Unended Quest
Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography ([1976] 2002) is a book by Karl R. Popper. It first appeared in The Philosophy of Karl Popper (1974) from the series The Library of Living Philosophers.
The book chronicles Popper's life from the beginning, including wider implications he drew from his experiences. In chapter 1, "Omniscience and Fallibility," for example, he describes his apprenticeship to a cabinetmaker while he was a university student. His master invited him to ask anything he liked, because with due modesty, the master claimed to know everything. From his omniscient master, Popper writes that he became a disciple of Socrates and learned more about the theory of knowledge, including how little he knew, than from his university teachers.[1]
Other thematic chapter subjects include music, education, philosophical problems Popper encountered, and his differences from other philosophers, whether earlier or contemporary. These are woven into an account of events in his life and research programmes that he developed.[2] For example, Chapter 24 discusses 2 of his best-known works, The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism, and the origins of 'critical rationalism' to describe the approach he espoused.
Notes
- ↑ Karl R. Popper ([1976] 2002). Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. pp. 1-2.
- ↑ Karl R. Popper ([1976] 2002). Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. Description and contents.
References
- Karl R. Popper ([1976] 2002). Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. London and New York: Routledge, and a repagination, including a shift to Roman numeral pagination before ch. 1. ISBN 0-415-28589-5
- _____, (1994). The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality.
- John Watkins (1997). "Karl Raimund Popper, 1902-1994," Proceedings of the British Academy, 94, pp. 645-85, which makes heavy use of Unended Quest besides many other sources.
- Bryan Magee (1973). Popper, Contents. Psychology Press. A popular account.
- John Vernon (2011). "Unended Quest By Karl Popper". A blog that suggests by examples how Popper's major ideas can readily be understood through the book.
- A.H. Martin et al (2012). "Karl Popper," The Philosophy and Rhetoric of Science, pp. 32-59. PediaPress.com.