Each volume inscribed by the author in the years of publication to the British physicist Michael Redhead (1929-2020), a colleague of Popper’s at the London School of Economics, on the front free endpapers: ‘To Michael Redhead from Karl Popper’, and dated respectively ‘14-3-83’, ‘13-8-82’, and ‘12-9-82’.
Presentation copies of Popper’s Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery with all three volumes individually inscribed are notably scarce due to the individual volumes having been published separately between 1982 and 1983, compounded by an unfortunate history of individual inscribed volumes being sold separately.
The recipient, Michael Redhead, was greatly influenced by Popper’s work, a testament to Popper’s critical influence both within the philosophy of science and - a rare distinction - on the methods of practising scientists. The Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery was evidently particularly influential, with Redhead publishing an article titled ‘Popper and Quantum Theory’ in 1995.
Popper’s three-part postscript to his first published book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1936), represents one of the major works on determinism and indeterminism. Although the culmination of Popper’s work in the philosophy of physics (reaching its peak in the second volume, The Open Universe) the Postscript took almost three decades to be published. Originally intended as appendices to a later edition of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, the three works grew into a fully-fledged work which actually exceeded in length The Logic of Scientific Discovery. In 1956–7 The Postscript was all set to be published and already existed in the form of galley proofs but because of his deteriorating eyesight Popper was never able to proof-read the galleys and the whole project remained on hold for 25 years.
