This is insufferable misinterpretation of Popper, and with no excuse given
other than Stove's own emotional discomfort with carefully reasoned ideas.
The "foundation" metaphor of science is empty rhetoric; Popper /expanded/
the grand edifice of science by refusing to tie its future to the failures
of imagination of those past. To strain the metaphor, Mr. Stove wants a
solid foundation, but refuses to allow science to build on land outside it,
or to tear it down when it is found inadequate, or to change our very
methods of building when better ones are found.
Mr. Stove seems uncomfortable with the obvious fact that expanding
knowledge implies expanding ignorance. We all experience this directly
in our lives; the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there
is that we haven't learned; the more capable our imaginations become of
seeing outside our earlier unwarranted naive certainty. Mr. Stove's
discomfort with "conjectural knowledge" is merely cowardice: he doesn't
want to admit that every act taken by every human being is a gamble on
the efficacy of what we call knowledge. He seems dismayed by that
rather than enlivened and freed. That's /his/ failure, not Popper's.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>