| Preface | xi |
| Acknowledgements | xiv |
| Preface to the Second Edition | xv |
| Preface to the Third Edition | xvii |
| Introduction: On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance | 3 |
| Conjectures | |
1 | Science: Conjectures and Refutations | 43 |
Appendix | Some Problems in the Philosophy of Science | 78 |
2 | The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science | 87 |
3 | Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge | 130 |
1 | The Science of Galileo and Its Most Recent Betrayal | 130 |
2 | The Issue at Stake | 134 |
3 | The First View: Ultimate Explanation by Essences | 139 |
4 | The Second View: Theories as Instruments | 144 |
5 | Criticism of the Instrumentalist View | 149 |
6 | The Third View: Conjectures, Truth, and Reality | 153 |
4 | Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition | 161 |
5 | Back to the Presocratics | 183 |
Appendix | Historical Conjectures and Heraclitus on Change | 206 |
6 | A Note on Berkeley as Precursor of Mach and Einstein | 224 |
7 | Kant's Critique and Cosmology | 237 |
1 | Kant and the Enlightenment | 238 |
2 | Kant's Newtonian Cosmology | 240 |
3 | The Critique and the Cosmological Problem | 241 |
4 | Space and Time | 242 |
5 | Kant's Copernican Revolution | 244 |
6 | The Doctrine of Autonomy | 246 |
8 | On the Status of Science and of Metaphysics | 249 |
1 | Kant and the Logic of Experience | 249 |
2 | The Problem of the Irrefutability of Philosophical Theories | 261 |
9 | Why are the Calculi of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality? | 272 |
10 | Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge | 291 |
1 | The Growth of Knowledge: Theories and Problems | 291 |
2 | The Theory of Objective Truth: Correspondence to the Facts | 302 |
3 | Truth and Content: Verisimilitude versus Probability | 309 |
4 | Background Knowledge and Scientific Growth | 322 |
5 | Three Requirements for the Growth of Knowledge | 326 |
Appendix | A Presumably False yet Formally Highly Probable Non-Empirical Statement | 336 |
| Refutations | |
11 | The Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics | 341 |
1 | Introduction | 342 |
2 | My Own View of the Problem | 344 |
3 | Carnap's First Theory of Meaninglessness | 349 |
4 | Carnap and the Language of Science | 356 |
5 | Testability and Meaning | 368 |
6 | Probability and Induction | 377 |
12 | Language and the Body-Mind Problem | 395 |
1 | Introduction | 395 |
2 | Four Major Functions of Language | 397 |
3 | A Group of Theses | 398 |
4 | The Machine Argument | 399 |
5 | The Causal Theory of Naming | 401 |
6 | Interaction | 402 |
7 | Conclusion | 402 |
13 | A Note on the Body-Mind Problem | 403 |
14 | Self-Reference and Meaning in Ordinary Language | 409 |
15 | What is Dialectic? | 419 |
1 | Dialectic Explained | 419 |
2 | Hegelian Dialectic | 435 |
3 | Dialectic After Hegel | 445 |
16 | Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences | 452 |
17 | Public Opinion and Liberal Principles | 467 |
1 | The Myth of Public Opinion | 467 |
2 | The Dangers of Public Opinion | 470 |
3 | Liberal Principles: A Group of Theses | 471 |
4 | The Liberal Theory of Free Discussion | 473 |
5 | The Forms of Public Opinion | 475 |
6 | Some Practical Problems: Censorship and Monopolies of Publicity | 475 |
7 | A Short List of Political Illustrations | 476 |
8 | Summary | 476 |
18 | Utopia and Violence | 477 |
19 | The History of Our Time: An Optimist's View | 489 |
20 | Humanism and Reason | 506 |
| Addenda: Some Technical Notes | 517 |
1 | Empirical Content | 517 |
2 | Probability and the Severity of Tests | 522 |
3 | Verisimilitude | 527 |
4 | Numerical Examples | 535 |
5 | Artificial vs. Formalized Languages | 537 |
6 | A Historical Note on Verisimilitude (1964) | 538 |
7 | Some Further Hints on Verisimilitude (1968) | 541 |
8 | Further Remarks on the Presocratics, especially on Parmenides (1968) | 545 |
9 | The Presocratics: Unity or Novelty? (1968) | 556 |
10 | An Argument, due to Mark Twain, against Naive Empiricism (1989) | 557 |
| Index of Mottoes | 558 |
| Index of Names | 559 |
| Index of Subjects | 567 |