3: Corroborated survival versus verified truth.

Survival under serious tests can rationally improve a conjecture's comparative standing, especially when rivals fail, but it cannot convert a finite testing history into final verification or guaranteed future success. Refusing to learn anything from survival makes severe testing pointless; treating corroboration as accumulated proof abandons fallibilism. The epistemic gain lies in a better-tested provisional preference whose conditions and comparison set remain visible. Diagnostic: Is the surviving conjecture being preferred because it withstood specified discriminating criticism, or promoted to certainty beyond what that testing history warrants?

T4: Normative reconstruction versus descriptive history.

The Popperian cycle provides standards for criticizable inquiry, but actual scientific episodes may involve mixed motives, retrospective narratives, suppressed alternatives, or tests not designed around explicit falsification. Applying the model can reveal where inquiry did or did not expose error; forcing every chronology into its sequence can rewrite history as methodological compliance. Conversely, treating any historical deviation as a refutation of the norm confuses prescription with description. Diagnostic: Is the cycle being used to appraise a documented episode against explicit norms, or asserted as a factual history without evidence for its problems, alternatives, tests, and error decisions?

T5: Truth orientation versus contested truthlikeness.

Critical inquiry needs more than arbitrary change: criticism is oriented toward truth or improved explanation. Yet turning that orientation into a single settled measure of verisimilitude can conceal disputes about how false theories should be ranked and which improvements matter. Abandoning truth orientation makes replacement indistinguishable from fashion; demanding an uncontested scalar can overstate what the philosophy supplies. Diagnostic: Does the claimed progress identify errors removed and problems better solved while retaining truth as an aim, or depend on an unsupported numerical ranking of closeness to truth?

T6: Individual criticizability versus institutional support.

A conjecture can be logically open to criticism while the surrounding community restricts rival proposals, access to evidence, reproduction, or public challenge. Institutions that coordinate standards and testing can make error detection possible, but their authority can also stabilize fashionable or protected claims. Reducing growth to individual reasoning ignores these enabling conditions; reducing it to institutional output mistakes publication or consensus for criticism. Diagnostic: Do the social arrangements expose competing conjectures and evidence to meaningful challenge, or merely increase activity while insulating the organizing theory from error detection?

T7: Cumulative refinement versus transformed successor problem.

Some criticism narrows a parameter or repairs an auxiliary while preserving the framework; other failures reorganize what counts as the problem and which conjectures are viable. Treating only revolutionary replacement as growth overlooks genuine error elimination within a continuing program, while treating every incremental addition as progress loses the requirement that inquiry transform the problem situation. The successor problem supplies continuity through criticism without requiring sameness of framework. Diagnostic: What error or limitation did the episode expose, and did the resulting inquiry merely add information or genuinely alter what must next be explained and tested?

T8: Popperian Growth of Knowledge autonomy versus reduction to Inquiry (Inquiry).

The parent Prime Inquiry supplies the portable carrier of questions pursued through evidence, evaluation, and revision. Every instance of Popperian Growth of Knowledge is a strict kind of Inquiry because its problem, conjectures, criticism, and successor problem enact that full question-directed structure. Reducing the child to the parent erases problem primacy, falsifiability, corroboration without verification, selective error elimination, and the recursive production of new problems; treating it as wholly autonomous hides the general inquiry structure. Diagnostic: Does the case merely show disciplined Inquiry, or do the conjecture–criticism–error-elimination commitments remain explicit enough to warrant the Popperian specialization?

Structural–Framed Character¶

Popperian Growth of Knowledge lies at the framed pole of the structural–framed spectrum because its problem–conjecture–criticism cycle is inseparable from a named philosophical account of what counts as rational epistemic progress. Its evaluative_weight is constitutive: severe criticism, error elimination, provisional preference, and continued openness to refutation express standards for better inquiry rather than a neutral chronology of changing beliefs. It is strongly human_practice_bound because problems, conjectures, tests, criticisms, and successor questions exist here as roles in deliberate inquiry, not as an observer-free natural process. Its institutional_origin is likewise explicit in critical rationalism and philosophy of science, even when the account is used to appraise empirical practice. Its vocab_travels only partly: problem, proposal, test, and revision retain broad meanings, while falsifiability, corroboration without verification, fallibilism, and verisimilitude remain Popperian terms of art. Under import_vs_recognize, another practice may literally instantiate disciplined question-directed updating, but calling every iterative improvement Popperian Growth of Knowledge imports the frame unless problem primacy, risky conjecture, attempted error elimination, and successor problems organize it.

The smallest positively reviewed portable skeleton is Inquiry: a question or doubt directs evidence seeking, comparison among possible answers, evaluation, and an epistemic update or explicitly unresolved result. The cross-domain reach of that question–alternatives–evidence–evaluation–update structure belongs to the Inquiry Prime. Popperian Growth of Knowledge remains home-bound by its critical-rationalist commitments: conjectures need not be inductively derived, empirical claims must risk failure, corroboration never becomes verification, error diagnosis remains fallible, and criticism transforms the problem situation. Removing those commitments leaves Inquiry; removing Inquiry's question-directed epistemic change leaves accumulation, advocacy, or chronological replacement rather than this model.

Its character: framed pole because a portable inquiry cycle supplies the structural pull, while Popperian norms of criticism, corroboration, fallibilism, and problem succession constitute the decisive frame.

Structural Core vs. Domain Accent¶

This decomposition explains why Popperian Growth of Knowledge is a domain-specific abstraction rather than a Prime.

What is skeletal (could lift toward a cross-domain prime). The carrier is a question-directed epistemic process organized by a problem and alternative answers. Its operation proposes answers, exposes their consequences to discriminating evidence or criticism, eliminates or revises detected error, and updates the question; its invariant is warranted knowledge change under explicit standards rather than passive accumulation. Recognition requires a traceable problem–alternative–criticism–update sequence, and fails when claims merely accumulate, remain insulated from possible failure, or change chronologically without inquiry. This is a strict specialization of Inquiry: removing the Popperian differentia leaves Inquiry's complete question, alternatives, evidence, evaluation, and epistemic-update structure.

What is domain-bound. The constitutive accent is the critical-rationalist account in which problems are primary, conjectures need not be induced from observations, empirical proposals risk falsification, tests address systems of theory and auxiliaries, error must be diagnosed selectively, and survivors are corroborated only provisionally before generating successor problems. Replace those methodological commitments with generic iteration, ordinary learning, or output growth and the result is no longer Popperian Growth of Knowledge, even if it involves criticism and revision.

Why this does not clear the prime bar. The complete signature—including problem primacy, conjecture and refutation, falsifiability, corroboration without verification, fallibilist recursion, and successor-problem semantics—does not recur literally across at least three unrelated domains with the same vocabulary, diagnostics, and intervention logic. The broader reach identified in Knowledge Transfer belongs to Inquiry; engineering diagnosis, software testing, or organizational learning are shared-mechanism cases unless the Popperian epistemology itself governs them. Stripping the philosophical accent therefore leaves Inquiry but not the named account, while retaining Popperian terms without the problem–criticism–error-elimination operation leaves a historical or topical label rather than this abstraction.

This entry is a kind of Inquiry.

Instantiates — Inquiry (Inquiry). The typed carrier is a problem situation together with competing conjectures, their consequences, auxiliary assumptions, tests, and the epistemic state of the inquiring community. The operative process frames the problem, proposes answers, derives discriminating consequences, exposes them to logical or empirical criticism, and updates or reframes the question after selective error elimination. Its invariant is question-directed knowledge change under explicit standards: a conjecture may survive provisionally or remain unresolved, but neither survival nor accumulated observation becomes final verification. Removing the specifically Popperian vocabulary leaves Inquiry's full question–alternatives–evidence–evaluation–update structure; removing that structure leaves passive accumulation, insulated advocacy, or chronological theory replacement rather than Popperian Growth of Knowledge. Inquiry is therefore the strict genus, while problem primacy, falsifiability, corroboration, fallibilism, and successor problems supply the domain differentia.

Relationships to Other Abstractions¶

Current abstraction Popperian Growth of Knowledge Domain-specific

Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on

Popperian Growth of Knowledge is a kind of Inquiry Prime

The typed carrier is a problem situation together with competing conjectures, their consequences, auxiliary assumptions, tests, and the epistemic state of the inquiring community.

Hierarchy paths (2) — routes to 2 parentless roots

Popperian Growth of Knowledge → Inquiry → Learning → Adaptation

Show alternative path (1)

Neighborhood in Abstraction Space¶

Popperian Growth of Knowledge sits in a sparse region of the domain-specific corpus (75^th percentile for distinctiveness): few abstractions share its structure, so a faithful description tends to retrieve it precisely.

Family — Unclustered & Miscellaneous (2551 abstractions)

Nearest neighbors

Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-08

Not to Be Confused With¶

Inquiry. Inquiry is the broader disciplined pursuit of questions and evidence; Popperian Growth of Knowledge is a specialization whose inquiry proceeds from problems through conjectures, severe criticism, selective error elimination, provisional survival, and successor problems. Tell: Does the account require that complete problem–conjecture–criticism–successor-problem cycle, or only disciplined investigation?
Falsifiability. Falsifiability is the methodological property by which an empirical claim excludes possible observations and can therefore fail a relevant test; it is one risk-exposure condition within, not the whole of, the Popperian growth model. Tell: Is the analysis only asking what observation could count against a claim, or also tracing competing conjectures, failure diagnosis, error elimination, and the transformed problem that follows?
Inductivism. Inductivism treats repeated observations as a basis for forming or supporting generalizations, whereas the Popperian account permits conjectures not derived from observations and treats survival under criticism as provisional rather than verifying. Tell: Does epistemic support come from accumulating favorable instances, or from exposing conjectures to outcomes they forbid and learning selectively from failure?
Kuhnian scientific revolution. A Kuhnian scientific revolution is a reorganization of inquiry around a changed paradigm; it is a rival account of large-scale scientific change, whereas Popperian Growth of Knowledge is a recursive critical method that can operate without a paradigm replacement. Tell: Is the decisive transition a community-level change of paradigm, or a problem-level sequence of conjecture, criticism, error elimination, and successor problem?

References¶

[1] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[2] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[3] Karl Popper registry ↩

[4] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[5] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[6] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[7] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[8] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[9] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩

[10] Unverified encyclopedia synthesis; claim-specific authoritative support was not established in this verification pass. ↩