We are all Popperians
Sir: I am having a problem with Paul John- son's thinking. In his recent intellectual engagement with Richard Dawkins your columnist simply asserted the existence of God. Now Mr Johnson champions the recently late Sir Karl Popper, especially his Logic of Scientific Discovery (24 Septem- ber). But the essence of the Popperian view is that an hypothesis (which I take the existence of God to be) is useful in promoting knowledge only in so far as it makes predictions which are capable in principle of being falsified by some obser- vation. What we call knowledge is a set of hypotheses which have not yet been shown to be false by evidence. Thus all knowledge is tentative.
Mr Johnson puts forward the God hypothesis to explain the Universe and our place in it. As a good Popperian perhaps he will now tell us of an observation which could be made which he would accept as refuting the God hypothesis? Nothing is `certain' in Popper's world, but in Johnson's world some things are 'certain', apparently.
Kenneth Hunter
76 Hervey Close, London N3
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