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Karl Popper's most important epistemological works were ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery''[[CiteRef::Popper (1959)]], which was originally published in German as ''Logic der Forschung'' in 1935, and ''Conjectures and Refutations'' [[CiteRef::Popper (1962)]]published in 1962 [[CiteRef::Thornton (2015)]]. His work had three objectives:

* To solve Hume's problem of induction as a limitation on human knowledge

Popper’s work directly opposed the positivist principle that inductive logic adequately separates empirical sciences from metaphysical and non-scientific knowledge. His critical rationalism stands as a unique variation from a lineage of competing interpretations of the mind’s limitations when attempting to prove the truth of general empirical claims, such as scientific theories. Popper’s approach focused on ascertaining criteria for a demarcation between science and non-science, and on debunking the opinion that science establishes truth beyond doubt. He defined a value for scientific progress beyond both the optimism of describing essences and realities hidden behind appearances, and the pessimism that relegates scientific discovery to instrumental, or heuristic utility.

|Historical Context=Pyrrho’s skepticism is commonly associated with philosophical thought on the nature of things in themselves as necessarily separated from our experience of them. This problem of sensations leads to accepting a limitation to empirical knowledge. Such limits influenced the classical philosophy of the Enlightenment as well as contemporary philosophy of science, including Popper’s critical rationalism.

Empiricist theories such as Locke’s tabula rasa (the mind as a blank slate), Berkely’s phenomenalism, and Hume’s criticism of inductive reasoning (i.e. making generalizations from singular instances), correspond in their shared belief that human knowledge originates in the senses. On the other hand, rationalist philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, hoped to escape empirical problems for epistemological ontology by containing the problem of sensations and inductive skepticism within a logically structured, a priori rationalization.