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Reference
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2016). Paul Feyerabend. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/#AgaiMeth1970 -
Birth and Early Studies
Paul Feyerabend was an Austrian born scientist and philosopher. He originally studied science at the University of Vienna, but then later changed to history and sociology, then back to physics. His move into philosophy came from a combination of interactions with the likes of Viktor Kraft and the Vienna Circle, a cohort of philosophers, and the fact that he had gotten “nowhere with the electrodynamics problem he was calculating” (Stanford, 2016). -
Feyerabend meets Thomas Kuhn
Feyerabend accepts position at UC Berkeley and meets Thomas Kuhn. Neither believed in the fixed, rational, logic-based version of science. Feyerabend took Kuhns thinking a little further and was much more against the idea that the there was a “best” method of science, although he felt that embracing a lack of method and solving scientific problems using creativity was essentially the “best” method.
https://youtu.be/AiNm5Ec-GuE -
Against Method Book was Published
Feyerabend’s book Against Method was published based on an earlier article of the same name. He had originally planned to have Imre Lakatos write a portion of the book which would be “for” method in science, however, Lakatos died in 1974 and the full book was never written. The book turned from his earlier views on methods and he instead began to feel that there were “no useful and exceptionless methodological rules governing the Progress of science or the growth of knowledge” (Standford, 2016). -
Death and Later Years
Even though Against Method was so outrageous in its claims that the scientific and philosophical communities deemed it somewhat irrational and forced Feyerabend to defend the book for many years thereafter, he was able to continue with a lucrative career in philosophy well through the 1980s and into early 90s when he finally passed.
