Science and Philosophy between "Open Society" and "Depersonalized Society": from Claude Bernard to Karl Popper.

In this article I focus on the ante litteram popperism of the great French physiologist Claude Bernard, developing an important observation that Francesco Coniglione reports in his 1978 book, "La scienza impossibile. Dal popperismo alla critica del razionalismo". Based on Bernard's theories – who emphasizes the dialectic between facts and theories according to what I define "weak falsificationism" – the relationship between science and philosophy within the "open society" is addressed, starting from a comparison between Henri Bergson, Karl Popper and Walter Lippmann. The article closes with a theoretical assessment of the function of dialogic rationality within the open society, understood as an antidote to what Popper calls an "abstract and depersonalised society".