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Paul Karl Feyerabend was born into a middle-class Viennese family in 1924. Times were hard in Vienna in the nineteen-twenties: in the aftermath of the First World War there were famines, hunger riots, and runaway inflation. Feyerabend's family had a three-room apartment on the Wolfganggasse.
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Feyerabend attended a Realgymnasium at which he was taught Latin, English, and science. He exceeded in every aspect of school and was known as a Vorzugsschüler, by the time he was sixteen he was popular for knowing more about physics and math than his teachers
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Having passed his final high school exams in March 1942, he was drafted into the Arbeitsdienst known as the work forced of the Nazis, he was sent for basic training in Pirmasens, Germany. During his service he received the Iron Cross early in March 1944, for leading his men into a village under enemy fire, and occupying it. He was advanced from private soldier to lieutenant by the end of 1944.
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After being shot in the spine leaving him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down with the use of crutches he returned to Vienna where he was offered to study at the university, where he then eventually met Karl Popper at a international seminar.
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Feyerabend planned to study with Wittgenstein in Cambridge, and Wittgenstein was prepared to take him on as a student, but he died before Feyerabend arrived in England. Karl Popper became his supervisor instead.
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Feyerabend's first notable work appears, voicing his stance as a controversial figure within the philosophy of science. His criticisms of empiricism, the dominant philosophy at the time, and introduction of incommensurability put his stance as a rebel within the community. Although he claims his work was influenced by Wittgenstein, one can understand, that working under Popper while in England, this carried more weight than he chose to believe.
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What is arguable Feyerabend's most notorious work, "Against Method" is published in . This established the theory that there is no such thing as "the scientific method", giving rise to "anything goes" and the term epistemological anarchism. He felt that even though science had started as a liberating movement, it had become rigid and rule based, garnering some oppressive features, therefore making science indistinguishable from religion and politics.
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This was a series of responses to Against Method in which Feyerabend is defending his ideas against those who were critical of his work, Feyerbend had seen his works undermining science's privileged position within culture, leading to depression and leading to his later works critiquing its position within Western society. Also pushes for a separation of science and state in much the same as separation of church and state exists.
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Feyerabend dies of an inoperable brain tumor in 1994 being survived by his wife, Grazia Borrini Feyerabend
