20th century · 1902–1994
Who influenced Karl Popper?
Influences
Science advances by falsification, not induction — and open societies by criticism.
Karl Popper was influenced by Immanuel Kant. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Franz Barta, No restrictions See the whole map
Who was Karl Popper?
Karl Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher, rejected the inductivist view of scientific method. For him a scientific theory can never be proven, only falsified, so it should be exposed to decisive tests; falsifiability is what marks a theory as empirical. He replaced the search for justified knowledge with critical rationalism and founded the philosophy department at the London School of Economics.
In politics he defended liberal democracy and the habit of social criticism that he thought an open society needs. He opposed totalitarianism, communism, nationalism, fascism and historicism, and saw modern liberal democracies as the best working version of an open society so far.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Karl Popper?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
The line of teachers behind Karl Popper
The longest documented line of influence ending at Karl Popper runs 20 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Karl Popper
Two steps away from Karl Popper
Indirect influences
Contemporaries of Karl Popper
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Karl Popper, with no direct line between them.
- Émile Benveniste 1902–1976
- Alexandre Kojève 1902–1968
- Theodor W. Adorno 1903–1969
- Jacques Lacan 1901–1981
- Erich Fromm 1900–1980
- Hans-Georg Gadamer 1900–2002
- Gilbert Ryle 1900–1976
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
Karl Popper by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 0
- Thinkers upstream
- 82
- Thinkers downstream
- 0
- Wikipedia languages
- 95 — #13 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Karl Popper
- Who influenced Karl Popper?
- Immanuel Kant.
- Who did Karl Popper influence?
- No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on Karl Popper.
- When did Karl Popper live?
- 1902–1994. The map files Karl Popper under the 20th century.
- How rare is the Karl Popper card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Karl Popper in 95 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 20th-century philosophers
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
- Max Weber 1864–1920
- Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
- Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Umberto Eco 1932–2016