A Study On Popper 's Social Improvement

Karl Popper is one of the most famous philosophersof science and society in modern western world. His social improvement thought has a profound impact in 21 th century. The thesis uses the background information of Popper’s social improvement thought as the entry point. It firstly introduces the historical background and theoretical origin of Popper’s thought of social improvement and then it states the ideological foundation of the social improvement thought. Popper’s thought of social improvement was based on his ideology of critical rationalism. He used anti-inductivism and trial and error method to solve the problem of demarcation of science and falsification principle. The measures proposed by critical rationalism ideology apply to both natural science and social science. Popper changed critical rationalism ideology into historical criticism. Through analyzed the concepts and development processes of historicism, he criticized the historicism and Utopian project and then leaded to the research of the framework of social improvement thought. The thesis deeply explains the target of social improvement thought, which is the main characteristic of an open society. And it also analyzes five core parts in social improvement thought, they are rule of law, democracy, limited tolerance rule, minimum government principle and power balance, respectively. Then the thesis points out the way of social improvement that is the Popper’s theory of piecemeal socialengineering. At the same time, the writer of the thesis also develops theoretical introspection about Popper’s social improvement thought and realizes the thought’s spiritual essence and as non-Marxism social improvement thought it also has some limitations. Finally, the thesis concludes that Popper’s social improvement thought has the theoretical inspiration of self-criticism and spirit of negation as well as provides reference on practice area.