Viewing Popper’s Theory of Falsification Through Political Theory and Subsequent Policy Anonymous College

Philosopher Karl Popper grew up graciously revering of the paramount thinkers and ideas of his time. He was attentive to the budding theories of Psychoanalysis and Marxism, by Freud and Marx, respectively. He attended lectures presented by Einstein. It was by meditating on the work of these geniuses that Popper was able to formulate his own theories (Corvi, 1997). The distinction between “science” and “psuedo-science” was an eventual result of said meditating (Popper, 1957). But can Popper’s new and shiny process of designating science be used in less conventional scientific settings? For example, Carl Sagen, a renowned scientist and science communicator said that every act of public policy is a scientific experiment “since there is no deductive theory of social organization”, (Sagan & Druyan 1997). To assess objectively whether the scientific model of falsification is relevant here, one can observe both the potential of political policy as well as the political theory which is its source of life. One will find that while political theory and the policy born from it can benefit from elements of Popper’s scientific model of falsification, they are not useful as perfect case studies of such.

To set the stage, one must examine...