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Paul Feyerband (Born January 13, 1924)
Feyerabend was born into a middle-class family in Vienna, Austria in 1924. It was a tough time with the aftermath of World War 1. Vienna struggled with famines, hunger riots, and runaway inflation. Feyeraben was sheltered in a three bedroom apartment, cut off from neighbors and other children because the world was a dangerous place. -
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Paul Feyerabend (Born January 13, 1924)
When Feyerabend started school at the age of six, he “had no idea how other people lived or what to do with them. During this period he got into the habit of reading a lot and developed an interest in theatre, and started singing lessons. Theater, opera, and singing remained lifelong interests, as much as philosophy. -
Graduation High School
Feyerabend attended a high school at which he was taught Latin, English, and science. By the time he was sixteen he had the reputation of knowing more about physics and math than his teachers. Feyerabend graduated high school in April 1942 and drafted into the German Arbeitsdienst. (A Labor Service) -
Pioneer Corps of the German Army
Feyerabend was drafted into the Pioneer Corps of the German army. December 1943 on, he served as an officer on the northern part of the Eastern Front and was decorated with a iron cross. Feyerabend was hit by three bullets while directing traffic during Germany's retreat from the red army. One of the bullets had hit him in the spine. As a consequence of this, he needed to walk with a stick for the rest of his life. Feyerabend's mother committed suicide in 1943. -
Vienna University
Feyerabend returned to Vienna to study history and sociology at the University. Soon transferred to physics. His first article was on the concept of illustration in modern physics, published. Feyerabend “a positivist” at the time. Feyerabend became secretary of the seminars. Fayerabend met Karl Popper and Walter Hollitscher and Married first wife, Edeltrud. -
Wittgenstein
Feyerabend was granted a British Council scholarship to study under Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend moved to England. -
Europe
Feyerabend went to England, to study under Karl Popper at the London School of Economics. Feyerabend worked on the quantum theory and Wittgenstein. Studied the typescript of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and prepared a summary of the book. Befriended another of Popper’s students, Joseph Agassi. -
Return to Vienna
Feyerabend returned to Vienna, Feyerabend decided to remain in Vienna instead. Feyerabend translated Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies into German. Declined the offer to become Popper’s research assistant. Feyerabend became research assistant to Arthur Pap in Vienna. Arthur Pap was a philosopher in the school of analytic philosophy. -
Quantum Mechanics
First articles on quantum mechanics and on Wittgenstein published. Pap introduced Feyerabend to Herbert Feigl. Feigl is logical empiricist philosopher. Feigl is known for his important contributions to the philosophical analysis of probability, to the debate over scientific realism, and to the analysis of the mind-body problem. -
Back to England
Feyerabend took philosophy at the University of Bristol, England. His summary of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations appeared as a review of the book in The Philosophical Review. -
University of California
eyerabend had been invited to spend one year at the University of California at Berkeley, and accepted. When this visiting appointment ended, the University administration decided to hire him on the basis of his publications and, of course Because of his grant to work at Minneapolis, he only started lecturing full-time at Berkeley in 1960. There he encountered Thomas Kuhn, and read Kuhn’s forthcoming book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in draft form. -
Published Problems of Empiriscism
Feyerabend published “Das Problem der Existenz theoretischer Entitäten”, (Problems of Empiricism) in which he argued that there is no special “problem” of theoretical entities, and that all entities are hypothetical. Gave two lectures to Oberlin College, Ohio, in which he embroidered on Popper’s views about the pre-socratic thinkers. -
How to be a Good Empiricist
Feyerabrand wrote a position paper “How to be a Good Empiricist”, a summing up his point of view, was published, along with his two main articles on the Mind/Body Problem in which he introduced the position now known as “eliminative materialism”. -
Feyerabend Gives up Empiricist
Feyerabend finally gave up the attempt to be an empiricist, arguing that in principle experience is necessary at no point in the construction, comprehension or testing of empirical scientific theories. -
Agianst Method
Appearance of Feyerabend’s first book, Against Method, setting out “epistemological anarchism”, whose main thesis was that there is no such thing as the scientific method. -
Science is Art
Publishes “Science as an Art”, in which he defends an explicitly relativistic account of the history of science according to which there is change, but no “progress”. Also continues his campaign to rehabilitate Ernst Mach. -
Leaving Berkeley
Feyerabend officially resigned from Berkeley in March. -
Against Method
Third edition of Against Method published. Feyerabend developed an inoperable brain tumour, and was hospitalized. -
Died Switzerland (February 11, 1994)
Feyerabend died in the Genolier clinic (Genolier, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland), February 11th. Several major memorial symposia and colloquia on his work took place over the next two years. -
References
Preston, John, "Paul Feyerabend", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/feyerabend/. Consolations for the Specialist," in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970)