Paul Feyerabend

Paul Karl Feyerabend (Vienna, January 13, 1924 - Zurich, February 11, 1994) was a philosopher of science who experienced a constant evolution in his thinking throughout his life. (Popperian, anti-rationalist, empiricist, anti-empiricist, anti-positivist and relativist), always with a high degree of anarchism and a critical sense that led him to postulate epistemological anarchism. He is one of the two authors of the incommensurability thesis.

In his essays he used clear and expressive communication, far from the cold and aseptic language that is, according to Feyerabend, one of the lacks or defects in form that academic writing generally suffers from. He frequently used quotes from Marxist philosophers, among others Lenin, Mao Tse Tung and Rosa Luxemburg. Feyerabend became famous for his proposed anarchist position on science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. The initial negative reviews his book Against Method received caused him, as stated in his book autobiographical Killing time, a deep depression.

Biography

Childhood, youth, war

Paul Feyerabend was born in 1924 in Vienna. The son of a middle-class family, he grew up in that city and attended primary and secondary school there, standing out as an above average student. His parents had had to wait a long time before having Paul, their only child, due to the First World War (1914-1918) as well as inflation in the First Austrian Republic (1918-1933): Paul's mother Feyerabend was already 40 years old when he was born.

During this period he acquired the habit of reading widely, developed an interest in theater, and took singing lessons. According to his own account, his first contact with philosophy was just a coincidence:

When one sought literature that was for sale, they could buy books for tons for a few cents.[...] I could not prevent the media from coming from Plato, Descartes or Büchner (the materialist, not the poet). I then probably read these unwanted extra books out of curiosity or simply because I had to pay for it.

Zeitverschwendung (Killing time, autobiography)

In March 1938 Austria became part of the German Reich, on September 1, 1939 World War II began, which also transformed the life of the 15-year-old. Feyerabend's parents hailed the annexation of Austria, while Feyerabend himself described his relationship to the Nazis as naive and relatively unemotional. He did not become an ardent supporter, but neither did he respond with indignation to the wartime atrocities he witnessed.

When he graduated in April 1940, he was recruited for the Arbeitsdienst (mandatory labor year in Germany). After initial training in Pirmasens, Germany, he was assigned to a unit at Quélerne en Bas, opposite Brest, in France. Feyerabend described the work he did in that period as monotonous: "We would move around the fields, digging ditches, and then walking back to fill them." After a brief dropout he voluntarily enlisted in the army at officer school.

In 1942 he was part of an army engineering corps, and in 1943 he attended military officers' school. For his instruction he was also sent to Yugoslavia for a period, and while in this country he learned of his mother's suicide, an event that at that time did not affect him too much. According to Feyerabend, the officers' school seemed like a good way to avoid direct action in war. In his autobiography he writes that by then he hoped the war would be over before he finished his officer training.

But things did not turn out that way: in September 1943 he was posted to Russia, and from December he served as an officer on the northern part of the Eastern Front, where he was awarded the Iron Cross. According to his own account, he would have behaved there in a reckless and theatrical manner, and for this he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

When the Wehrmacht had already begun the retreat and the Red Army was advancing, Feyerabend was hit by three bullets, in the stomach and in the hands, while he was directing traffic. One of the bullets reached his spine and, as a result of this, he required a cane to walk for the rest of his life and often felt severe pain. From then on, he spent the rest of the war recovering from his wounds in a hospital in Apolda. When the war ended, he first found a temporary job as a playwright in Apolda and began to study singing in the neighboring city of Weimar.

University studies

After taking various courses at the Weimar Academy, he returned to Vienna in 1947. His previous passion — physics — seemed totally unrealistic to him after the end of the war, so he began his university studies in History and Sociology. However, very soon he felt that the classes bored him and he felt dissatisfied, so he switched to Physics at the University of Vienna. There he met the physicist Felix Ehrenhaft, who would have a great influence on his later views on the nature of science. Shortly after, and through Victor Kraft, Feyerabend came into contact with academic Philosophy. Unlike the other members of the Vienna Circle, Kraft had remained in Vienna, and a group of philosophers and students rallied around his leadership, in the so-called "Kraft Circle." Feyerabend also participated there and in this way had the opportunity to discuss with philosophers such as Walter Hollitscher, G.E.M. Anscombe or Ludwig Wittgenstein, and wrote his thesis on the language of observation ( observation sentences ). In his autobiography, he described the philosophical outlook he held at the time as "firmly empiricist", fully embracing the main theses of logical empiricism:

Das war übrigens die Haltung bei all meinen Diskussionbeiträgen: die Wissenschaft ist die Grundlage des Wissens, Wissen ist empirisch, nicht-empirische Überlegungen sind entweder Logik oder Unsinn.

This was my position in all my contributions to the discussion: science is the foundation of knowledge, knowledge is empirical, non-empirical reflections belong to logic or are nonsense.

Killing time.

He published his first article in 1947, which dealt with the concept of enlightenment in modern physics, in which he was deeply positivist.

For the development that Feyerabend followed later, his participation in the Alpbach Forum, which he attended for the first time in 1948, was decisive. In Alpbach, he met Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht and, not least, Karl Popper. There he declined an offer from Brecht to work as his assistant, instead, having obtained his doctorate in 1951, he wanted to continue studying with Wittgenstein at Cambridge, on a one-year scholarship from the British Council. But Wittgenstein died in 1951, before Feyerabend's arrival in the UK, so he went to work under Popper's mentorship at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He has published various articles in which clear influences of Popperian rationalism can be detected. Indeed, his influence was decisive in many ways for Feyerabend's philosophical evolution. In the first place, he was deeply marked by Popper's ideas and assumed falsificationism. Later, however, he distanced himself from Popper's critical rationalism and made him the main enemy of his own conception of epistemological anarchism.^{[citation needed ]}

From Bristol to Berkeley

In 1955 he got his first academic job at the University of Bristol, where he was to teach a lecture on theory of knowledge. Although he reached this position thanks to Popper's influence, Feyerabend's first breaks with Popper's position were shown here:

John Watkins (...) looked at me from top to bottom with serious face and gave me a sermon because I was a popperian evil: there was very little Popper in the text of my essays and, by the way, absolutely no quote to Popper on footnotes. By explaining in detail that one could read a little bit of Popper in some places of the text, gave a sigh of relief, led me to the room and allowed me to eat.

Killing time, p. 149.

However, Feyerabend's writings of the 1950s and early 1960s are heavily marked by Popper's falsificationism. A good example of this is the critique of positivism in: An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience, 1958.

During this period in Bristol, Feyerabend married a second time, but like his first marriage, he was soon divorced. In this context, she was glad to receive in 1958 an offer for a one-year stay at the University of California at Berkeley.

Berkeley was Feyerabend's primary residence for more than 30 years. The move from Europe to the United States was an influential event in several ways: First, he soon came into close contact with the American philosophical milieu, especially through his visits to the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science. Among the friends and contacts he made there were several of the former representatives of the Vienna Circle, such as Herbert Feigl, Rudolf Carnap and Carl Gustav Hempel and, on the other hand, representatives of analytical philosophy, such as John Searle and Hilary Putnam. In 1965 he published his first detailed scientific theoretical paper, The Problems of Empiricism. This long essay already contains many of his radical ideas, but it is based on philosophical realism and does not yet necessarily lead Feyerabend to a confrontation with the philosophy of contemporary science.

In addition, the political climate in Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Area in general also exerted its influence: in 1964, the Free Speech Movement transformed Berkeley into a left-wing revolutionary center in the United States. Three years later, the hippie movement had reached its climax in the neighboring city of San Francisco with the "Summer of Love." Feyerabend used to point out in his writings that his experiences with political movements and contact with the multiculturalism of the Bay Area strongly marked his philosophical thinking. This is how he explains it, for example, in relation to multicultural students:

Who was I to explain to these people what and how should they think? I had no idea of their problems, even though I knew they had many. He did not know his interests, his feelings, his anguish, his hopes [...]. Because this task [refers to the pontificate of the tradition of rationalism] was that of a master of cult and elegant slaves. And a blacksmith I didn't want to be.

EffM, S. 233 f.

However, Feyerabend's long stay at Berkeley changed nothing in his restlessness and discontent with his new homeland. Over the years he took on various visiting professorships in different places, never being completely satisfied in any one place. He stayed for a long time in London and in Berlin, where he also came into contact with student movements. Other places of stay were Auckland, Kassel, Sussex and Yale.^{[citation needed]}

In 1959, he became a US citizen. He began to write articles in which he critically reviewed empiricism. He introduced the concept of incommensurability into his philosophy (although the term itself was fixed later), since it is also used by Wittgenstein and Kuhn to refer to disjoint scientific theories, that is, those whose conceptual domains are totally incompatible and untranslatable with each other.^{[citation required]}

Towards the end of the 1960s, his articles began to reveal a turn towards a kind of theoretical pluralism, according to which the best mechanism for progress was to introduce the greatest possible number of alternative hypotheses. Proposal that was published in a long article in 1970 (“Against the method”). Feyerabend planned with Imre Lakatos, a friend of his, a collaboration in the form of a discussion book to be called For and against method. Although Lakatos's death ended the joint project, Feyerabend published part of it, like his first book, under the title A Treatise Against Method (1975).

In his following works Science in an Open Society (1978), Science as an Art (1987) and Farewell to Reason (1987), pointed out and developed his epistemology. These meant a clear endorsement of relativism, going so far as to affirm that in reality science undergoes changes, but does not progress.^{[citation required]}

He died of a brain tumor for which there was no effective treatment. His autobiography Killing Time was published, posthumously, in 1995. ^{[citation needed ]}

Philosophy

First period

Early writings show a clear Popperian influence. He claimed that the function of epistemology was not to describe how scientists act, but how they should act. His epistemology was totally methodological, without any metaphysical concern. He defended the multiplication of theories as the best path for progress.

Against Method (1970)

Against Method is a critique of the logic of the rationalist scientific method, supported by a detailed study of key episodes in the history of science. He concludes that historical research contradicts that there is a method with unalterable principles, that there is no rule that has not been broken, which indicates that the infraction is not accidental but necessary for the advancement of science. In Feyerabend's own words:

The idea of a method that contains infallible, unalterable and absolutely binding scientific principles that govern scientific matters is in difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research.

For this, Feyerabend proposes a «principle that can be defended under any circumstances and at all stages of human development. I mean the "anything goes" principle.

Despite this, Feyerabend denounces that there continues to be a continuous effort to enclose the scientific process within the limits of rationalism, so that a specialist ends up being a person subjected voluntarily to a series of restrictions in his way of thinking, to act and even to express themselves, he himself compares them to "trained dogs":

Just as a trained perrillo will obey his master without matter how confusing he himself is and how urgent it is to adapt new behavior schemes, a trained rationalist will be obedient to the mental image of his master, will conform to the standards of argumentation he has learned, will show adherence to these standards without importing the difficulty that he himself finds in them, and will be unable to discover that what he considers as a postef.

An essential part of all theories of induction is the rule that the facts measure the success of a theory. Feyerabend suggests proceeding inductively, but also counter-inductively, that is, introducing hypotheses that are inconsistent with theories, or with well-established facts. In other words,

A principle of proliferation: inventing and elaborating theories that are inconsistent with the commonly accepted viewpoint, even in the assumption that it is highly confirmed and enjoys general acceptance. the principle of proliferation is also an essential part of a humanitarian perspective.

Justifies the counterinduction by saying that there are theories in which the information necessary to contrast them would only be apparent in the light of other theories that contradict the first. The history of science provides examples of counterinduction in action. For example, Galileo had to resort to counterinduction to falsify the reasoning with which the Aristotelian physicists denied the movement of the Earth. Therefore, the use of counterinduction would simply be taking advantage in a conscious way of the very way of being of science. The hollow earth is an exemplary theory.

Feyerabend claimed that no theory would ever be consistent with all the relevant facts. For example, a theory of gravitation of the entity of Newton's has from the beginning had serious difficulties of quantitative deviations with the observed facts. This has not prevented it from being the dominant theory for centuries and being considered a model of scientific theory. In these cases, instead of dismissing the theory for its disagreement with the facts, an approximation is used or a hypothesis is invented ("an ad hoc hypothesis," says Feyerabend) that covers up the inconsistency. The usual attitude in philosophy of science is to dismiss these ad hoc hypotheses as going against the rationalist method. However, according to Feyerabend, it is a fact that such hypotheses are abundant in the body of science. Lakatos, one of Popper's main followers, also believes that any new theory that is proposed to replace a refuted theory is basically nothing more than (and it could not be otherwise) an ad hoc.

In conclusion, as Feyerabend would say: "If the old forms of argument become too weak to serve as a cause, shouldn't these advocates either give up, or resort to stronger and more irrational means?"

Science in a Free Society (1978)

He continues with his analysis of science and the method he uses, criticizing the mystical status it has achieved in Western society as the best way to acquire knowledge. The last part of the book is a self-defense against the dismal reception among academics that he received Against the method , where he accuses the critics of not having understood him:

They do not recognize an argument when they see it, that they consider rhetoric more important than the argument or that in my book there is something that hurts their thinking and confuses their perception in such a way that dreams and hallucinations occupy a place in reality.

(CSL, 1978 (p. 146)).

Feyerabend concludes his work with some guidelines and arguments against each of those who criticized his work in a very subjective way.

In Science in a Free Society Feyerabend continues to take up a critique of the analysis of science and the method it uses. In this new work, Feyerabend takes up the polemic and his iconoclastic criticism of science, where the philosopher's main argument is: «What I do is the following. I compare three idols—Truth, Honesty, and Knowledge (or Rationality)—and their methodological ramifications with a fourth idol—Science—and find that they are in conflict, concluding that it is time to look at things anew. another way» (CSL, 1978 (p.145)), in such a way that in the first part of his book he launches an incessant criticism against Western science.

Following his work, he explains in another way that science should not be taken totally as an ideal for the creation of a society where he defines that:

There should be a separation from the State and Science, as there is already a separation between the Church and the State. The reason for this separation is very simple: every profession has an ideology and a tendency to power that goes beyond its achievements, and it is a tendency for a democracy to keep this ideology and trend under control.

(CSL, 1978 (p.176)).

Farewell to Reason (1987)

Feyerabend relies on Soren Kierkegaard and various philosophers: romantics and existentialists to deny the rationality of the world, or rather the existence of a dominant abstract Reason. Science is like art in the sense that there is no "progress" or "truth" but merely changes of style. He proclaims the virtues of cultural pluralism. Western ideas are not the best nor are they the ideal to which humanity should aspire. In his book Goodbye to Reason (1987), chaps. 3-7, he cautions against dismissing belief systems like astrology or alternative medicine, to which he attributes a status on par with science, as useless.

Articles from the 1980s

During this decade he published a large number of articles. In them, he believes that reason and science have displaced previous beliefs due to a simple game of powers, not because they have won any argument.

Science is really an agglomeration of ideas, not a unified whole. It includes a large number of components that come from non-scientific disciplines that are a vital part of the process, and there is really no reason to suppose that the world has only one nature. On the contrary, it appears to us profoundly plural.

Epistemological Dadaism

Feyerabend believes that it is not possible to set invariable standards in any field, including science, rather he considers that the direction that the study will take will be based on its object. So, according to Feyerabend, there are no universal principles within scientific rationality, which is why knowledge does not always follow the same path, but rather with peculiarities that make it different from the others. It is because of this position that Feyerabend defends so ardently the idea that science is full of inconsistencies and anarchy, reasons for which he affirms that only sustained criticism, tolerance for inconsistencies and absolute freedom are the best tools to achieve that a science is really productive.

This is how Feyerabend came to the conclusion that the success of an investigation is not given by the extent to which the general rules and formulas are applied, in fact the method with which it was achieved is not even explicitly known. Here we could remember Einstein who tells us "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

But Einstein is not the only one with whom he shared ideas, with his teacher Popper he also did, this is reflected in one of his most famous phrases: «I am a professor of scientific method, but I have a problem: the scientific method does not exist.

History itself is full of accidents and curious events, this demonstrates the complexity of real circumstances and the unpredictable nature of things. For this very reason the idea of a fixed method for any event is incongruous. However, there is a principle that can be seen in any circumstance: everything works.

Science does not have an order, it does not have a key step in the process that implies its success. When a problem arises, the way to reach its solution is to change the applied process, adapting the method. There is no guide considered as the basis for each investigation, but the methods that come from previous experiences do.

In conclusion we can say that the best way to do science is not to think that we can reach an absolute truth, but we have to shape our thoughts to the problem and take into account its own uniqueness.

Works

Books

• Treaty against the Method (1976)

• Why not Plato? (1980)
• Science in a free society (1978)
• Goodbye to reason (1987)
• Dialogues on knowledge (1991)
• Killing time (1995)
• Conquest of abundance (laughing)

Articles

• «I try a realistic interpretation of experience» (1958)
• «Complementation» (1958)
• "The problem of the existence of the theoretical entities" (1960)
• «Explanation, Reduction and Empirism» (1962)
• «How to Be a Good Empirist» (1962)
• «Ciencia sin experiencia» (1969)
• «Consuelos del Especial» (1970)
• «With the method» (1974)
• "Science as an Art" (1985).