Conjectures and Refutations

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, published in 1963, collects essays Popper wrote across two decades on the nature of scientific knowledge, its relationship to other forms of understanding, and the methodology of critical inquiry. It is widely regarded as the most accessible of Popper's major works — less technical than The Logic of Scientific Discovery, more focused than The Open Society, and written with the directness of a thinker confident in his framework. The book's central thesis is the title's: knowledge grows through the alternation of bold conjectures and severe attempts at refutation. The thesis is illustrated across essays on physics, political philosophy, the history of philosophy, and the methodology of the social sciences. For many readers, this is the Popper they encounter first, and the book through which his influence propagated through the second half of the twentieth century.