-
How to be a Good Empiricist
Feyerabend published his ground breaking paper "How to be a Good Empiricist". Empiricism "entails that knowledge can only be gained, if at all, by experience". The biggest argument that this paper makes is that "realism is desirable because it demands the proliferation of new and incompatible theories . . . because it results in each theory having more empirical content that it otherwise would". Essentially this all boils down to gaining knowledge by experiencing it rather than notionalizing it. -
Theoretical Pluralism
Feyerabend brought forward his idea of theoretical pluralism meaning that it "is possible to construct several different theories for the explanation of the same 'data'". Through this process one is able to help explain some of the short comings that empiricism creates. The use of theoretical pluralism helps lead to alternate approaches to theories that would otherwise not be possible. -
Abandoning Empiricism
Through the many difficulties that empiricism presented, Feyerabend had finally reached the point where he could no longer continue to push the ideas that empiricism held. He published an article titled "Science Without Experience" to "arguing that in principle experience is necessary at no point in the construction, comprehension or testing of empirical scientific theories". With this articles publishing, Feyerabend gave notice to the scientific community that he is no longer an impiricist -
Feyerabend's First Book
Feyerabend had published his first book "Against Method". In this book he strongly opposed the idea of the scientific method. He believed that scientist were methodological opportunists. They conduct experiments by using opportunities that arise while the experiment is being conducted even if they went against emipiricism. This book labeled Feyerabend as the worst enemy of science. His ideas had not been taken seriously until after he had past in -
Epistemological Anarchist
In Feyerabend's book "Against Method" the idea of the epistomological anarchist is born. Epsitomological anarchist means that " there are no useful and exceptionless methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge". His objective for binging about this idea was to open peoples eyes to the ways the world really works while toppling the scientific restraints that philosophers of science had created. -
The Worst Enemy of Science
In this video we get a simpler understanding of Paul Feyerabend's book Against Method. Philosophy of Science 10 - Against Method
