On Popper's Revision Of Kant's "Man-made Natural Legislation" Thought

Karl Popper is a great critical rationalism philosopher of the 20 th century, whose rationalism has a very close relationship with Kant’s philosophy. On one hand, he inherited Kant’s idea "establishing law for nature by man" and took it as a powerful "weapon" to fight against the prevalent logical positivism; on the other hand, he modified the theory according to the changes which happened in the field of science and thought of 20 th century. On this basis, Popper formed his own unique critical rationalism ideology.The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part mainly analyzes the reasons why Popper amends Kant’s idea "establishing law for nature by man" in the aspects of scientific background and its theoretical basis. First of all, Einstein’s theory of relativity was proposed and took the place of Newtonian mechanics, which caused a great impact on Popper and made him see the fallibility of knowledge. Secondly, Popper modified Kant’s idea "establishing law for nature by man" under the influence of Hume’s philosophy, Tarski’s correspondence theory of truth and Darwinian theory of evolution and by the investigation on instrumentalism and essentialism.The second part analyzes how Popper amends Kant’s idea "establishing law for nature by man". Firstly, he turns Kant’s "static" congenital cognitive forms into "dynamic" pre-existence theory and emphasizes the "postnatal" development of cognitive structure. Also, he modifies the absolutely "right" law established for nature by man into hypothesis that may be "wrong" and makes it change from the "permanent guarantee" into "temporary basis" of cognition. Secondly, Popper makes the experience change from the source into the inspection and refutation of cognition, which will break the authority of reason and limit its freewill creation. Lastly, Popper extends the scope of "nature" from the "phenomenal world" to "real world" and he claims that our theory should describe and explain the "reality" and pursue the aim of approaching to it.The third part evaluates Popper’s amendment to Kant’s thought mainly from its positive meaning and theoretical limitation. Overall, Popper’s ideas reflect more rationality and progress, and his thoughts are more adaptive and coincident to the actual demands of the development of contemporary science. But it is not perfect and there are still something unreasonable or controversial left. Meanwhile, these questions can enlighten us to think deeply in a certain sense.