Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations and Realism and the Aim of Science

Realism is part of three books as postscripts to Logic of Scientific Inquiry, which is an excellent book but which I read about ten years ago. So it's harder to follow, although it's very good. I certainly understand better the necessity to settle the issue of whether the world can be mapped by theory, and of course I was reminded of Popper's great contribution to knowledge, the criteria of falsifiability. Conjectures is also an excellent book, which has on p. 37 the quote: "...the criterion of the scientific statement of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.' This answers a question I had in my mind for many years, since a reviewer asked whether the theory of strategy I originated was falsifiable -- possibly there were flaws in the formulation regarding falsifiability, but it is now clear to me that it was testable. And I have, repeatedly, tested it. On p. 221 of m y edition (New York: Basic, 1962), he discusses the current ideal of science, which is an atomatized deductive system. This ideal has been dominant in European epistemology since Euclid through Newton and, of course Einstein. There has been a consistent tension between the intuitionist inductivist Continent and the North American atomized deductivist. I can live with deduction. I as a thinker cannot live with atomization. Strategy is impossible with atomization, and so are most complex social and/or intellectual phenomena.In Conjecture and Refutations (New York: Rowman Littlefield, 1983), Popper says that 'The inductivist's mistake is not confined to his failure to appreciate the difference between learning by trial and error and learning by rote, or to his consequent assumption that we can add to our knowledge by the formation of habits. He also believes that there is some raw material for knowledge in the form of perceptions or observations or sense-impressions..." Well, I do believe it. I believe the scientific method, like the legal system, passes on nine-tenths of what is know and true.