ABSTRACT

This unique collection of essays, published together for the first time, not only elucidates the complexity of ancient Greek thought, but also reveals Karl Popper's engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in his reading of Parmenides. As Karl Popper himself states himself in his introduction, he was inspired to write about Presocratic philosophy for two reasons - firstly to illustrate the thesis that all history is the history of problem situations and secondly, to show the greatness of the early Greek philosophers, who gave Europe its philosophy, its science and its humanism.

chapter |5 pages

Introduction

Aristotle's invention of induction and the eclipse of Presocratic cosmology

chapter 1|26 pages

Back to the Presocratics

chapter 2|35 pages

The Unknown Xenophanes

An attempt to establish his greatness

chapter 6|41 pages

The World of Parmenides

Notes on Parmenides' poem and its origin in early Greek cosmology

chapter 7|77 pages

Beyond the Search for Invariants

chapter 9|20 pages

Plato and Geometry

chapter 10|9 pages

Concluding Remarks on Support and Countersupport

How induction becomes counterinduction, and the epagōgē returns to the elenchus