Paul feyerabend

Paul Feyerabend, 1924 - 1994

By elk5565

  • Birth of Feyerabend

    Paul Karl Feyerabend was born 13 January, 1924 in Vienna, Austria. (Stanford). His philosophical standpoint is unique, and offers colorful and outrageous views. His thoughts can be summed up in a simple quote, "The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes." (Against Method). He is typically considered an anarchistic scientific philosopher.

  • Feyerabend attends college

    Feyerabend attends the University of Vienna's Institut für Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung. He begins studying History and sociology, before quickly switching to physics, math and astronomy. At this time, he is still a raving positivist, which was the popular belief rooted in the Vienna circle. He believed the radically empirical approach, believing science was the base of all knowledge. (Stanford).

  • Feyerabend meets Popper

    At a summit in Alpbach, Feyerabend meets Karl popper for the first time. Little is written about the meeting. At the time, Feyerabend was still a logical positivist, while Popper held deductivist views and falsification beliefs similar to Wittgenstein. (Stanford)
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    Kraft Circle

    Feyerabend was the student Leader of a philosophical study group called the Kraft Circle. They had numerous guest speakers such as Walter Hollitscher and Wittgenstein. (Stanford)
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    Popper is a supervisor

    During this time, Karl Popper was a supervisor and mentor to Paul Feyerabend. Popper offered that there was no "scientific method", but there were some general rule of thumbs. Convinced by Poppers' critique of induction, Feyerabend temporarily believed in the concept of falsifiability, and included falsification in his papers and lectures. (Stanford). He generally disliked the simplicity of Poppers' approach, stating it “may be out of touch with reality… [that is], with scientific practice”.

  • Wittgenstein's Monster

    The first English publication of Feyerabend. He reviewed and critiqued "Philosophical Investigations". He argued particularly against Wittgenstein's realist theories of meaning, and instead proposed a "contextual" theory of meaning. He supported the notion that even without a concrete definition, any scientist knew the terms' use and implications (Stanford). "Wittgenstein's arguments solidified Feyerabends' nominalist convictions with respect to natural kind". (Feyerabend's Philosophy)

  • An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience

    Feyerabend published one of his more important works, "An attempt at a realistic Interpretation of Experience". Here, Feyerabend began arguing against the notion of positivism, and towards realism.Rather than a flow from theory to experience, he supported experience to theory.

  • Feyerabend begins work at Berkeley

    Paul had begun working at the California college Berkeley, and this is where he met Thomas Kuhn. He read the rough draft of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", after which he generally believed in empiricism as a basis for forming a theory, rather than a source of knowledge itself. (Stanford) The following link clarifies their interactions and theories somewhat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiNm5Ec-GuE (Hacking).

  • “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism”

    A paper written in 1962, this is Feyerabend's introduction of incommensurability. Feyerabend claims language between differnt theories will have different meanings. "If meaning is determined by theory, terms in very different theories simply cannot share the same meaning: they will be “incommensurable”" (Stanford). Kuhn published a paper offering the same idea later that year.
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    Era of scientific realism

    "How to be a Good Empiricist” (1963), “Realism and Instrumentalism” (1964), “Problems of Empiricism” and “Reply to Criticism” (1965) are all published (Stanford). Feyerabend used incommensurability as an argument for theoretical pluraliism (Feyerabend's Philosophy). He argued that multiple theories existing, and conflicting, created competition from which science could advance. He rejected the testing of a theory against empirical evidence. This is a step away from his earlier Popperian beliefs.

  • Lakatos

    During this time, Feyerabend became good friends with Imre Lakatos. Lakatos' office was across the hall from the LSE lecture hall. He would typically interject in Feyerabend's class when he disagreed with a point. (Stanford). Kuhn influenced him in several areas such as "Feyerabend emphasises Kuhn’s idea that the reigning paradigm heavily influences interpretation of observed phenomena" (Antimatter).

  • Against Method

    By this time, Feyerabend has completely changed his original philosophy. He now argues for "epistemological anarchy" (Theory and Reality). In this sense, he rejects any full theory of scientific method completely, arguing that science will best progress without any form of structure. He has developed an "anything goes" mind set.This book supposedly "uses reason in order to destabilize it" (Theory and Reality). At this point, Feyerabend was against any form of methodology concerning knowledge.

  • Farewell to Reason

    Farewell to Reason was published, and solidified a turning point in Feyerabend's philosophy. He fully supported relativism as the only true way to settle conflicting beliefs and ways of life (Stanford). He goes on to state that reason and rationality are “ambiguous and never clearly explained” (FTR). He supports cultural diversity in its varying viewpoints, but doesn't believe that each culture considering its own ideas to be correct will help science over-all.

  • Death

    Genolier, Switzerland

  • Bibliography page 1

    1. Feser, Edward. “Feyerabend on empiricism and sola scriptura”. 13 July 2015. URL = http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/07/feyerabend-on-empiricism-and-sola.html (photo)
    2. Feyerabend, Paul. “Against Method”, 1993. Verso. URL = https://ebook4scaricare.com/gratis/against-method/
    3. Feyerabend, Paul. “Farewell to Reason”, 1988. London; New York. URL = https://archive.org/details/farewelltoreason00feye

  • Bibliography page 2

    1. Godfrey-Smith, Peter. “Theory and Reality : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science”. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. 2003. ebook
    2. Hacking, Ian. “Feyerabend and Kuhn”. 17 April 2018. Youtube. URL = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiNm5Ec-GuE
    3. Oberheim, Eric. Feyerabend’s Philosophy. Berlin ;: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Print.

  • Bibliography page 3

    1. Preston, John, "Paul Feyerabend", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/