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Full Idea
Karl Popper vehemently rejected the essentialism which underpins Plato and Aristotle, taking it to be a major obstacle to political, moral and scientific progress.
Gist of Idea
Popper felt that ancient essentialism was a bar to progress
Source
report of Karl Popper (Open Society and Its Enemies:Hegel and Marx [1945]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179
Book Ref
Mautner,Thomas: 'Dictionary of Philosophy' [Penguin 1997], p.179
A Reaction
This makes Popper sound like an existentialist, which seems unlikely. Modern essentialism would say the opposite about science - that hunting for external imposed laws is a red herring, and we should try to understand essences.
Related Ideas
Idea 12176 Science does not aim at ultimate explanations [Popper]
Idea 12179 Essentialist views of science prevent further questions from being raised [Popper]
| 12176 | Science does not aim at ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| 12175 | Galilean science aimed at true essences, as the ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| 12179 | Essentialist views of science prevent further questions from being raised [Popper] |
| 12177 | Human artefacts may have essences, in their purposes [Popper] |
| 7780 | Falsification is the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science [Popper, by Magee] |
| 16830 | We don't only reject hypotheses because we have falsified them [Lipton on Popper] |
| 6794 | If falsification requires logical inconsistency, then probabilistic statements can't be falsified [Bird on Popper] |
| 6795 | When Popper gets in difficulties, he quietly uses induction to help out [Bird on Popper] |
| 3856 | Good theories have empirical content, explain a lot, and are not falsified [Popper, by Newton-Smith] |
| 3860 | Science cannot be shown to be rational if induction is rejected [Newton-Smith on Popper] |
| 22188 | Give Nobel Prizes for really good refutations? [Gorham on Popper] |
| 7779 | There is no such thing as induction [Popper, by Magee] |
| 22358 | Scientific objectivity lies in inter-subjective testing [Popper] |
| 5451 | Popper felt that ancient essentialism was a bar to progress [Popper, by Mautner] |
| 18284 | Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper] |
| 11946 | Propensities are part of a situation, not part of the objects [Popper] |