Popper, Karl R.

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

C E L E B R A T I O N S  
ON A L I T T L E - K N O W N  
CHAPTER O F  
MEDITERRANEAN HISTORY 
ON 24TH MAY 1989, SIR KARL POPPER RECEIVED THE CATALONIA IN- 
TERNATIONAL PRIZE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE GENERALITAT, AT 
AN OFFICIAL CEREMONY HELD IN THE SANT JORDI HALL OF THE PALA U 
DE LA GENEMLITAT DE CATALUNYA. HE WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO 
RECEIVE THIS ANNUAL AWARD ESTABLISHED BY THE CATALAN INSTI- 
TUTE FOR MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES TO HONOUR OUTSTANDING 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE, CULTURE OR MANKIND. 
PROFESSOR JESÚS MOSTERIN, OF THE CHAIR OF LOGIC, HISTORY AND 
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA, EX- 
PLAINED TO THOSE PRESENT THAT KARL POPPER "HAS HAD AN ENOR- 
MOUS INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY THINKING, ESPECIALLY IN 
SUCH FIELDS AS THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
SCIENCE, THE THEORY OF PROBABILITY, THE PHILOSOPHY OF CULTU- 
RE, THE CRITIQUE OF IDEOLOGICS, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND SO- 
CIAL THINKING IN GENERAL. HIS PHILOSOPHY OF CRITICAL RATION- 
ALISM AND HIS OUTSPOKEN LIBERALISM HAVE EARNED HIM FOL- 
LOWERS ALL OVER THE WORLD, AS FOR EXAMPLE, THE PHILOSOPHERS 
HANS ALBERT AND GERARD RADNITZKY IN GERMANY, ALAN MUSGRA- 
VE AND JOHN WATKINS IN ENGLAND, DAVID CAMPBELL AND WILLIAM 
BARTLEY IN THE UNITED STATES". 
PRESIDENT PUJOL POINTED OUT THAT "KARL POPPER'S INTEL- 
LECTUAL RESEARCH IS CHARACTERIZED BY HIS NEGATION OF DETER- 
MINISM, AND COULD BE CONSIDERED AN OPTION IN FAVOUR OF FREE- 
DOM, TOLERANCE AND EFFICIENCY. THE EXPLANATIONS THAT IDEO- 
LOGICAL SYSTEMS OFFER OF REALITY ARE NEVER COMPLETE OR 
FINAL. NEITHER IS THE COURSE OF HISTORY PREDETERMINED. ALL 
TRUTHS MUST BE OPEN. POLITICS IS ALWAYS A RISK TO FREEDOM AND 
HOPE. THE EXISTENCE OF MANY RACES CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY 
THE PARADOXICAL POSSIBILITY OF BREAKING OUT OF THE GREAT 
HISTORICAL DETERMINISMS THAT OVERLOOK THE EQUITATIVE 
STRENGTH OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND SHARED DECISIONS. WE CATA- 
LANS HAVE A PRESENT AND SHALL HAVE A FUTURE, THANKS TO OUR 
STUBBORN INSISTENCE ON DEFYING ADVERSE DETERMINISMS. FOR 
THIS REASON WE HAVE WANTED TO HONOUR KARL POPPER". 
ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES, CATALONIA OFFERS THE COMPLETE VER- 
SION OF PROFESOR POPPER'S SPEECH, WHICH HE MADE IN BARCELONA 
ON THE OCCASION OF HIS BEING AWARDED THE 1ST CATALONIA IN- 
TERNATIONAL PRIZE 1 9 8 9. 
r. President, Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen, 
It is a great honour, and a great 
experience, to have been chosen to be 
the first person to receive the Catalonia 
Intemational Prize: a newly founded - 
prize whose foundation is clearly of his- 
torical and symbolic significance for 
Catalonia. 1 am now standing before 
you with two tasks to fulfil. The first is 
to thank the Catalan Institute for Medi- 
terranean Studies and its President and 
Officers, and al1 others concemed, for 
having conferred on me so great an 
honour by judging me, and my work, 
worthy of being chosen. This task of 
giving thanks is easy to perform; for 
since 1 feel abundantly grateful, it is 
easy for me to say: Thank you very 
much indeed, thank you for your appre- 
ciation of my work, thank you for your 
good will, and thank you al1 for your 
generosity. And thank you also for al1 
the work and al1 the effort and al1 the 
time you have spent in preparing this 
solemn ceremony. And 1 also want to 
thank al1 of you who have come here 
with the intention of participating in 
this great occasion. And finally, let me 
express my thanks to the people of Ca- 
talonia and to the members of theii Ge- 
neralitat and to their President. 
Tuming now to my second task, this is 
far more difficult. It is my task to ad- 
dress you. But it is obviously impossible 
for me to make, by way of a short ad- 
C E L E B R A T I O N S  
dress, anything like an adequate retum 
to you, much as 1 should wish to do so. 
When preparing for this address, my 
inadequacy was a heavy weight; and 1 
found it very difficult to decide on a 
topic. Should 1 talk to you on an ab- 
stract subject matter like the theory of 
scientific knowledge? Or on demo- 
cracy? But is not democracy a subject of 
which you may perhaps know more 
than 1 do? If possible, 1 should say 
something interesting about the Medi- 
terranean, 1 thought, in deference to 
your Institute of Mediterranean Stu- 
dies; but 1 know nothing, or very little, 
about the Mediterranean. So in my 
mind's eye 1 saw myself standing here 
before you, an old man of 87 before his 
stern judges, and not a good speaker 
-somewhat like Socrates before his 501 
stem Athenian judges who condemned 
him to death. 
When 1 had come so far in my con- 
siderations, 1 suddenly knew what was 
to be the topic of my address: The Mira- 
cle ofAthens and ¿he Origin ofAthenian 
Democracy. This was an appropriate 
theme, for it was to become the Miracle 
of Greece, and Later, the Miracle of the 
Mediterranean, of the Mediterranean 
civilization. It is a topic which com- 
bines the themes of democracy with 
that of the Mediterranean civilization, 
and which gives me the possibility of 
addressing you on a topic to which 1 
myself have made a contribution -a 
contribution which 1 have not fully de- 
veloped before. 
Our civilization, which is, essentially, 
the Mediterranean civilization, derives 
from the Greeks. And it is the period 
from the 6th century before Christ to 
the 4th century in which this civi- 
lization was born; and it was born in 
Athens. 
The Athenian Miracle is staggering. 
Here we have, in a short period, begin- 
ning with Solon at about 600, a peaceful 
revolution. Solon saved the city by 
shaking off the burden of debt from the 
exploited Athenian citizens, and by for- 
bidding that any Athenian can be made 
a slave because of his debts. It was the 
first constitution ever designed to pre- 
serve the freedom of the citizenship, 
and it was never forgotten, although the 
history of Athens showed abundantly 
clearly that freedom is never secure but 
always threatened. 
Solon was not only a great statesman 
but the first Athenian poet of whom we 
have knowledge; and he explained his 
aims in his poetry. He spoke of "euno- 
mia" or "good govemment", and he 
explained this as balancing the con- 
flicting interests of the citizenship. It 
was, no doubt, the first time, at least the 
first time in the Mediterranean region, 
that a constitution had been shaped 
with an ethical and humanitarian aim. 
And what was here at work was the uni- 
versally valid ethical imperative which 
CELEBRATIONS 
' P A L A U  DE L A  G E N E R A L I T A T "  
Schopenhauer brought into the simple 
form: Neminem lede imo omnes, quan- 
tum potes, juva! That is: Do not hurt 
anybody, but help all, as weli as you can! 
Like the American revolution, which 
came 2,500 years later, Solon's revolu- 
tion had only the freedom of the citi- 
zens in mind: the slavery of the bought 
barbarian slaves was overlooked. 
After Solon, Athenian policies were far 
from stable. Severa1 families were con- 
testing for power, and after some unsuc- 
cessful attempts, Peisistratos, a relation 
of Solon's, established himself as a mo- 
narch or tyrant in Athens. The source of 
his great wealth were silver mines which 
were situated outside Attica, and he 
used his wealth in Athens largely for 
cultural purposes and for stabilizing the 
Solonian reforms. He instituted festi- 
vals, especially the theatrical festivals; 
to him is due the founding of the per- 
formance~ of tragedies in Athens. And 
as we know from Cicero, he organized 
the writing down of the works of Ho- 
mer, the Iliad and Odyssey, which pre- 
viously seem to have existed only as 
oral traditions. 
It is the main thesis of my address that 
this was a deed that had the most far- 
reaching consequences; that it was an 
event of foca1 significance in the history 
of our civilization. 
For many years, ever since 1 wrote my 
Open Society and its Enemies, the Athe- 
nian miracle has been a problem that 
fascinated me. It was a problem that 
followed me around and did not let me 
go. What was it that made Athens 
create our civilization? What made 
Athens invent art and literature, trag- 
edy, philosphy, science, and democracy, 
al1 in such a short period of time? 
1 had one answer to this problem, an 
answer that was undoubtedly true but, 1 
felt, quite insuff~cient. The answer was: 
culture clash. When two or more dif- 
ferent cultures get into contact, then 
this makes people realize that their 
ways and manners are not "natural", 
not the only possible ones, neither de- 
creed by the gods nor part of human 
nature. It thus opens up a world of new 
possibilities: it opens the windows and 
it lets in fresh air. This is a kind of 
sociological law, and it explains a lot. 
And it certainly played an important 
role in Greek history. 
Indeed, one of Homer's main themes in 
the Iliad and even more in the Odyssey 
is, precisely, culture clash. And culture 
clash is of course also a main topic of 
Herodotus's History. Its significance for 
Greek civilization is very great. 
Yet this explanation did not satisfy me. 
And for a long time 1 felt that 1 had to 
give up. A miracle like the Athenian 
miracle 1 felt cannot be explained. And 
least of ali can it be explained by the 
writing down of the works of Homer, 
although this certainly had great in- 
fluence. Books, and indeed great books, 
had been written down before, and at 
other places, and nothing comparable to 
the Athenian miracle had happened. 
But one day 1 read again Plato's Apo- 
logy of Socrates Before His Judges -the 
most beautiful philosophical work 1 
know. And re-reading a much discussed 
passage, 1 had a new idea. The passage 
[26 D-E] implies that there was a flou- 
rishing book market in Athens in the 
year 399 B.C., a market, at any rate, 
where regularly old books (like the one 
by Anaxagoras) were sold, and where 
they could be bought quite cheaply. Eu- 
polis, the great master of the old co- 
medy, speaks [in a fragment cited by 
Pollux, Onomasticon IX, 47; cp. VII, 
2 1 11 even quite explicitly of a bookmar- 
CELEBRATIONS 
ket 50 years earlier. Now when could 
such a market have arisen? It was clear: 
only after Peisistratos had the works of 
Homer written down. 
Slowly, the whole significance of this 
event dawned before me: the picture 
began to unfold itself. Before Homer 
had been written down, there were 
books, but no popular books, freely dis- 
tributed on a market: books were, if 
they existed, a great rarity, not commer- 
cially copied and distributed, but kept 
(like the book written by Heraclitus) in 
a holy place, under the sumeiliance of 
priests. But in Athens, we know that 
Homer had become popular: everybody 
had read Homer, most knew him by 
heart. Homer had become the first 
public entertainment ever! And this was 
the case mainly in Athens, as we can 
leam from Plato who in his Politeia 
complains about this dangerous enter- 
tainment and in his Nomoi ironizes 
Sparta where Homer's name is not 
quite unknown, and Creta where he has 
never been heard of. No doubt, the 
great success of Homer in Athens led to 
commercial book publishing: books, we 
know, were dictated to a set of literate 
slaves who wrote them down on papy- 
rus; the sheets were collected in scrolls 
or "books". 
How did al1 this start? The most likely 
hypothesis is that Peisistratos himself 
not only edited Homer but had him 
copied and distributed. By a strange 
coincidence 1 stumbled across a report 
saying that in a year in which Peisistra- 
tos was still ruling in Athens, the first 
and very considerable export of papyrus 
from Egypt to Athens began. 
Since Peisistratos had been interested 
in having public recitals of Homer, it is 
very plausible that he started distribut- 
ing the newly edited books; and their 
popularity led to the appearance of 
other publishers. 
Collections of poems written by other 
C E L E B R A T I O N S  
poets, and tragedies and comedies fol- 
lowed. None of these had been written 
with the intention of publishing; but 
books written with that intention fol- 
, lowed as soon as publishing had be- 
come an established practice, and the 
book market (biblibnia) in the Agora 
had become an institution. 1 conjecture 
that the first book written with the in- 
tention of publication was Anaxagoras's 
great work On Nature. Anaximandros's 
work was, it seems, never published, 
although it seems that the Lyceum had 
a copy, or perhaps a summary, and that 
Appollodoros later discovered a copy 
-perhaps the same one- in an Athenian 
library. So 1 suggest that the publication 
of the works of Homer was the first 
publication ever, at least in the Medi- 
terranean region. It not only made Ho- 
mer the bible (biblion) of Athens -it 
made him the first instrument of educa- 
tion, the first primer, the first spelling 
book, the first novel. And it made the 
Athenians literate. 
That this was highly significant for the 
establishment of the Athenian demo- 
cratic revolution -the expulsion of Pe- 
sistratos's son Hippias from Athens, and 
the establishment of a constitution- 
may be seen from one of the charac- 
teristic institutions of the democracy 
which was established about 50 years 
after the first publication. 1 mean the 
institution of ostracism. This institu- 
tion assumed, on the one hand, that an 
Athenian citizen was able to write, for it 
assumed that he could write the name 
of the citizen he thought dangerously 
popular or otherwise prominent on a 
potsherd. On the other hand, the insti- 
tution of ostracism shows that the Athe- 
nians, at any rate during the first cen- 
tury after expelling the tyrant Hippias, 
regarded as the central problem of their 
democracy the prevention of a tyranny. 
This idea comes out very clearly when 
we realize that the institution of ostra- 
CELEBRATIONS 
' P A L A U  D E  LA G E N E R A L I T A T "  
cism did not regard the banishment as a 
punishment. By being ostracized, a citi- 
zen's honour remained untouched, and 
he retained his property and indeed al1 
rights except his right to remain in his 
city. This right he lost, first for ten years 
and later for five, though he could be 
recalled. In a sense, ostracism was an 
honour, since it recognized that a citi- 
zen was outstanding; and some of the 
most outstanding leaders were ostra- 
cized. Thus the idea was: nobody is irre- 
placeable, and although we admire 
leadership, we must be able to do with- 
out any particular leader; otherwise he 
may make himself our master, and it is 
the main task of our democracy to 
avoid this. It should be noted that ostra- 
cism was not long in use. The first 
known case was in 488 B.C., and the 
last in 417. Al1 the cases were tragic for 
the great men who were banished. The 
period almost coincides with that of the 
greatest works of Athenian tragedy, 
with the period of Aeschylus, Sopho- 
cles, and Euripides, who banished him- 
se1 f. 
So it is my hypothesis that the first 
publication in Europe was the publica- 
tion of Homer, and this fortunate fact 
led to the Greek love of Homer and of 
the Homeric heroes, to popular literacy, 
and to the Athenian democracy. But 1 
think it did more. Homer was of course 
popular before; and almost al1 of the 
vase paintings had been for some time 
illustrations of his work. So had been 
many sculptures. Homer himself had 
been a detailed and realistic painter in 
words of many vivid and interesting 
scenes, and as Ernst Gombrich has 
pointed out, this challenged sculptors 
and painters to do as he did in their 
own different media. And the challenge 
became even greater as the detailed 
knowledge of the Homeric text became 
more widespread. So the influence of 
the power to read upon the arts cannot 
be denied. The influence of Homeric 
themes upon the Athenian tragedians is 
evident; and even when they used non- 
Homeric themes, they were still conti- 
nuing to choose themes with which 
their audience could be assumed to be 
familiar. So 1 can indeed claim that the 
cultural influence of the book market 
was incalculable. Al1 the components of 
the Athenian miracle were greatly in- 
fluenced by it. 
But to crown all these arguments, we 
have a kind of historical experiment. 
The great invention which, as it were, 
repeated the invention of the publica- 
tion of books accesible to the people on 
a large scale was the invention of book 
printing by Gutenberg, 2,000 years after 
Peisistratos's invention of book pub- 
lishing. It is interesting that, even 
though the invention was made in the 
North of Europe, the majority of those 
printers who had acquired their ski11 
came with it South to the Mediterra- 
nean -to Italy. And there they played a 
decisive role in that great new move- 
ment called the Renaissance, which in- 
cluded the new humanist scholarship 
and the new science which ultimately 
transformed our own civilization. 
This was a movement on a much larger 
scale than the movement which 1 
dubbed "The Athenian Miracle". It 
was, first of all, a movement based on 
very much larger editions of books. Al- 
dus printed in 1500 editions of one 
thousand copies. It was, obviously, the 
size of the printed editions which was 
the salient point of this new revolution. 
But otherwise there is an astonishing 
analogy, or similarity, between what 
had started in Athens in, say, 500 B.C. 
and had spread from there over the Me- 
diterranean, and what was happening in 
Florence or Venice in, say, 1500. And 
the new humanist scholars were aware 
of this: they wanted to renew the spirit 
of Athens, and they were proud of their 
ability to do so. 
As in Athens and later in Grecia Magna 
-and especially in Alexandria, but in- 
deed al1 over the Mediterranean- scien- 
tific and, in particular, cosmological 
speculation played an important role in 
these movements. Renaissance mathe- 
maticians, such as Commandino, suc- 
cessfully tried to recapture the lost re- 
sults of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollo- 
nius, Pappus and Ptolemy, but also of 
Aristarchus, which led to Copemican 
Revolution and so to Galileo, to Kepler, 
to Newton and to Einstein. If our civi- 
lization is correctly described as the 
first scientific civilization, then it al1 
comes from the Mediterranean and, 1 
suggest, from Athenian book publish- 
ing, and the Athenian book market. 
In al1 this 1 have badly neglected the 
contribution of the Arabs, who brought 
an Indian number system to the Medi- 
terranean. They gave much, but they 
received as much if not more than they 
when they reached the Mediterranean. 
Ladies and Gentlemen, 1 have briefly 
told a well-known story -well known 
but for one small yet, 1 think, significant 
contribution: the decisive role played 
by books from the very beginning. 
Our civilization is, indeed, a bookish 
one: its traditionality and its originality, 
its seriousness and sense of intellectual 
responsibility, its unprecedented power 
of imagination and its creativity, its un- 
derstanding of freedom and its watch- 
fulness for it -al1 this rests on our love 
of books. May short-term fashions, the 
media, and the computers never spoil 
or even loosen this close personal at- 
tachment ! 
But 1 do not wish to end with books, 
however important thay are for our ci- 
vilization. It is more important not to 
forget that a civilization consists of civi- 
lized individual men and women, of in- 
dividual~ who wish to live good lives 
and civilized lives. It is to this end that 
books and our civilization must make 
their contributions. 1 believe that they 
are doing so. 
1 thank you for having come, and 1 
thank you for your attention. ¤ 
Copyright 1989 by Karl R. Popper 


On a Little-Known Chapter of Mediterranean Histoy

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert