| Preface | xi |
| Acknowledgements | xiv |
| Preface to the Second Edition | xv |
| Preface to the Third Edition | xvii |
| Introduction: On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance | 3 |
| Conjectures | |
| 1 | Science: Conjectures and Refutations | 43 |
| Appendix | Some Problems in the Philosophy of Science | 78 |
| 2 | The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science | 87 |
| 3 | Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge | 130 |
| 1 | The Science of Galileo and Its Most Recent Betrayal | 130 |
| 2 | The Issue at Stake | 134 |
| 3 | The First View: Ultimate Explanation by Essences | 139 |
| 4 | The Second View: Theories as Instruments | 144 |
| 5 | Criticism of the Instrumentalist View | 149 |
| 6 | The Third View: Conjectures, Truth, and Reality | 153 |
| 4 | Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition | 161 |
| 5 | Back to the Presocratics | 183 |
| Appendix | Historical Conjectures and Heraclitus on Change | 206 |
| 6 | A Note on Berkeley as Precursor of Mach and Einstein | 224 |
| 7 | Kant's Critique and Cosmology | 237 |
| 1 | Kant and the Enlightenment | 238 |
| 2 | Kant's Newtonian Cosmology | 240 |
| 3 | The Critique and the Cosmological Problem | 241 |
| 4 | Space and Time | 242 |
| 5 | Kant's Copernican Revolution | 244 |
| 6 | The Doctrine of Autonomy | 246 |
| 8 | On the Status of Science and of Metaphysics | 249 |
| 1 | Kant and the Logic of Experience | 249 |
| 2 | The Problem of the Irrefutability of Philosophical Theories | 261 |
| 9 | Why are the Calculi of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality? | 272 |
| 10 | Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge | 291 |
| 1 | The Growth of Knowledge: Theories and Problems | 291 |
| 2 | The Theory of Objective Truth: Correspondence to the Facts | 302 |
| 3 | Truth and Content: Verisimilitude versus Probability | 309 |
| 4 | Background Knowledge and Scientific Growth | 322 |
| 5 | Three Requirements for the Growth of Knowledge | 326 |
| Appendix | A Presumably False yet Formally Highly Probable Non-Empirical Statement | 336 |
| Refutations | |
| 11 | The Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics | 341 |
| 1 | Introduction | 342 |
| 2 | My Own View of the Problem | 344 |
| 3 | Carnap's First Theory of Meaninglessness | 349 |
| 4 | Carnap and the Language of Science | 356 |
| 5 | Testability and Meaning | 368 |
| 6 | Probability and Induction | 377 |
| 12 | Language and the Body-Mind Problem | 395 |
| 1 | Introduction | 395 |
| 2 | Four Major Functions of Language | 397 |
| 3 | A Group of Theses | 398 |
| 4 | The Machine Argument | 399 |
| 5 | The Causal Theory of Naming | 401 |
| 6 | Interaction | 402 |
| 7 | Conclusion | 402 |
| 13 | A Note on the Body-Mind Problem | 403 |
| 14 | Self-Reference and Meaning in Ordinary Language | 409 |
| 15 | What is Dialectic? | 419 |
| 1 | Dialectic Explained | 419 |
| 2 | Hegelian Dialectic | 435 |
| 3 | Dialectic After Hegel | 445 |
| 16 | Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences | 452 |
| 17 | Public Opinion and Liberal Principles | 467 |
| 1 | The Myth of Public Opinion | 467 |
| 2 | The Dangers of Public Opinion | 470 |
| 3 | Liberal Principles: A Group of Theses | 471 |
| 4 | The Liberal Theory of Free Discussion | 473 |
| 5 | The Forms of Public Opinion | 475 |
| 6 | Some Practical Problems: Censorship and Monopolies of Publicity | 475 |
| 7 | A Short List of Political Illustrations | 476 |
| 8 | Summary | 476 |
| 18 | Utopia and Violence | 477 |
| 19 | The History of Our Time: An Optimist's View | 489 |
| 20 | Humanism and Reason | 506 |
| Addenda: Some Technical Notes | 517 |
| 1 | Empirical Content | 517 |
| 2 | Probability and the Severity of Tests | 522 |
| 3 | Verisimilitude | 527 |
| 4 | Numerical Examples | 535 |
| 5 | Artificial vs. Formalized Languages | 537 |
| 6 | A Historical Note on Verisimilitude (1964) | 538 |
| 7 | Some Further Hints on Verisimilitude (1968) | 541 |
| 8 | Further Remarks on the Presocratics, especially on Parmenides (1968) | 545 |
| 9 | The Presocratics: Unity or Novelty? (1968) | 556 |
| 10 | An Argument, due to Mark Twain, against Naive Empiricism (1989) | 557 |
| Index of Mottoes | 558 |
| Index of Names | 559 |
| Index of Subjects | 567 |