In
Conjectures and Refutations, Popper shows that Bishop Berkeley is a clear and present exemplification for what has just been said. Berkeley implied the basics of quantum physics hundreds of years before there was a systematic ability to evaluate whether or not a chair exists when no one is looking at it. And Berkeley didn't hypothesize his theory from observation. That would be absurd (and refute Popper's fallacy of inductive logic). He, like Kant after him, hypothesized based soley on Christian myth as he read it in the Gospels.
It is a standard part of the traditional Christian faith that time and space and material objects are local characteristics of this human world of ours, but only of this world: they do not characterize reality as such . . . What can be the nature of time and space and material objects if they obtain only in the world of human beings? Could it be, given that they characterize only the world of experience and nothing else, that they are characteristics, or preconditions, of experience, and nothing else? In other words, Kant's [like Berkeley's] philosophy is a fully worked out analysis of what needs to be the case for what he believed already to be true [according to a pre-existing religious myth].
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher p. 249, 250 (emphasis mine).
Prior to the ability to verify Berkeley's amazing myth-inspired and third eye observed truth, agnostic science types could imply that existing proofs couldn't authenticate Berkeley's myth, but neither could they refute it since science can only confirm that something is factual, it can't refute it except to say that based on current understanding it has no support. And since all men possess some access, no matter how limited, to the third eye of enlightenment, it's not that strange that for hundreds of years agnostic scientists found Berkeley's insight disturbing enough that they sought counter-examples of the reality of the world which would, if not refute Berkeley's myth, nevertheless give powerful counter-examples of reality that would land Berkeley's strange insight in the dustbin of intellectual history.
What philosophy suggested in times past, the central feature of quantum mechanics tells us today with impressive force: In some strange sense this is a participatory universe. . . How does quantum mechanics today differ from what Bishop George Berkeley told us two centuries ago, "Esse est percipi", to be is to be perceived.
John Wheeler, At Home in the Universe.
All of this leads to the premise that Popper both acknowledged, and used, something like the third eye of enlightement required to produce the myths that modern science requires:
The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.
Popper Selections, p. 122.
Rather than leading his fellow agnostics and atheists to the trough of mythological truth, Popper overlooks his great philosophical gaff in order to remain consistent with his agnostic worldview rather than acknowledge the god-given third eye of enlightenment he clearly possesses. In the statement above, Popper clearly acknowledges the hidden reality that exist behind the appearances, which appearances alone are availble to the natural eye of observation. Space and time, as local characteristics of our natural human world, its appearances, hide what's behind the world as it appears to us by means of our natural apparantus for perception.
What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making.
Here's Popper's great gaff. And it's the posterchild for every agnostic or atheist who beleives himself to be consistent in his thinking. Having already refuted the fallacy of inductive logic such that no one, scientist or otherwise, fruitfully employs bold guesses without a pre-existent theory ("the belief that we can start with pure observations alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd"), Popper claims bold guess, daring conjecture, from the modern scientist, is "akin to myth making," though he knows, on every level it's not, since he's aware, and clear, that there's a fundamental difference between what myth presents ----direct revelation from the unknown----versus systematic evaluation of those mythological hypotheses.
Popper is completely clear that blind guess, bold guesses, based on the fallacy of induction, aren't the same as myth, since myth posits a reality revealed non-inductively, i.e., through revelation, while modern science, armed with only bold guesses, quasi-inductive inferences, is incapable of moving human insight forward at anything but a random snails pace. Popper is aware what his own great revelations reveal. That all human advance comes not from natural reason, natural observation, empircally inspired thought, but from something like a third eye of insight capable of seeing deeper into reality than is possible according to all agnostic or atheistic reasoning. Popper knows that the materialistic version of the world doesn't stand up to systematic examination (materialistic science isn't scientifically viable) even though he refuses to follow that truth to where it leads; a lonely cross on a hill in Palestine.
Thus I share with the materialists or physicalists not only the emphasis on material objects as the paradigms of reality, but also the evolutionary hypothesis. But our ways seem to part when evolution produces minds, and human language. And they part even more widely when human minds produce stories, explanatory myths, tools and works of art and of science. All this, so it seems, has evolved without any violation of the laws of physics. But with life, even with low forms of life, problem-solving enters the universe; and with the higher form, purposes and aims, consciously pursued. We can only wonder that matter can thus transcend itself, by producing mind, purpose, and a world of the products of the human mind.
Karl Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 11.
It is therefore plain, that nothing can be more evident to any one that is capable of the least reflexion, than the existence of God, or a spirit who is intimately present to our minds, producing in them all that variety or ideas or sensations, which continually affect us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short, `in whom we live, and move, and have our being’ [Acts 17:28]. That the discovery of this great truth which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.
Bishop Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Principle # 149.
John
