The death of Imre Lakatos on February 2, 1974 was a personal and philosophical loss to the worldwide circle of his friends, colleagues and students. This volume reflects the range of his interests in mathematics, logic, politics and especially in the history and methodology of the sciences. Indeed, Lakatos was a man in search of rationality in all of its forms. He thought he had found it in the historical development of scientific knowledge, yet he also saw rationality endangered everywhere. (...) To honor Lakatos is to honor his sharp and aggressive criticism as well as his humane warmth and his quick wit. He was a person to love and to struggle with. PAUL K. FEYERABEND ROBERT S. COHEN MARX W. WARTOFSKY TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface VII JOHN WORRALL / Imre Lakatos : Philosopher of Mathematics and Philosopher of Science JOSEPH AGASSI / The Lakatosian Revolution 9 23 D. M. ARMSTRONG / Immediate Perception w. W. BAR TLEY, III/On Imre Lakatos 37 WILLIAM BERKSON / Lakatos One and Lakatos Two: An Appreciation 39 I. B. COHEN / William Whewell and the Concept of Scientific Revolution 55 L. JONATHAN COHEN / How Can One Testimony Corroborate Another? 65 R. S. COHEN / Constraints on Science 79 GENE D'AMOUR/ Research Programs, Rationality, and Ethics 87 YEHUDA ELKANA / Introduction: Culture, Cultural System and Science 99 PA UL K. (shrink)

The paper discusses some aspects of the relationship between Feyerabend and Kuhn. First, some biographical remarks concerning their connections are made. Second, four characteristics of Feyerabend and Kuhn's concept of incommensurability are discussed. Third, Feyerabend's general criticism of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions is reconstructed. Forth and more specifically, Feyerabend's criticism of Kuhn's evaluation of normal science is critically investigated. Finally, Feyerabend's re-evaluation of Kuhn's philosophy towards the end of his life is presented.

Paul Feyerabend recommended the methodological policy of proliferating competing theories as a means to uncovering new empirical data, and thus as a means to increase the empirical constraints that all theories must confront. Feyerabend's policy is here defended as a clear consequence of connectionist models of explanatory understanding and learning. An earlier connectionist "vindication" is criticized, and a more realistic and penetrating account is offered in terms of the computationally plastic cognitive profile displayed by neural networks with a recurrent (...) architecture. (shrink)

The paper contains two yet unknown letters that Feyerabend wrote to Kuhn in 1960 or 1961 on a draft of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In these letters, Feyerabend criticises both details of Kuhn's book and its general direction. The letters anticipate many of the arguments that were put forward in the public controversy against Kuhn's position, including some of the (numerous) misunderstandings. Feyerabend's assertions and arguments are very characteristic of his position in the early sixties.

In this commemorative article the significance of Paul Feyerabend's work for philosophy of science in general is reviewed. Its unifying perspective is identified as the fight against any possible constraint on imagination (i.e. on the capacity of generating alternatives). This alternative-maximizing search was already central in Feyerabend's 'pre-anarchistic' studies. In fact, I claim that the really significant theses and arguments, as far as the intrinsic debate within the philosophy of science is concerned, were present in these earlier studies (criticism (...) of the conditions of consistency and meaning invariance, pragmatic theory of observation, incommensurability thesis ...). The context of the 'historical turn' is sketched in which these arguments were developed as aresponse to current views on science. But these arguments do possess an independent normative significance. As Feyerabend construes them however, this independence is uncertain, because it is the value of proliferating imaginative alternatives as such which partly conditionalizes the significance of these arguments (as it conditionalizes the very value of science itself). In this way the philosophy of the critical imagination could eventually turn the critical values against the philosophy of rational criticism itself. And indeed, (1)a certain combination of the tenets concerning consistency and meaning variance undermines the idea of crucial test, and (2) in Against Method xht panegyric of the imagination (couched in a new narrative of the history of science) is used as the main weapon to override any methodological account. Philosophy of science is now convicted of what is the only deadly sin — the murder of imagination. But science itself is also accused of the same crime: it has become not merely an ideology — which is nothing to worry about — but a totalitarian ideology, monopolizing epistemic and educational claims. I argue that, although the reintroduction within philosophy of science of such questions belonging to a philosophy of culture is called for as a complement for intrinsic approaches, the Feyerabendean way of treating those questions makes it impossible to state anything about the specificity of science within culture. On the other hand two 'master ideas' still seem apt to stimulate further discussion: (1) the critique of the consistency condition, backed by the attack on the thesis of the 'relative autonomy of facts', and (2) the defence of meaning variance, backed by the pragmatic theory of observation, and leading in turn to the idea of incommensurability. At the same time this idea of incommensurability could also play a role in a philosophy of the relation between science and culture (which remains to be developed). (shrink)

The essay begins with a detailed consideration of the introduction of incommensurability by Feyerabend in 1962 which exposes several historically inaccurate claims about incommensurability. Section 2 is a coneise argument against causal theories of reference as used as arguments against incommensurability. We object to this strategy because it begs the question by presupposing realism. Section 3 introduces and discusses a hypothesis that w'e call meta-incommensurability which provides the reason for the wide-spread accusation of question-begging and use of circular argumentation among (...) the proponents of both realist and non-realist interpretations of science. (shrink)

Contrary to Sankey’s central assumption, incommensurability does not imply incomparability of content, nor threaten scientific realism by challenging the rationality of theory comparison. Moreover, Sankey equivocates between reference to specific entities by statements used to test theories and reference to kinds by theories themselves. This distinction helps identify and characterize the genuine threat that incommensurability poses to realism, which is ontological discontinuity as evidenced in the historical record: Successive theories reclassify objects into mutually exclusive sets of kinds to which they (...) refer. That is why claiming that scientific progress is an increasingly better approximation to truth is difficult to justify. Similarly, Sankey’s attack on neo-Kantian antirealist positions is based on his misunderstanding of some of the central terms of those positions, making most of his attack on them ineffectual, including his diagnosis of their incoherence. We conclude by reiterating our conviction that in this debate meta-incommensurability plays an important role.Keywords: Scientific realism; Incommensurability; Meta-incommensurability; Thomas Kuhn; Paul Feyerabend; Howard Sankey. (shrink)

The essay begins with a detailed consideration of the introduction of incommensurability by Feyerabend in 1962 which exposes several historically inaccurate claims about incommensurability. Section 2 is a coneise argument against causal theories of reference as used as arguments against incommensurability. We object to this strategy because it begs the question by presupposing realism. Section 3 introduces and discusses a hypothesis that w'e call meta-incommensurability which provides the reason for the wide-spread accusation of question-begging and use of circular argumentation among (...) the proponents of both realist and non-realist interpretations of science. (shrink)

Schlagel begins with the claim: "Ever since Galileo, our beliefs about the world have been influenced, in the main, by the results of scientific inquiry." This is still true, he says, in a sense: "Prominent contemporary philosophers such as Popper, Nagel, Hempel, Grünbaum, Toulmin, and Feyerabend have also taken scientific developments as their main focus of interest." But Schlagel thinks analytical philosophers, by contrast with philosophers of earlier periods, are peculiarly academic--out of touch with the general contemporary intellectual community. Though (...) writing for academic philosophers, Schlagel wants to reach a "wider audience comprised of scholars of diverse backgrounds." To achieve this aim, he says he will diverge from the current analytical paradigm in the following three respects: " [The book] does not focus on language as the primary datum for philosophical investigation, but the results of empirical inquiry...; it does not rely on logic as the tool for clarifying concepts and arguments; and it is systematic, in that it attempts to show that the various facets of the problem of knowledge... are interrelated and imply a new framework of interpretation". (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive critical study of the work of Paul Feyerabend, one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. The book traces the evolution of Feyerabend's thought, beginning with his early attempt to graft insights from Wittgenstein's conception of meaning onto Popper's falsificationist philosophy. The key elements of Feyerabend's model of the acquisition of knowledge are identified and critically evaluated. Feyerabend's early work emerges as a continuation of Popper's philosophy of science, rather than as a contribution (...) to the historical approach to science with which he is usually associated. In his more notorious later work, Feyerabend claimed that there was, and should be, no such thing as the scientific method. The roots of Feyerabend's 'epistemological anarchism' are exposed and the weaknesses of his cultural relativism are brought out. Throughout the book, Preston discusses the influence of Feyerabend's thought on contemporary philosophers and traces his stimulating but divided legacy. The book will be of interest to students of philosophy, methodology, and the social sciences. (shrink)

In 1966, Paul Feyerabend published a short essay on the relation between dialectical materialist philosophy and Niels Bohr’s quantum theory, in which he develops several provocative ideas about the relations between science, ideology and society. I use Feyerabend’s essay to construct an account of his ‘Dadaist’ philosophical methodology. I argue that Dadaism is an ironic form of intellectual seriousness, such that the Dadaist is prepared to take any idea or practice seriously as a potentially valuable contribution to collective human (...) thought and action (despite any diverging personal convictions), especially if they find such engagement to be lacking in their local culture. I identify a weakness in Feyerabend’s formulation of Dadaism, so far as it is conceived as a matter of individual epistemic character and thus fails to account for the role of the social structure of intellectual activity. This weakness can be remedied by supplementing philosophical Dadaism with descriptions of the kinds of institutions and incentive structures that might cultivate its constitutive epistemic dispositions. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to a reappraisal of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It has four aims. The first is to reassess his already well-known work from the 1960s and 1970s in light of contemporary developments in the history and philosophy of science. The second is to explore themes in his neglected later work, including recently published and previously unavailable writings. The third is to assess the contributions that Feyerabend can make to contemporary debate, on topics such as perspectivism, (...) realism, and political philosophy of science. The fourth and final aim is to reconsider Feyerabend's place within the history of philosophy of science in the light of new scholarship. (shrink)

The article examines and criticizes Paul Karl Feyerabend’s seminal work entitled, “How to Be a Good Empiricist—A Plea for Tolerance in Matters Epistemological” which persuasively argued for a pluralistic view of scientific knowledge and theoretical truth. Throughout the article, a number of polemical points, analytic elaborations, and broader philosophical concerns are raised regarding the notions of consistency condition, meaning invariance, theoretical alternatives, and the very principle of theoretical pluralism. The article concludes that Feyerabend’s call for a plurality of theories (...) as the surest path to the progress of science is in need of numerous conceptual qualifications, provoking the reader into critical thinking about the deeper underpinnings of science while providing very few ready-made answers to the problems enunciated. (shrink)

Intensely discussed in the philosophy of science in the 20th and 21st centuries, the themes of realism and anti-realism pervade Feyerabend’s work. However, discerning the author’s position on these subjects poses a problem for scholars. One sign of this is that they attribute to Feyerabend the adherence to (or the rejection of) different conceptions of realism and anti-realism. Despite the divergences, however, scholars approach the topic in a similar way, detecting elements of Feyerabend’s realist and anti-realist positions that are incompatible (...) with each other and that follow one another in the course of his work. Although such studies are of great value, we propose to explore another approach, which also seems pertinent. Examining Feyerabend’s writings, we seek to discern conditions that make it possible for the author to assume, without contradiction, realist and anti-realist positions. Finally, we seek to infer from Feyerabend’s conception of science features of the realism prescribed by the author as well as features of the realism proscribed by him. (shrink)

Los críticos que han interpretado el pensamiento de Feyerabend como un relativismo radical no hacen justicia a su intencionalidad, y se muestran incapaces de comprender la unidad de su obra, en particular, su abandono posterior de los ideales relativistas. Se busca distinguir las diversas posiciones de Feyerabend frente al relativismo y exponer su reducción al absurdo de las nociones de la ciencia propias del positivismo lógico y del racionalismo crítico. Así mismo, se plantea cómo Feyerabend, ante la ausencia de un (...) criterio para discernir la tarea científica, postula un relativismo, pero, al final de su vida, busca elaborar una metafísica de la abundancia que supere las coordenadas de aquel. Critics who have interpreted Feyerabend's work as radical relativism do not do justice to his intentions and do not understand the unity of his work, in particular, his later abandonment of relativist ideals. This article seeks to distinguish the diverse Feyerabend's positions regarding relativism and exposes his reduction to absurdity of the ideas of science belonging to logical positivism and critical rationalism. It also addresses the way in which Feyerabend postulated relativism when faced with the absence of criteria to discern the scientific task. It argues, however, that at the end of his life Feyerabend seeked to construct a metaphysics of abundance in order to surpass relativism. (shrink)

Title: Against Method Publisher: Verso Author: Paul K. Feyerabend Title: Science in a Free Society Publisher: Verso ISBN: 0860917533 Author: Paul K. Feyerabend.

In this editorial, I explain how Paul Feyerabend's Principle of Proliferation is adopted and adapted as a publication model for the Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems (JKSS). Critical views on the limitations of both non-dynamic publishing models and government- and industry-based models of research are expressed.

The goal of this paper is to provide an interpretation of Feyerabend's metaphysics of science as found in late works like Conquest of Abundance and Tyranny of Science. Feyerabend's late metaphysics consists of an attempt to criticize and provide a systematic alternative to traditional scientific realism, a package of views he sometimes referred to as “scientific materialism.” Scientific materialism is objectionable not only on metaphysical grounds, nor because it provides a poor ground for understanding science, but because it implies problematic (...) claims about the epistemic and cultural authority of science, claims incompatible with situating science properly in democratic societies. I show how Feyerabend's metaphysical view, which I call “the abundant world” or “abundant realism,” constitute a sophisticated and challenging form of ontological pluralism that makes interesting connections with contemporary philosophy of science and issues of the political and policy role of science in a democratic society. (shrink)

Review of Paul Feyerabend, Against Method.

Entre los estudios críticos que existen en torno a la obra de Paul Feyerabend predominan aquellos que subrayan una discontinuidad radical entre la versión temprana y tardía de su pensamiento. Todo ello contribuye a que dispongamos de una visión fragmentada e incompleta de un pensador que evoluciono hasta el 1994, año de su fallecimiento. Nuestro propósito es ofrecer una explicación de su itinerario intelectual de tal modo que quedé patente su continuidad en la clave de sus críticas contra los (...) falsos absolutos erigidos por el positivismo lógico y el racionalismo científico. Mostraremos las diversas cuestiones que Feyerabend aborda en las distintas épocas de su vida pero, al mismo tiempo, subrayaremos la unidad o coherencia lógica que existe en su revisión crítica de la racionalidad científica. Nos preocuparemos por entender las razones por las cuales nuestro filósofo de la ciencia va trasladando sus distintos focos de discusión o crítica. A common element in studies of Paul Karl Feyerabend is the distinction between five periods in his work. John Preston sees a radical discontinuity between the early and late versions of Feyerabend’s thought. All of this contributes our having a fragmented and incomplete view of a thinker who continued to evolve until 1994, the year of his death. We aim to provide an explanation of his intellectual journey that shows the evident continuity and unity of his thought. We will discuss the various issues he addressed in the different periods of his life, but at the same time we will emphasize the unity or logical coherence among them. Our aim is to understand the reasons why the philosopher of science changed his distinct foci of discussion and criticism. (shrink)

Some remarks on the significance of Feyerabend's views on meaning and method.

Review of the third edition of Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.