Paul Karl Feyerabend (January 13rd 1924 - February 11th 1994) was a philosophical sciences of Austrian origin which lived in England, with the the United States, in New Zealand, Italy and finally in Suisse. Its principal work is Against the method (published in 1975), science in an free society (published in 1978) and Adieu the reason (a collection of articles published in 1987). It became famous for its anarchistic vision of the science and its refusal of the existence of universal methodological rules. It is an influential figure in the field of the Philosophie of sciences, in particular by its epistemological theory known as of “epistemological anarchism” which it exposed in the work Against the method, Esquisse of an anarchistic theory of knowledge in 1975.

Biography

Paul Feyerabend was born in 1924 with Vienna, where it followed his schooling until the secondary cycle. During this period, it took the practice of reading much, it developed an interest for the theater and began lessons of Chant. After having received its diploma of the secondary cycle, it was built-in the German Arbeitsdienst. After a simple drive with Pirmasens (Germany), it was assigned with a unit with Quelern in Bottom close to Brest. Feyerabend describes the work carried out during this period like monotonous: " We turned in the countryside, dug pits then have we them rebouchées". After a short permission it joined the army and the volunteers for the school of officer. In its autobiography, he wrote that he hoped that the war would be finished when he would have finished his training of officer. But it was not the case. As from December 1943, it was useful as officer in the Northern part of the face Is, it was decorated with the Croix of iron and it reached the row of lieutenant. After the German army had begun its retirement because of the advance of the Red Army , Feyerabend was made draw above and accepted three balls, including one in the back. It had to use a cane to go the remainder of its life and frequently tested serious pains. It passed the remainder of the war to recover its wounds.

When the war was finished, Feyerabend began a temporary work with Apolda which consisted in writing plays. After that, it turned over to Vienna to study the Histoire and the Sociologie. It was however disappointed and was quickly transferred in Physique, where it met Felix Ehrenhaft, a physicist whose experiments influenced its vision of science. It changed its subject of study for the Philosophie and subjected its thesis on the sentences of observation. In its autobiography, it describes its philosophical opinions of this time like “honestly empirists”. In 1948 it met for the first time Karl Popper during a seminar with Alpbach. Karl Popper had much influence on later work of Feyerabend, which fitted initially in the continuity of the thought of Popper then in opposition with it. In 1951, one granted a research grant to Feyerabend to study under the direction of Wittgenstein, but this one died before Feyerabend could come to England. Feyerabend chooses Popper as research director then, and studied at the school of sciences of the saving in London in 1952. In its autobiography, Feyerabend explains why it was strongly influenced by Popper during this period: " I had fallen under the charm from his ideas from Popper". Feyerabend went back then to Vienna where it took part in various projects. Was remunerated it to carry out a translation of the open company and his enemies of Popper (a study on the development of the social sciences in Austria) like for the drafting of several encyclopedic articles.

In 1955, Feyerabend was named at the Bristol-board university, where it gave courses on the Philosophie of sciences. He was also professor, in the continuation of his life, in Berkeley, Auckland, Sussex, Yale, London and Berlin. He developed for this period a critical vision on the science, which he defined as " anarchiste" or " dadaïste" to illustrate its rejection of any methodological dogmatism. This position was deeply incompatible with the rationalist tradition which at the time exerted a major influence on the Philosophie of sciences. Feyerabend met then a student of Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos. They projected to write a dialog in which Lakatos would defend the rationalist vision of science when Feyerabend, it, would attack it. The sudden death of Lakatos, in 1974, did not allow the realization of this common work. Feyerabend then decided to publish its share of the dialog, while insisting on the fact that the work, without the response of Lakatos to its criticisms, would remain basically lacunar. The opuscule, named Against the method , caused nevertheless, by the virulence of its criticism of the vision of philosophy on sciences, of many reactions.

Feyerabend left in 1958 to teach in Berkeley and became American citizen. It gave courses until 1991. Although it took its retirement, Feyerabend continued to publish articles and worked on its autobiography. He died in 1994 in Zurich of a brain tumor.

Feyerabend and method in science

In its books Against the method and Science in Free Society (" has; Science in a company libre" , not yet translated into French), Feyerabend the idea defended that there do not exist immutable methodological rules whose scientists should always be useful themselves, and who would guarantee in an undeniable way the validity of their research. It reproached such a prescriptive methodology for limiting the field of activity of the scientists and for restricting by là-même scientific progress. According to him, a " dose" of methodological anarchism could be only advantageous with science.

The position of Feyerabend is generally perceived like radical in philosophy of sciences, because it implies that philosophy will never manage to give an integral description of science, nor to determine a method which makes it possible to differentiate the products from the science of nonscientific entities as the Mythe S. It also implies that the regulations of philosophy as for the way of doing science must be been unaware of by the scientists, if they aim at progress in science.

To support this idea that the methodological rules generally do not contribute to scientific success, Feyerabend takes in particular the example of the Révolution copernician and shows that the prescriptive rules of the philosophy of sciences all were violated at the time of this episode of the Histoire of sciences. It goes even until affirming that the application of these rules in such situations on the contrary had prevented any scientific revolution.

Feyerabend attacks also one of the traditional criteria of the evaluation of the scientific theories, that of compatibility. It tries to show that this requirement of compatibility of the new theories with the old ones gives an unreasonable disadvantage to the already instituted theories. According to him, the fact that a new theory is compatible with the another covering same research field does not increase to in no case its validity. He understands by there that to choose between two theories of the same economy for the explanation of the phenomena that which is most compatible with the theory old and refuted ( falsified ), it is to make a choice of an esthetic nature more than rational. The familiarity of such a theory will return more it moreover attracting for the scientists, who will not have to call in question their prejudices. In that, this theory has an unreasonable and unjust advantage.

Feyerabend also operated a critic of the falsificationnism poppérien. He objected to him that no interesting theory would be never in agreement with all the facts. That goes against a naive falsicationnism which would consist in saying that any scientific theory should be rejected since it would not be compatible with all the known facts. Feyerabend takes the example of the Renormalization in quantum Mécanique: “This procedure consists in striping the results of certain calculations and replacing them by a description of what is observed empirically. One admits as well, implicitly, as the theory is prone to guarantee, by formulating it in a manner which implies that a new principle was discovered” ( Against the method ). Feyerabend does not intend here to make fun in the way in which the scientists proceed. He does not say that the scientists should not make use of the renormalization or unspecified assumptions ad hoc . On the contrary, he affirms that such methods are necessary to the advance in knowledge for several reasons. One of them is that the advance in knowledge is unequal. Feyerabend explains for example why at the time of Galileo, the Optique did not give an account of phenomena which however could be observed by the Télescope S. the astronomers who made use of the observations of the telescopes had already recourse to assumptions ad hoc until they can justify their assumptions thanks to the optical theory.

Feyerabend also criticized any attitude consisting in judging the quality of the scientific theories by comparing them with the known facts. He thought that the preceding theories could influence the interpretation of the phenomena observed. The scientists make use of natural interpretations, i.e. of ideas " so closely related to the observations which should be made a special effort to take conscience" of it; , when they compare the scientific theories with the facts that they observe. Such interpretations must be modified if one wants to make the new theory compatible with the observations. Feyerabend took for principal example of these natural interpretations of the phenomena the argument of the tower. The argument of the tower, indeed, constituted the major objection with the theory trying to show that the ground turns. The aristotelicians thought that the fact that a stone falling from a tower lands right in front of the tower proves that the ground is motionless. They thought that if the ground carried out a rotation while the stone fell, this one would have landed behind the tower. If the ground turned the objects would not fall to the vertical but in diagonal, according to them. Like that does not occur in the physical world, Aristotéliciens inféraient the immobility of the ground of it. The theory of Copernic seems well to be refuted by the fact that the objects fall vertically on ground. It was thus necessary to reinterpret this observation to make it compatible with the theory of Copernic. If Galileo succeeded in doing it, they are only while making use of ad hoc assumptions and while proceeding against-inductivement. The assumptions have in fact at Feyerabend a positive role: they make it possible to make a theory temporarily compatible with the facts, while waiting for that the theory to be defended can be constant by other theories.

All these remarks try to justify the introduction of theories which are not at first sight compatible with the well established facts. Beyond, they make necessary a methodological pluralism which implies to make comparisons between the theories to improve the articulation of these theories. In this way, scientific pluralism would renew the critical capacity of science. Thus, Feyerabend proposes that science does not proceed any more by induction, but well rather by against-induction.

According to Feyerabend, the new theories are never accepted to have respected a scientific step, but because those which supported it are been useful of all the possible easy ways - that they consist in rational arguments, artifices rhetorics or in pure propaganda to advance their cause. Consequently, the only approach which does not harm progress is " all is bon" ( anything goes ). " “All is good” is not a principle which I would like to set up… " , known as Feyerabend in 1975, " but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who was interested more closely in the histoire."

Feyerabend also thought that the Incommensurabilité of the theories, i.e. the fact of being able to compare the theories directly because it are based on incompatible assumptions, could also prevent the use of general criteria to define the quality of scientific theories. It is not theory higher than another, since to in no case the scientific theories do not apprehend reality starting from the same axes, according to him.

In Against the method Feyerabend declared that the philosophy of the research programs of Imre Lakatos actually consisted in " the Anarchism déguisé" , because he claims not to give directives to the scientists. Feyerabend dedicated besides Against the method in “Imre Lakatos: my friend, and brother in anarchism”.

The role of science in the company

Feyerabend described science as anarchistic, being essentially obsessed by its own myth, and claiming with the truth well beyond what allows him its real capacities. It especially was very made indignant by the condescending attitude of many scientists with regard to other knowledge and ways of thinking. For example, he thought that the negative opinions on the astrology or the effectivity of the dances of the rain were not justified by scientific research, and that this kind of behavior with respect to these phenomena were élitistes or racist. For him, science had become a repressive Idéologie, although it could be a movement initially liberator. Feyerabend thought that a pluralist company should try to limit the too great influence of science, as it did with other ideologies.

On the basis of the principle that there is no universal scientific method, Feyerabend affirmed that science did not deserve its statute privileged in the Western companies. Since the scientists cannot manage to adopt a universal point of view which would guarantee the quality of their observations, there is no for him reason which the assertions of science is privileged by reports/ratios with those of other ideologies as the Religion S. One cannot thus judge the other ideologies starting from the prejudices of science. Moreover, great scientific successes historically comprised nonscientific elements. The inspiration of the scientist comes to him at least of good part of mythical or the monk.

While being based on this argumentation, Feyerabend then preached the separation of science and the State, in the same way that the religion and the company are separate in the secular modern societies. It considered " a company libre" in which " all the traditions would have the same rights and the same access to the pouvoir". For example, the parents should have the right to determine the ideological context of the education of their children, instead of having only options limited by science. According to Feyerabend, science should also be subjected to a democratic control: not only the fields of research should be given by popular elections, but the assumptions and the conclusions of science should also be supervised by popular committees. He thought that the citizens should make use of their own principles when they would be brought to make decisions on these problems; the idea that a decision must be rational is according to him élitiste, because it supposes that the philosophers or the scientists are able to determine the criteria in virtue of which the men should make their decisions.

Quotations

" (...) if an American can well today choose the religion which he wants, one does not enable him until new order to require that his/her children learn at the school the magic rather than science. There is a separation between the Church and the State, it does not have there separation between the State and Science." Against the method (1975)

" Let us release the company of the capacity of throttling of a science ideologically petrified, exactly as our ancestors released us from the capacity of throttling of the true-and-single-religion! "

" My thesis is that anarchism contributes to progress, whatever the direction that one him donne"

" All methodologies have their limits, and only the " règle" who survives, it is " all is bon" "

" The idea that science can, and must, being organized according to fixed and universal rules is at the same time utopian and pernicious. It is utopian, because it implies a too simple design of the aptitudes of the man and circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious in what the attempt to impose such rules cannot miss increasing our professional qualifications only at the expense of our humanity. Moreover, such an idea is prejudicial with science, because she neglects the physical conditions and complex histories which influence actually the scientific change. She makes our science less easily adaptable and more dogmatic: each methodological rule being associated with cosmological assumptions, the use of makes us regard the accuracy of the others as self-explanatory. The naive falsificationism holds thus for asset that the natural laws are manifest, and not hidden under disturbances of a considerable width; empiricism, that the experiment of the directions is a mirror of the world more faithful than the pure thought; rationalism, finally, that the artifices of the reason give better results that free plan of the emotions (...) "

" Science is much closer to the myth than a scientific philosophy is not ready to admit it. It is one of the many forms of thought which were developed by the man, but not inevitably best (...) the "

Publications

• Against the method, Outlines of an anarchistic theory of knowledge (1975).
• Science in has Free Society (1978)
• philosophical Ecrits, volume 1: Realism, rationalism and scientific method (1981).
• Good-bye the reason (1987).
• Dialogs on knowledge (1991).
• To kill time (1995).

Publications on Paul Feyerabend

In French language

• Baertschi B., the Scientific Realism of Feyerabend , Dialog, Montreal, 1986.

• Fatty A., Feyerabend, the merry demolition contracter , Alloy, n°28, 1996.
• Krige J. the phenomenon Feyerabend , Alloy, n°28, 1996.
• Malolo Dissaké E., Feyerabend - Epistemology, anarchism and free society , Paris, Puf, philosophies, 2001.
• Levy-Leblond J-M, Paul Feyerabend, a epistemologist except standard , Alloy, n°28, 1996.
• Stengers I., the death of Feyerabend. A thought moving. , Multitudes, 1994.

In English language

Internal bonds

• epistemological Anarchism

• Relativisme
• Grazzia Borrini-Feyerabend

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