To hell with David Hume, Immanuel Kant,
Spinoza, Berkeley, Locke. Let's put a stopper
on centuries of verbiage. Let us plant
a plug to slug their every whim and whopper,
forever banish the misguided crew
of misanthropes, and clear the way for Popper
(Karl of that ilk) the man who led us through
Hume's paradox and made it shrink away
like some uncovered bully. Nothing to
trouble us here, his genius seemed to say,
for look, induction never was the basis
of reason. Let it go. It's had its day,
like Wittgenstein. Vienna - turn your faces
towards the wall in shame for lending succour
to lusty Lud's linguistics. An oasis
of sense in nonsense, Popps the only fucker
with wit enough to twit the bally gang
stuck in pretentious crap and getting stucker.
He chucked a rope, both ends and said, go hang.
He'd better things to do. Historicism
was moribund and ready to go bang.
Helping it on its way produced a schism
or two but there were bigger trout to fry -
Sigmund a sitting duck, next stop Marxism,
(a minor Karl who spun a major lie).
So much was light relief. The veneration
which is his due, let nobody deny,
will come when people learn that refutation
alone lets knowledge grow, and cease to rant
in futile praise of proof, or confirmation.
