Background

Paul Karl Feyerabend was born on January 13, 1924, in Vienna, Austria, to the family of a civil servant and a seamstress.

Education

Feyerabend attended a Realgymnasium (High School) at which he was taught Latin, English, and science. He was a Vorzugsschüler, that is, "a student whose grades exceeded a certain average," and by the time he was sixteen he had the reputation of knowing more about physics and math than his teachers. But he also got thrown out of school on one occasion.

After basic training in Pirmasens, Germany, he was assigned to a unit in Quelerne en Bas, France. Feyerabend described the work he did during that period as monotonous: "we moved around in the countryside, dug ditches, and filled them up again." After a short leave, he joined the army and volunteered for officer school. In his autobiography Killing Time, he wrote that he hoped the war would be over by the time he had finished his education as an officer. This turned out not to be the case. From December 1943 on, he served as an officer on the northern part of the Eastern Front, was decorated with an Iron cross, and attained the rank of lieutenant. After the German army started its retreat from the advancing Red Army, Feyerabend was hit by three bullets while directing traffic. It turned out that 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 and frequently experienced severe pains. He was also impotent. He spent the rest of the war recovering from his injuries.

When he was 23 years old, Feyerabend received word that his mother had committed suicide. He did attend the funeral but reports that he felt nothing about it. When his father died he did not bother to attend his funeral.

When the war was over, Feyerabend first got a temporary job in Apolda in which he wrote pieces for the theatre. After that, he took various classes at the Weimar Academy, and returned to Vienna to study history and sociology. He became dissatisfied, however, and soon transferred to physics, where he met Felix Ehrenhaft, a physicist whose experiments would influence his later views on the nature of science. Feyerabend changed the subject of his study to philosophy and submitted his final thesis on observation sentences. In his autobiography, he described his philosophical views during this time as "staunchly empiricist." In 1948 he visited the first meeting of the international summer seminar of the Austrian College Society in Alpbach. This was the place where Feyerabend first met Karl Popper, who had a large influence on him and his work, first in a positive way so that for a time he defended Popper and called himself a Popperian, but later in a negative one when he rejected falsificationism and denounced Popper.

In 1951, Feyerabend was granted a British Council scholarship to study under Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend moved to England. Feyerabend then chose Popper as his supervisor instead and went to study at the London School of Economics in 1952. In his autobiography, Feyerabend explains that during this time, he was influenced by Popper: "I had fallen for [Popper's ideas]." After that, Feyerabend returned to Vienna and was involved in various projects. He was paid to do a number of projects: he translated Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies into German, he did a report on the development of the humanities in Austria, and he wrote several articles for an encyclopedia.

Career

In 1955, Feyerabend received his first academic appointment at the University of Bristol, England, where he gave lectures about the philosophy of science. During this time he developed a critical view of science, which he later described as "anarchistic" or "dadaistic" to illustrate his rejection of the dogmatic use of rules. This position was incompatible with the contemporary rationalistic culture in the philosophy of science.

At the London School of Economics, Feyerabend met Imre Lakatos, a student of Popper. Feyerabend and lakatos planned to write a dialogue volume in which Lakatos would defend a rationalist view of science and Feyerabend would attack it. Lakatos' sudden death in 1974 put an end to this planned joint publication. Against Method, Feyerabend's half of that projected joint project, became a famous criticism of current philosophical views of science and provoked many reactions.

He had moved to University of California at Berkeley in Southern California in 1958 and became a US citizen. Following (visiting) professorships (or their equivalent) at London, Berlin, and Yale universities, he taught at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1974, always returning to California. Feyerabend later enjoyed alternating between posts at ETH Zurich and Berkeley through the 1980s, but left Berkeley for good in October of 1989, first to Italy, then finally to Zurich. After his retirement in 1991, Feyerabend continued to publish frequent papers and worked on his autobiography. He died in 1994, at his home in Zurich, from a brain tumor.

Achievements

• Paul Feyerabend made a name for himself both as an expositor and as a critic of Karl Popper's "critical rationalism," and went on to become one of the twentieth century's most famous philosophers of science. An imaginative maverick, he became a critic of the philosophy of science itself, particularly of "rationalist" attempts to lay down or discover rules of the scientific method.
  
  Asteroid 22356 Feyerabend is named in Paul Feyerabend's honor

Works

More photos

• book

  • Against Method

    (Paul Feyerabend's globally acclaimed work, which sparked ...)

    1975
  • Science in a Free Society

    (In this work, Feyerabend reviews that controversy, and ex...)

    1978
  • The Tyranny of Science 2011
  • Philosophy of Nature 2016

• boom

  • Farewell to Reason

    (Farewell to Reason offers a vigorous challenge to the sci...)

    1989

Religion

Raised a Catholic, Feyerabend became an adamant atheist.

Politics

While Feyerabend described himself as an "epistemological anarchist," he explicitly disavowed being a "political anarchist."

Views

Feyerabend's critique of science takes place on two fronts. Having been influenced by Popper, he examines in detail the logic of scientific method, as well as making a detailed, if unconventional, study of key episodes in the history of science.

Feyerabend argued that adherence to any strict method, such as those presented by Lakatos or Popper, would in the long run be counterproductive for the progress of science. All such methods place unhelpful restrictions in the path of progress.

Feyerabend points out that to insist that new theories be consistent with old theories gives an unreasonable advantage to the older theory. He makes the logical point that being compatible with a defunct older theory does not increase the validity or truth of a new theory over an alternative covering the same content. That is, if one had to choose between two theories of equal explanatory power, to choose the one that is compatible with an older, falsified theory is to make an aesthetic, rather than a rational choice. The familiarity of such a theory might also make it more appealing to scientists, since they will not have to disregard as many cherished prejudices. Hence, that theory can be said to have "an unfair advantage."

Feyerabend also argues that no interesting theory is ever consistent with all the relevant facts. He uses several examples, but "renormalization" in quantum mechanics provides an example of his intentionally provocative style: "This procedure consists in crossing out the results of certain calculations and replacing them by a description of what is actually observed. Thus one admits, implicitly, that the theory is in trouble while formulating it in a manner suggesting that a new principle has been discovered." Such jokes are not intended as a criticism of the practice of scientists. Feyerabend is not advocating that physicists not make use of renormalization or other ad hoc methods - quite the opposite. He is arguing that they are essential to the progress of science. Feyerabend's dispute is with methodologies that hide this fact.

Together these remarks sanction the introduction of theories that are inconsistent with well-established facts. Furthermore, a pluralistic methodology that involves making comparisons between any theories at all forces defendants to improve the articulation of each theory. Thus Feyerabend proposes that science might proceed best not by induction, but by counterinduction.

Feyerabend examines in detail crucial events in the history of science, arguing that they provide examples of counterinduction at work. For instance, from the point of view of an Aristotelian, that a ball dropped from a tower lands directly under the point from which it was dropped, and not to one side or the other, is a falsification of the hypothesis that the earth moves. Feyerabend argues that in order to progress beyond Aristotelianism, Galileo had to make use of ad hoc hypothesis and alterations to the very language in which observations are made. For Feyerabend, Galileo proceeds counterinductively, and against the rational principles of scientific method.

Feyerabend objected to any single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would limit the activities of scientists, and hence restrict scientific progress. New theories came to be accepted not because of their accord with scientific method, but because their supporters made use of any trick - rational, rhetorical or ribald - in order to advance their cause. Without a fixed ideology, or the introduction of religious tendencies, the only approach which does not inhibit progress is "anything goes": "'anything goes' is not a 'principle' I hold... but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history."

Feyerabend enjoyed using inflammatory and direct language. He described science as being essentially anarchistic, of being obsessed with its own mythology, and of making claims to truth well beyond its actual capacity. He called for a separation of the state and science for much the same reasons that are used to justify the separation of state and church.

Quotations: "The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths."

"Science is only 'one' of the many instruments people invented to cope with their surroundings. It is not the only one, it is not infallible and it has become too powerful, too pushy and too dangerous to be left on its own."

"The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes."

"The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education."

Personality

As a person, Feyerabend was so complex that even his closest friends found him brilliant and original but erratic, unreliable, and often difficult to take.

Physical Characteristics: During the World War II, Feyerabend was hit by three bullets. It turned out that 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 and frequently experienced severe pains. He was also impotent.

Following the initial reviews of Against Method, which were overwhelmingly negative, Feyerabend fell into a deep depression.

Interests

• Reading

Connections

The wartime injury Feyerabend received left him impotent. But this did not stop his having many affairs with many women. He left a string of broken hearts in his wake. He was married four times and carried on relationships with other women while he was married. At Berkeley, for one of his primary locations, he took away the girlfriends of numerous students - after all, he was a famous professor and they were just lowly students.

He does seem to have finally found happiness and contentment with his last wife, Grazia Borrini Feyerabend. They remained together until his death and she was with him when he died. After that, she took loving charge of his papers and work and saw through the posthumous publication of some of them.

Spouse:

Grazia Borrini Feyerabend

References

• Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend
  1996