The Logic of Scientific Discovery

8vo (24 cm), 480 pp. Publisher's gray cloth with gold lettering on red spine label, top edge painted red (without dust jacket, binding slightly rubbed and dusted). A very good copy of the first American edition. One of the most influential works in the philosophy of science of the twentieth century, first published in German as Logik der Forschung in 1934 and here translated into English with substantial new appendices. Popper's central achievement is his solution to the problem of demarcation--how to distinguish genuine science from pseudoscience and metaphysics--through the criterion of falsifiability: a theory is scientific if and only if it is in principle capable of being refuted by experience. This leads him to reject induction as the logic of science, proposing instead that science advances through bold conjectures subjected to severe attempts at refutation, with surviving theories being "corroborated" rather than verified. The book works through the implications of this view with great rigour, treating theories and their logical structure, the empirical basis of science, degrees of testability and simplicity, and the thorny problem of probability--developing an objective frequency theory at length and engaging critically with von Mises. A final chapter applies his framework to quantum theory. The English edition adds twelve new appendices, including a letter from Einstein on the EPR experiment, substantially extending the original text. Indispensable for anyone interested in the philosophy of science, scientific method, or epistemology.…