There are writers one mildly respects. There are those that command a kind of distant awe. And then, very rarely, there’s a thinker who triggers an instant sense of affinity, of intimate recognition, almost a déjà vu. This last is my experience in recent weeks of reading Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method.
It’s a book of its time (1975) — the efflorescence of postmodernism, a distinctly European revolt against philosophical authority, against the unity of thought, against the stability of systems.
Feyerabend’s thesis is that the accepted rules of scientific method (logical formulations, falsifiable theories, adherence to observable facts, commensurability with known laws) are constructions after the event which bear no relation to the historical practice of science. He defines his own approach as anthropological. He argues that in reality science has only advanced through reckless disregard for logic and fact, and by resorting to rhetoric, propaganda and social pressure. He demonstrates this principle with (in particular) a detailed reconstruction of the Galilean revolution.
A second consequence of Feyerabend’s train of thought is to demote science itself to just one of many ways to apprehend the world (alongside myth, magic, dogmatic religion, etc.) with no ultimate authority to arbitrate the truth between them.
This thesis carries numerous interesting implications. For now, here are three questions that I find worth considering:
If we abandon our attachment to what Feyerabend calls the “fairy tale” of scientific authority, how do we respond to the assault on science from a delusional faction that denies global warming, and in doing so threatens the future of the planet?
Related to this first question, is science—that is, the ideology of modern science—unique in diagnosing and confronting the peculiar menace of wishful thinking (“It is so because I want it to be so”)?
Is reason only a function of the mind, or is it (as Hegel implies) a function of nature? That’s to say, is rationality itself—as opposed to one or other set of rational propositions—a mirror (however tarnished) of reality?
Footnote: It’s interesting to me that while Feyerabend talks about scientific method with a lively interest, he does not originate a philosophical method in his own writing (as did Hegel or Kierkegaard or Wittgenstein). His text evinces a quite conventional mixture of rationalism and empiricism, spiced with some delightful polemic.