"Put in a nut-shell, my thesis amounts to this. The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed. The reason is that the positivistic concept of 'meaning' or 'sense' is inappropriate for achieving this demarcation — simply because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science. In all its variations demarcation by meaninglessness has tended to be at the same time too narrow and too wide: as against all intentions and all claims, it has tended to exclude scientific theories as meaningless, while failing to exclude even that part of metaphysics which is known as 'rational theology'."
React to this quote
More by Karl Popper
See allResonant Thoughts
"BE IT KNOWN unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain…"
"I remember this, that King James had behind him the letter of the law just as completely as Mr. Asquith has now. He made sure of it. He got the judges on his side by methods not dissimilar from those …"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"The latest firing had put him at a crossroads: he could continue with the fantasy of being a writer, or he …"
— William McKeen"I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of r…"
— Ralph Waldo Emerson"In most theoretical embodiments of inflationary cosmology, the currently observed universe appears as a sma…"
— Frank Wilczek"Leibniz ... envisioned real possibility in terms rooted in axiological considerations of evaluative optimal…"
— Nicholas Rescher"...for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all b…"
— Henry Fielding"If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway. If there is anyo…"
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Related Thinkers
Related Topics
Deep Dives
- Baruch Spinoza on philosophy
- Thomas Carlyle on philosophy
- Friedrich Nietzsche on philosophy
- Immanuel Kant on philosophy
- Aristotle on philosophy
- Arthur Schopenhauer on philosophy
- Michel de Montaigne on philosophy
- Ludwig Wittgenstein on philosophy
- Baruch Spinoza on knowledge
- Baruch Spinoza on mind
- knowledge & Beauty
- knowledge & Change