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Against Method
Modern philosophy of science has paid great attention to the understanding of scientific ‘practice’, in contrast to concentration on scientific ‘method’. Paul Feyerabend’s acclaimed work, which has contributed greatly to this new emphasis, shows the deficiencies of some widespread ideas about the nature of knowledge. He argues that the only feasible explanations of scientific successes are historical explanations, and that anarchism must now replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge.
The third edition of this classic text contains a new preface and additional reflections at various points in which the author takes account both of recent debates on science and on the impact of scientific products and practices on the human community. While disavowing populism or relativism, Feyerabend continues to insist that the voice of the inexpert must be heard. Thus many environmental perils were first identified by non-experts against prevailing assumptions in the scientific community. Feyerabend’s challenging reassessment of scientific claims and understandings are as pungent and timely as ever.
The third edition of this classic text contains a new preface and additional reflections at various points in which the author takes account both of recent debates on science and on the impact of scientific products and practices on the human community. While disavowing populism or relativism, Feyerabend continues to insist that the voice of the inexpert must be heard. Thus many environmental perils were first identified by non-experts against prevailing assumptions in the scientific community. Feyerabend’s challenging reassessment of scientific claims and understandings are as pungent and timely as ever.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
Paul Karl Feyerabend
55 books256 followersPaul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989).
His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge.
His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge.
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December 31, 2021
This is a challenging book to review. The obvious problems are bad enough: Feyerabend quotes extensively from a multitude of authors that I know poorly or not at all, including philosophers of science (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Carnap, Duhem), other philosophers (Protagoras, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Marx, Lenin), scientists, most of whom he claims to have read in the original (Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Newton, Einstein, Bohr) and classical literature (Homer, also in the original). Thank goodness that I had at least read Wittgenstein thoroughly, so I didn't feel like a complete ignoramus. But if it were only the extensive range of sources, I wouldn't feel so worried. The worst part is that Feyerabend is obviously teasing you a lot of the time: in case you were in any doubt, he says so in the introduction, and then reminds you again every now and then in case you missed it. He wants you to read him critically, not just slavishly agree with him when he shows you the stone tablets he brought down from Mount Sinai. They could as easily have been picked up from the props department at Universal Studios, you know.
Ow! O wise Zen Master, please don't hit me again. I am doing my best to get with your book. And stop calling me Grasshopper!
If you're into deconstruction, you might, at peril of your life, say that Feyerabend is deconstructing scientific method. Be warned that he's waiting for you. Here's his putdown of Derrida (he's a master of the elegant putdown):
Feyerabend has some interesting arguments to back up his claims. First of all, new scientific theories frequently don't have the logical structure they're supposed to. The official picture is that you have an old theory, and some observations which won't fit into it. The new theory comes along and explains the anomalous observations. It also predicts some new phenomena that no one has yet has had a chance to examine. People go and look for them, and, lo and behold, they're there. The old theory is thrown out, and the new one is installed in its place.
Feyerabend says that this is a fairy story, and that new theories are often weaker than the old ones they are trying to replace. They are typically riddled with holes that you could drive a truck though, which their proponents airily ignore, explaining that these little technical problems will be fixed later. Sometimes, there isn't even any new experimental evidence to support the theory. However, the clever people who made it up have warm, fuzzy feelings for it, and are good at arguing their case. The theory gains ground, not because of its logical merits, but because its champions are running an effective propaganda campaign.
Feyerabend's central example here is Galileo and the Copernican Revolution. Like most people, I had this vague image of Galileo as a noble martyr with Truth on his side, cowed into silence by the evil and reactionary forces of the Inquisition. Feyerabend paints a more nuanced picture. In fact, the evidence supporting Galileo's ideas turns out to have been surprisingly patchy. Much it consisted of thought-experiments and other hand-waving; what you were able to see through his primitive telescopes was hard to interpret, and could have been used to support many possible theories. Feyerabend argues that, if Science really did play by its official rules, the Vatican would have been correct to suppress this dangerous heresy. Galileo fudged his data and used emotional arguments, but, all the same, he turned out in the end to be right. Feyerabend says this is normal for a major new theory. It is no accident that Smolin quotes him, apropos string theory, in The Trouble with Physics.
One parallel that occurred to me from my own experience should be familiar to anyone who works in software engineering. Sometimes, you feel you need to replace a major piece of software that's been around for a while and has had a lot of effort invested in it. It still does the job, more or less, but you're not happy with it. An enterprising person puts together a prototype of a possible successor. Unless a miracle has occurred, the prototype will only be able to do a tiny fraction of the things that the established system can do, if indeed it can do anything. (There's this well-known software engineer's joke: "Apart from the fact that it doesn't work, what do you think?") None the less, people do sometimes look at a shaky software prototype, and decide that they're going to try to build it up to the point where it can replace the established system. Why? Well, I think Feyerabend has a point. It's a combination of an attractive dream (perhaps some design principle that impresses people with its cleanness and elegance), and persuasive marketing on the part of the people championing it. Perhaps major scientific theories get started in the same way. It's not as logical a story as you'd like it to be, but it could well be true.
Another large part of the book is about theories and data. This time, the official picture is that they are quite different kinds of animal. You have the uncontested data. You make up theories, and see how well they fit that data. The theories change, but the data stays the same. Again, Feyerabend says that this is a fairy story. He argues that, in general, you can't cleanly separate data from theories. A lot of the data only makes sense in the context of theories, which may be extremely elaborate. Once you bring in a new theory, you see the data in a different way, and it may be difficult even to reconstruct how you originally thought of it. Feyerabend discusses an argument which was widely held to refute Galileo's claim that the Earth moved. You drop a stone from a high tower; if the Earth were moving quickly though space, the stone would land hundreds of metres from the base of the tower, which it plainly doesn't. The fallacy in the argument is that the stone was already moving in the same direction as the tower when it was dropped, so it will continue to move along with it. This is obvious once you have a theoretical framework which includes the concepts of inertia and relative motion. But people before Galileo didn't have these concepts, and it requires an effort of will even to try and imagine a world-view that lacks them. We can't truly reconstruct the original data.
Another interesting segment contrasts the archaic Greek world-view, which lies behind Homer's works, with the classical world-view of Plato and Aristotle. Feyerabend, in arguments which I found startlingly reminiscent of Julian Jaynes in The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, claims that the archaic Greek view of consciousness was fundamentally different from the classical one. In particular, the distinction between "being" and "appearing", which we now take for granted, was weaker, and may not have existed at all. Like a lot of the book, it's speculative, but thought-provoking. Again, I looked for parallels in my own experience. I've wasted a dismaying part of my life playing various games, and have reached a reasonably high level at several of them, in particular Chess and Go. As you get better at a game of this kind, there are several points where you reconceptualize your mental picture. You realize that you were looking at it in completely the wrong way, and that there's a much better one available. For example, there's a point in your Go development where you suddenly see that you shouldn't think of stones so much as enclosing territory, but rather as exerting influence. After you've made a shift of this kind, it's very hard to recapture your original way of seeing the game. Perhaps it feels a bit like that to experience a major paradigm shift in science.
In general, Feyerabend's arguments are directed towards undermining the idea that science, and reason in general, have a privileged position in the scheme of things. He claims that science, where it succeeds, often does so precisely because it isn't rational, and only claims to have been rational when it turns out later to have been right. Another case of history being written by the victors, in fact, and Feyerabend frequently says how dangerous it is to divorce the philosophy of science from its history. To him, they are both part of the same thing. He also reminds you how often the language of rationality is used to justify arguments which really derive from use of coercive force: might makes right. As he points out, science is far from exempt. Scientists are usually at the mercy of whoever it is that controls their funding. It takes courage to pursue unfashionable research directions, even though the danger of actually being burned at the stake is less acute than it used to be. This stuff resonated with my own experience.
I'm in danger of giving the impression that I loved everything about the book, so let me correct that now. There were plenty of things I didn't like at all. I hated his arguments that it's sometimes good for science to be controlled by the State, which were largely based on Mao's revival of traditional Chinese medicine. I was appalled at his opportunism in appearing as a witness when Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) reopened the Galileo case: Feyerabend's claims that the Church had arguably been right came in very handy. Sometimes he came across as boastful or whiny or slightly mad - assuming, of course, that he isn't feigning madness, Hamlet-style, to show up the weaknesses in the King's position. But even if he can be infuriating and obscure, he writes well, and he's funny. I love the way he juxtaposes incongruous elements to jolt you out of your established thought-patterns. I think my favourites were "science and prostitution" and "quantum mechanics and Nubian sand divining" - no, I'd never heard of it either.
I could go on longer - it's a rambling book that prompts a rambling review - but I'd better wrap up. Here are two thoughts that I keep returning to. First, given that the official story is a rather threadbare myth, what do scientists really do? Why hasn't more been written on the sociology of science? I thought this was an excellent question. And second, it's inspirational to see someone who's perfectly capable of working within the system, but who chooses not to and still succeeds brilliantly. Last night, I saw The Mask of Zorro on TV: it's one of my favourite films. I suddenly saw the author of Against Method as a sort of intellectual equivalent of Zorro, sword in hand, cape fluttering in the wind, a smile on his masked face, brazenly romancing the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones. One of the book's many unanswered questions: what exactly was the nature of his relationship with Elizabeth Anscombe?
Viva Feyerabend! You were a worthy adversary to the positivists, and they won't forget you in a hurry. Now where is Young Zorro?
Ow! O wise Zen Master, please don't hit me again. I am doing my best to get with your book. And stop calling me Grasshopper!
If you're into deconstruction, you might, at peril of your life, say that Feyerabend is deconstructing scientific method. Be warned that he's waiting for you. Here's his putdown of Derrida (he's a master of the elegant putdown):
It is one of the merits of deconstruction to have undermined philosophical commonplaces and thus to have made some people think. Unfortunately it affected only a small circle of insiders and it affected them in ways that are not always clear, not even to them. That's why I prefer Nestroy, who was a great, funny and popular deconstructeur, while Derrida, for all his good intentions, can't even tell a story.So I'm going to forget about deconstruction and other kinds of fashionable nonsense, and try to explain in more commonsense terms what I got out of Against Method. One of the central themes is that philosophers of science are grossly misrepresenting what it is that scientists actually do, or at least misrepresenting the worthwhile parts of it. All this stuff about observations and theories and falsification is, quite possibly, beside the point.
Feyerabend has some interesting arguments to back up his claims. First of all, new scientific theories frequently don't have the logical structure they're supposed to. The official picture is that you have an old theory, and some observations which won't fit into it. The new theory comes along and explains the anomalous observations. It also predicts some new phenomena that no one has yet has had a chance to examine. People go and look for them, and, lo and behold, they're there. The old theory is thrown out, and the new one is installed in its place.
Feyerabend says that this is a fairy story, and that new theories are often weaker than the old ones they are trying to replace. They are typically riddled with holes that you could drive a truck though, which their proponents airily ignore, explaining that these little technical problems will be fixed later. Sometimes, there isn't even any new experimental evidence to support the theory. However, the clever people who made it up have warm, fuzzy feelings for it, and are good at arguing their case. The theory gains ground, not because of its logical merits, but because its champions are running an effective propaganda campaign.
Feyerabend's central example here is Galileo and the Copernican Revolution. Like most people, I had this vague image of Galileo as a noble martyr with Truth on his side, cowed into silence by the evil and reactionary forces of the Inquisition. Feyerabend paints a more nuanced picture. In fact, the evidence supporting Galileo's ideas turns out to have been surprisingly patchy. Much it consisted of thought-experiments and other hand-waving; what you were able to see through his primitive telescopes was hard to interpret, and could have been used to support many possible theories. Feyerabend argues that, if Science really did play by its official rules, the Vatican would have been correct to suppress this dangerous heresy. Galileo fudged his data and used emotional arguments, but, all the same, he turned out in the end to be right. Feyerabend says this is normal for a major new theory. It is no accident that Smolin quotes him, apropos string theory, in The Trouble with Physics.
One parallel that occurred to me from my own experience should be familiar to anyone who works in software engineering. Sometimes, you feel you need to replace a major piece of software that's been around for a while and has had a lot of effort invested in it. It still does the job, more or less, but you're not happy with it. An enterprising person puts together a prototype of a possible successor. Unless a miracle has occurred, the prototype will only be able to do a tiny fraction of the things that the established system can do, if indeed it can do anything. (There's this well-known software engineer's joke: "Apart from the fact that it doesn't work, what do you think?") None the less, people do sometimes look at a shaky software prototype, and decide that they're going to try to build it up to the point where it can replace the established system. Why? Well, I think Feyerabend has a point. It's a combination of an attractive dream (perhaps some design principle that impresses people with its cleanness and elegance), and persuasive marketing on the part of the people championing it. Perhaps major scientific theories get started in the same way. It's not as logical a story as you'd like it to be, but it could well be true.
Another large part of the book is about theories and data. This time, the official picture is that they are quite different kinds of animal. You have the uncontested data. You make up theories, and see how well they fit that data. The theories change, but the data stays the same. Again, Feyerabend says that this is a fairy story. He argues that, in general, you can't cleanly separate data from theories. A lot of the data only makes sense in the context of theories, which may be extremely elaborate. Once you bring in a new theory, you see the data in a different way, and it may be difficult even to reconstruct how you originally thought of it. Feyerabend discusses an argument which was widely held to refute Galileo's claim that the Earth moved. You drop a stone from a high tower; if the Earth were moving quickly though space, the stone would land hundreds of metres from the base of the tower, which it plainly doesn't. The fallacy in the argument is that the stone was already moving in the same direction as the tower when it was dropped, so it will continue to move along with it. This is obvious once you have a theoretical framework which includes the concepts of inertia and relative motion. But people before Galileo didn't have these concepts, and it requires an effort of will even to try and imagine a world-view that lacks them. We can't truly reconstruct the original data.
Another interesting segment contrasts the archaic Greek world-view, which lies behind Homer's works, with the classical world-view of Plato and Aristotle. Feyerabend, in arguments which I found startlingly reminiscent of Julian Jaynes in The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, claims that the archaic Greek view of consciousness was fundamentally different from the classical one. In particular, the distinction between "being" and "appearing", which we now take for granted, was weaker, and may not have existed at all. Like a lot of the book, it's speculative, but thought-provoking. Again, I looked for parallels in my own experience. I've wasted a dismaying part of my life playing various games, and have reached a reasonably high level at several of them, in particular Chess and Go. As you get better at a game of this kind, there are several points where you reconceptualize your mental picture. You realize that you were looking at it in completely the wrong way, and that there's a much better one available. For example, there's a point in your Go development where you suddenly see that you shouldn't think of stones so much as enclosing territory, but rather as exerting influence. After you've made a shift of this kind, it's very hard to recapture your original way of seeing the game. Perhaps it feels a bit like that to experience a major paradigm shift in science.
In general, Feyerabend's arguments are directed towards undermining the idea that science, and reason in general, have a privileged position in the scheme of things. He claims that science, where it succeeds, often does so precisely because it isn't rational, and only claims to have been rational when it turns out later to have been right. Another case of history being written by the victors, in fact, and Feyerabend frequently says how dangerous it is to divorce the philosophy of science from its history. To him, they are both part of the same thing. He also reminds you how often the language of rationality is used to justify arguments which really derive from use of coercive force: might makes right. As he points out, science is far from exempt. Scientists are usually at the mercy of whoever it is that controls their funding. It takes courage to pursue unfashionable research directions, even though the danger of actually being burned at the stake is less acute than it used to be. This stuff resonated with my own experience.
I'm in danger of giving the impression that I loved everything about the book, so let me correct that now. There were plenty of things I didn't like at all. I hated his arguments that it's sometimes good for science to be controlled by the State, which were largely based on Mao's revival of traditional Chinese medicine. I was appalled at his opportunism in appearing as a witness when Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) reopened the Galileo case: Feyerabend's claims that the Church had arguably been right came in very handy. Sometimes he came across as boastful or whiny or slightly mad - assuming, of course, that he isn't feigning madness, Hamlet-style, to show up the weaknesses in the King's position. But even if he can be infuriating and obscure, he writes well, and he's funny. I love the way he juxtaposes incongruous elements to jolt you out of your established thought-patterns. I think my favourites were "science and prostitution" and "quantum mechanics and Nubian sand divining" - no, I'd never heard of it either.
I could go on longer - it's a rambling book that prompts a rambling review - but I'd better wrap up. Here are two thoughts that I keep returning to. First, given that the official story is a rather threadbare myth, what do scientists really do? Why hasn't more been written on the sociology of science? I thought this was an excellent question. And second, it's inspirational to see someone who's perfectly capable of working within the system, but who chooses not to and still succeeds brilliantly. Last night, I saw The Mask of Zorro on TV: it's one of my favourite films. I suddenly saw the author of Against Method as a sort of intellectual equivalent of Zorro, sword in hand, cape fluttering in the wind, a smile on his masked face, brazenly romancing the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones. One of the book's many unanswered questions: what exactly was the nature of his relationship with Elizabeth Anscombe?
Viva Feyerabend! You were a worthy adversary to the positivists, and they won't forget you in a hurry. Now where is Young Zorro?
May 19, 2014
This took forever to read, not because the contents were boring, but because most of it went way over my head. Sometimes, entire pages seem to have been machine-translated from German, to which Feyerabend added Greek and Latin quotes, and cites ten different philosophers and forgotten authors to make the confusion complete. I had to look up quite a few English words (incommensurable, counter-inductive, etc.). But then suddenly, the next 5 pages are crystal clear and genius!
To summarize his points: Scientific conduct and progress is much more chaotic and "law-less" than proponents and practitioners of science realize. He makes his point by showing how Galileo didn't win Europe over to Copernicanism by showing a theory that explained reality "better" (as one would assume), Galileo won everyone over by inventing a few tools, hiding a few inconvenient datapoints, being a good propagandist, and a lot of trickery.
For me as a scientist reading Against Method is freeing. There is a break in between how we do science and how we present it to the public - for example, the structure of a scientific publiction has absolutely nothing to do with how the actual results were obtained. In my case with bioinformatics, I start to play around with data, and walk down 500 paths of which 499 don't work. I get some interesting results, and try to make sense of them by looking through the literature, and I finally find some biological phenomenon that might fit. Using that phenomenon as a start, I think how I can prove or disprove it - find one way to prove it - and write the paper. This has nothing to do with the scientific method of hypothesis -> prediction -> testing with data, yet the publication I write follows this structure (I also do not list the 499 things I tried, thereby "inventing" a story that is cleaner than reality). PHDComics had this fitting comic a few years ago.
Feyerabend correctly sees that stringent application of the "rules" of science would make science impossible. For example, if falsification were to be applied stringently we simply couldn't have bioinformatics. Play around with one of the settings in your genome assembler, and you get a slightly different genome - which one is the correct one? If I computationally predict genes in a genome, I get around 400,000 genes. Which ones do really exist?
There are surely ways to falsify this, but the technology does not exist (or it's a tedious, expensive and literally life-consuming work). As long as the technology does not exist, we proceed and publish: "anything goes". This makes science much more a field of play than people realize. Schools do not teach this: according to what I learned in high school about science, I should be much more stuffy and strict. Yet a large part of my work is playing around in an R console, looking for fun things, making pretty pictures, and drinking free coffee.
Where I don't agree with Feyerabend in the slightest is his demand to split science from politics - I can understand where he's coming from, I guess up until the 80s the results of science where set in stone. What the scientist said was "true", to the detriment of science itself; Feyerabend says that there are other systems alternative to science that are as good as, or even "better" than "Western science" - he makes the case for traditional Chinese science & medicine, which by now is known to be mostly Placebo effect. I can't agree with him at all. The split of science and politics has (partially?) caused the mess we're in now.
Maybe by now, statistics has done the job Feyerabend wanted other systems to do. The introduction of rigid tests, the spreading awareness of problems like the multiple comparisons problem, too small sample sizes and more, the availability of online anonymous comments etc., has helped to "dethrone" scientific results.
I also can understand why scientists rarely read philosopy of science. Large parts of this book serve as counter-arguments to Popper and Lakatos, I rarely understood anything there, since I've read very little philosophy of science.. Plus I, like most scientists, don't understand Latin or Greek.
Recommended for: Practitioners and "fans" of science, it's eye-opening.
To summarize his points: Scientific conduct and progress is much more chaotic and "law-less" than proponents and practitioners of science realize. He makes his point by showing how Galileo didn't win Europe over to Copernicanism by showing a theory that explained reality "better" (as one would assume), Galileo won everyone over by inventing a few tools, hiding a few inconvenient datapoints, being a good propagandist, and a lot of trickery.
For me as a scientist reading Against Method is freeing. There is a break in between how we do science and how we present it to the public - for example, the structure of a scientific publiction has absolutely nothing to do with how the actual results were obtained. In my case with bioinformatics, I start to play around with data, and walk down 500 paths of which 499 don't work. I get some interesting results, and try to make sense of them by looking through the literature, and I finally find some biological phenomenon that might fit. Using that phenomenon as a start, I think how I can prove or disprove it - find one way to prove it - and write the paper. This has nothing to do with the scientific method of hypothesis -> prediction -> testing with data, yet the publication I write follows this structure (I also do not list the 499 things I tried, thereby "inventing" a story that is cleaner than reality). PHDComics had this fitting comic a few years ago.
Feyerabend correctly sees that stringent application of the "rules" of science would make science impossible. For example, if falsification were to be applied stringently we simply couldn't have bioinformatics. Play around with one of the settings in your genome assembler, and you get a slightly different genome - which one is the correct one? If I computationally predict genes in a genome, I get around 400,000 genes. Which ones do really exist?
There are surely ways to falsify this, but the technology does not exist (or it's a tedious, expensive and literally life-consuming work). As long as the technology does not exist, we proceed and publish: "anything goes". This makes science much more a field of play than people realize. Schools do not teach this: according to what I learned in high school about science, I should be much more stuffy and strict. Yet a large part of my work is playing around in an R console, looking for fun things, making pretty pictures, and drinking free coffee.
Where I don't agree with Feyerabend in the slightest is his demand to split science from politics - I can understand where he's coming from, I guess up until the 80s the results of science where set in stone. What the scientist said was "true", to the detriment of science itself; Feyerabend says that there are other systems alternative to science that are as good as, or even "better" than "Western science" - he makes the case for traditional Chinese science & medicine, which by now is known to be mostly Placebo effect. I can't agree with him at all. The split of science and politics has (partially?) caused the mess we're in now.
Maybe by now, statistics has done the job Feyerabend wanted other systems to do. The introduction of rigid tests, the spreading awareness of problems like the multiple comparisons problem, too small sample sizes and more, the availability of online anonymous comments etc., has helped to "dethrone" scientific results.
I also can understand why scientists rarely read philosopy of science. Large parts of this book serve as counter-arguments to Popper and Lakatos, I rarely understood anything there, since I've read very little philosophy of science.. Plus I, like most scientists, don't understand Latin or Greek.
Recommended for: Practitioners and "fans" of science, it's eye-opening.
April 30, 2012
Feyerabend, Kuhn and Edward de Bono published within short intervals of each other circa 1970s, with practically indistinguishable platforms. I find this co-occurrence not insignificant, and ironical given the premise of their ‘new philosophy’. Ironical, in that their call for a variant of ‘anarchistic’ epistemology, by virtue of arriving simultaneously, implies reliance on sequential, table-top deduction (the very methodology they are trying to discredit).
The idea is to discredit empirical methodology as means of progress, call for multi-disciplinary unification and to a certain extent accommodate mutually exclusive concepts within the paradigm of discovery/invention. That this has merit is indisputable: most serious inventions in the 20c are a product not of ‘top table’ (de bono) rationalism, but accidental and even irrational stray into alternative paradigms. How then, are we to harness this understanding of the non linear nature of progress to any purpose?
Fayerabend proposes anarchistic epistemology: an unfortunate coinage of terminology, more so for the negative associated connotations with that term than anything else. As existing methodologies are predicated on falsified facts (agreed) , scientists must take a step back and re-examine and re-construct the so called building blocks of theorems in order to arrive at a new experience of reality, even if recontextualizing methodological qualia means introducing irrational alternatives. De Bono has more success with this platform since his primary audience seems to be the business world: the task there is infinitely more tangible than science, where even he thought of such an undertaking can make one break out into a cold sweat. Which facts, exactly are we meant to discard? And which to keep? How many irrational hypothesis are to be accommodated, numbers please, in this quest for anarchistic epistemological solutions? Feyerabend acknowledges that science doesn’t develop as a pro bono exercise: sponsors (the state, companies, etc) have to fund these follies. Which chimera do you fund with the hope of making, say, teleportation a reality? Funding aside, how does one come up with these irrational ideas in the first place? Feyerabend is silent on this subject. De Bono tries much, much harder, but even his findings do not validate an approach or method of being creative/innovative: at best, he comes up with a few ideas/methods of preventing the being of non-creative: which is a very different thing altogether.
However, in as much as scientific progress has been the product of non-linear sidestep rather than top bottom ‘leaps’, then even without the learned triple axis’s postulations, this ‘anarchistic’ epistemology is already naturally occurring. It is erroneous in fact to consider taking any steps back whatsoever to re-evaluate scientific facts: they already carry a ‘full’ value with the errors embedded in them. In essence, they are accredited failures. Why should I discount them so I can start making the same mistakes again through trial and error? It seems to me, (although I am no scientist), that once a plethora of non theory compliant data and facts accumulate, a tipping point is reached when the brain can no longer justify falsification and paradigm shifts occur. Is it a coincidence, then, that Feyerabend, Kuhn, and De Bono are flogging the same horse at the same time? Why did no one have this eureka moment one hundred years ago? Because the facts didn’t exist then. I’ve often thought of the uncanny coincidence that most significant discoveries do not spring up as Lone Rangers on the scene : there are always any number of competing scientists hovering in the background, fully engaged in the race, but just didn’t make it first past the post. I personally can not discount a sequential as well as a tangential element in scientific quest.
The idea is to discredit empirical methodology as means of progress, call for multi-disciplinary unification and to a certain extent accommodate mutually exclusive concepts within the paradigm of discovery/invention. That this has merit is indisputable: most serious inventions in the 20c are a product not of ‘top table’ (de bono) rationalism, but accidental and even irrational stray into alternative paradigms. How then, are we to harness this understanding of the non linear nature of progress to any purpose?
Fayerabend proposes anarchistic epistemology: an unfortunate coinage of terminology, more so for the negative associated connotations with that term than anything else. As existing methodologies are predicated on falsified facts (agreed) , scientists must take a step back and re-examine and re-construct the so called building blocks of theorems in order to arrive at a new experience of reality, even if recontextualizing methodological qualia means introducing irrational alternatives. De Bono has more success with this platform since his primary audience seems to be the business world: the task there is infinitely more tangible than science, where even he thought of such an undertaking can make one break out into a cold sweat. Which facts, exactly are we meant to discard? And which to keep? How many irrational hypothesis are to be accommodated, numbers please, in this quest for anarchistic epistemological solutions? Feyerabend acknowledges that science doesn’t develop as a pro bono exercise: sponsors (the state, companies, etc) have to fund these follies. Which chimera do you fund with the hope of making, say, teleportation a reality? Funding aside, how does one come up with these irrational ideas in the first place? Feyerabend is silent on this subject. De Bono tries much, much harder, but even his findings do not validate an approach or method of being creative/innovative: at best, he comes up with a few ideas/methods of preventing the being of non-creative: which is a very different thing altogether.
However, in as much as scientific progress has been the product of non-linear sidestep rather than top bottom ‘leaps’, then even without the learned triple axis’s postulations, this ‘anarchistic’ epistemology is already naturally occurring. It is erroneous in fact to consider taking any steps back whatsoever to re-evaluate scientific facts: they already carry a ‘full’ value with the errors embedded in them. In essence, they are accredited failures. Why should I discount them so I can start making the same mistakes again through trial and error? It seems to me, (although I am no scientist), that once a plethora of non theory compliant data and facts accumulate, a tipping point is reached when the brain can no longer justify falsification and paradigm shifts occur. Is it a coincidence, then, that Feyerabend, Kuhn, and De Bono are flogging the same horse at the same time? Why did no one have this eureka moment one hundred years ago? Because the facts didn’t exist then. I’ve often thought of the uncanny coincidence that most significant discoveries do not spring up as Lone Rangers on the scene : there are always any number of competing scientists hovering in the background, fully engaged in the race, but just didn’t make it first past the post. I personally can not discount a sequential as well as a tangential element in scientific quest.
Read
August 25, 2012I read Feyerabend because I know he's a critical figure in the philosophy of science, not because I expected to agree with anything he said. But not only does he make a fair number of persuasive points, he does so in a remarkably clear, straightforward style.
Some points I happen to agree with... First, there is no one scientific method, but rather a multiplicity of methods preferred by multiple disciplines. And that a lot of science is simply grasping in the dark.
Where I happen to disagree is when he takes this to its logical extreme. Namely, when he states that there is no one scientific method, and therefore there is no scientific method-- it's a little more complex than that. Similarly, his claims about the lack of use-value for science are honestly a bit of a cop-out.
While his analyses of science are fairly lucid, despite my disagreements, the problem arises when he tries to put forth positive solutions. Feyerabend's line of thought seems to be that if "anything goes" (as he glibly puts it) in science, science has no special claims to knowledge and that other ways of knowing should be respected. I would claim that this argument is self-defeating because if anything goes in science, anything can be construed as science and therefore no line can be drawn between science and not-science.
In addition, his claims that society must be "protected from" science are largely bolstered by Mao's program of replacing Western medicine with traditional Chinese medicine. Did that really work? Arguments like this-- many fiercely anti-hierarchical New Left arguments, for that matter, fall into this same category-- were well and good in the days of massive state-sponsored research by both the Americans and the Soviets. But in an era where workers' rights have been massively eviscerated, scientific research grotesquely corporatized, and in which a radically anti-rational American right has used its influence to prevent environmental justice and declare unilateral war in the Middle East, the argument that science fails to serve society just doesn't stand.
Oh my! That was a long review with a lot of anger. But I have great respect for Feyerabend as a thinker and researcher, and reading him is a bit like having a good intellectual sparring partner. I honestly would read more by him.
Some points I happen to agree with... First, there is no one scientific method, but rather a multiplicity of methods preferred by multiple disciplines. And that a lot of science is simply grasping in the dark.
Where I happen to disagree is when he takes this to its logical extreme. Namely, when he states that there is no one scientific method, and therefore there is no scientific method-- it's a little more complex than that. Similarly, his claims about the lack of use-value for science are honestly a bit of a cop-out.
While his analyses of science are fairly lucid, despite my disagreements, the problem arises when he tries to put forth positive solutions. Feyerabend's line of thought seems to be that if "anything goes" (as he glibly puts it) in science, science has no special claims to knowledge and that other ways of knowing should be respected. I would claim that this argument is self-defeating because if anything goes in science, anything can be construed as science and therefore no line can be drawn between science and not-science.
In addition, his claims that society must be "protected from" science are largely bolstered by Mao's program of replacing Western medicine with traditional Chinese medicine. Did that really work? Arguments like this-- many fiercely anti-hierarchical New Left arguments, for that matter, fall into this same category-- were well and good in the days of massive state-sponsored research by both the Americans and the Soviets. But in an era where workers' rights have been massively eviscerated, scientific research grotesquely corporatized, and in which a radically anti-rational American right has used its influence to prevent environmental justice and declare unilateral war in the Middle East, the argument that science fails to serve society just doesn't stand.
Oh my! That was a long review with a lot of anger. But I have great respect for Feyerabend as a thinker and researcher, and reading him is a bit like having a good intellectual sparring partner. I honestly would read more by him.
October 17, 2021
Reading Feyerabend was recommended to me because somebody who has heard me criticize the way "Science" (with a capital S) claims to be, one system, objective and free of cultural bias, as well as saying it can set standards for ethics and political thought, said I pretty much have the same view as Feyerabend about how the way science interacts with the current society is totally fucked. This person was right and so is Feyerabend, though I don't agree with him on everything.
A lot of my thought on this has come from how debates about science and religion have been going of late. Feyerabend argues that a lot of the stuff that religion is so good at illuminating are things that science has nothing to say about and if it did try to invade these domains we would be worse off for it. I've been screaming this for years, despite not being a religious person. When Sam Harris refers to religions as "failed sciences" this not only shows an alarming ignorance of what religion is, but an alarming ignorance of what science is. Science, Sam Harris seems to believe, is the only system that produces knowledge. The fact so many people believe this is more frightening to me than Donald Trump being president, and I'm pretty frightened by that.
Feyerabend takes a cue from Kuhn about how science progresses. Kuhn claimed that there are periods of "normal science" that are upset by revolutionary shifts. When a new paradigm takes over, we go back to "normal science" until a new paradigm shows up in the form of another revolution. Feyerabend explains how this actually happened and his claim is that the idea that science is this rational enterprise that gives us more and more a view of objective reality is false. According to Feyerabend, scientists behave more like artists when they create a revolution and behave counter-inductively. They start to wonder that if everything we know might be wrong and only by messing around do they begin to come up with a revolutionary theory.
I think this is true in science, and especially true of physics. I see it less in biology, the scientific field I studied, but it is hard to look at the history of physics and not get what Feyerabend is talking about. Most people who argue against him make appeals to his arguments helping "the enemies of science," which is the kind of argument that pretty much proves Feyerabend's point in the first place.
A lot of my thought on this has come from how debates about science and religion have been going of late. Feyerabend argues that a lot of the stuff that religion is so good at illuminating are things that science has nothing to say about and if it did try to invade these domains we would be worse off for it. I've been screaming this for years, despite not being a religious person. When Sam Harris refers to religions as "failed sciences" this not only shows an alarming ignorance of what religion is, but an alarming ignorance of what science is. Science, Sam Harris seems to believe, is the only system that produces knowledge. The fact so many people believe this is more frightening to me than Donald Trump being president, and I'm pretty frightened by that.
Feyerabend takes a cue from Kuhn about how science progresses. Kuhn claimed that there are periods of "normal science" that are upset by revolutionary shifts. When a new paradigm takes over, we go back to "normal science" until a new paradigm shows up in the form of another revolution. Feyerabend explains how this actually happened and his claim is that the idea that science is this rational enterprise that gives us more and more a view of objective reality is false. According to Feyerabend, scientists behave more like artists when they create a revolution and behave counter-inductively. They start to wonder that if everything we know might be wrong and only by messing around do they begin to come up with a revolutionary theory.
I think this is true in science, and especially true of physics. I see it less in biology, the scientific field I studied, but it is hard to look at the history of physics and not get what Feyerabend is talking about. Most people who argue against him make appeals to his arguments helping "the enemies of science," which is the kind of argument that pretty much proves Feyerabend's point in the first place.
June 24, 2019
This book attacks the scientific method by using Galileo's promotion of heliocentrism as a reductio. If that piques your interest, you should read it. The historical particulars can be really hard to follow in this text though, so it's a good idea to take notes. I recommend it for fans of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michael Polanyi, and Hannah Arendt.
Feyerabend argues that the scientific method is an inadequate and even stultifying rule, because it demands that new theories be supported by facts. Feyerabend believes that facts are intersubjective, defined by human acts of perception (just as a measurement is defined by the tool used to gather data). The example that he explores throughout the book is the Copernican Revolution. In order to convince the world that the Earth moves, Galileo had to contend with both scientific fact and natural interpretations of everyday sense perceptions. The moon seems to walk along the street with you. Venus doesn't get any bigger throughout its cycle, despite Copernicus' predictions. Elites and astronomers agreed that Galileo's telescope seemed to work perfectly on terrestrial objects but very poorly on celestial ones.
Feyerabend argues that Galileo had to use "counterinduction" to support his theory. He formulated a theory that contradicted contemporary facts. He built a new way of perceiving the world (without having a great understanding of optics) that changed the facts. And he used propagandist/sophist tactics to root his arguments in common sense. Thus, Feyerabend claims, scientists in general must create theories that blatantly contradict fact in order to advance scientific knowledge.
The really meaty philosophy starts late in the book, in Chapter 16. Here he clears the slate and deliberately gives the reader a picture of why facts are intersubjective. First he shows a Wittgensteinian insight: that our perception of the world involves resolving seeming contradictions, like an optical illusion (Wittgenstein's classic example is a drawing that can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit.) These resolutions leave us with an "after-image" that offers a chance to see the thing differently [This passage is particularly difficult so I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. But the author's reference to a change of basis in the mathematical sense seems to support my interpretation]. I believe Feyerabend is referring to paradigm shifts that, once seen, "cannot be unseen".
Other examples he gives in Chapter 16 come from archaic visual art and poetry. In Stone Age and Egyptian art, one might see 6 men posed in a way that resembles bookkeeping rather than storytelling. One of the men smiles with his eyes open, but he is turned 90 degrees to indicate that he is dead. Likewise, in Homer's Iliad, epithets are analytic aspects of the characters, so "sweetly laughing" Aphrodite is tearfully complaining, and "swift-footed" Achilles is sitting in discussion. These forms of representation indicate not a lack of skill, but a deliberate repeated choice that emanates from one's worldview. Feyerabend (while thankfully rejecting the strong "Whorf hypothesis") argues that different worldviews are composed of different facts, which leads to incommensurability (theories that contradict despite being internally consistent). He even goes so far as to say that newer worldviews can express facts from previous ones, but the reverse is not true. That seems trivially true in the case of differing Hellenic worldviews in the book. But taking it as a general fact also strikes me as weirdly non-relativistic for him, and I'm not sure why he comes to that conclusion.
While reading this book I made my best presentation of its contents to some physicists and engineers I know. It was honestly hard to tell what part of it upset them. It could be they haven't grokked the Gödel/Wittgenstein Eldritch Truth yet, or maybe Feyerabend's thesis just seems too dangerous to promote. One really good criticism arose that I couldn't answer: Why did Galileo come to believe in heliocentrism in the first place? This is hinted at in the text somewhere that I unfortunately cannot locate. But it probably deserved its own chapter.
In any case, I feel a little bit crazier for having read this book, and I look forward to revisiting it after I have more experience.
Feyerabend argues that the scientific method is an inadequate and even stultifying rule, because it demands that new theories be supported by facts. Feyerabend believes that facts are intersubjective, defined by human acts of perception (just as a measurement is defined by the tool used to gather data). The example that he explores throughout the book is the Copernican Revolution. In order to convince the world that the Earth moves, Galileo had to contend with both scientific fact and natural interpretations of everyday sense perceptions. The moon seems to walk along the street with you. Venus doesn't get any bigger throughout its cycle, despite Copernicus' predictions. Elites and astronomers agreed that Galileo's telescope seemed to work perfectly on terrestrial objects but very poorly on celestial ones.
Feyerabend argues that Galileo had to use "counterinduction" to support his theory. He formulated a theory that contradicted contemporary facts. He built a new way of perceiving the world (without having a great understanding of optics) that changed the facts. And he used propagandist/sophist tactics to root his arguments in common sense. Thus, Feyerabend claims, scientists in general must create theories that blatantly contradict fact in order to advance scientific knowledge.
The really meaty philosophy starts late in the book, in Chapter 16. Here he clears the slate and deliberately gives the reader a picture of why facts are intersubjective. First he shows a Wittgensteinian insight: that our perception of the world involves resolving seeming contradictions, like an optical illusion (Wittgenstein's classic example is a drawing that can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit.) These resolutions leave us with an "after-image" that offers a chance to see the thing differently [This passage is particularly difficult so I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. But the author's reference to a change of basis in the mathematical sense seems to support my interpretation]. I believe Feyerabend is referring to paradigm shifts that, once seen, "cannot be unseen".
Other examples he gives in Chapter 16 come from archaic visual art and poetry. In Stone Age and Egyptian art, one might see 6 men posed in a way that resembles bookkeeping rather than storytelling. One of the men smiles with his eyes open, but he is turned 90 degrees to indicate that he is dead. Likewise, in Homer's Iliad, epithets are analytic aspects of the characters, so "sweetly laughing" Aphrodite is tearfully complaining, and "swift-footed" Achilles is sitting in discussion. These forms of representation indicate not a lack of skill, but a deliberate repeated choice that emanates from one's worldview. Feyerabend (while thankfully rejecting the strong "Whorf hypothesis") argues that different worldviews are composed of different facts, which leads to incommensurability (theories that contradict despite being internally consistent). He even goes so far as to say that newer worldviews can express facts from previous ones, but the reverse is not true. That seems trivially true in the case of differing Hellenic worldviews in the book. But taking it as a general fact also strikes me as weirdly non-relativistic for him, and I'm not sure why he comes to that conclusion.
While reading this book I made my best presentation of its contents to some physicists and engineers I know. It was honestly hard to tell what part of it upset them. It could be they haven't grokked the Gödel/Wittgenstein Eldritch Truth yet, or maybe Feyerabend's thesis just seems too dangerous to promote. One really good criticism arose that I couldn't answer: Why did Galileo come to believe in heliocentrism in the first place? This is hinted at in the text somewhere that I unfortunately cannot locate. But it probably deserved its own chapter.
In any case, I feel a little bit crazier for having read this book, and I look forward to revisiting it after I have more experience.
September 17, 2015
Feyerabend writes a difficult book here, but one which is necessary. Taking a radically different perspective on the aesthetics of what theory is, Feyerabend attack one of the scared cows of science and mathematics -- that of consistency.
In some ways, Feyerabend could have raised objections more metaphysically -- that ideas have at their germination roots outside of a given domain -- that culture plays a role in utilizing domains in one area to influence another -- that science is a socially generated practice, on that mistakes methodology for reality -- but in other ways, Feyerabend does well by sticking very close to his topic. His use of Galileo as an example is of interest, since he returns to it often but it is in his later chapters that his critique really stands out.
Basically Feyerabend shows us that knowledge is always procedural. Knowledge and theory are generated through processes of agency. By attempting to manipulate or influence a specific phenomenon, we generate procedures to gain access to that phenomenon. This requires that we calibrate our actions to an appropriate cut. Nonetheless, any cut we calibrate to is simultaneously a distortion of the very object of study, because it casts it in a certain relationship. Thus
One should be quick to realize that Feyerabend is not against science at all; in fact he encourages it in his "irresponible" and "anarchist" ways. What Feyerabend is objecting to is the imagined consistency/consensus of science, a "sacred cow" of science all the more because science doesn't need such a "petit object a" in order to function. One of the underlying criticisms that Feyerabend levels is that all social institutions (including science) are in fact first and foremost, social institutions. We understand this to be even more true when we realize that the academic/scientific community often operates as a ranking system more than as a theory generating procedure; that grants and individuals are awarded more for position than they are for work. That the entire procedure of science is one of self promotion (through the modality of whatever science they are using) more than anything else.
In some ways, Feyerabend does well to criticize past methods in order to highlight inconsistencies in how they are aestheticized and presented. But this of course, will stop no one, because past procedures are in the past. After all, aren't we better now?
I cannot stop praising his book, because there is so much in here. I appreciate the clarity and freshness with which Feyeraband approaches this topic. On a more abstract level, one that I think Feyerabend would appreciate, is that we should approach all polemics and theories understanding that they are generated through the auspices of their own consistency and meaning. We often reject theories and ideas just like we reject people -- they either don't make the cut due to some personal inclination, or they are competitors for the same social capital. Often, these are the same thing. I whole heartedly agree with Feyerabend. With the lack of any "true" authority, one that "naturally" supersedes whatever authority we could imagine here on Earth (as there is none like that), we ought to utilize any theory that allows us to increase our agency. Should we not desire any particular agency, we should embrace any idea for what it is worth, at the time that we need it. Of course, some ideas will become undecideable should the foundation for that idea be incommensurable with our own foundation. But that is not a fault of that idea. This is merely the fault of our own localization. Sometimes, a question simply isn't available from a given point of view because its context is not available.
This is of course, in a big way, where Kant's Critique of Pure Reason steps in, and it is at this point that Feyerabend stops short. He doesn't wish to get into the logistics of what is reasonable. He only wishes that we set ourselves free of the chains by which we adhere to an image of what good science ought to look like so that we can do better science. And for that, I find that there is a resonance with martial arts, or with music or any other technicality/agency. We must learn the basics to define what the modality is. From that point on, mastery begins when we start to release ourselves from technique in order to be more appropriate to whatever situation we find ourselves in, simply because technique is a pedagogical tool, and its rigid organization will make certain acts impossible because they are incommensurable with that technique.
Ultimately, consistency is how we make sense of a localization for the purposes of ordinance (organization). We must never mistake the map for the territory since the territory is always changing as our desires/designs and agential relations change -- so we too change.
In some ways, Feyerabend could have raised objections more metaphysically -- that ideas have at their germination roots outside of a given domain -- that culture plays a role in utilizing domains in one area to influence another -- that science is a socially generated practice, on that mistakes methodology for reality -- but in other ways, Feyerabend does well by sticking very close to his topic. His use of Galileo as an example is of interest, since he returns to it often but it is in his later chapters that his critique really stands out.
Basically Feyerabend shows us that knowledge is always procedural. Knowledge and theory are generated through processes of agency. By attempting to manipulate or influence a specific phenomenon, we generate procedures to gain access to that phenomenon. This requires that we calibrate our actions to an appropriate cut. Nonetheless, any cut we calibrate to is simultaneously a distortion of the very object of study, because it casts it in a certain relationship. Thus
Expressing it differently, we may say that the assumption of a single coherent world-view that underlies all of science is either a metaphysical hypothesis trying to anticipate a future unity, or a pedagogical fake; or it is an attempt to show, by a judicious up-and downgrading of disciplines, that a synthesis has already been achieved. This is how fans of uniformity proceeded in the past (cf. Plato's lists of subjects in Chapter vii of his Republic), these are the ways that are still being used today. A more realistic account, however, would be that '[t]here is no simple "scientific" map of reality--or if there were, it would be much too complicated and unwieldy to be grasped or used by anyone. But there are many different maps of reality, from a variety of scientific viewpoints'
One should be quick to realize that Feyerabend is not against science at all; in fact he encourages it in his "irresponible" and "anarchist" ways. What Feyerabend is objecting to is the imagined consistency/consensus of science, a "sacred cow" of science all the more because science doesn't need such a "petit object a" in order to function. One of the underlying criticisms that Feyerabend levels is that all social institutions (including science) are in fact first and foremost, social institutions. We understand this to be even more true when we realize that the academic/scientific community often operates as a ranking system more than as a theory generating procedure; that grants and individuals are awarded more for position than they are for work. That the entire procedure of science is one of self promotion (through the modality of whatever science they are using) more than anything else.
In some ways, Feyerabend does well to criticize past methods in order to highlight inconsistencies in how they are aestheticized and presented. But this of course, will stop no one, because past procedures are in the past. After all, aren't we better now?
I cannot stop praising his book, because there is so much in here. I appreciate the clarity and freshness with which Feyeraband approaches this topic. On a more abstract level, one that I think Feyerabend would appreciate, is that we should approach all polemics and theories understanding that they are generated through the auspices of their own consistency and meaning. We often reject theories and ideas just like we reject people -- they either don't make the cut due to some personal inclination, or they are competitors for the same social capital. Often, these are the same thing. I whole heartedly agree with Feyerabend. With the lack of any "true" authority, one that "naturally" supersedes whatever authority we could imagine here on Earth (as there is none like that), we ought to utilize any theory that allows us to increase our agency. Should we not desire any particular agency, we should embrace any idea for what it is worth, at the time that we need it. Of course, some ideas will become undecideable should the foundation for that idea be incommensurable with our own foundation. But that is not a fault of that idea. This is merely the fault of our own localization. Sometimes, a question simply isn't available from a given point of view because its context is not available.
This is of course, in a big way, where Kant's Critique of Pure Reason steps in, and it is at this point that Feyerabend stops short. He doesn't wish to get into the logistics of what is reasonable. He only wishes that we set ourselves free of the chains by which we adhere to an image of what good science ought to look like so that we can do better science. And for that, I find that there is a resonance with martial arts, or with music or any other technicality/agency. We must learn the basics to define what the modality is. From that point on, mastery begins when we start to release ourselves from technique in order to be more appropriate to whatever situation we find ourselves in, simply because technique is a pedagogical tool, and its rigid organization will make certain acts impossible because they are incommensurable with that technique.
Ultimately, consistency is how we make sense of a localization for the purposes of ordinance (organization). We must never mistake the map for the territory since the territory is always changing as our desires/designs and agential relations change -- so we too change.
June 7, 2014
Feyerabend spends nearly half a book on Galileo and his astronomical observations as a paradigmatic example of how science is in fact anarchic rather than methodical. The trouble is, compared to more modern discoveries like DNA, we don't actually know that much about Galileo when it comes to his celestial deductions. Given the thesis, it would have made more sense to focus on half a dozen discoveries from the c20th. Not only would this have built a much more comprehensive (hence: firmer) case, it would have made Feyerabend's task much easier - this is where most of the sociological data lies.
By the time we leave Galileo and his telescope (which, contra to Feyerabend's claim on p.78, was not invented by Galileo) the main argument gives way to broad metaphysical issues which don't really impinge on the master-thesis, and then there's quite a lot of stuff about Aristotelian logic. Since it can be observed that all human projects deviate from their own rules, making it up as unforeseen obstacles emerge, there isn't actually anything contentious at all about Feyerabend's thesis. What is debatable is to what extent rules can be broken, and how often this actually occurs, but no where are these issues resolved.
What Feyerabend has done is similar to what many philosophers do when presented with writing a book: throw into 300 pages every paper he's ever published about a given topic hoping it will all add up to a coherent master-thesis. To help sign-post what's significant and what isn't along the way, the author has also relied heavily on italics, but this doesn't really work either – if it isn't obvious what's relevant and what isn't by the content itself, then what's been produced just needs rewriting.
By the time we leave Galileo and his telescope (which, contra to Feyerabend's claim on p.78, was not invented by Galileo) the main argument gives way to broad metaphysical issues which don't really impinge on the master-thesis, and then there's quite a lot of stuff about Aristotelian logic. Since it can be observed that all human projects deviate from their own rules, making it up as unforeseen obstacles emerge, there isn't actually anything contentious at all about Feyerabend's thesis. What is debatable is to what extent rules can be broken, and how often this actually occurs, but no where are these issues resolved.
What Feyerabend has done is similar to what many philosophers do when presented with writing a book: throw into 300 pages every paper he's ever published about a given topic hoping it will all add up to a coherent master-thesis. To help sign-post what's significant and what isn't along the way, the author has also relied heavily on italics, but this doesn't really work either – if it isn't obvious what's relevant and what isn't by the content itself, then what's been produced just needs rewriting.
July 28, 2007
Relativist polemic against scientific monopolies. Feyerabend is a physicist and astronomer as well as a philosopher by training. His anti-positivist arguments are made with care and humor. Using Galileo as a case study, he demonstrates that so-called scientific revolutions also invariably break with pre-given logical structures, such that the scientific method is violated as a matter of course, and re-written each time. As a consequence, propagandists (like Galileo) fare very well. Propagandists are, in fact, necessary for scientific progress.
As a conclusion, he suggests that there should be a separation between state and science, as between state and religion. My only beef is that he assumes that ideas are politically neutral, or that all ideas are equally non-neutral, which I think ignores their motivations. In that sense I'm not entirely ready to accept his program of "scientific anarchy," but his points on method are well taken nevertheless, and he's 100% right about the messy, social world of scientific discovery.
As a conclusion, he suggests that there should be a separation between state and science, as between state and religion. My only beef is that he assumes that ideas are politically neutral, or that all ideas are equally non-neutral, which I think ignores their motivations. In that sense I'm not entirely ready to accept his program of "scientific anarchy," but his points on method are well taken nevertheless, and he's 100% right about the messy, social world of scientific discovery.
May 8, 2020
His ideas are super similar/complimentary to those of Quine and Putnam so obviously I loved this.
“Even an ‘objective’ enterprise like science which apparently reveals Nature As She Is In Herself intervenes, eliminates, enlarged, produces and codifies the results in a severely standardized way - but again there is no guarantee that the results will conceal into a unified world. This all we apprehend when experimenting, or interfering in less systemic ways, or simply living as part of a well-developed culture is how what surrounds us responds to our actions (thoughts, observations, etc.); we do not apprehended these surroundings themselves: Culture and Nature (or Being, to use a more general term) are always entangled in a fashion that can be explored only by entering into further and even more complicated entanglements.
...
What we find when living, experimenting, dong research is therefore not a single scenario called ‘the world’ or ‘being’ or ‘reality’ but a variety of responses, each of them constituting a special (and not always well-defined) reality for those who have called it forth. This is relativism because the type of reality encountered depends on the approach taken. However, it differs from the philosophical doctrine by admitting failure: not every approach succeeds. In my reply to my critics I called this form of relativism ‘cosmological’ relativism, in an article published in Iride I spoke of ‘ontological’ relativism”
(284-285)
In my interpretation this is the same as Putnam’s conceptual relativism, and the incommensurability of language and theories explanation is very similar.
“Even an ‘objective’ enterprise like science which apparently reveals Nature As She Is In Herself intervenes, eliminates, enlarged, produces and codifies the results in a severely standardized way - but again there is no guarantee that the results will conceal into a unified world. This all we apprehend when experimenting, or interfering in less systemic ways, or simply living as part of a well-developed culture is how what surrounds us responds to our actions (thoughts, observations, etc.); we do not apprehended these surroundings themselves: Culture and Nature (or Being, to use a more general term) are always entangled in a fashion that can be explored only by entering into further and even more complicated entanglements.
...
What we find when living, experimenting, dong research is therefore not a single scenario called ‘the world’ or ‘being’ or ‘reality’ but a variety of responses, each of them constituting a special (and not always well-defined) reality for those who have called it forth. This is relativism because the type of reality encountered depends on the approach taken. However, it differs from the philosophical doctrine by admitting failure: not every approach succeeds. In my reply to my critics I called this form of relativism ‘cosmological’ relativism, in an article published in Iride I spoke of ‘ontological’ relativism”
(284-285)
In my interpretation this is the same as Putnam’s conceptual relativism, and the incommensurability of language and theories explanation is very similar.
March 20, 2021
Okay, so Feyerabend shows that institutionalized science gets directed to institutional ends, ignores questions that are deemed irrelevant, and sometimes presumes that its answers are final rather than preliminary. But this sustained attack on the biases of scientific enterprise seem to invalidate self-interest in the process of problem solving. It seems to label science as an enemy of greater understanding, the way many people label religion as an enemy of self-discovery.
April 9, 2011
A great book dealing with the way in which science loses something by rigidly adhering to antiquated methodologies and theories. No theory can make sense of every fact within its domain. There are usually incommensurable facts that must be taken into account, and this challenges the basis of the theory itself. A wise scientist will then challenge the theory and assert something new, and when science fails to accomodate new facts it becomes stagnant and stifles progress. Anarchistic in his approach, Feyerabend argues that progress can only occur by separating science from the state, much in the same way we hope to separate the church from the state, because unfair influence from political forces can only serve to corrupt the procurement of new untimely facts that might be socially and politically unpopular.
For instance, he takes a provocative position that actually swayed me to rethink my view on whether or not Creationism should be taught in public schools. His theory is that we should allow all sides of this scientific issue to be debated, not censor unsavory opinions, and then make sure schools remain a place for the open forum of all ideas, and eventually if we do this, the position with the stronger factual basis will win out. By censoring creationism, we assume that the state is taking control of the educational process, and this closes off our inherent desire to weigh every option before making a decision. Censoring creationism, he says, would be just as bad as the Catholic Church censoring the views of Galileo because his work did not appeal to the popular consensus at the time. Any attempt to censor an idea, however unpopular it is, will result in stifling human progress. As an analytical philosopher, with a 'rationalist' bend, he may be too idealistically attached to a conception of human reason. Someone like Slavoj Zizek (who I am also reading at this time) would possibly say that ideology always trumps factual evidence to the contrary. Opening up the door for creationism to be taught in school, will lead to mystical thinking, and lead to playing language games in science class instead of sticking to facts, evidence, and solid qualitative/quantitative research... I am not sure who to side with.
Several other points worth mentioning, but I do not want to take up too much time and space. Great book, really interesting, and surprisingly easy to digest. Those analytical philosophers with their clear writing! What a breath of fresh air!
For instance, he takes a provocative position that actually swayed me to rethink my view on whether or not Creationism should be taught in public schools. His theory is that we should allow all sides of this scientific issue to be debated, not censor unsavory opinions, and then make sure schools remain a place for the open forum of all ideas, and eventually if we do this, the position with the stronger factual basis will win out. By censoring creationism, we assume that the state is taking control of the educational process, and this closes off our inherent desire to weigh every option before making a decision. Censoring creationism, he says, would be just as bad as the Catholic Church censoring the views of Galileo because his work did not appeal to the popular consensus at the time. Any attempt to censor an idea, however unpopular it is, will result in stifling human progress. As an analytical philosopher, with a 'rationalist' bend, he may be too idealistically attached to a conception of human reason. Someone like Slavoj Zizek (who I am also reading at this time) would possibly say that ideology always trumps factual evidence to the contrary. Opening up the door for creationism to be taught in school, will lead to mystical thinking, and lead to playing language games in science class instead of sticking to facts, evidence, and solid qualitative/quantitative research... I am not sure who to side with.
Several other points worth mentioning, but I do not want to take up too much time and space. Great book, really interesting, and surprisingly easy to digest. Those analytical philosophers with their clear writing! What a breath of fresh air!
April 7, 2022
An indispensable book for any science enthusiast. Feyeraband does science a tremendous service by dismantling the standard, simplistic account of science as a unified enterprise, exposing the alleged rational-methodological unity of science as a mere chimera constructed by abstracting science from its historical, life world context.
There is not one science, but many; not one overarching method, but many methods, including tricks such as propaganda, conceptual sleight-of-hand, and ad hoc rationalizations, exactly the 'irrational' procedures condemned and repressed by the standard narrative of science. In contrast, Feyeraband argues that these procedures should be condoned, preferred even, for they form the backbone of science as we know it today. He demonstrates through historical examples that the results of scientists who veer off from the dictates of reason and methodology (e.g. Galileo when vindicating Copernicus) later crystallize and become part of the established scientific canon itself. Along these lines, Feyeraband makes a compelling case that "anything goes" is the only methodological prescription that does not inhibit scientific progress.
The merit of the book lies in the fact it is a potent antidote for scientism, though it is not without its minor defects. In section 4 where Feyeraband takes a stab at the hegemony of Western science, for instance, one might wish he had elaborated his thoughts on the ethical implications of say, condoning, for the sake of plurality of perspectives, the charlatans (*cough* Deepak Chopra *cough*) who reap exorbitant profits from peddling less than dubious medical advice dressed up in the veneer of scientific veracity to the credulous public.
There is not one science, but many; not one overarching method, but many methods, including tricks such as propaganda, conceptual sleight-of-hand, and ad hoc rationalizations, exactly the 'irrational' procedures condemned and repressed by the standard narrative of science. In contrast, Feyeraband argues that these procedures should be condoned, preferred even, for they form the backbone of science as we know it today. He demonstrates through historical examples that the results of scientists who veer off from the dictates of reason and methodology (e.g. Galileo when vindicating Copernicus) later crystallize and become part of the established scientific canon itself. Along these lines, Feyeraband makes a compelling case that "anything goes" is the only methodological prescription that does not inhibit scientific progress.
The merit of the book lies in the fact it is a potent antidote for scientism, though it is not without its minor defects. In section 4 where Feyeraband takes a stab at the hegemony of Western science, for instance, one might wish he had elaborated his thoughts on the ethical implications of say, condoning, for the sake of plurality of perspectives, the charlatans (*cough* Deepak Chopra *cough*) who reap exorbitant profits from peddling less than dubious medical advice dressed up in the veneer of scientific veracity to the credulous public.
December 18, 2014
Una critica sconclusionata al metodo scientifico fatta da uno che non ha la minima idea di cosa sia la scienza.
Purtroppo libro fortunato e citatissimo da fuffari vari :(
Purtroppo libro fortunato e citatissimo da fuffari vari :(
August 3, 2016
Feyerabend should, undoubtedly, be praised for providing a scathing critique of the status of the scientific enterprise within contemporary society. It wasn't a popular position to take at the time it was written, and it's still not much of a popular position today (except among Creationists, perhaps). It couldn't have been easy to step outside of the imposing influence of the day and say something that nobody wanted to hear. He made people--scientists, philosophers, and laymen alike--critically examine their respective positions towards science and reevaluate their sometimes uncritical conclusions. Yet, in considering this and similar philosophy historically, it's impossible to ignore its blatant irresponsibility, its disastrous effects on thought and objectivity.
Getting down to the main positions Feyerabend takes in this work it's easy to sum them up pretty briefly: There's no set of unwavering and indubitable rules or methods that science actually utilizes in practice; Scientific theories are often incommensurable in that they are composed of fundamentally different concepts that are not reducible to a common measure; Science as a whole has unduly been given a special status in society that it does not deserve, and it's just another ideology and should consequently be separated from the state like religion.
Okay--I'll say at the outset that the incommensurability of scientific theories is a fascinating concept and one that I'm really not informed enough to have any substantive opinion. So I'm not going to comment on it except to say in passing that it seems less of an intractable problem than it's made out to be.
As for method, I think Feyerabend makes gross exaggerations and doesn't sufficiently argue away the difference between contexts of discovery and justification as well as he thinks he does. If we have a theory that is not even theoretically falsifiable because it's claims are compatible with all observable phenomena, it's going to have a difficult time surviving the context of justification. It will eventually wither away in not being able to face empiric criticism. If we have a theory that turns out to be self-contradictory, it will have a difficult time surviving the the context of justification. Yes, it may, for a time, prove its utility in various ways, but it will never be thought of as "right" unless it can reconcile its internal contradictions. Standards are more than arbitrary, historically determined, totalitarian-like, rationalist schemes. Although I obviously can't get into acceptable standards in this space, they do have the function of time and time again successfully removing the crap from science (psychoanalysis, for instance). Feyerabend is right to reject "naive falsification." Of course theories can't explain all the facts in their domain and may be in conflict with some of them. This is fine. But when theories are conflicting with most of the facts in their domains, providing minimal utility, and clashing with very well corroborated theories they are right to be rejected. And it's important to remember that, especially when critiquing Feyerabend, this is a rational rejection.
Now, the separation of science and state. Ridiculous. Absolutely terrible. One of the worst ideas ever put forth. Stop giving tax dollars to scientifically-minded institutions like the National Institute of Health, effectively abolishing it altogether? Or how about having the FDA start endorsing homeopathy, voodoo, and witchcraft for dealing with medicinal concerns? Excellent! Have departments of transportation pay no attention to the physics of bridge building? Yes! Start teaching astrology and magic as viable alternatives alongside astronomy and biology in school? Perfect! Society will be improved immensely! We'll be free of the corrupting influence and ideology of Science! (Feyerabend doesn't explicitly make these claims--except, I think, saying that we should teach "magic" in public schools--but they are natural consequences of his view, nonetheless.)
Feyerabend says, concerning the utility of science, "The questions reach their polemical aim only if one assumes that the results of science which no one will deny have arisen without any help from non-scientific elements, and that they cannot be improved by an admixture of such elements either . . . Science alone [this is sarcasm, here] gives us a useful astronomy, an effective medicine, a trustworthy technology. One must also assume that science owes its success to the correct method and not merely to a lucky accident [italics in original]."
The "non-scientific elements," methods inherent in homeopathy, voodoo, witchcraft, and astrology which lack the rationalism and critical reflection of the sciences are assuredly not going to improve the human condition. They've been tried, and they failed terribly. Certainly science needs to stay creative, but the solution must not be looked for in the practices just mentioned. There's a reason why science is successful. It would be quite a coincidence if, instead of having the "correct method," science hit upon hundreds and hundreds of "lucky accident[s]," over and over again throughout history, continually making life better for people through such "accidents."
Some further comments: Feyerabend is also critical of Lakatos and his "research programmes." I guess originally this work was supposed to be the two each going back and forth, F defending irrationalism in the sciences and L defending rationalism. But then Lakatos died. Shame, because he would have probably thoroughly put Feyerabend in his place. Feyerabend's argument is that, essentially, Lakatos' more liberal versions of some of Popper's ideas are so liberal that, "in so far as the methodology of research programmes is 'rational,' it does not differ from anarchism." Or, to put it another way, that Lakatos is arguing the same thing as Feyerabend himself, but cloaking it in the language of rationalism. Interestingly, Feyerabend says, only a few pages later, that, "Lakatos does not really differ from the traditional epistemologists. . ."
In regards to Feyerabend's own philosophy of science he says, "There is not a single rule that remains valid under all circumstances and not a single agency to which appeal can always be made," and that, "Anything goes." Yet he also says, paradoxically, that the "essence of empiricism" and the "important part of all theories of confirmation and corroboration" is "counterinduction [italics added]." He goes on to conclude that, "Counterinduction is therefore, always reasonable and it always has a chance of success [italics added]." In other words, scientists would be stupid not to use counterinduction with the introduction of every new theory. Counterinduction sounds strangely like "a rule that remains valid under all circumstances," no?
Getting down to the main positions Feyerabend takes in this work it's easy to sum them up pretty briefly: There's no set of unwavering and indubitable rules or methods that science actually utilizes in practice; Scientific theories are often incommensurable in that they are composed of fundamentally different concepts that are not reducible to a common measure; Science as a whole has unduly been given a special status in society that it does not deserve, and it's just another ideology and should consequently be separated from the state like religion.
Okay--I'll say at the outset that the incommensurability of scientific theories is a fascinating concept and one that I'm really not informed enough to have any substantive opinion. So I'm not going to comment on it except to say in passing that it seems less of an intractable problem than it's made out to be.
As for method, I think Feyerabend makes gross exaggerations and doesn't sufficiently argue away the difference between contexts of discovery and justification as well as he thinks he does. If we have a theory that is not even theoretically falsifiable because it's claims are compatible with all observable phenomena, it's going to have a difficult time surviving the context of justification. It will eventually wither away in not being able to face empiric criticism. If we have a theory that turns out to be self-contradictory, it will have a difficult time surviving the the context of justification. Yes, it may, for a time, prove its utility in various ways, but it will never be thought of as "right" unless it can reconcile its internal contradictions. Standards are more than arbitrary, historically determined, totalitarian-like, rationalist schemes. Although I obviously can't get into acceptable standards in this space, they do have the function of time and time again successfully removing the crap from science (psychoanalysis, for instance). Feyerabend is right to reject "naive falsification." Of course theories can't explain all the facts in their domain and may be in conflict with some of them. This is fine. But when theories are conflicting with most of the facts in their domains, providing minimal utility, and clashing with very well corroborated theories they are right to be rejected. And it's important to remember that, especially when critiquing Feyerabend, this is a rational rejection.
Now, the separation of science and state. Ridiculous. Absolutely terrible. One of the worst ideas ever put forth. Stop giving tax dollars to scientifically-minded institutions like the National Institute of Health, effectively abolishing it altogether? Or how about having the FDA start endorsing homeopathy, voodoo, and witchcraft for dealing with medicinal concerns? Excellent! Have departments of transportation pay no attention to the physics of bridge building? Yes! Start teaching astrology and magic as viable alternatives alongside astronomy and biology in school? Perfect! Society will be improved immensely! We'll be free of the corrupting influence and ideology of Science! (Feyerabend doesn't explicitly make these claims--except, I think, saying that we should teach "magic" in public schools--but they are natural consequences of his view, nonetheless.)
Feyerabend says, concerning the utility of science, "The questions reach their polemical aim only if one assumes that the results of science which no one will deny have arisen without any help from non-scientific elements, and that they cannot be improved by an admixture of such elements either . . . Science alone [this is sarcasm, here] gives us a useful astronomy, an effective medicine, a trustworthy technology. One must also assume that science owes its success to the correct method and not merely to a lucky accident [italics in original]."
The "non-scientific elements," methods inherent in homeopathy, voodoo, witchcraft, and astrology which lack the rationalism and critical reflection of the sciences are assuredly not going to improve the human condition. They've been tried, and they failed terribly. Certainly science needs to stay creative, but the solution must not be looked for in the practices just mentioned. There's a reason why science is successful. It would be quite a coincidence if, instead of having the "correct method," science hit upon hundreds and hundreds of "lucky accident[s]," over and over again throughout history, continually making life better for people through such "accidents."
Some further comments: Feyerabend is also critical of Lakatos and his "research programmes." I guess originally this work was supposed to be the two each going back and forth, F defending irrationalism in the sciences and L defending rationalism. But then Lakatos died. Shame, because he would have probably thoroughly put Feyerabend in his place. Feyerabend's argument is that, essentially, Lakatos' more liberal versions of some of Popper's ideas are so liberal that, "in so far as the methodology of research programmes is 'rational,' it does not differ from anarchism." Or, to put it another way, that Lakatos is arguing the same thing as Feyerabend himself, but cloaking it in the language of rationalism. Interestingly, Feyerabend says, only a few pages later, that, "Lakatos does not really differ from the traditional epistemologists. . ."
In regards to Feyerabend's own philosophy of science he says, "There is not a single rule that remains valid under all circumstances and not a single agency to which appeal can always be made," and that, "Anything goes." Yet he also says, paradoxically, that the "essence of empiricism" and the "important part of all theories of confirmation and corroboration" is "counterinduction [italics added]." He goes on to conclude that, "Counterinduction is therefore, always reasonable and it always has a chance of success [italics added]." In other words, scientists would be stupid not to use counterinduction with the introduction of every new theory. Counterinduction sounds strangely like "a rule that remains valid under all circumstances," no?
February 13, 2023
Paul Feyerabend writes a thought-provoking argument against treating science as a singular entity from which its knowledge should be elevated because it is believed to be grounded on rationality. Feyerabend achieves this refutation by relying primarily on the historical example of Galileo and his championing of Copernican heliocentrism despite inconsistencies and an incomplete understanding, as well as other detailed examinations into the process of science related to accepting and refuting theory.
Reading this as an early-career cognitive neuroscientist, currently engaged with the 'reproducibility crisis' and subsequent science reform movement, I feel that this book is a must-read for anyone who is themselves a scientist or currently studying a science. In it, I find are many applicable lessons for the modern-day scientist – for example, "the idea that 'scientific' knowledge is in some way peculiarly positive and free from differences of opinion is nothing but a chimaera", and that counterinduction plays an important role in challenging scientific theories (to me, this means that those conducting model comparisons or hypothesis-testing should bring formidable, developed opponents to the competition rather than theories or models that rely on ad hoc assumptions.
This book was dense and rambling in parts, and it took a lengthy amount of time to read and digest. However, I found it a worthwhile read, and believe to be one that will hone how I conduct and wield science in the future. I recommend it to any reader interested in the philosophy of science, especially to any scientists or scientists-to-be, who can withstand the challenging (and sometimes extreme) read to engage and potentially reconsider their beliefs around science and how it may (proclaims to) achieve progress.
Reading this as an early-career cognitive neuroscientist, currently engaged with the 'reproducibility crisis' and subsequent science reform movement, I feel that this book is a must-read for anyone who is themselves a scientist or currently studying a science. In it, I find are many applicable lessons for the modern-day scientist – for example, "the idea that 'scientific' knowledge is in some way peculiarly positive and free from differences of opinion is nothing but a chimaera", and that counterinduction plays an important role in challenging scientific theories (to me, this means that those conducting model comparisons or hypothesis-testing should bring formidable, developed opponents to the competition rather than theories or models that rely on ad hoc assumptions.
This book was dense and rambling in parts, and it took a lengthy amount of time to read and digest. However, I found it a worthwhile read, and believe to be one that will hone how I conduct and wield science in the future. I recommend it to any reader interested in the philosophy of science, especially to any scientists or scientists-to-be, who can withstand the challenging (and sometimes extreme) read to engage and potentially reconsider their beliefs around science and how it may (proclaims to) achieve progress.
March 1, 2023
Finally I've finished this one and I finally understood Feyerabend's whole argument/thesis. Right now, I'm not at home, but there's a whole treatise I have planned for this review. The short summary I can give now is that we like to imagine a universe where we travel back in time and we become like gods amongst men due to our knowledge of the world. Feyerabend argues that for the people of the past, rather than deities, we would be perceived as lunatics. However contrary to a naive surface level reading of Feyerabend (what he calls naive anarchism), he is not actually arguing for a "anything goes" for scientific practice or knowledge in general.
September 2, 2021
Our knowledge resides within the world that we live in and is within us. It’s about things and how we connect the facts of the world with our own understanding of the world and the context and the relations that surround those facts and it is up to us to separate the confounding variables into what we call science.
There is not the science there is only a science and the elimination of the Bayesian trap of deriving our future expectations from the likelihood of past occurrence’s priors weighted by the current reality is what skews our understanding of reality and creates a Science War fought bravely by Paul Feyerabend while the world goes whistling past the graveyard of empty tombs from those who just ignored the war because we all determine our meaning on our own while underdetermination, auxiliary hypothesis, and old paradigms morph into new world truths changing the model but keeping the words the same; is Democritus’ atom the same as Boltzmann’s (who was driven to suicide because of his concept), or Neil Bohr’s or today’s concept of the atom? The same word describes them all but the concept that underlies them is radically different. What Galileo did is amazing but he lived in the real world and had to deal with idiots and did what was necessary to literally have the world move on.
Galileo wrote one of the most important books ever written, Dialogs Concerning Two Chief World Systems. It’s one of my most favorite books ever. This author understands the sleight-of-hand that Galileo employs while making his arguments in order to convince the world the Earth rotates around the sun.
Yes, ‘the earth does move’, but in the language of the times and an appeal to auxiliary arguments makes Galileo’s arguments less than bullet proof and he clearly is using slippery subtle arguments that he knows could be refuted using his own reasoning at times as the author demonstrates. Tell me again why I don’t get dizzy on a spinning earth as I would with a merry-go-round? Everyone knows the sun rises in the east, just look out your window in the morning. Common sense is hard to overcome. Galileo actually has a bizarre theory about the ocean waves and is wrong about comets. In my printing of the book, Einstein makes a tone-deaf statement in the introduction on how Galileo can’t back off his wave theory while Einstein never quite could bring himself to accept his own creation of the quantum theory (‘God doesn’t play dice’). That’s sort of the point this author is making that the ‘sculpture molds the clay with the clay he has and the world that they live in’.
Homer’s Odyssey gets cleverly entwined with the author’s main point on how the truth is up to us to determine for ourselves such that as the author will say “anything goes” because we live in the world that we live in and we understand the truth and its meaning within our own world-view.
The book does move around a lot. At times, the author argues for the reasonableness of Chinese Alternative Medicine while using his approach of Against Method. Here’s a joke: what do you call alternative medicine when it works? answer: medicine. The moment one has to put the adjective ‘alternative’ in the phrase one can just as well call it ‘junk’. This author’s methodology would refer to it as Medicine without the ‘junk’ adjective.
I really enjoyed this book overall. I know that there can’t be a Science War if the scientist just ‘shut-up and calculate’ and ignore all the missiles lobbed at them by this author, and it’s perfectly logical for scientist to ignore this book. I also know that our meaning and values come from ourselves and we play the game such that we do whatever it takes to move what we think is best forward. The War fought in this book has been ignored, but that doesn’t mean that this book is not worth reading.
There is not the science there is only a science and the elimination of the Bayesian trap of deriving our future expectations from the likelihood of past occurrence’s priors weighted by the current reality is what skews our understanding of reality and creates a Science War fought bravely by Paul Feyerabend while the world goes whistling past the graveyard of empty tombs from those who just ignored the war because we all determine our meaning on our own while underdetermination, auxiliary hypothesis, and old paradigms morph into new world truths changing the model but keeping the words the same; is Democritus’ atom the same as Boltzmann’s (who was driven to suicide because of his concept), or Neil Bohr’s or today’s concept of the atom? The same word describes them all but the concept that underlies them is radically different. What Galileo did is amazing but he lived in the real world and had to deal with idiots and did what was necessary to literally have the world move on.
Galileo wrote one of the most important books ever written, Dialogs Concerning Two Chief World Systems. It’s one of my most favorite books ever. This author understands the sleight-of-hand that Galileo employs while making his arguments in order to convince the world the Earth rotates around the sun.
Yes, ‘the earth does move’, but in the language of the times and an appeal to auxiliary arguments makes Galileo’s arguments less than bullet proof and he clearly is using slippery subtle arguments that he knows could be refuted using his own reasoning at times as the author demonstrates. Tell me again why I don’t get dizzy on a spinning earth as I would with a merry-go-round? Everyone knows the sun rises in the east, just look out your window in the morning. Common sense is hard to overcome. Galileo actually has a bizarre theory about the ocean waves and is wrong about comets. In my printing of the book, Einstein makes a tone-deaf statement in the introduction on how Galileo can’t back off his wave theory while Einstein never quite could bring himself to accept his own creation of the quantum theory (‘God doesn’t play dice’). That’s sort of the point this author is making that the ‘sculpture molds the clay with the clay he has and the world that they live in’.
Homer’s Odyssey gets cleverly entwined with the author’s main point on how the truth is up to us to determine for ourselves such that as the author will say “anything goes” because we live in the world that we live in and we understand the truth and its meaning within our own world-view.
The book does move around a lot. At times, the author argues for the reasonableness of Chinese Alternative Medicine while using his approach of Against Method. Here’s a joke: what do you call alternative medicine when it works? answer: medicine. The moment one has to put the adjective ‘alternative’ in the phrase one can just as well call it ‘junk’. This author’s methodology would refer to it as Medicine without the ‘junk’ adjective.
I really enjoyed this book overall. I know that there can’t be a Science War if the scientist just ‘shut-up and calculate’ and ignore all the missiles lobbed at them by this author, and it’s perfectly logical for scientist to ignore this book. I also know that our meaning and values come from ourselves and we play the game such that we do whatever it takes to move what we think is best forward. The War fought in this book has been ignored, but that doesn’t mean that this book is not worth reading.
January 21, 2015
Against Method is Paul Feyerabend's profound, brilliant treatise on the tenuous relation between scientific theory and practice. If the book has a central thesis, it is the famous phrase 'anything goes' - but there's no systematic argument here. Instead Feyerabend offers a constellation of polemics, beginning with an analysis of Galileo's 'confirmation' of Copernicanism to show that real scientific practice is counterinductive, irrational, propagandistic, and riddled with inconsistencies. He discusses the ways in which new theories by definition violate reason, ignore or distort facts and observations as understood by the current paradigm, and essentially bootstrap themselves into a position of greater empirical content and, ultimately, scientific legitimacy.
From here he moves on to argue that there is no such unitary thing as 'science' at all, only a series of different endeavors utilizing different, permanently incompatible sets of theories and practices. He discusses his notion of incommensurability (which subsequently became a widely discussed topic in philosophy of science), which says that new theories do not even talk about the same concepts or objects as the older theories they supposedly extend, but instead posit new concepts, objects, and even ways of measuring which have nothing in common with their predecessors (consider the concepts of space, time, or length before and after Einstein). He argues that there are basic, fundamental limitations on human knowledge which necessitate that facts be constructed from theories and not vice versa, and that this means that new problems can only be solved when given total freedom from the constraints of the dominant norms and theories.
But this is all to set up what lies at the core of Feyerabend's philosophy: His is ultimately a moral endeavor, and he believes that reason, objectivity, and theory as conceived by Western science and philosophy exercise an exclusionary tyranny upon our minds and persons which is substantively no different than that of religion or any other rigid ideology. He argues that theories replace people and actions with theoretical abstrations of people and actions. He argues that the only way forward for societies as a whole is through a great plurality of worldviews; that there is no idea too ancient, or primitive, or mistaken which cannot improve and deepen the empirical content of our thought.
From here he moves on to argue that there is no such unitary thing as 'science' at all, only a series of different endeavors utilizing different, permanently incompatible sets of theories and practices. He discusses his notion of incommensurability (which subsequently became a widely discussed topic in philosophy of science), which says that new theories do not even talk about the same concepts or objects as the older theories they supposedly extend, but instead posit new concepts, objects, and even ways of measuring which have nothing in common with their predecessors (consider the concepts of space, time, or length before and after Einstein). He argues that there are basic, fundamental limitations on human knowledge which necessitate that facts be constructed from theories and not vice versa, and that this means that new problems can only be solved when given total freedom from the constraints of the dominant norms and theories.
But this is all to set up what lies at the core of Feyerabend's philosophy: His is ultimately a moral endeavor, and he believes that reason, objectivity, and theory as conceived by Western science and philosophy exercise an exclusionary tyranny upon our minds and persons which is substantively no different than that of religion or any other rigid ideology. He argues that theories replace people and actions with theoretical abstrations of people and actions. He argues that the only way forward for societies as a whole is through a great plurality of worldviews; that there is no idea too ancient, or primitive, or mistaken which cannot improve and deepen the empirical content of our thought.
March 23, 2018
A unique perspective on how science is done. Feyerabend posits that historically speaking scientific advances are often made by going AGAINST prevailing reason and being counterinductive and constructing ad hoc hypotheses to fit phenomena that is later on explained in a better way. He uses plenty of historical examples but mainly focuses on Galileo supporting Copernicus. He also makes an interesting claim that Galileo was not purely rational: he used propaganda - not only that, but the Church was closer to the reason of the day than Galileo was and were pretty much justified in censuring him. There is no one scientific method, and there is a lengthy discussion about incommensurability that is blithely summed up with "it's more of a problem for philosophers than scientists". Interesting of him to use the Marxist-Leninist concept of uneven development for scientific theories, and cites Lenin, Marx, and Mao a couple times (though later on claiming he was never fully convinced by Marxism). One thing that I don't really get is his "tradition" theory which seems relativist (he has a whole appendix defending it). He says traditions are neither good nor bad, they just are.... to me that's pretty relativist. Perhaps a tradition isn't bad, but certainly some traditions are better than others. Perhaps the point he was trying to make was there is no Archimedean point for us to survey which tradition is better than which. Towards the end he calls the Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge "deconstruction gone mad" which makes me question if he's ever read Derrida or if he's just hitching onto Kuhn's (and philosophers of science) at large's opinion.
Other than that though, read this for a counterintuitive yet fascinating look at how science is and has been historically done.
Other than that though, read this for a counterintuitive yet fascinating look at how science is and has been historically done.
April 10, 2023
I had been waiting so long to read this, and wow, it did not disappoint!
There's certainly a lot one can criticise about Feyerabend — his quips against other philosophical schools can come across as more arrogant than amusing; his uncritical acceptance of Mill's marketplace of ideas seems ignorant at best; and as he admits himself, Against Method can be quite disjointed in places and some aspects of his argument are much more developed than others.
But as my rating of this book has already indicated, I couldn't help but love it! Feyerabend's critique of different scientific schools really resonated with my own experiences within scientific communities, where other conceptual frameworks are often completely dismissed. Questioning scientific authorities is a social taboo, and a contentious political issue in a wide range of areas from public health to environmental policy. Yet unlike the simplistic "trust science" vs. "I've done my own research" type of debates, Feyerabend's perspective adds a nuance to the different priorities that are at stake when it comes to theoretical debates in science.
I'm too tired now to formulate my thoughts fully, but needless to say I'll be returning to this volume in my future research, and I will definitely be reading more from Feyerabend in the future.
There's certainly a lot one can criticise about Feyerabend — his quips against other philosophical schools can come across as more arrogant than amusing; his uncritical acceptance of Mill's marketplace of ideas seems ignorant at best; and as he admits himself, Against Method can be quite disjointed in places and some aspects of his argument are much more developed than others.
But as my rating of this book has already indicated, I couldn't help but love it! Feyerabend's critique of different scientific schools really resonated with my own experiences within scientific communities, where other conceptual frameworks are often completely dismissed. Questioning scientific authorities is a social taboo, and a contentious political issue in a wide range of areas from public health to environmental policy. Yet unlike the simplistic "trust science" vs. "I've done my own research" type of debates, Feyerabend's perspective adds a nuance to the different priorities that are at stake when it comes to theoretical debates in science.
I'm too tired now to formulate my thoughts fully, but needless to say I'll be returning to this volume in my future research, and I will definitely be reading more from Feyerabend in the future.
November 24, 2016
"La idea de que la ciencia puede y debe regirse según unas reglas fijas y de que su racionalidad consiste en un acuerdo con tales reglas no es realista y está viciada. No es realista, puesto que tiene una visión demasiado simple del talento de los hombres y de las circunstancias que animan, o causan, su desarrollo. Y está viciada, puesto que el intento de fortalecer las reglas levantará indudablemente barreras a lo que los hombres podrían haber sido, y reducirá nuestra humanidad incrementando nuestras cualificaciones profesionales."
Estas conclusiones son incontestables. Sin embargo, aunque dice que no es un relativista y que es un realista, no queda muy claro como se articula eso dentro de su propuesta. Aun así, su propuesta de una Epistemología Anarquista es lo más coherente que y seductor que leí.
Estas conclusiones son incontestables. Sin embargo, aunque dice que no es un relativista y que es un realista, no queda muy claro como se articula eso dentro de su propuesta. Aun así, su propuesta de una Epistemología Anarquista es lo más coherente que y seductor que leí.
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February 22, 2024I expected to dislike this book very much for whatever reason, though I always liked Feyerabend's mode of presentation and general dispositions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed the text and found much of it fairly well-argued.
Feyerabend distinguishes between the dogmatic science of contemporary times and the historical anarchic science which is practiced through irrationality, counter-induction, mistakes, and so on. It is crucial to the enterprise of science that one methodology, or picture of the scientific method, predominates, and indeed, it is also a requirement that falsified methodologies be retained precisely in the counter-inductive activity. He gives an illuminating example in Galileo, who advances a Copernican view against the dominant Aristotelean picture of the motion of the earth. Galileo proceeds both irrationally and counter-inductively, he questions the idea of "motion" dominant in the scientific ideology of the time, which is only possible as consequence of his holding so strongly to a Copernican view. He then proceeds through propaganda, replacing observation-statements more sympathetic to a Copernican view: like how a line drawn of a ships complete journey across the sea will look straight despite minute movements left and right in the journey, because the relative size of the whole makes the minor motions appear small. This is used to replace ideas of motion implicitly in his dialogues, but it is never advanced by argument.
This view of science is interesting, fun, fruitful, but Feyerabend does suffer from a kind of impotent liberalism which he attempts to make more radical than it probably is, by naming it "anarchism". Really, the over-reliance on Mill is middling. Further, the references to Lenin and Marx, for the use of "pragmatism" in Lenin's vanguardism, and Mrax's "uneven development of science" is less-than-scholarly, often the only reason for referencing them seems to me to be an association of words, and less because it has much to contribute to the text.
Following Appendix I, the book is considerably weaker. Though a rather interesting discussion of the archaic worldview and the transition out of it is interesting, and provides a good reading list, there are large ramblings on Whorff, who is now, as far as I am familiar, rather discredited. Many of the linguistic arguments therefore, which I think Feyerabend places far too much importance on since his argument survives without it despite his own proclamations, are weak. Incommensurability does not need Whorff.
Overall, glad to have finally read this.
Feyerabend distinguishes between the dogmatic science of contemporary times and the historical anarchic science which is practiced through irrationality, counter-induction, mistakes, and so on. It is crucial to the enterprise of science that one methodology, or picture of the scientific method, predominates, and indeed, it is also a requirement that falsified methodologies be retained precisely in the counter-inductive activity. He gives an illuminating example in Galileo, who advances a Copernican view against the dominant Aristotelean picture of the motion of the earth. Galileo proceeds both irrationally and counter-inductively, he questions the idea of "motion" dominant in the scientific ideology of the time, which is only possible as consequence of his holding so strongly to a Copernican view. He then proceeds through propaganda, replacing observation-statements more sympathetic to a Copernican view: like how a line drawn of a ships complete journey across the sea will look straight despite minute movements left and right in the journey, because the relative size of the whole makes the minor motions appear small. This is used to replace ideas of motion implicitly in his dialogues, but it is never advanced by argument.
This view of science is interesting, fun, fruitful, but Feyerabend does suffer from a kind of impotent liberalism which he attempts to make more radical than it probably is, by naming it "anarchism". Really, the over-reliance on Mill is middling. Further, the references to Lenin and Marx, for the use of "pragmatism" in Lenin's vanguardism, and Mrax's "uneven development of science" is less-than-scholarly, often the only reason for referencing them seems to me to be an association of words, and less because it has much to contribute to the text.
Following Appendix I, the book is considerably weaker. Though a rather interesting discussion of the archaic worldview and the transition out of it is interesting, and provides a good reading list, there are large ramblings on Whorff, who is now, as far as I am familiar, rather discredited. Many of the linguistic arguments therefore, which I think Feyerabend places far too much importance on since his argument survives without it despite his own proclamations, are weak. Incommensurability does not need Whorff.
Overall, glad to have finally read this.
November 28, 2019
Como você se sentiria caso um artigo publicado na Nature lhe tachasse de “o pior inimigo da ciência”? — “Muito bem, obrigado”, é o que deve ter respondido Paul Feyerabend, em 1987. Dono de uma prosa ágil e cáustica, em “Contra o Método”, Feyerabend delineia o que passou a ser conhecido como o “anarquismo epistemológico”. Como o próprio título acusa, trata-se de uma clara cisão com a ideia cartesiana de que a ciência se caracteriza pela Razão, e que esta, por sua vez, é garantida pela adesão ao Método. “A ciência não é nem uma tradução isolada nem a melhor que há, exceto para aqueles que se acostumaram com sua presença, seus benefícios e suas desvantagens. Em uma democracia, deveria ser separada do Estado exatamente como as igrejas ora estão dele separadas”.
Muitas vezes mal interpretado, Feyerabend não está advogando pela irracionalidade. Ele se opõe ao uso de palavras vazias (Razão, Método… Fé… Humanidade) a fim de fornecer corpo a uma tradição (Ciência… Religião…), capacitando-a a subjugar o outro. Por trás de seus argumentos inflamados, existe muita indignação. “Indignação diante da destruição de conquistas culturais das quais poderíamos todos ter aprendido, diante da ousadia presunçosa com que alguns intelectuais interferem na vida das pessoas, e desdém pelas frases traiçoeiras que usam para embelezar suas iniquidades foram, e ainda são, a força motivadora de [seu] trabalho”.
Existe indignação e uma profunda consideração à humanidade — não a uma Humanidade idealizada, mas a uma humanidade com “h” minúsculo, materializada, contingente. E isso se atinge com o reconhecimento da natureza humana de todos e todas que somos personagens na epopeia social técnico-científica (ou seria uma tragédia?). Para ficar com uma das passagens que mais me fez rir (e essa é uma marca da boa filosofia!): “[…] Não há garantia de que os cientistas resolverão todo problema e substituirão toda teoria que tenha sido refutada por uma sucessora que satisfaça as condições formais. A invenção de teorias depende de nossos talentos e de outras circunstâncias fortuitas, como uma vida sexual satisfatória. […]”
Qual a diferença entre uma teocracia e uma tecnocracia? Apenas duas letras. “Contra o Método” é um texto libertador e, creio eu, fundamental para eu repensar minha prática enquanto engenheiro, professor de engenharia e pesquisador em pleno século XXI.
Muitas vezes mal interpretado, Feyerabend não está advogando pela irracionalidade. Ele se opõe ao uso de palavras vazias (Razão, Método… Fé… Humanidade) a fim de fornecer corpo a uma tradição (Ciência… Religião…), capacitando-a a subjugar o outro. Por trás de seus argumentos inflamados, existe muita indignação. “Indignação diante da destruição de conquistas culturais das quais poderíamos todos ter aprendido, diante da ousadia presunçosa com que alguns intelectuais interferem na vida das pessoas, e desdém pelas frases traiçoeiras que usam para embelezar suas iniquidades foram, e ainda são, a força motivadora de [seu] trabalho”.
Existe indignação e uma profunda consideração à humanidade — não a uma Humanidade idealizada, mas a uma humanidade com “h” minúsculo, materializada, contingente. E isso se atinge com o reconhecimento da natureza humana de todos e todas que somos personagens na epopeia social técnico-científica (ou seria uma tragédia?). Para ficar com uma das passagens que mais me fez rir (e essa é uma marca da boa filosofia!): “[…] Não há garantia de que os cientistas resolverão todo problema e substituirão toda teoria que tenha sido refutada por uma sucessora que satisfaça as condições formais. A invenção de teorias depende de nossos talentos e de outras circunstâncias fortuitas, como uma vida sexual satisfatória. […]”
Qual a diferença entre uma teocracia e uma tecnocracia? Apenas duas letras. “Contra o Método” é um texto libertador e, creio eu, fundamental para eu repensar minha prática enquanto engenheiro, professor de engenharia e pesquisador em pleno século XXI.
March 16, 2020
Captures the chaos and "law-less"-ness actually involved in science that most proponents and practitioners fail to realize and accept. For example, goes into heavy detail about how Galileo won wasn't because he came up with a theory and explanation that was strictly "better" than the previous one on all accounts. Rather it was because he was good at propaganda and inventing new tools, while also being willing to ignore any inconvenient data points.
As a researcher a lot of this rings true. How we actually do science and how we present it are completely different enterprises. There is no clear set of rules that make the method scientific. There is a lot of play and coffee involved. Even with empirical results there are a lot of degrees of freedom in how to interpret them.
Some parts of the book feel very dated, so much so that it's funny when you are almost agreeing with everything the author is bringing up and suddenly he starts talking about alternate medical systems like traditional Chinese medicine which can be even "better" than "Western medicine" that makes you question everything he said previously (good thing in my opinion). To be fair, in my copy Feyerabend accepted that some of the stuff should be taken as a product of its time in the 70s and since then with the change in time, we need to be more careful:
As a researcher a lot of this rings true. How we actually do science and how we present it are completely different enterprises. There is no clear set of rules that make the method scientific. There is a lot of play and coffee involved. Even with empirical results there are a lot of degrees of freedom in how to interpret them.
Some parts of the book feel very dated, so much so that it's funny when you are almost agreeing with everything the author is bringing up and suddenly he starts talking about alternate medical systems like traditional Chinese medicine which can be even "better" than "Western medicine" that makes you question everything he said previously (good thing in my opinion). To be fair, in my copy Feyerabend accepted that some of the stuff should be taken as a product of its time in the 70s and since then with the change in time, we need to be more careful:
This was my opinion in 1970 when I wrote the first version of this essay. Times have changed. Considering some tendencies in US education ('politically correct', academic menus, etc.), in philosophy (postmodernism) and in the world at large I think that reason should now be given greater weight not because it is and always was fundamental but because it seems to be needed, in circumstances that occur rather frequently today (but may disappear tomorrow), it create a more humane approach.
October 15, 2022
I really wanted to like this book. The second of its two stars was achieved by the thesis statement and high-level arguments of the book being really interesting. However it ultimately proved to be a case of drowning in details, telling stories of they-said-they-said. I have no problems with that, but it's got to be interesting and I just can't find philosophy of science interesting. It makes me snooze in the same way that analytical philosophy does, even in this book which is about as far from the analytical approach as you can get. I couldn't make it to the end.
The thesis is this: the correct epistemological position to take is epistemological anarchism, meaning taking an 'anything goes' approach when choosing sources of truth to investigate. This is extreme opposition to logical positivist scientism, a prevalent stance in the western world which claims that empiricism through science is the only reliable way to establish knowledge (and everything not established through science, we'll work it out eventually in a scientific way).
Science often puts itself forward as a unified body of knowledge which is consistent with itself in its various areas. However Paul Feyerabend writes that this is rarely the case, unity in science is a myth. This is because over various different fields, there is no consistent way to carry out the kinds of science experiments many of us learn in school; repeatable, controlled or hypothesis disproving. Many fields just aren't practically able to do it. So then how can we reconcile theories that were proven in vastly different ways?
Another major point is how science makes lots of rules, but then often has to break them to make any meaningful changes to existing theories. If changing a theory makes it more accurate in the long-run, then you would hope that science accommodates this. But looking through history, most of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in history were only made possible by giving the finger to the established rules at the time. So why even have rules?
Perhaps a bizarre point: to enhance a theory's precision, accuracy or criticality, you have to enhance knowledge in all other competing theories no matter what method they are established with. With competing theories at the same level of complexity as the one you are defending, how can it be developed further?
Lastly, of the points I picked up, Feyerabend writes that science is shaped by history and politics whether we want to be or not. This was strongly denied by Kant and Descartes, saying that it's possible to bracket all of history and politics while carrying out scientific enquiry. However Feyerabend sees their effects to each individual as deterministic in all the thinking that individual does, including the desire to 'bracket out' history and politics.
Overall a really interesting thesis that captivated me and makes me second guess logical positivism even stronger. What I hope to do going forward is to see truth as something viewed under a lens. Different lenses produce different truths and what really matters in the end is how critical or 'meaningful' the knowledge through that lens is in our lives. Just accuracy is not enough, you also need to know where to aim.
The rest of the book however... 😴
The thesis is this: the correct epistemological position to take is epistemological anarchism, meaning taking an 'anything goes' approach when choosing sources of truth to investigate. This is extreme opposition to logical positivist scientism, a prevalent stance in the western world which claims that empiricism through science is the only reliable way to establish knowledge (and everything not established through science, we'll work it out eventually in a scientific way).
Science often puts itself forward as a unified body of knowledge which is consistent with itself in its various areas. However Paul Feyerabend writes that this is rarely the case, unity in science is a myth. This is because over various different fields, there is no consistent way to carry out the kinds of science experiments many of us learn in school; repeatable, controlled or hypothesis disproving. Many fields just aren't practically able to do it. So then how can we reconcile theories that were proven in vastly different ways?
Another major point is how science makes lots of rules, but then often has to break them to make any meaningful changes to existing theories. If changing a theory makes it more accurate in the long-run, then you would hope that science accommodates this. But looking through history, most of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in history were only made possible by giving the finger to the established rules at the time. So why even have rules?
Perhaps a bizarre point: to enhance a theory's precision, accuracy or criticality, you have to enhance knowledge in all other competing theories no matter what method they are established with. With competing theories at the same level of complexity as the one you are defending, how can it be developed further?
Lastly, of the points I picked up, Feyerabend writes that science is shaped by history and politics whether we want to be or not. This was strongly denied by Kant and Descartes, saying that it's possible to bracket all of history and politics while carrying out scientific enquiry. However Feyerabend sees their effects to each individual as deterministic in all the thinking that individual does, including the desire to 'bracket out' history and politics.
Overall a really interesting thesis that captivated me and makes me second guess logical positivism even stronger. What I hope to do going forward is to see truth as something viewed under a lens. Different lenses produce different truths and what really matters in the end is how critical or 'meaningful' the knowledge through that lens is in our lives. Just accuracy is not enough, you also need to know where to aim.
The rest of the book however... 😴
May 6, 2017
This was a great book that got me thinking about a lot of things. My best reading experiences are ones that give me the pleasure of well presented new ideas when I am reading, get me thinking about my own ideas in the subject area of the book and in related fields, stimulate further areas of reading and inquiry and then linger with me after I finish reading them. It's too soon after completing this book to know about the lingering part, but it passed all of the other tests.
I have read and enjoyed Popper and Kuhn, so I was worried that I would get upset at Feyerabend for being anti-Popper. He is a little disrepectful, but I think upon reflection that his criticisms of Popper are justified. I still think that Popper has a lot of valid points, but Feyerabend puts him in the context of a bigger universe where Popper becomes one of many ways of looking at the world of science.
I love how Feyerabend shows that there are different valid approaches for doing great science and, in general, for solving problems and advancing knowledge. He shows how it can be productive to start from theories instead of facts and to sometimes pick theories that seem improbable and that contradict observations and known facts. He shows how facts and their interpretation are in the eyes of the observer, and how scientists only see (sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously) the facts that fit their models. And he shows how great scientists may use non-rational techniques of argument and persuasion to effectively advocate for their positions in ways that are more familiar in lawyers and politicians than in scientists. He certainly has the courage of his convictions in taking his positions to their logical extremes, arguing that rationality is just one way of looking at the world, which is not necessarily the best way, and that it may sometimes be in the best interests of human society and the advancement of knowledge to have politicians interfere with science. The problem I see here is that tossing out rationality or allowing political interference may have good results in a few situations, but those situations are rare. I don't want to be overly paternalistic, but I am concerned that opening the door to thinking in these ways is more likely to be damaging than productive. But this is a very small bone to pick with a book that in almost every respect smart, original and stimulating.
I have read and enjoyed Popper and Kuhn, so I was worried that I would get upset at Feyerabend for being anti-Popper. He is a little disrepectful, but I think upon reflection that his criticisms of Popper are justified. I still think that Popper has a lot of valid points, but Feyerabend puts him in the context of a bigger universe where Popper becomes one of many ways of looking at the world of science.
I love how Feyerabend shows that there are different valid approaches for doing great science and, in general, for solving problems and advancing knowledge. He shows how it can be productive to start from theories instead of facts and to sometimes pick theories that seem improbable and that contradict observations and known facts. He shows how facts and their interpretation are in the eyes of the observer, and how scientists only see (sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously) the facts that fit their models. And he shows how great scientists may use non-rational techniques of argument and persuasion to effectively advocate for their positions in ways that are more familiar in lawyers and politicians than in scientists. He certainly has the courage of his convictions in taking his positions to their logical extremes, arguing that rationality is just one way of looking at the world, which is not necessarily the best way, and that it may sometimes be in the best interests of human society and the advancement of knowledge to have politicians interfere with science. The problem I see here is that tossing out rationality or allowing political interference may have good results in a few situations, but those situations are rare. I don't want to be overly paternalistic, but I am concerned that opening the door to thinking in these ways is more likely to be damaging than productive. But this is a very small bone to pick with a book that in almost every respect smart, original and stimulating.
April 30, 2020
Sin duda uno de mis libros favoritos de filosofía. Creo que Feyerabend es capaz de desmontar de manera muy clara (aunque con ejemplos HORRIBLEMENTE largos) una concepción que actualmente sigue en el imaginario común y demostrar que el método científico no es omnipotente y, de hecho, en las revoluciones científicas ha tenido menos peso del que parece.
No estoy segura de estar de acuerdo con el anarquismo epistemológico, porque creo que el método, aunque es limitado y no es exactamente el ideal de rigor y verdad que a veces nos han vendido, sigue siendo una característica de la ciencia que creo que le aporta seguridad y además, es uno de los motivos por el que confiamos y vamos a seguir confiando en la ciencia. Lo que sí hay que hacer es desmontar el mito de la ciencia y darnos cuenta de que, como todo ámbito de conocimiento, es limitado y puede beber de otras fuentes (pero siempre pasando por unos mínimos de demostración y no, Feyerabend, no creo que se pueda equiparar la magia a la ciencia. No por nada, sino porque obviamente la ciencia tiene más éxito predictivo)
No estoy segura de estar de acuerdo con el anarquismo epistemológico, porque creo que el método, aunque es limitado y no es exactamente el ideal de rigor y verdad que a veces nos han vendido, sigue siendo una característica de la ciencia que creo que le aporta seguridad y además, es uno de los motivos por el que confiamos y vamos a seguir confiando en la ciencia. Lo que sí hay que hacer es desmontar el mito de la ciencia y darnos cuenta de que, como todo ámbito de conocimiento, es limitado y puede beber de otras fuentes (pero siempre pasando por unos mínimos de demostración y no, Feyerabend, no creo que se pueda equiparar la magia a la ciencia. No por nada, sino porque obviamente la ciencia tiene más éxito predictivo)
February 23, 2021
What a trip
April 12, 2016
After reading Kuhn and Lakatos, Feyerabend comes with a radical new approach for descriptive and prescriptive attributes of science. Instead of keeping science confined in its own little community Feyerabend breaks boundaries and intertwines disciplines. He stretches science to include political messages and is bountiful with scientific examples (though may be dreary sometimes.)
Although I do not agree with all that he says, in some parts he is too radical for me, and I am not on-board for his view of incommensurability, it was still a fascinating, eye-opening read.
Although I do not agree with all that he says, in some parts he is too radical for me, and I am not on-board for his view of incommensurability, it was still a fascinating, eye-opening read.
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