Antiessentialism as the Presupposition of Karl R. Popper’s Antidefinitionism

Abstract

The paper aims at reconstructing Karl R. Popper's critical standpoint with regard to essentialism, as antiessentialism is the main presupposition of his antidefinitionism. Popper criticised essentialism for claiming that it is justified to apply the concept of things' essential properties within the procedure of scientific explanation. He argued that the essentialists' ”faith in essence” is not scientific because of the lack of a criterion which would allow us to tell whether a certain definition grasps the essential properties of a given object. He doubted also that it is justified to apply the concept of intellectual intuition to the procedure of scientific explanation. Popper claimed that falsificationism gives a better concept of explanation, than that motivated by essentialism. He was convinced that falsificationism is logically more correct and more appropriately describes the real practice of scientists.