The environment in
which Popper and I formed our ideas was very much the same. It was very largely dominated by discussion with Marxists and with Freudians. Both these groups had one very irritating attribute: they insisted that their theories were, in principle, irrefutable. 1/n

Their system was so built up that there was no possibility .. I remember particularly one occasion when I suddenly began to see how ridiculous it all was when I was arguing with Freudians, and they explained, "Oh, well, this is due to the death instinct." And I said .. 2/n

"But this can't be due to the death instinct." "Oh, then this is due to the life instinct."
[laughter] 3/n

Well, if you have these two alternatives, of course there's no way of checking whether the theory is true or not. And
that led me, already, to the understanding of what became Popper's main systematic point: that the test of empirical science was that it could be refuted .. 4/n

and that any system which claimed that it was irrefutable was by definition not scientific. I was not a trained philosopher; I didn't elaborate this. It was sufficient for me to have recognized this .. 5/n

but when I found this thing explicitly argued and justified in Popper, I just accepted the Popperian philosophy for spelling out what I had always felt. 6/End

-- Friedrich Hayek, abridged

NOTE: Hayek would already have been introduced to the idea that empirically meaningful claims are contingent when Hayek read his cousin Wittgenstein's *Tractatus* in 1921. Popper's ideas are derived in part directly from Wittgenstein, and those like Carnap developing his ideas.

NOTE: Hayek would already have been introduced to the idea that empirically meaningful claims are contingent when Hayek read his cousin Wittgenstein's *Tractatus* in 1921. Popper's ideas are derived in part directly from Wittgenstein & those like Carnap developing his ideas.