Certainty and Knowledge

Elliot Temple
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No, they treat fallibility as a fact. The virtues are recognizing your fallibility and acting appropriately given your fallibility. Everyone is always fallible so merely being fallible isn’t a virtue.

Fallibility is not the foundation of reason, rationality is.

CR says that humans are fallible and figuring out how to deal with fallibility is one of the multiple core elements of reason and rationality.

One of the ways to deal with being fallible is to be open to error correction rather than approaching life and thought in such a way that if you’re wrong you’ll stay wrong (even if better knowledge is available today, and even if people try to tell you good corrections). Ayn Rand spoke of being active minded rather than passive minded (preferring that terminology over open vs. closed minded), which is similar.

So CR/CF views things like active mindedness, openness to debate and other good error correction approaches as virtues which are important to rationality and which help us deal with the problem of fallibility.

To treat all ideas as mere conjecture is to erode the distinction between knowledge and opinion, truth and error, certainty and doubt.

It seems like you’re arguing about terminology. Popper used different terminology than Rand which makes it harder to see what they agree about.

Rand and Peikoff advocated contextual certainty, which acknowledges that we may be mistaken and learn new things. Since knowledge and certainty are contextual and we may have a new context at any time, then we may at any moment change our mind about any of our ideas. So Popper would call Objectivism’s knowledge “provisional” and “tentative”, and the dictionary would agree.

If I am to cross the street, I must be certain that no cars are coming that might hit me.

You need contextual certainty but not infallible, non-Objectivist dictionary-certainty to cross the street.

You’re basically attacking Popper for beliefs he didn’t have and conclusions he didn’t hold.

If you look at my work, I think you’ll find I’m not wishy-washy, hesitant, lacking confidence, unwilling to make strong claims, unable to reach conclusions, or any of that stuff. I think you’ll also find that I don’t shy away from moral ideas, moral claims and moral conclusions. Popper advocated making bold claims and sticking your neck out, and he also thought moral knowledge was important and objective.

Invoking a potential alien or hallucination as a reason to be uncertain is irrational.

As a matter of logic, those things contradict infallibilism and dictionary certainty. They do not contradict Objectivism or CR, which were clever enough to accept fallibilism and advocate reaching conclusions, making decisions, having confidence, etc., in ways that work for fallible beings.

Many philosophies are stuck in an infallibilism vs. skepticism dichotomy. Objectivism and CR both aren’t; they both say (in different words and with different emphasis) that humans can obtain fallible knowledge and that that is good enough to be real, genuine knowledge that humans can act on in their lives. Objectivism calls that knowledge contextual or non-omniscient.

See also Rand and Fallibilism Quotes and Rand

I appreciate you taking the time to address the issues that I brought up. I realize now that there was no evasion on your part and am happy to assert that. I still, however, see problems with these arguments.

Great.

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I don’t think it’s right to conflate CR with Objectivism in their understanding of fallibility. They both acknowledge it but treat it very differently. I can’t say it better than Peikoff says here:

"Certainty is a contextual assessment, and in countless situations the context permits no other. Despite the claims of skeptics, doubt is not the human fate, with cognition being an unattainable ideal. Doubt, rationally exercised, is a temporary, transitional state, which is applicable only to (some) higher level questions—which itself expresses a cognitive judgement: that the evidence one has is still inconclusive. As such, doubt is made possible only by a vast context of knowledge in the doubter’s mind. The doubter must know both facts and logic; he must know the facts known so far—and also the means by which in principle his doubt is eventually to be removed, i.e. what else is required to reach full proof.

Doubt that is not arbitrary or pathological is a self-limiting condition, both in scope and duration. It is not the norm of the mind but, at most, a frequent stage on the road to the norm, which, when reached, ends it.

Is man capable of certainty? Since man has a faculty of knowledge and nonomniscience and is no obstacle to its use, there is only one rational answer: certainly."

This is very different to Popper’s conception when he says things like this:
“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.”

The dictionary would agree but here I disagree with the dictionary is the same way you and I disagree with the dictionary in defining “knowledge”. Similarly, Rand’s objective-subjective-intrinsic trichotomy is rejected by traditional philosophers by saying that Rand’s “objective” falls under the subjective, or extrinsic, camp. I believe that there is nothing provisional or tentative with “contextual certainty” anymore than there is anything subjective with rationally validating the objective value of things. Again, I think Peikoff argued my point best. I am interested where you think he goes wrong in his argument.

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I’m not disagreeing with Peikoff. I’m disagreeing with you. His “contextual certainty” in fact makes ideas tentative and provisional because contexts can change at any moment and often do change. So “contextually certain” ideas may be revised, changed, improved, etc.

Peikoff was not saying that further progress in an area is out of the question once contextual certainty is reached.

Contextual certainty is compatible with Popper here because we never run out of new contexts, so we never retire from the game.

ItOE:

The joke is on his listeners: it is this exponent of a primordial mystic’s craving for an effortless, rigid, automatic omniscience that modern men take for an advocate of a free-flowing, dynamic, progressive science.

It is the “open-end” character of concepts that permits the division of cognitive labor among men.

Rand here, against the mystics, is the advocate of open-ended concepts (we don’t retire from the game, we’re never omniscient and never done thinking). Rand is the advocate of science having a progressive, dynamic, free-flowing character. This is in agreement with Popper.

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ItOE:

Instead, men are taught by the guardians of scientific epistemology, the philosophers, that conceptual precision is impossible, that integration is undesirable, that concepts have no factual referents, that a concept denotes nothing but its defining characteristic, which represents nothing but an arbitrary social convention—and that a scientist should take public polls to discover the meaning of the concepts he uses.

Look at who and what Rand is attacking here and in various other passages. She’s pretty clear about her enemies. Popper doesn’t fit, and actually he also didn’t like those people and argued with them.

Popper didn’t say that conceptual precision is impossible.

Popper didn’t say that integration is undesirable.

Popper didn’t say that concepts have no factual referents.

Popper didn’t say that concepts or definitions are arbitrary social conventions. Popper wouldn’t have wanted to take a public poll on the matter.

“When can we claim that we know what a concept stands for?” they clamor—and offer, as an example of man’s predicament, the fact that one may believe all swans to be white, then discover the existence of a black swan and thus find one’s concept invalidated.

Popper also used swan colors to criticize the same people.

If finding a black swan ruins your knowledge, then you’re approaching knowledge wrong. And a lot of philosophers are approaching knowledge wrong. This is the claim of both Rand and Popper.

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“Doubt is a temporary, transitional state…” " …by which in principle his doubt is eventually to be removed, i.e. what else is required to reach full proof."

With CR, doubt is constant with full proof, or even just proof, never being attained. As you said, claims are either refuted or not yet refuted. Objectivists would disagree with this in favor of using reason to achieve objectively validated proof and the absence of doubt.

There is quite a bit of agreement, sure, but their disagreements are substantial and meaningful.

Some key disagreements would be that Popper is a rationalist. Rand criticized rationalists for abandoning reality by using only deduction. Popper is anti-induction. Rand claimed induction is the essential means of concept creation. Popper can be narrowed to fit into an objectivist framework but the opposite way is impossible. Popper needs a foundation, as everything does. But any foundation is denied by Popper because, since we are fallible, we can always be wrong. Rand disagrees with this. She provides a metaphysical foundation on which all knowledge rests. Rand begins with axioms, Popper rejects them. You must start somewhere foundational. Objectivists start with the validity of sense perception. Popper starts midstream somewhere unspecified. Popper and Rand do not treat fallibility the same way. Rand claims that omniscience is not needed to be certain about objective facts of reality. Popper claims that nonomniscience precludes certainty. This should be easy to accept. There is nothing provisional or tentative about the metaphysical axioms of Objectivism. Treating them as provisional, tentative or optional results in a category error. 1. A is A, 2. existence exists and 3. consciousness is conscious and always of something, are not theories to be tested, but the framework within which all testing occurs.

I like your desire to integrate Rand and Popper but Objectivism cannot be collapsed into CR. Rand holds the umbrella which prevents intellectual sogginess in regards to foundational uncertainty. Popper is welcome to seek refuge here but he provides nothing more than a footnote here and there. His lack of foundations and validation and induction make him only a partially interesting philosopher who lacks full integration.

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You’re again using terminology, like “doubt”, vaguely and/or for more than one meaning. I think that’s one of the main issues making this discussion difficult.

Some key disagreements would be that Popper is a rationalist.

You’ve multiple times accused Popper of stuff without evidence. Instead of listening to Popperians like me about what Popper’s positions are, or using quotes, you make false assertions about his positions.

Note that this again also depends on keeping definitions straight. I mean that Popper is not a “rationalist” by the Objectivist definition. He is a “rationalist” if it’s defined as being in favor of rationality, but so was Rand. Both are standard dictionary definitions.

Here’s Popper near the beginning of On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance, the introductory chapter of his book Conjectures and Refutations:

In this lecture I shall try to show of the two schools of empiricism and rationalism that their differences are much smaller than their similarities, and that both are mistaken.

Where did you get your information that Popper is a rationalist?

I didn’t say “optional” and “optional” is not a synonym for provisional or tentative. Both “provisional” and “tentative” have multiple definitions, and I’m concerned that this is more terminology confusion.

Rand claims that omniscience is not needed to be certain about objective facts of reality. Popper claims that nonomniscience precludes certainty.

Again you’re being imprecise with definitions. You’re using a word two different ways in succession. I’ll rewrite it more clearly:

Rand claims that omniscience is not needed to be contextually certain about objective facts of reality. Popper claims that nonomniscience precludes non-contextual certainty.

I don’t know how to resolve these issues, let alone cover new topics like foundations, given this sort of imprecision.

I’m guessing the underlying issue is basically that someone told you that Popper was a skeptic, and you believed them without reading Popper. (By “told” I include reading it somewhere.) That’s what I think issues like certainty and doubt are primarily about: whether we can actually achieve (real, good, usable) knowledge.

PS If you want an organized debate with me, see Debate Policy · Elliot Temple and Request a Debate. I don’t think it’s a good idea currently, but I do want people to be aware of my policy in case they think they should use it.

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Saw some discussion around this article so I wanted to go ahead and read it and share my own comments before going through the discussion and saying stuff.

Hmm. Let’s see. Why is that?

Well if you’re certain there is no point in debate. If an idea has no mistakes there would be no reason for you to debate.

You wouldn’t listen to suggestions or criticism because you’re idea is already perfect. If it could be improved than its kinda mistaken.

New scientific theories would contradict(?) the old ones. But if the old ones are certain we will ignore/reject the new ones.

If you already have a perfect idea why think just follow it. No need to put active thinking into your activities.

Forward thinkers and outliers wouldn’t necessarily be a part of the agreed 100% certain thing.

Depending on what the certain truth is I can see why anything that harms it can lead to execution.

Saying we can be/are mistaken is not the same as saying we can’t know anything.

Hmm. I know Rand did and I read the quotes of hers that shared that sentiment. I guess Peikoff by extension is fallibilist? For some reason I remember seeing comments about Peikoff being infallibilist and I haven’t read enough of his stuff to know his thoughts on it.

That kind of remains of some stuff I’ve heard shared as memes by science majors and stuff: my first year I learned x, my second year I learned that x is wrong and that y is correct, my third year I learned y is also wrong and that z is correct, etc. I don’t know the full science history and information but its kind of like how we had Newtons Mechanics for the longest time and now we have quantum mechanics(?).

Uhh. so. There’s information and data, then knowledge. Information is stuff like a tree branch. It can be measured from its number of leaves to atoms. Knowledge serves a purpose. Information can not.

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Information and data are synonyms.

Knowledge is a type of information. Some information is knowledge and some isn’t. Information can serve a purpose but often doesn’t.

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I am using the term “doubt” as synonymous with “uncertain” or “unsure.” I quoted Peikoff as saying that doubt (or uncertainty, or being unsure) is a transitional and temporary state. I do not see anything vague in this formulation.

I assert—just as Popper himself did—that Popper is a rationalist. While there are different kinds of rationalism, Popper fits within the Objectivist use of the term because he holds that knowledge does not begin with sense-data, but with conjecture in the formation of concepts. Like Kant, Popper maintains that there is a real reality, but that it cannot be known directly or purely. The following quotes support this interpretation:

“The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. … But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd.”
— Conjectures and Refutations (1963)

This suggests that observations are not direct but are interpreted through theoretical lenses, echoing the Kantian view that a priori structures precede sensory experience.

“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
— The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)

This highlights the limits of human knowledge and the boundlessness of what we do not know, mirroring Kant’s distinction between phenomena (what we can know) and noumena (what we cannot).

“I believe that theory—at least some rudimentary theory or expectation—always comes first; that it always precedes observation.”
— The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)

Again, this reflects the Kantian notion that experience is shaped by a priori conceptual structures.

This is the rationalism I am referring to. To use “rationalist” merely to mean someone who likes and uses rationality is to misuse the term.

I considered whether to include the word “optional” and decided it was appropriate, as it is logically implied by the rejection or non-recognition of metaphysical axioms. These axioms are not optional, tentative, or provisional. I anticipated the objection that you did not use the term “optional,” but, as I’ve explained, it is necessarily implied by describing metaphysical axioms as “tentative” or “provisional.”
To perceive, to conjecture, to test, etc., presupposes that:

  • Existence exists
  • Consciousness is conscious of something
  • A thing is itself (A is A)

These axioms are not provisional, tentative or optional—they are the preconditions of knowledge.

I have read Popper, and I found it a painstaking task, primarily due to what I consider a category error arising from his lack of foundations. I regard Popper as a skeptic in the same sense that I regard Kant and Hume as skeptics. This is not to say that they are identical in every respect, but they all share an inability to objectively validate knowledge, albeit for slightly different reasons.

The following quotes show the skeptical similarities between Popper and Hume:

“I approached the problem of induction through Hume. Hume showed that there is no rational justification for the principle of induction. He had no solution of the problem. But I felt that the problem was one of the most important in philosophy.”
— Unended Quest (1974)

“I realized that Hume had proved, and not merely asserted, that we cannot justify induction by experience.”
— Conjectures and Refutations (1963)

As Rand defines it, induction is “the process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts.” Hume’s skepticism and Popper’s fallibilism both stem from the same root error: the belief that the mind cannot directly grasp reality. This is essentially Kantian subjectivism in disguise, and it leads—inevitably—to skepticism.

I think that it is impossible to talk about the issues of certainty and knowledge without discussing foundations. I agree that I am not sure how to resolve these issues if foundations are considered a separate issue.

I have been aware of this policy but I do not fit the requirements as I do not have a website. I, too, do not think that a formal debate is a good idea currently, anyway. I think what we are doing here is good for now. I hope I have cleared up my position in this post now. If I was vague or anything else that is problematic I appreciate you pointing it out. I worked a while on this post in order to be clear and demonstrate my knowledge of the subject, and to hopefully contribute to a better understanding.

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Bold added for emphasis:

Quote? Did you miss the quote to the contrary?:

Popper rejected the rationalism-empiricism dichotomy and so did Rand:

[Philosophers came to be divided] into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the [mystics] by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind.

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Question: is Rand a huge supporter of induction? I haven’t closely followed this conversation, just skimmed through here and there. I intend to read it closer soon. However, I’ve heard claims that Rand didn’t give induction much thought. She gave her epistemology a lot of thought, sure, but not exactly much to the process of induction. Right? Are you saying Rands thoughts on things such as concept formation are directly tied to induction?

I guess I’m just looking for clarity on whether you think, and what evidence you have, that Rand was a massive supporter of induction. I’ve heard claims to the alternate and that Rand just kinda accepted induction. Note: I’m not refuting you, I could be wrong on this and really I’m looking for anyone to answer this. Who it is doesn’t really matter to much.

Oh yeah, also:

May be relevant : What Is Man? Philosophy and Human Nature – ARI Campus. I share through ARI campus because you can generate a transcript to look through (though copying and pasting from it seems impossible) it. At 1:15:22 Peikoff begins giving an example for something he just talked about (reason and emotions). I think his example is relevant here. He talks about how if you give six different people a medical slide they will six different reactions to it. A savage, as he puts it, will think the weird moving blobs as something ominous. An average person of today will just think of this as some cool harmless science stuff and have no strong feeling. Another person may notice some important things in the slide such as, in Peikoffs example, the slide showing that someone has some disease.

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You say doubt=uncertain without specifying if you mean contextually uncertain or non-contextually uncertain, so again it’s ambiguous. You also didn’t respond to the part where I pointed out your use of two different meanings of “certain” in succession.

OK so you mean that Popper is “rationalist” according to neither standard dictionary definition (which is not what Popper himself meant). But where are you getting your definition? You didn’t give a specific source, and your definition also contradicts my understanding of Rand’s position which was conveniently already posted to this topic:

Popper’s method uses a mix of observation and conceptual reasoning. It doesn’t fit either of these two camps.

PS It looks like you stopped responding to other people besides me. Is there a reason for that?

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FYI I’m generally not very strict (meeting the requirements provides a guarantee of a debate, but you can request a debate without meeting them all) and you do have 20+ YouTube videos and my policy says:

Exceptions may be available, especially for other types of content creators who don’t write online articles, but this policy is what I’m guaranteeing I’ll follow even if I have a low opinion of you. Anyone who wants to can meet these requirements.

Requiring 20 articles helps filter out unserious people who haven’t finished some intellectual projects. It also lets me review their past work to see what they’re like. And it prevents people from easily switching names and pretending to be a new person. Books, academic papers or other published writing are fine too. Videos or podcasts work for most purposes,

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Elliot asking actually_thinking:

It seems so. I’m writing this for my own benefit, I think I’m learning whether actually_thinking answers or not. I’m writing in order to explain, but perhaps mostly to explain to myself. I suspect theory and observation is not the best topic to discuss, perhaps fallibilism would be best. But this has been one of my top interests of CR, so it was very fun to write, felt like only 30 minutes passed while it actually took 2 hours and 30 minutes (from reading the posts I’m responding to)!

You seem to think that just because some theory comes before the observation then that necessarily means that the observation has to become corrupted. I don’t think Popper believes this because Popper doesn’t say we can’t use observation in knowledge creation or reasoning.

I couldn’t find quotes for this (I only looked at Elliot’s recommendations, C&R and Objective Knowledge), so someone please tell me if I’m wrong or missing something important, but this is my understanding of Popper on theory before observations:

Let’s start by explaining a contradicting alternative:
Some inductivists (maybe not @actually_thinking) think that truth becomes manifest through an reading of the open book of nature. Make an observation and true knowledge will be created in your mind. But obviously you cannot only make a single observation, in that case everyone would agree about almost everything. You need to make multiple observations of the same phenomena. This is also needed because the knowledge we’re expecting to read is a pattern. By making many repeated observations, in the correct way (which I think many inductivists disagree about what the correct way is), the pattern becomes manifest.

It goes something like:
Observe phenomena → repeat in some “correct way” → pattern becomes manifest → the pattern is certain knowledge because it came directly from nature

I looked at Deutsch’s diagram in FoR which talks about doing more observations to further justify your theory. I focused on the pattern becoming manifest.

The problem with this is that the pattern never becomes manifest. Because there are always logically infinitely many patterns that are compatible with the list of sense data that we have recorded at any point of time.

Simplified and generalized example: we observe [A, B, C, A, B, C], and so we say “Aha! the pattern is manifest! [A, B, C] will repeat indefinitely.” But then we observe “D” and say “Ok… quite close, it’s [A, B, C, A, B, C, D] and that will repeat indefinitely”. However we again find that unexpected patterns seem to keep appearing. We look back and find that there was nothing logically stopping D from being a part of the pattern, and E or F could also have followed instead. We can attach any random symbol and make a new pattern repeating whatever sequence has come up until now including the new symbol.

But we have plenty of examples of people making an observation, then being intrigued by it, then making more observations, then making a generalization that explains the observations. So how does that happen?

The answer is that you start by making a theory of what the pattern is. Then you observe again and ask “does my theory of a pattern match the observation?” If the observation contradicts the pattern you scrap it and think of a new pattern. When you find a pattern that fits you say:

This works, but I cannot guarantee future observations won’t contradict it. None of the other patterns I thought of were compatible with the observations so I will hold this one to describe the true pattern the best. We wait until we can think of a new pattern that fits the same observations as well as other observations that contradict our current pattern.

So it goes something like:
Be intrigued by something → create a theory of what the pattern is → make observations and see if they fit the pattern you theorized → create new theory for a pattern if the observations contradict → find a pattern that fits, the pattern never became manifest, you theorized first then found one that fits → look for observations that contradict your current pattern such that you can improve upon it.

Notice also that in the final step we do targeted searches for observations that could contradict our pattern. This means we have to theorize about how our pattern could be wrong. Often we have a new pattern which we suspect is better than the current pattern, and we think the new pattern will fit the observations we will see whereas the current pattern will not.

So again we do a whole lot of theorizing before we make observations. We have to do this because there are infinite possibilities for patterns to match the observations. And there are infinite things to focus on while making observations. And there are infinitely many tests we could make that could contradict our theories. In order to not drown in possibilities we make theories about which patterns could fit, we theorize about what aspects to focus on which we think can make up a pattern, we theorize about which tests can contradict our theories.

We can do an experiment to illustrate:
You go into a classroom and ask your students “observe!”.
The students sit still for some time, waiting for truth to become manifest.
No truth is revealed.
Then they finally ask “observe what?”
We conclude you have to look for something in order to find it. If you’re not counting on it happening by accident.

How is it that you can notice things that are totally unexpected and you certainly did not make a theory of to predict? Something like a dragon appearing outside of your window. The answer is you have background theories of things that are expected. A dragon outside of your window is not one of those. When you look outside your window and see a dragon it does not match anything you would expect to see. It contradicts your background theories so you have to make a new theory of whatever is in front of you. You quickly theorize about what the thing could be and identify it as a dragon.

Atlas Shrugged:

The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason; his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.

I don’t know whether Rand said anything about theorizing before observations. This quote however shows that she certainly did not believe that truth became manifest simply from observation. After you get your sense data you have to interpret it through theory in order to understand it.

I read a bit in On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance from C&R, maybe 10% at most.

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I just skimmed but one thing you may be missing is what “a priori” means. It isn’t what Popper said (theory first) nor is it implied. A priori is a pretty specific claim.

Popper even says in LScD, my bold:

Kant tried to force his way out of this difficulty by taking the principle of induction (which he formulated as the ‘principle of universal causation’) to be ‘a priori valid’. But I do not think that his ingenious attempt to provide an a priori justification for synthetic statements was successful.

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This appears to be a misquote. I searched the book and didn’t find this text.

I couldn’t find this text in this book.

I couldn’t find this text in this book.

I also couldn’t find this text in this book.

Where/how did you get the Popper quotes you posted? I’m guessing you got them from a secondary source, so please provide that. I have past experience with Objectivists like Harry Binswanger (who was unapologetic and uninterested in correcting his errors) misquoting Popper and I want to know where this stuff comes from.

Please note that misquotes are strictly prohibited in the forum rules. That includes any modifications to quotes without square brackets; please quote literally. E.g. if you start a quote mid-sentence please don’t put a capital letter and if you stop a quote mid-sentence don’t add a period. Please also don’t squish text from separate paragraphs into the same paragraph, even with an ellipsis.

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fwiw i also just looked through the book and just ctrl + f with Hume and I couldn’t find any quote that read even close to the one above. I haven’t read C&R but from my quick skimming I think the above quote is somewhat accurate to what Popper says in the book (though you would be a better judge than me), but yeah he didn’t say that or anything close to that. I looked through with other words and here’s the only sentence I found with Hume and asserted close by, from Conjectures and Refutations:

I asserted, in my L.Sc.D., that an inductive logic must involve
either (a) an infinite regress (discovered by Hume), or (b) the accept-
ance (with Kant) of some synthetic principle as valid a priori.

hmm i copied and pasted from a pdf, so the formatting looks weird. should i attempt to fix it in these situations?

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I went through these and found the quotes I could. Only 1 of 5 was attributed to the correct book.

Karl Popper in Conjectures and Refutations, bold mine:

The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere—of denying what nobody in his senses can doubt.

But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observations alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd; as may be illustrated by the story of the man who dedicated his life to natural science, wrote down everything he could observe, and bequeathed his priceless collection of observations to the Royal Society to be used as inductive evidence.

It’s a misquote. “observation” instead of “observations”, (edit: typo) and ends the sentence with a full stop and not a semi-colon.

This quote is incorrectly attributed to The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It’s actually from Conjectures and Refutations, bold mine:

For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance—the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

The quote starts mid-sentence but capitalises the letter. It misquotes “can be only” to “can only be”.

I looked in five books until I found this quote. It’s from Objective Knowledge, bold mine:

I believe that theory-at least some rudimentary theory or expectation-always comes first; that it always precedes observation; and that the fundamental role of observations and experimental tests is to show that some of our theories are false, and so to stimulate us to produce better ones.

It finishes the sentence on a full stop instead of a semi-colon.

This was the strangest one. I found what seemed to be the first sentence in Conjectures and Refutations, but I could find none of the other sentences or things kind of resembling those sentences (I searched keywords and fragments) in any of 5 books I looked in. I suspect that the last three sentences of that quote are just made up/paraphrased, though I don’t know. I haven’t looked everywhere. It seems like you can kind of see fossil/skeletons of that quote in this quote from C&R.

Bold added:

I approached the problem of induction through Hume. Hume, I felt, was perfectly right in pointing out that induction cannot be logically justified. He held that there can be no valid logical arguments allowing us to establish ‘that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experience’. Consequently ‘even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience’. For ‘shou’d it be said that we have experience’—experience teaching us that objects constantly conjoined with certain other objects continue to be so conjoined—then, Hume says, ‘I wou’d renew my question, why from this experience we form any conclusion beyond those past instances, of which we have had experience’. This ‘renew’d question’ indicates that an attempt to justify the practice of induction by an appeal to experience must lead to an infinite regress. As a result we can say that theories can never be inferred from observation statements, or rationally justified by them.

So yeah, it’s definitely misattributed to Unended Quest, and I think this is a misquote. (And potentially an egregious misquote.)

This definitely doesn’t appear in Conjectures and Refutations, and I didn’t find it or anything near it in any of LoSD, OK, RATAoS, UQ. I suspect it’s a paraphrase/made up.

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typo

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Do you have a good ebook version of the book to search in? I could only find the book on archive.org which has horrible search.