You’ve got your chronology wrong.
Popper, who is probably the most influential 20th century philosopher of science, contributed to our understanding of quantum physics through his skepticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation and along with his great friend F.A. Hayek inspired Margaret Thatcher, was no ID theorist or creationist and made his famous criticisms of the “new synthesis” of Darwinism long before “Intelligent Design” became a buzzword.
In fact, Popper’s argument against materialism in cognitive science depended upon natural selection being the primary source of change in species-— that is, Popper was a stronger Darwinist in that sense than, say, Stephen Jay Gould, who along with many other paleontologists placed a bigger premium on mutation than the rest of the mainstream of evolutionary biology.
Popper’s criticism of Darwinism, then, was not of the idea of natural selection itself, but of the sloppy way that idea had tended to be formulated, revealing complacency where there should have been questioning. Thus Behe in his book “The Edge of Evolution” in examining what might be the limits of natural selection follows Popper, much as, in that sense, Stephen Jay Gould and Michael Polyani did.
I had to think and think about your FReeper name, and it simply just would not come to me.
Gosh was I annoyed with myself once I took a peek at the FR profile page.
DRRRR!