Timeline: Paul Feyerabend (1924 - 1994)

1924

Born in Vienna

1936

Highschool

Feyerabend's school physics teacher Oswald Thomas inspired in him an interest in physics and astronomy. The first lecture he gave (at school) seems to have been on these subjects (p. 28).

1952

Studied under Popper

Concentrated on the quantum theory and Wittgenstein. Studied the typescript of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and prepared a summary of the book.

1958

Took up visiting lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley

Two of his most important early papers, “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience”, and “Complementarity” appeared in the proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. In them, Feyerabend argued against positivism and in favour of a scientific realist account of the relation between theory and experience, largely on grounds familiar from Karl Popper's falsificationist views

1960

Started lecturing at Berkeley full-time

There he encountered Thomas Kuhn, and read Kuhn's forthcoming book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in draft form. He then wrote to Kuhn about the book.
But he was not quite ready to take on Kuhn's descriptive-historical approach to the philosophy of science. Although more and more historical examples peppered his published work, he was still using them to support fairly orthodox falsificationist conclusions.

1970

Publication of “Consolations for the Specialist”,

“Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge”, in which “epistemological anarchism” was revealed for the first time.

1974

Lakato's Death

shocked Feyerabend deeply, meant that the rationalist part of the joint work was never completed. Instead of the volume written jointly with Lakatos, Feyerabend put together his tour de force, the book version of Against Method

1994