His insistence that there is no scientific method is pro-science. Science’s only method is “opportunism,” he said. “You need a toolbox full of different kinds of tools. Not only a hammer and pins and nothing else." This is what he meant by his much-maligned phrase "anything goes" (and not, as is commonly thought, that one scientific theory is as good as any other). Restricting science to a particular methodology--such as Popper's falsification scheme or Kuhn's “normal science”--would destroy it.
Well, it's true that the cliched "scientific method" taught in high schools is a gross oversimplification, and many discoveries are made by accident rather than deliberately trying to test a clearly defined hypothesis. But in the 1980s-1990s "Science Wars", there was a movement by postmodernists to try to claim that science is just an ideology no better than religion or magic. This movement liked to quote Feyerabend and Kuhn regularly. That's why many working scientists don't really have warm feelings towards philosophers of science in general.
Considering the replication crises and the utter failure of, for example, supersymmetry in theoretical high energy physics, maybe the criticism was warranted. Ignoring the ideological forces that drive science as it actually exists doesn't make them go away.
Supersymmetry was a theory that turned out not to be true. Are scientists not allowed to offer hypotheses that turn out not to be true? That's a job for oracles, not people.
It's not a paranoid fantasy, when you look at the (very real) religious education wars that were being waged in the American South.
The meme of "Science is no better then religion or magic" is why schools mandated equal time into teaching evolution, and particular flavours of evangelical creationism.
I'd recommend Samir Okasha's "Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction" (one of those Oxford University Press "Very short introduction" books that are only around 100 pages) as he has a short section on the Science Wars, and then if you are interested in more, James Robert Brown's "Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars". Both Okasha and Brown are philosophers of science themselves, and do cover both sides, but they are are scientific realists in that they believe that scientific models do reflect to some degree the reality of the universe.
You might be interested in Why Trust Science? by Naomi Oreskes, who tries to answer a related question: how do we do science in a 'post-truth' period, where the tactics of postmodern critique are being taken up by climate change deniers, tobacco companies, etc?
I have only read the beginning, but chapter one gives a very good overview of the history of critique that got us to this place. Oreskes suggests that it is possible to hold a critical, social constructivist position while also demanding a good scientific practice that will produce trustworthy knowledge.
How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity and historical coincidence, determine how people know and what they know. This text compares two epistemic cultures, those in high energy physics and molecular biology.
Many working scientists are also not very well versed in social sciences and humanities and tend to just get angry when anything outside of their fields get mentioned.
My experience is precisely the reverse. Working scientists understand both the social sciences and humanities as well as science and math. On the other hand, people outside the sciences have very little understanding of science and math. And they are often embarrassed by their lack of knowledge and sometimes respond in anger.
Perhaps worth noting that Kuhn wasn't attempting to lay out a methodology - he wasn't saying "this is how you should do science". Rather, he was a historian making generalizations about how different sciences developed.
It really is unfair to lump Kuhn in with Feyerabend. He was trying to document the historical process of scientific revolutions versus normal science. He was always resisted the broader inferences people have tried to draw from his work (something Horgan complains about in the article).
Feyerabend's work reminds me a bit of Alvin Plantinga's.
As a young objectivist at university, I had the idealistic idea that if two people could use logic and science to determine certain facts, they could settle any disagreement, even moral ones.
However, science is built upon certain assumed first principles, like causation and other minds sharing your reality. Plantinga argued that one could start with additional first principles (he called "basic beliefs"), in particular, belief in God.
In this way, two people might disagree without having any way to resolve disagreements, because they don't share the same first principles.
Science does not have primacy here. It is just one of several ways to arrive at knowledge.
Consensus is possible, provided that the interlocutor have a shared goal and maximize for information exchange.
Otherwise, the whole notion of discussing one’s “beliefs“ is philosophical (non-empirical) nonsense. If I shut my mouth there is no way to empirically determine whether “I believe in God or not”.
I don’t have beliefs - I have methods of various degrees of effectiveness that get me what I want. To those ends knowledge is only instrumental. Which makes me an unapologetic opportunist/pragmatist/instrumentalist.
To you it may be “knowledge” - that Earth is round, to me it is inconsequential and immaterial even if I “believed“ (whatever that means) Earth was triangular.
> I don’t have beliefs - I have methods of various degrees of effectiveness that get me what I want.
It is a self-contradictory claim. You believe in your methods. You believe that your vision works by means of your methods, but how do you know this? Take a look at a your hand, all your mind get from it is a bunch of "pixels" from your retina, and by some means your mind construct a mental representation named "hand". How your mind had learnt to do it? Did it use bayesian learning or maybe it used some other mistaken method and your vision fools you? Maybe in the basis of your bayesianism lays totally non-bayesian vision? Maybe information about reality you have is not facts?
You fool yourself believing that you use bayesian reasoning. Mostly your mind thinks for yourself by itself, all you can do is to get into your consiousness some small part of reasoning and to check it with bayes. No one proved that it is possible to build mind based on the bayesianism. Our computational resources are weak for this. You cannot be a bayesian mind while you have no ability to reflect all the reasoning of your mind, starting with individual "pixels" from your retina as informational input and ending with claims like "there is no God".
So you are believing that you are bayesian mind, and therefore Aumann's theorem is applicable to you.
That's generally how all the Philosophy language-games work.
You claim that I've contradicted myself and then you go onto re-describe my argument in your vocabulary. Ex falso sequitur quodlibet...
You are imposing your language/vocabulary onto me, rather than adopting mine, while failing to realise that language itself is just another instrument. I use it for communication.
Not only are you imposing your language onto me, you are trying to impose your logic onto me also - failing to realise that logic is also just an instrument.
And in so far as you seem to care about contradictions - your dogma/religion is the 'Law' of non-contradiction. It's a false God, a man-made authority. Trivially side-stepped with either Dialetheism or Paraconsistent logic.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes. --Walt Whitman
Bayesianism, Intuitioinism, Structuralism, Counter-factualism, Reflection, Introspection, Self-reference, methodism, particularism (obviously the list is incomplete) are just some of the tools (formal languages/models - used for communicating with other humans, not to be mistaken for ontologies) in my toolbox. How and when I might use any particular instrument is context-dependent and is largely up to me. It's purposeful and intentional.
The rest of the time my mind does whatever it does all by itself - I can't tell you what the autopilot 'believes'.
And I am not here to be persuaded (by you or anybody) that your way is better than my way - I can change my mind all by myself if you give me the relevant information. That's how I use introspection/reflection.
> You are imposing your language/vocabulary onto me, rather than adopting mine, while failing to realise that language itself is just another instrument. I use it for communication.
You mentioned Aumann's theorem, so it seemed for me that you are bayesian thinker.
> Bayesianism, Intuitioinism, counter-factualism, methodism, particularism (obviously the list is incomlete) are just some of the tools in my toolbox. How and when I might use any particular instrument is up to me.
No, there comes another question: how you might claim that Aumann's theorem is applicable to you, if you are not a strictly bayesian? Maybe logic is also just a one tool of many, and can be rejected when you feel like that? Have you formal rules to judge when some or other tool might be used or rejected? If so, do you believe in this rules to work?
All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.
>You mentioned Aumann's theorem, so it seemed for me that you are bayesian thinker.
As with all things in Logic/Formal languages - the conclusions are true IF you accept the axioms. The CHOICE to accept (or reject) the axioms (read: play the game according its set of normative rules) is up to you. It's cooperative game theory.
Aumann's theorem applies to me in as much as my goal in any conversation/interaction is to optimise for consensus-building - to this end, I will happily abandon my language and adopt my interlocutors' (if they are not comfortable doing so). If my interlocutors understand how 'the game' works and are themselves comfortable using language effectively/metaphorically/constructively/adaptively in real-time then there's no need for compromise on my part.
It seems to me that you are playing a non-cooperative game. You are trying to 'be right. That signals to me that you aren't even playing by the same rules as me.
So if you dislike the word 'methods' and you would much prefer me to use the word 'beliefs' when talking to you - I will happily do that (after I've made my point).
>All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.
Then it's false. So what? You seem like you belong to the Church of Truth also...
All models are wrong, but some are useful --George Box
Since you are the one making positive claims about 'my beliefs', then (by the rules I am guessing you subscribe to, but I don't) the burden of proof is on you?
> Aumann's theorem applies to me in as much as my goal in any conversation/interaction is to optimise for consensus-building
But Aumann's theorem is true for rationalists only. I checked wikipedia artice, and seems that it is not just about bayesian rationality as I thought, it is about any rationality. Why do you think, that you are rational agent? All the psychology shows that people are irrational beings.
> It seems to me that you are playing a non-cooperative game.> That signals to me that you aren't even playing by the same rules as me.
Maybe I am. Why should I? What could I gain from being cooperative in this particular case? What could I gain from following your rules?
> You are trying to 'be right.
No, I'm trying to make a point. I'm not interested in the search for consensus. I need no consensus. I made a point. You have a choice to understand it or to not understand. You have a choice to agree or to disagree. I'm interested in your understanding, but I'm not interested in your agreement. Your disagreement is much more fun, it could be much more educational for me. It is more educational for you also, though it is more about your gain, then mine. An agreement is boring and useless.
> So if you dislike the word 'methods'
No, it is misunderstanding. I'm trying to say, that methods are also beliefs, or they based on beliefs.
> Then it's false. So what? You seem like you belong to the Church of Truth also...
> All models are wrong, but some are useful --George Box
Of course all models are wrong, but some are useful. Moreover, our mind can work only with models. Logic is one of such a models, it can simplify a lot of cases by reducing them into true/false statements. Either you have beliefs or you have not. Isn't it? Or your point that it is not so simple and dichotomy cannot capture all relevant properties of the problem? Could you propose some other model which we can use to speak about your beliefs that you take as granted and do not question?
> Since you are the one making positive claims about 'my beliefs', then (by the rules I am guessing you subscribe to, but I don't) the burden of proof is on you?
I cannot prove that, because to prove I need to find an example of your belief. It is a hard work by itself and it is more so, because English is not my native language. But I can give you tools to find your beliefs which you had not questioned yet. Dig your methods, they are themselves based on assumptions.
If a field of knowledge is associated with a person or group of persons ("Frankfurter Schule", "Wiener Kreis"), I am a priori sceptical. Genuine scientific knowledge exists for itself and does not require authority and sectarian admiration. Philosophy can produce more useful things (e.g. knowledge representation, ontologies) than subjective individual opinions.
Expressing opinions does not create new, reliable scientific knowledge. Instead scientists observe, make claims, deduce the effects of their claims, and then conduct experiments suited to possibly observe these effects. So it's not just claiming. And the laws of physics exist by themselves, even when there is no human society to discover and know them.
It's a different story how knowledge is passed on or accepted by society.
We know that the proof of authority is the weakest and most unreliable type of evidence. But still the proof of authority dominates in practical everyday life. We believe things because our parents or teachers tell us, even if we had the possibility to check them ourselves from a scientific point of view. But parents and teachers are not the source of knowledge, they are only transmitters.
In the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften", and similar disciplines) the situation is different. Knowledge is rather believable and not falsifiable, but only accepted on the authority of the person who uttered the sentence.
>In the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften", and similar disciplines) the situation is different. Knowledge is rather believable and not falsifiable, but only accepted on the authority of the person who uttered the sentence.
I'm curious if you have any evidence that this is a general trend. Your original comment is also wrong; the "Frankfurt School", one of your examples, does not ascribe particular authority to its members by virtue of being part of the "school"[1] - rather, it denotes a particular tradition, very similar to the way we use the term "school" in music. A school of thought[0] specifically denotes a commitment to a particular method or set of principles, not a commitment to certain personages. Although a school may take after one person, it's not because of the person but because of the content of their thought.
Besides, the Frankfurt School never claimed to be carrying out science. Other schools were, for instance, committed to certain ideas of science. These philosophical schools are ontologically prior to science.
[1] Habermas is a "member" of the Frankfurt School of thought, yet he is criticized by those inside and outside the school. This, at least, shows that a school of thought is not a dogmatic adherence to a person or their ideas.
>Agree, but this does not improve the quality of the sentences uttered by the members of this "school"
I agree, and nobody has claimed otherwise. Ideas that come from a school are not necessarily more or less valid than any others. There are some schools of thought I agree with, and others I disagree with, and I think that's the same for many lay people like me and many philosophers too.
>Well, in German language there is the word "Geisteswissenschaft" which includes philosophy
I think it can be argued that Marx was engaged in Wissenschaft (Patrick Murray argues this, for example), but I don't know if the same could be said about the Frankfurt School, at lesat not on the whole.
By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title. In principle, philosophers (apart from having to compete for an audience like writers) have a pretty simple life. They can simply claim something without ever providing any proof. And with a bit of luck and charisma, they find disciples who continue to represent their doctrine and help their master to gain social prestige. And as you correctly say: this concept predates science and enlightenment.
My original statement was that I am skeptical of knowledge whose origins are a specific person or group of persons ("schools"). I hope to have clarified my point after this excursion. In the case of traditional philosophy of science there is even a contradiction in terms: the statements are dogmas that defy falsification. So according to the own criteria of the philosophy of science of that time they do not differ from religion.
>By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title.
Scientists also write; writing isn't the point, the point is logically consistent arguments (or arguments for a particular logical system), which philosophers attempt to make. "Mathematician", "programmer", "logician" and in many cases "engineer" are also self-appointed titles, yet in both cases we must say that a mathematician and engineer's work could reasonably be said to be confined to writing and designing. The fact of the matter is that logical claims do not require "proof", but the relevance of theories to the world as observed by science does require support from the scientific method. This is why philosophers strive for their systems to be consistent with the current state of science (whether physics, biology or sociology, etc.)
>And as you correctly say: this concept predates science and enlightenment.
It not only predates, it is ontologically prior, meaning that for science to be carried out, there must be a justified philosophy of science for it to have any basis. For instance, we might ask, "why falsification?" - a question that, if unanswered, renders science without a logical basis. You may reply that science is useful whether or not we have a logical basis, but usefulness in turn requires some justification; after all, many things are useful but we do not carry them out for other reasons.
>In the case of traditional philosophy of science there is even a contradiction in terms: the statements are dogmas that defy falsification
This is not a contradiction in terms, since most philosophers of science are not pure falsificationists. Falsification is not the only way to gain knowledge generally (logical arguments and mathematics are unfalsifiable; even the statement "science must be falsifiable" is unfalsifiable), but after Popper there are very few pure falsificationists in the philosophy of science, for various good reasons[0].
>So according to the own criteria of the philosophy of science of that time they do not differ from religion.
Philosophy of science is very much the equivalent of atheism, or agnosticism when we're talking about dogmas such as falsificationism or positivism or any other popular way of doing science that is unjustified.
I can't really add more than I already said. I assume that you know the difference between physicists, mathematicians and engineers or how these titles are protected in Germany, for example, and that there is no need to discuss this. I have already referred (see links above) to the direction in which, in my view, the philosophy of science should usefully develop. And regardless how you call it: hypothesis, prediction and experiment are still the essential steps of todays generally accepted scientific method.
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. [...] Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
> If you'd read this stuff, you'd know that Critical Theory is the continuation of Marx's ideas.
Some of it is, yes. But what's wrong with Marx? His main work, Das Kapital, was actually an extremely thorough and sober critique of capitalist systems.
As with all mathematics, this is acceptable because it's named after the wrong person; in this case, the foundational work named after Newton was first exhibited by Kepler. I do sometimes hear the phrase "Keplerian element" when talking about classical orbits, named after Kepler and not Galileo.
Interesting point, but not actually a rebuttal of my statement. Another example: von Neumann Architecture was not invented by von Neumann; he was just the guy who illegally published the concept under his name without naming the real authors. So again: attributing knowledge to persons does not really help.
Newtonian physics is a great example, because Newtonian physics is wrong! Due to relativity and quantum mechanics. If it were still our best guess at how the world worked, I think we would just call it "physics" rather than "Newtonian physics".
"Science isn't useful because it is right, science is right because it is useful." (Unknown philosopher of science, possibly but probably not Feyerabend)
From this perspective, there's nothing "wrong" with Newtonian physics as long as you understand the domain in which it is useful (essentially: larger than molecules, smaller than planets).
Newtonian physics, QM and relativity are all just stories we tell in our attempt to understand how the universe came to be as it is, and predict how it will change (with or without our own actions). They are all "wrong" in the sense that none of them are the way the universe actually is, but they are all "right" in the sense that they provide us with immense explanatory and predictive power when used in the appropriate domain(s).
I agreed with you sort of. But as there was originally a positive view ie “For Method” not just against one in the book, may I try the problem presented by Kuhn. All institutions have built in bias. And teacher found their own similar once. Hence the paradigm. And the authority is there.
also even if there is no authority one still has to explain what we are doing here. Philosophy may not just be of philosopher. We are not Plato and Aristotle... and in fact I doubt many practitioner even listen to this speculation. but still they need to say something.
For example One may say we are trying to devise experiments to refute ... or is it really so? that is not we observe but to a certain extent per Kuhn I say not. And this popper Way and the anarchist way is just was to take about things.
Historical schools were very much a product of the era where communication was difficult, so it was natural for people to be most influenced by the people around them, particularly when people write mostly in their national languages. Some of these schools had considerable momentum, so that they persisted into the post-war era outside their original milieu (Austrian economics, say, or the Frankfurt School), but it's not something you see much of anymore.
There may well be a method to “science” (whatever that is), or acquiring knowledge in general.
Is just that we haven’t invented the ‘right’ language to describe the process with.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. —Donald Knuth
In as much as software development is theory-building and iterative development is about hypothesis testing/experiment validation/reproduction - it is scientific/empirical.
Beyond that ... We are forever stuck with theory, which is never a good enough substitute for practice.
> First of all the perceptual system cuts down this abundance or you couldn't survive." Religion, science, politics and philosophy represent our attempts to compress reality still further.
Very interesting to think about in the context of artificial intelligence.
Philosophy of science is more helpful than people give it credit for. For example, Ernst Mach basically laid a lot of groundwork for the General Theory of Relativity with his philosophical work about the nature of physical theories.
I have also personally had a couple of discussions with philosophers who worked on understanding scientific simulation and trying to approach an abstract, but accurate definition of its nature. Even just the attempt to do that forced a lot of introspection onto the scientists they talked to about their work. My takeaway was that these discussions uncovered a lot of implicit assumptions that were unknowingly made. So even if the results the philosophers wanted - a generic definition of what a scientific simulation is - might not be very useful in themselves, the mere process of getting there helped everybody develop a better understanding.
side note: feyerabend is a variation of the german word „feierabend“ which consists of the two nouns „feier“ and „abend“, „party“ and „evening“ respectively. we use that word for „home time“ after the work day. i.e. „feierabend! i’ll call it a day and go home“.
> "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!"
By modern social convention this is "trolling".
> If he was not anti-science, I asked, what did he mean by his statement in Who's Who that intellectuals are criminals? "I thought so for a long time," Feyerabend said, "but last year I crossed it out, because there are lots of good intellectuals."
This was more or less the justification used in the Cultural Revolution or "Year Zero" for murdering "intellectuals".
In the end he has a bunch of valid criticisms, but I suspect his overall outlook is, like that of a lot of people, rooted in the trauma of his time. In this case WW2, which was an extremely "scientific" war, containing both the "race science" of the Nazis plus the development of weapons of mass destruction and the use of scientific methods to maximise lethality.
> > "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!"
> By modern social convention this is "trolling".
Can you expand on this? That hardly sounds like trolling and more like "Strong opinions loosely held" which is an admirable intellectual stance to take in my opinion.
I like pjc50's answer, but here's an alternative take: it's a matter of intention. Trolling involves making people angry because making them angry is fun. It's not any kind of intellectual stance.
The alternative is a method of teaching or learning, where unpopular opinions are as something between a counterfactual for exploration and the best way of getting a question answered on the internet: by asserting a wrong answer.
"Strong opinions loosely held" requires the opinions to actually be loosely held. You have to admit there are other options and you have to let go when yours are shown to be silly.
On the other hand, keep in mind that intent is impossible to judge from the outside.
If you read the introduction to "Against Method", it's clear that he's trolling. He says that he was writing a wicked book, and that Lakatos was supposed to write an even-more wicked refutation of the book before he passed away.
This has helped me understand why folks think that I'm so often trolling: I wish for my opinion to be shown silly, because I'm so confident that it is a stupid opinion, because all of my opinions are stupid silly opinions.
I would much rather have everything laid out, examined, and shown not to be what it is not, than to suffer under political rhetoric. It is possible to be intellectually curious and also not a tankie.
If you want a less risible formulation of this sort of mindset, rewatch "Dogma" and listen to Rufus' outlook on life.
> His only real beef with mankind is the shit that gets carried out in His name. Wars. Bigotry. Televangelism. The big one though, is the factioning of the religions. He said, "Mankind got it all wrong by takin' a good idea and building a belief structure out of it."
> This has helped me understand why folks think that I'm so often trolling: I wish for my opinion to be shown silly, because I'm so confident that it is a stupid opinion, because all of my opinions are stupid silly opinions.
If you're not telling people that this is your purpose, then you are not arguing in good faith. If you're playing devil's advocate, you should say so.
There's a big difference between, for example, arguing with someone that the earth is flat, and saying something like: "I'm going to pretend I think the world is flat, and I'd like you to try and convince me that it is not." That gives someone the opportunity to either play your game or not play your game. Otherwise, you're in danger of convincing people you're an idiot, rather than someone who simply likes to argue unusual positions.
Alright, let's take this for a test drive, then: I don't really think that good-faith argument exists, in general.
The idea of good faith is old and important in law; without good faith, it would be hard to enter into contracts. The underlying emotional content that we are reaching for when we try to embrace good faith is the emotion of authenticity.
However, I don't think that people are capable of being authentic. In order to be authentic, people must intend what they are saying and doing, and I am not sure that people can have internal worlds which are rich enough to enable authenticity. I certainly believe that people believe that they are acting in good faith, when they claim it, but I cannot verify that people are indeed good-faith actors.
In the olden days, good faith was achieved with a token, a bonafides of some sort. This is because, even in the olden days, it was well-understood that one cannot simply take people at their word when people say that they are arguing in good faith. This suggests that people have known and understood for a long time that good faith doesn't really exist.
Further, I think that when the rules say, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith," they mean that we must construct steelmen before commenting. After all, giving good-faith assumptions to bad-faith arguments would be a waste of effort.
For your edification, you should know that I don't like to argue my positions.
There's a lot to be said for the benefits of dialectic, but there's also a time and a place for it and the participants need to be on the same page and not threatened by it. You shouldn't take the "I'd just like to know what's so silly about race science of Aryanism" position with a Jewish person, for example, because they're going to interpret it as a death threat.
Less importantly (but still a matter of social grace) you need to know whether your interlocutor gets this all the time. Failing to do basic research will get your question closed on stackoverflow; engaging in dialectic to go over "settled" questions again and again is frustrating, and many of the people on the other side have got fed up with insincere timewasters.
> It is possible to be intellectually curious and also not a tankie.
To me those are mutually exclusive - "tankies" (and many other ideological factions) are people who've become tidally locked to a position and are no longer intellectually curious, but only interested in shooting down other ideological positions.
Actually, there's almost nobody else remotely like Feyerabend. Imre Lakatos came close, but was more interested in mathematics than science. Feyerabend was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of the 20th century, whether or not he was right about some things, or about anything at all.
Lakatos was a great philosopher of science, while Feyerabend is a gadfly. His "Proofs and Refutations" doesn't really hold up -- once mathematics reached the modern standard of rigor the process he described stopped -- but his notion of progressive versus degenerating research programs is very powerful.
I knew Feyerabend in Berkeley in the early 1960's. He was an engaging character, a large personality, a brilliant conversationalist, always surrounded by an interesting collection of other articulate people as he held forth at the Mediterranean Coffee House on Telegraph Avenue. Right or wrong, his perceptive observations motivated further consideration.
The phrase dead white male (abbreviated DWM), has been used since the mid-1980s as a term of disparagement for male authors and academics of European ancestry whose pre-eminence, especially in academic study, is challenged as being disproportionate to their cultural significance, and attributed to a historical bias in favour of their gender and ethnicity.
It's not a useful or interesting representation of Feyerabend.
The internet habit of reducing everything to its most sensational detail, and cleansing it of all context, for damning purposes, is a bad one. It's what that HN guideline is intended to cover.
There's a flipside, where certain writers get to be read with infinite charity, while everyone else has to take their lumps. Feyerabend really did make that argument -- it's right there in black-and-white in "Against Method". But since he's an "important thinker", we have to read him with more care than he wrote with.
"Against Method" is a fun book, and I enjoyed it when I read it back when the stakes didn't seem so high. But he chose to write a fun book rather than a serious one, and he can't complain when people take him seriously.
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