Peter Munz - Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge: Popper or Wittgenstein

Routledge Revivals

Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge

Peter Munz, a former student of both Popper and Wittgenstein, begins his comparison of the two great twentieth-century philosophers by explaining that since the demise of positivism there have emerged, broadly speaking, two philosophical options: Wittgenstein, with the absolute relativism of his theory that meaning is a function of language games and that social configurations are determinants of knowledge; and Poppers evolutionary epistemology conscious knowledge is a special case of the relationship which exists between all living beings and their environments.

Professor Munz examines and rejects the Wittgensteinian position. Instead, Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge , first published in 1985, elaborates the potentially fruitful link between Poppers critical rationalism and Neo-Darwinism. Read in the light of the latter, Poppers philosophy leads to the transformation of Kants Transcendental Idealism into Hypothetical Realism, whilst the emphasis on the biological orientation of Poppers thought helps to illumine some difficulties in Poppers falsificationism.

Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge

Popper or Wittgenstein?

Peter Munz

First published in 1985
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

This edition first published in 2014 by Routledge
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1985 Peter Munz

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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-77867-2 (hbk)
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PETER MUNZ

Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge

Popper or Wittgenstein?

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley

First published in 1985
by Routledge & Kegan Paul plc

14 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7PH, England

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Set in Baskerville
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and printed in Great Britain by
Billings and Sons Ltd,
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Peter Munz 1985

No part of this book may be reproduced in
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Munz, Peter, 1921

Our knowledge of the growth of knowledge Includes index.
1. Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Popper, Karl Raimund, Sir, 1902 . 3 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 18891951.
I. Title
BD161.M86 1985 121 851730

British Library CIP data also available

ISBN 0-7102-0460-4

Contents

This book is an attempt to explore some special consequences of one of the greatest changes which have come over our view of the world. Until not so very long ago we believed that nature was steady and unchanging, without a history; and that human culture had a history but that that history was not part of the steady existence of nature but more like an ephemeral dance performed on natures stage. In our new view of the world which has firmly established itself in the course of the twentieth century, nature and history have come together. Nature herself, we have come to see, has a history and human history is inserted into it. Thus, there must be some kind of link between the historicity of nature and the historicity of man. The history of nature influences the history of man; and the history of man, in the shape of mans knowledge of nature, in turn, reflects upon the history of nature. If there still are two cultures the extension of historicity has made their practitioners realise that they have a lot in common.

Unfortunately, the clarity of this vision tends to be clouded when we expect too much from our knowledge of history. It is one thing to be aware of the historicity of nature and of man. But it does not follow that we can be equally certain of the actual course of these histories. On the contrary, historical knowledge is subject to the same doubts and uncertainties as all knowledge and cannot be used to establish any final view about the growth of knowledge, let alone firm thoughts about a lack of growth or about the finality of the relativism of all knowledge.

In writing this book I was very much the beady-eyed historian who seeks to explain the limitations of historical knowledge and the conditions it is subject to. Bearing those limitations in mind, I am arguing in favour of a philosophy of knowledge which, while encompassing the historicity both of nature and of man, does not depend on historical knowledge alone. Again, writing as a historian I have little interest in conceptual analysis. The form of discourse I employ is not coercive, but explanatory in Robert Nozicks sense. But unlike Nozick I do not believe that any explanation can be self-explanatory. On the contrary: in explaining I have to have constant recourse to a theory in terms of which any explanation holds good. In this case, the theory in question is the theory of evolution and for the purposes of this book, that theory is itself not a subject to be explained. However, lest the reader think that in saying that all explanations are relative to a theory I am subscribing to Richard Rortys view that all truths and meanings are relative to a speech community or a tradition of rhetoric, I wish to state that I hold the opposite view. In saying that explanations are never absolute but always in terms of something else, I mean that whatever they are relative to must, in turn and on a different occasion, be open to criticism and be explained.

Not counting the Introduction, the book falls into three parts. In the first part () I return to the main theme by developing Karl Poppers evolutionary philosophy of knowledge and by sketching the major transformations of thought which become possible and desirable when one takes historicity seriously.

The shape of my argument is almost wholly dependent on the fact that I was a student of Karl Popper in Christchurch, New Zealand (19404) and of Wittgenstein in Cambridge (19468). At the time these early influences were the result of accidents: I had come to Christchurch as a refugee from the Second World War, and to Cambridge to study medieval history. There was no plan to learn from either Popper or Wittgenstein and it took me several decades to discover how this educational accident came to be turned into a fundamental and meaningful philosophical experience. I have since recorded this extraordinary accident in a paper on Transformation in Philosophy through the Teaching Methods of Wittgenstein and Popper ( Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences , New York, 1982, vol. 2, pp. 123565).