Popper and the rationality principle

Abstract

Though Karl Popper's short paper on the rationality principle may not be the most frequently discussed of all of his writings on epistemological matters, it is very probably the most radically criticized. The fact that this champion of falsifiability suggested in this text not to reject a principle that he emphatically declares false has always been a source of embarrassment for his disciples and has often been characterised by his adversaries as a rather shameful theoretical development. In the present paper, I would like to show that, in spite of this fact, Popper's views on rationality, while at moments somewhat awkwardly formulated, are much more sensible than it is usually acknowledged and that they might even be considered as one of his most interesting contributions, and surely as his most underestimated one.