ABSTRACT
I want to consider the nature of one possible answer to an important question. For those of us engaged in social explanatory endeavour it may even be the most important research question we face. Certainly this appears to be the case from the perspective of the project to which I, and numerous others, have been contributing in recent years.1 As formulated, though, it is a question that Popper seems never quite to have addressed despite his interest in social explanation. However, the nature of the particular answer to it on which I shall focus is, I think, very Popperian indeed, both because it is in the broad spirit of Popper’s writings and also because Popper provides many, though not quite all, of its central ingredients.
