Popper's three worlds

"World 3" redirects here. For the grouping of countries known as the "third world", see Third world. For the Maoist theory, see Three Worlds Theory. For the system dynamics model used in The Limits to Growth, see World3.

Popper in 1990. Karl Popper wrote two papers about the three worlds in the late 1960s.

Popper's three worlds is a theory developed by Karl Popper in the late 1960s. It involves three interacting worlds. World 1 is the material realm, World 2 is the mental realm, and World 3 is the cultural realm. Popper's goal was to defend his notion of objective knowledge against the rising notion that knowledge is a belief that must be justified and true. This theory supported his old view that theories need not be verified by induction. In his approach, the methodological rules as well as the logical content of science belong to World 3. The theory is evolutionary. Popper was a strong advocate of a theory of emergence in which each world is not predetermined by previous ones.