"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification"
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Popper’s line flatters science with one hand and needles it with the other. Calling science an “art” quietly demotes it from the fantasy of pure, mechanical objectivity; it’s something practiced, judged, improved, and occasionally botched. Then comes the provocation: “systematic over-simplification.” Not simplification, which sounds virtuous, but over-simplification, which sounds like a sin. Popper is daring the reader to admit what working scientists already know: every model is a cheat.
The intent sits inside Popper’s larger project of demystifying scientific certainty. Writing in the shadow of early-20th-century upheavals - Einstein upending Newton, psychoanalysis and Marxism claiming scientific status, totalitarian ideologies dressing themselves in the lab coat of inevitability - Popper argued that science progresses not by proving truths but by risking error. You simplify the world into a testable claim, then you let reality take a swing at it. The “systematic” part is the ethics: the discipline of making your reductions explicit, repeatable, and vulnerable to refutation.
Subtext: the real enemy isn’t ignorance; it’s unfalsifiable sophistication. A theory that explains everything explains nothing, because it can’t be wrong. Popper’s jab at “over-simplification” also reads as a warning to the public: don’t mistake the clean lines of a scientific account for the messy contours of life. Science works because it trims; it fails when we forget the trimming happened.
The intent sits inside Popper’s larger project of demystifying scientific certainty. Writing in the shadow of early-20th-century upheavals - Einstein upending Newton, psychoanalysis and Marxism claiming scientific status, totalitarian ideologies dressing themselves in the lab coat of inevitability - Popper argued that science progresses not by proving truths but by risking error. You simplify the world into a testable claim, then you let reality take a swing at it. The “systematic” part is the ethics: the discipline of making your reductions explicit, repeatable, and vulnerable to refutation.
Subtext: the real enemy isn’t ignorance; it’s unfalsifiable sophistication. A theory that explains everything explains nothing, because it can’t be wrong. Popper’s jab at “over-simplification” also reads as a warning to the public: don’t mistake the clean lines of a scientific account for the messy contours of life. Science works because it trims; it fails when we forget the trimming happened.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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