ABSTRACT
A hypothesis is provisionally true if the empirical evidence justifies it, to a criterion; or if the evidence continually fails to falsify it. The psychology of science is dependent on the logic of science. The background and circumstances of discovery must be studied by reference to the logic of justification. Popper asserts that the standpoint from which a hypothesis arises is logically irrelevant to its truth. The testing of hypotheses is logically a public process, engaged in by the whole scientific community, a process that logically has nothing to do with any standpoint. If a particular scientist is committed to any school, paradigm, standpoint, etc., and logically free at any time to discard this hindrance to rational scientific activity. Karl Mannheim regards the utopian mentality, the standpoints with future-oriented utopias, as the core of social science, and has scant respect for the ideological mentality, the present- and past-oriented standpoints.
