Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

Popper's central claim: what makes a theory scientific is not that it can be confirmed but that it can be refuted, and the growth of knowledge happens through bold conjectures followed by serious attempts to disprove them. The book collects essays that build this argument across science, politics and philosophy, with characteristic clarity and combativeness. For product direction the falsificationist habit is directly useful — most product hypotheses are stated in a form that cannot fail, which is precisely why they produce no learning. Read alongside Kuhn for the sociological counterpoint and Merton for the institutional conditions that make refutation possible. Popper writes with unusual force; the essays on demarcation and on the sources of knowledge are the essential ones.