Books
Reading
Where to go next. Start with the first group if you are new to the subject; the rest follow the site's themes.
Start here
- The Beginning of InfinityDavid Deutsch, 2011
The book this site is built on. Chapters 1 to 4 give the theory of knowledge; the rest follows it into physics, mathematics, politics, art and the far future.
- PopperBryan Magee, 1973
A hundred clear pages on the whole of Popper's philosophy, by a broadcaster who knew him. Still the best way in.
- Conjectures and RefutationsKarl Popper, 1963
Popper's most readable collection. Start with the introduction, on the sources of knowledge, and chapter 1, on science as conjecture and refutation.
- The Science of Can and Can'tChiara Marletto, 2021
Constructor theory for the general reader: physics rebuilt from what is possible and impossible, with knowledge as one of its subjects.
- The Problems of PhilosophyBertrand Russell, 1912
A short classic introduction to appearance and reality, induction and the limits of knowledge. The source of the chicken on the Hume page.
Deutsch and Popper
- The Fabric of RealityDavid Deutsch, 1997
Deutsch's first book. Chapters 3 and 7 take on induction directly; chapter 13 argues with Kuhn.
- The Logic of Scientific DiscoveryKarl Popper, 1959
The founding text, first published in German in 1934. Technical in places, and worth the effort for chapters 1 to 5.
- Objective KnowledgeKarl Popper, 1972
Popper's later epistemology: the solution to the problem of induction restated, knowledge without a knower, and the bucket and the searchlight.
- The Open Society and Its EnemiesKarl Popper, 1945
Fallibilism applied to politics. Volume 1 is a sustained argument with Plato.
- Unended QuestKarl Popper, 1976
An intellectual autobiography, from Vienna in 1919 to the three worlds.
- Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and DefenceDavid Miller, 1994
The most rigorous modern defence of Popper's position, by his former assistant.
The classics
- Meno and Other DialoguesPlato
The Meno has the slave and the square. Read the Theaetetus next for the first full inquiry into what knowledge is.
- Outlines of ScepticismSextus Empiricus, translated by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes
The handbook of ancient scepticism. Book I is short and contains the whole method.
- The New OrganonFrancis Bacon, 1620
The idols of the mind and the first programme for experimental science, in numbered aphorisms.
- Meditations on First PhilosophyRené Descartes, 1641
Six short meditations. The first two are the most famous pages in modern philosophy.
- An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingJohn Locke, 1689
Long and repetitive; an abridged edition serves well. Book II.i has the white paper.
- An Enquiry Concerning Human UnderstandingDavid Hume, 1748
Sections IV and V state the problem of induction in a few pages of the best prose in philosophy.
- Prolegomena to Any Future MetaphysicsImmanuel Kant, 1783
Kant's own short guide to the Critique of Pure Reason, written because nobody understood the long one.
The twentieth-century debate
- The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsThomas Kuhn, 1962
Paradigms, normal science and revolutions. Short, and more careful than its reputation.
- Criticism and the Growth of Knowledgeedited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, 1970
Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos and Feyerabend argue it out in one volume.
- Proofs and RefutationsImre Lakatos, 1976
A classroom dialogue showing that mathematics grows by conjecture and counterexample too.
- Against MethodPaul Feyerabend, 1975
The case that science has no method, argued through Galileo with great energy.
- The Tacit DimensionMichael Polanyi, 1966
Three lectures on knowing more than we can tell.
- The Web of BeliefW. V. O. Quine and J. S. Ullian, 1970
Quine's holism written for students.
- What Is This Thing Called Science?A. F. Chalmers, 1976
The standard student introduction to inductivism, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and Bayesianism. Fair to all of them.
Probability, evolution and machines
- Probability Theory: The Logic of ScienceE. T. Jaynes, 2003
The fullest statement of the Bayesian view by a physicist who held it without reservation.
- Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian ApproachColin Howson and Peter Urbach, 1989
The standard philosophical defence of Bayesianism, with replies to Popper.
- Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledgeedited by Gerard Radnitzky and W. W. Bartley III, 1987
Reprints Campbell's two papers with essays by Popper and others.
- The Selfish GeneRichard Dawkins, 1976
The gene's-eye view of evolution, and the origin of the word "meme". Background to the idea that genes carry knowledge.
Shop links are plain searches, not affiliate links. Most of the classics are also free to read online, at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.