Everything about Paul Feyerabend totally explained
Paul Karl Feyerabend (
January 13,
1924 –
February 11,
1994) 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, 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.
Biography
Early life
Paul Feyerabend was born in 1924 in
Vienna, where he attended primary school and high school. In this period he got into the habit of reading a lot, developed an interest in theatre, and started singing lessons. When he graduated from high school in April 1942, he was drafted into the German
Arbeitsdienst. After basic training in
Pirmasens,
Germany, he was assigned to a unit in Quelern en Bas, near
Brest (
France). Feyerabend described the work he did during that period as monotonous: "we moved around in the countryside, dug ditches, and filled them up again." After a short leave, he joined the army and volunteered for officer school. In his
autobiography, he wrote that he hoped the war would be over by the time he'd finished his education as an officer. This turned out not to be the case. From December 1943 on, he served as an officer on the northern part of the
Eastern Front, was decorated with an
Iron cross, and attained the rank of
lieutenant. After the German army started its retreat from the advancing
Red army, Feyerabend was hit by three bullets while directing traffic. It turned out that one of the bullets had hit him in the spine. As a consequence of this, he needed to walk with a stick for the rest of his life and frequently experienced severe pains. He spent the rest of the war recovering from his injuries.
Post–WWII and university
When the war was over, Feyerabend first got a temporary job in
Apolda where he wrote pieces for the theatre. After that, he took various classes at the
Weimar Academy, and returned to
Vienna to study
History and
Sociology. He became dissatisfied, however, and soon transferred to
Physics, where he met
Felix Ehrenhaft, a physicist whose experiments would influence his later views on the nature of science. Feyerabend changed the subject of his study to
philosophy and submitted his final thesis on observation sentences. In his autobiography, he described his philosophical views during this time as "staunchly empiricist". In 1948 he visited the first meeting of the international summer seminar of the
Austrian College Society in
Alpbach. This was the place where Feyerabend first met
Karl Popper, who had a "positive" (early Popper), as well as "negative" (later Popper) impact on him. In 1951, Feyerabend was granted a
British Council scholarship to study under
Wittgenstein. However, Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend moved to England. Feyerabend then chose Popper as his supervisor instead, and went to study at the
London School of Economics in 1952. In his autobiography, Feyerabend explains that during this time, he was influenced by Popper: "I had fallen for [Popper'sideas]". After that, Feyerabend returned to Vienna and was involved in various projects; a translation of Karl Popper's
Open Society and its Enemies, a report on the development of the humanities in
Austria, and several articles for an encyclopedia.
Academia
In 1955, Feyerabend received his first academic appointment at the
University of Bristol,
England, where he gave lectures about the
Philosophy of science. Later in his life he worked as a professor (or equivalent) at
Berkeley,
Auckland,
Sussex,
Yale,
London and
Berlin. During this time, he developed a critical view of science, which he later described as '
anarchistic' or '
dadaistic' to illustrate his rejection of the dogmatic use of rules, a position incompatible with the contemporary rationalistic culture in the philosophy of science. At the
London School of Economics, Feyerabend met a colleague of K.R. Popper,
Imre Lakatos with whom he planned to write a dialogue volume in which Lakatos would defend a rationalist view of science and Feyerabend would attack it. This planned joint publication was put to an end by Lakatos's sudden death in 1974.
Against Method became a famous criticism of current philosophical views of science and provoked many reactions. There is passion and energy in his writings unequalled by other philosophers of science, something which, in his autobiography, he reveals came at great cost to himself:
UC Berkeley in
California in 1958 and became a US citizen. Following (visiting) professorships (or their equivalent) at
London,
Berlin, and
Yale, he taught at the
University of Auckland,
New Zealand in 1972 and 1974, always returning to
California. He later enjoyed alternating between posts at
ETH Zurich and Berkeley through the 1980s but left Berkeley for good in October of 1989, first to
Italy, then finally to Zurich. After his retirement in 1991, Feyerabend continued to publish frequent papers and worked on his autobiography. After a short period of suffering from a
brain tumor, he died in 1994 at the Genolier Clinic, overlooking Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Thought
Philosophy of science
Nature of scientific method
In his books
Against Method and
Science in a Free Society Feyerabend defended the idea that there are no
methodological rules which are always used by scientists. He objected to any single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would limit the activities of scientists, and hence restrict
scientific progress. In his view, science would benefit most from a "dose" of theoretical
anarchism. He also thought that theoretical anarchism was desirable because it was more
humanitarian than other systems of organization, by not imposing rigid rules on scientists.
For is it not possible that science as we know it today, or a 'search for the truth' in the style of traditional philosophy, will create a monster? Is it not possible that an objective approach that frowns upon personal connections between the entities examined will harm people, turn them into miserable, unfriendly, self-righteous mechanisms without charm or humour? "Is it not possible," asks [[SørenKierkegaard |
Feyerabend's position is generally seen as radical in the philosophy of science, because it implies that philosophy can neither succeed in providing a general description of science, nor in devising a method for differentiating products of science from non-scientific entities like myths. It also implies that philosophical guidelines should be ignored by scientists, if they're to aim for progress.
To support his position that methodological rules generally don't contribute to scientific success, Feyerabend provides counterexamples to the claim that (good) science operates according to a certain fixed method. He took some examples of episodes in science that are generally regarded as indisputable instances of progress (for example the
Copernican revolution), and showed that all common prescriptive rules of science are violated in such circumstances. Moreover, he claimed that applying such rules in these historical situations would actually have prevented scientific revolution.
One of the criteria for evaluating scientific theories that Feyerabend attacks is the
consistency criterion. He points out that to insist that new theories be consistent with old theories gives an unreasonable advantage to the older theory. He makes the logical point that being compatible with a defunct older theory doesn't increase the validity or truth of a new theory over an alternative covering the same content. That is, if one had to choose between two theories of equal explanatory power, to choose the one that's compatible with an older, falsified theory is to make an
aesthetic, rather than a rational choice. The familiarity of such a theory might also make it more appealing to scientists, since they won't have to disregard as many cherished prejudices. Hence, that theory can be said to have "an unfair advantage".
Feyerabend was also critical of
falsificationism. He argued that no interesting theory is ever consistent with
all the relevant facts. This would rule out using a naïve falsificationist rule which says that scientific theories should be rejected if they don't agree with known facts. Feyerabend uses several examples, but '
renormalization' in
quantum mechanics provides an example of his intentionally provocative style: "This procedure consists in crossing out the results of certain calculations and replacing them by a description of what is actually observed. Thus one admits, implicitly, that the theory is in trouble while formulating it in a manner suggesting that a new principle has been discovered" (AM p. 61). Such jokes are not intended as a criticism of the practice of scientists. Feyerabend isn't advocating that scientists don't make use of renormalization or other
ad hoc methods. Instead, he's arguing that such methods are essential to the progress of science for several reasons. One of these reasons is that progress in science is uneven. For instance, in the time of
Galileo, optical theory couldn't account for phenomena that were observed by means of telescopes. So, astronomers who used telescopic observation had to use 'ad hoc' rules until they could justify their assumptions by means of optical theory.
Feyerabend was critical of any guideline that aimed to judge the quality of scientific theories by comparing them to known facts. He thought that previous theory might influence natural interpretations of observed phenomena. Scientists necessarily make implicit assumptions when comparing scientific theories to facts that they observe. Such assumptions need to be changed in order to make the new theory compatible with observations. The main example of the influence of natural interpretations that Feyerabend provided was the
tower argument. The tower argument was one of the main objections against the theory of a moving earth. Aristotelians assumed that the fact that a stone which is dropped from a tower lands directly beneath it shows that the earth is stationary. They thought that, if the earth moved while the stone was falling, the stone would have been 'left behind'. Objects would fall diagonally instead of vertically. Since this doesn't happen, Aristotelians thought that it was evident that the earth didn't move. If one uses ancient theories of impulse and relative motion, the Copernican theory indeed appears to be falsified by the fact that objects fall vertically on earth. This observation required a new interpretation to make it compatible with Copernican theory. Galileo was able to make such a change about the nature of impulse and relative motion. Before such theories were articulated, Galileo had to make use of 'ad hoc' methods and proceed counter-inductively. So, 'ad hoc' hypotheses actually have a positive function: they temporarily make a new theory compatible with facts until the theory to be defended can be supported by other theories.
Feyerabend commented on the
Galileo affair as follows:
» "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism."
Together these remarks sanction the introduction of theories that are inconsistent with well-established facts. Furthermore, a pluralistic methodology that involves making comparisons between any theories at all forces defendants to improve the articulation of each theory. In this way, scientific
pluralism improves the critical power of science.
According to Feyerabend, new theories came to be accepted not because of their accord with
scientific method, but because their supporters made use of any trick – rational, rhetorical or ribald – in order to advance their cause. Without a fixed ideology, or the introduction of religious tendencies, the only approach which doesn't inhibit progress (using whichever definition one sees fit) is "anything goes": "'anything goes' isn't a 'principle' I hold... but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history." (Feyerabend, 1975).
Feyerabend considered the possibility of
incommensurability, but he was hesitant in his application of the concept. He wrote that "it is hardly ever possible to give an explicit definition of [incommensurability]" (AM, p.225), because it involves covert classifications and major conceptual changes. He also was critical of attempts to capture incommensurability in a logical framework, since he thought of incommensurability as a phenomenon outside the domain of logic. In the second appendix of
Against Method (p. 114), Feyerabend states, "I never said... that
any two rival theories are incommensurable... What I
did say was that
certain rival theories, so-called 'universal' theories, or 'non-instantial' theories,
if interpreted in a certain way, couldn't be compared easily." Incommensurability didn't concern Feyerabend greatly, because he believed that even when theories
are commensurable (for example can be compared), the outcome of the comparison shouldn't necessarily rule out either theory. To rephrase: when theories are incommensurable, they can't rule each other out, and when theories are commensurable, they can't rule each other out. Assessments of (in)commensurability, therefore, don't have much effect in Feyerabend's system, and can be more or less passed over in silence.
In
Against Method Feyerabend claimed that
Imre Lakatos' philosophy of research programmes is actually 'anarchism in disguise', because it doesn't issue orders to scientists. Feyerabend playfully dedicated
Against Method to "Imre Lakatos: Friend, and fellow-anarchist". One interpretation is that Lakatos' philosophy of mathematics and science was based on creative transformations of Hegelian historiographic ideas, many associated with Lakatos' teacher in Hungary
Georg Lukacs.
Role of science in society
Feyerabend described science as being essentially anarchistic, obsessed with its own mythology, and as making claims to truth well beyond its actual capacity. He was especially indignant about the condescending attitudes of many scientists towards alternative traditions. For example, he thought that negative opinions about
astrology and the effectivity of rain dances were not justified by scientific research, and dismissed the predominantly negative attitudes of scientists towards such phenomena as elitist or racist. In his opinion, science has become a repressing ideology, even though it arguably started as a liberating movement. Feyerabend thought that a pluralistic society should be protected from being influenced too much by science, just as it's protected from other ideologies.
Starting from the assumption that an historical universal scientific method doesn't exist, Feyerabend argued that science doesn't deserve its privileged status in western society. Since scientific points of view don't arise from using a universal method which guarantees high quality conclusions, he thought that there's no justification for valuing scientific claims over claims by other ideologies like religions. Feyerabend also argued that scientific accomplishments such as the moon landings are no compelling reason to give science a special status. In his opinion, it isn't fair to use scientific assumptions about which problems are worth solving in order to judge the merit of other ideologies. Additionally, success by scientists has traditionally involved non-scientific elements, such as inspiration from mythical or religious sources.
Based on these arguments, Feyerabend defended the idea that science should be separated from the state in the same way that
religion and state are separated in a modern secular society. He envisioned a 'free society' in which 'all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centres of power'. For example, parents should be able to determine the ideological context of their children's education, instead of having limited options because of scientific standards. According to Feyerabend, science should also be subjected to democratic control: not only should the subjects that are investigated by scientists be determined by popular election, scientific assumptions and conclusions should also be supervised by committees of lay people. He thought that citizens should use their own principles when making decisions about these matters. In his opinion, the idea that decisions should be 'rationalistic' is elitist, since this assumes that philosophers or scientists are in a position to determine the criteria by which people in general should make their decisions.
Philosophy of Mind
Eliminative materialism and the mind-body problem
Along with a number of mid-20th century philosophers (most notably,
Wilfred Sellars,
W.V.O. Quine, and
Richard Rorty), Feyerabend was influential in the development of
eliminative materialism, a radical position in the
philosophy of mind that holds that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind (
folk psychology) is false. It is succintly described by a modern proponent, Paul Churchland, as follows: "Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience."
In three short papers published in the early sixties, Feyerabend sought to defend
materialism against the supposition that the mind can't be a physical thing. Feyerabend suggested that our commonsense understanding of the mind was incommensurable with the (materialistic) scientific view, but that nevertheless we ought to prefer the materialistic one on general methodological grounds.
This view of the mind/body problem is widely considered one of Feyerabend's most important legacies. Even though Feyerabend himself seems to have given it up in the late 1970s, it was taken up by
Richard Rorty and, more recently, by
Patricia Churchland and
Paul Churchland. In fact, as Keeley observes, "PMC [PaulChurchland] has spent much of his career carrying the Feyerabend mantle forward" (p. 13).
Criticism
Feyerabend`s ideas have been subjected to criticism from
philosophers of science.
Alan Sokal and
Jean Bricmont criticized him in their book
Fashionable Nonsense for his belief that science is of little use to society, and that Feyerabend had virtually no understanding of how inductive science actually operates. Other
analytic philosophers criticize Feyerabend's ideas as they believe that his ideas have contributed to the
Postmodern criticism of science.
Horace Romano Harré described Feyerabend's propositions as "simply fallacious".
The Australian philosopher
David Stove claimed that Feyerabend was responsible for the "sabotaging of logical expressions" (
Popper and After, 1982). This was the practise of robbing logical statements of their logical force by placing them in epistemic contexts; for example, instead of saying "P is a proof for Q" one would say "It is generally believed by scientists that P is a proof for Q". This produces what Stove calls a "ghost logical statement": it gives the impression that serious statements of logic are being made when they're not - all that's really being made are sociological or historical claims which are immune to criticism on logical grounds.
Other works
Some of Feyerabend's work concerns the way in which people's perception of reality is influenced by various rules. In his last book, unfinished when he died, he talks of how our sense of reality is shaped and limited.
Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being bemoans the propensity we've of institutionalizing these limitations.
Further Information
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