If the great philosopher of science Karl Popper wanted to leave a posthumous gift for those who came after to puzzle over and discuss, he couldn’t have chosen more astutely than his famous comment about “recanting” on natural selection. He could have said something dull like, “Well, my thought on the subject has complexified and achieved degrees of higher nuance…” But no. “Recant” is a heavy word. Rhymes with “Galileo.”
Yesterday, science historian and A. R. Wallace biographer Michael Flannery, addressed “Popper and Purposeful Nature: A Note on the So-Called ‘Recantation.’” He concluded, “I believe Popper and [John C.] Eccles came to firmly believe in a purposeful nature.”
A colleague notes another relevant reference. In Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates (Discovery Institute Press 2017), a wonderful book, the late journalist Tom Bethell reported having interviewed Popper a decade after his alleged recantation. Popper told him that his view of natural selection had not altered. Says Bethell,
I immediately brought up the issue of natural selection. He told me that his opinion had not changed. He also said the thought that natural selection had in act been falsified “by Darwin’s own theory.” Distortions introduced by sexual selection sometimes meant that offspring were not better adapted than their parents, he said.
p. 15
Bethell gives some more information from his interview on the same page. A worthwhile read, with many other treasures inside.