Critical thinking through the eyes of Richard Paul and Karl Popper

Abstract

This 1993 workshop marks the beginning of my new logical or metaphysical research program on the application of Karl Popper’s non-inductive theory of method to the management of the World’s commercial fisheries. The view, according to which methodology is an empirical science in its turn – a study of the actual behaviour of scientists, or of the actual procedure of ‘science’ – may be described as ‘naturalistic’. Whereas in my first program of research on marine copepods (1963 to 1993) I learnt more and more about less and less, in my second anti-naturalistic application of Popper’s non-inductive method to the management of a commercial fishery (1993 to present) I am learning less and less about more and more.