Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced, it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper rejected any inductive logic that is ampliative, i.e., any logic that can provide more knowledge than deductive logic. This led Popper to his falsifiability criterion.
Are all swans white? The classical view of the philosophy of science is that it is the goal of science to “prove” such hypotheses or induce them from observational data. Such "proof" would require us to infer a general rule from a number of individual cases, which can have predictive use but is inadmissible by the rules of logic. However, if we find one single black swan, logic allows us to conclude that the statement that all swans are white is false. Falsificationism thus strives for questioning, for falsification, of hypotheses instead of proving them.
Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".
Popper in the 1980s
Popper bust in the Arkadenhof of the University of Vienna
English Heritage blue plaque at Burlington Rise, Oakleigh Park, London
Popper's gravesite in Lainzer Friedhof [de] in Vienna, Austria
![Popper's gravesite in Lainzer Friedhof [de] in Vienna, Austria](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Popper_gravesite.jpg/640px-Popper_gravesite.jpg)