Science is an amazing tool, but there’s no real agreement on how it actually works. That question bothered a man named Karl Popper enough that he spent most of his life thinking about it. I knew of Popper from history of philosophy courses, but it turns out he had a lot of interesting thoughts on other topics as well.
Like many great thinkers of his era, Karl Popper was forced to grapple with the roots of evil, it’s hard not to when you watch Hitler’s rise to power in real time.
Finance has long been one of my main interests, and nearly everyone in that space knows the name George Soros. Why bring him up in a text about science, Popper, and Hitler? It turns out this trio has more in common than you might think.
Popper spent his career searching for the origins of oppressive regimes. George Soros, the financier, is one of his biggest admirers, not just a fan, but a major funder of ideas through his Open Society Foundations.
That name might sound familiar if you follow politics. Several governments, especially those framed as having authoritarian leanings, like Hungary, are loudly hostile toward Soros and his projects. Hate is a strong signal, it acknowledges a perceived threat. I wanted to understand what that threat really is.
The Open Society and Its Enemies is an attempt to identify the ideas that gave rise to history’s most brutal regimes. Popper locates the core of the problem in a mindset he calls “historicism”, the belief that societies are conscious entities moving toward a predetermined end-state. In his view, accepting this premise normalizes the erosion of individual freedom and ultimately leads to catastrophic, oppressive outcomes.
Some find it absurd to link Nazis and socialists, but is it possible they share a fundamental way of viewing history and a common “ends justify the means” mentality? According to Karl Popper, absolutely.