Austins Atheism Blog Karl Popper and Evolution: Is Evolutionary Theory Based on a Tautology?
Karl Popper and Evolution: Is Evolutionary Theory Based on a Tautology? Tuesday June 20, 2006 Quite a few creationists try to rely upon comments by Karl Popper in their attacks on evolutionary theory. In a sense they have a point because Popper did criticize evolutionary theory; but they ignore the fact that Popper later retracted his criticism after he learned that he was mistaken. He demonstrated what being a scientist is all about. In the September/October issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Massimo Pigliucci writes: Perhaps the best-known philosophical criticism of evolution was put forth by Karl Popper, who once claimed that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program (Unended Quest, 1976). … Popper proposed his famous criterion of falsification to solve the demarcation problem: good science is done when hypotheses can be shown to be false (if they indeed are). Thats where the philosophers criticism of evolu
