标题：How Popper's 'Three Worlds Theory' Resembles Moscovici's 'Social Representations Theory' But Why Moscovici's Social Psychology of Science Still Differs From Popper's Critical Approach
摘要：This paper is to my best of knowledge the first to discuss similarities and differencesbetween Karl Popper’s ‘three worlds theory’ and Serge Moscovici’s ‘theory of socialrepresentations’. Karl Popper maintained that to be subject to criticism, and hence tofalsification attempts and subsequent improvement, scientific theories must first beformulated, disseminated, perceived, and understood by others. As a result, such atheory becomes a partially autonomous object of world 3, the “world of products of thehuman mind” in contrast to world 1, the “world of things”, and world 2, the “world ofmental states” (Popper, 1978, p. 144). Popper’s three worlds theory resemblesMoscovici’s social representations theory insofar as social representations / world 3objects cannot be reduced to individual states of minds, are embedded in interactionsbetween people and objects, and are always rooted in previous representations /knowledge. Hence, Popper – who was very skeptical of the usefulness of a ‘psychology of science’– did in fact employ elements of a ‘social’ social psychology of science in his later works. Moscovici himself in turn may have failed to notice that to Popper science does not take place within a separate ‘reified universe’ in his ‘Social Psychology of Science’ (1993). Although to Popper science aims at increasing objectivity and reification, it is still a part of the social world and the ‘consensual universe’.
关键词：Social representations; critical rationalism; three worlds theory; philosophy of;science; psychology of science.
