POPPER,KARL, 1902-1994 - RADICAL FALLIBILISM, POLITICAL-THEORY, AND DEMOCRACY

Popper's philosophy of science represents a radical departure from alm ost all other views about Knowledge. This helps account for serious mi sunderstandings of it among admirers no less than among adversaries. T he view that knowledge has and needs no foundations is counterintuitiv e and apparently relativistic. But Popper's fallibilism is in fact a f ar cry from antirealism. Similarly, Popper's social and political phil osophy although seemingly conservative in practice, can be quite radic al in theory. And while Popper was an ardent democrat, his reasons for supporting democracy were so unusual that they may escape the problem posed for democratic theory by the political ignorance of the demos.