Abstract
Harold Jeffreys (1891–1989) was a British scientist who mainly contributed to mathematics, statistics, Bayesian probability, geophysics and astronomy, but also published articles on other subjects. (For further biographical information cf. Cook, A. H. (1990). Sir Harold Jeffreys, 2 April 1891 – 18 March 1989. In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 36, pp. 301–333. url: https: //royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsbm.1990.0034..) This letter by Popper to Jeffreys was written in the context of a debate between Jeffreys and Popper on the nature of logic, which took place in the journal Mind between 1940 and 1943. This debate starts with Popper’s article “What is Dialectic?” (Popper, K. R. (1940). What Is Dialectic? In: Mind 49 (196), pp. 403–426.), in response to which Jeffreys published the note “Does a Contradiction Entail every Proposition?” (Jeffreys, H. (1942). Does a Contradiction Entail every Proposition? In: Mind 51 (201), pp. 90–91.). Popper announces his response to Jeffrey’s article in the letter reproduced here; he will publish it as “Are Contradictions Embracing?” (Popper, 1943; Chapter 8 of this volume.). The letter is also interesting for Popper’s remark on the probability interpretation of logical formulas, as well as for his remark on the relationship between formal logic and methodology.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Cook, A. H. (1990). Sir Harold Jeffreys, 2 April 1891 – 18 March 1989. In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 36, pp. 301–333. url: https: //royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1990.0034.
Jeffreys, H. (1942). Does a Contradiction Entail every Proposition? In: Mind 51 (201), pp. 90–91.
Lewis, C. I. (1918). A Survey of Symbolic Logic. University of California Press.
Lewis, C. I. and C. H. Langford (1932). Symbolic Logic. NewYork: Century Company.
Popper, K. R. (1940). What Is Dialectic? In: Mind 49 (196), pp. 403–426.
– (1943). Are Contradictions Embracing? In: Mind 52 (205), pp. 47–50. Reprinted as Chapter 8 of this volume.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Popper, K.R., Jeffreys, H. (2022). Popper’s Correspondence with Harold Jeffreys. In: Binder, D., Piecha, T., Schroeder-Heister, P. (eds) The Logical Writings of Karl Popper. Trends in Logic, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94926-6_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94926-6_27
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-94925-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-94926-6
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)