Of Popper's Error Concept

Karl.R.Popper is a science philosopher who devoted much attention to the studies of errors. His errorablism and the method of trial and error form his unique views on error. Popper's errorablism not only has it's history origin, but also has it's ontology origin. The errorablism emphasizes that errorability is scientific knowledge's inherent quality, the embodiment of human nature, and the prerequisite to solving the problem of demarcation. Therefore, it is anti-traditional. Based on this, Popper holds that only by continuous trial and errors elimination can one find truth, and this way to seek truth is the method of trial and error. The method was put forward by Popper according to the scientific and philosophic background at his time. Besides elimination method is it's innate character, tentatinity, criticism, verification and conditionality are it's characters. Popper also compares the method of trial and error with dialectics, and criticizes Marxist dialectics wrongly.Popper's errorablism has very important theoretical and practical significance. On the one hand, his errorablism is the direct source of Lakatos's errorablism; on the other hand, it has very important guiding values to scientific development: the first, it lays stress on the subjective initiative during the process of cognition; the second, it gives prominence to the importance of problems and finds the breakthrough point of scientific development; the last, it provides us with the attitude to face up to errors, that is " learning from errors".