Category Archives: Feyerabend

Hegel and the development of Feyerabend’s thought

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

In his paper Two models of epistemic change (1970), Feyerabend argued that we can distinguish between two approaches to prolonged stability of theories or concepts. The first interprets durability as a measure of success: on an instrumentalist view, it may … Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Feyerabend and historiographic proliferation

Posted on August 28, 2011 by

In the introduction to his Against Method, Paul Feyerabend paraphrased V.I. Lenin by claiming that history is “always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and subtle” than “the best historian and the best methodologist can imagine”. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend, Historiography, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Philosophy of Science | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Anything goes? Feyerabend and method

Posted on June 26, 2011 by

This entry looks at Paul Feyerabend’s reductio ad absurdum of specific rationalist conceptions of scientific method, perhaps one of the least understood arguments in the philosophy of science. I explain the structure of the reductio before considering how Feyerabend applied … Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend, Galileo, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Philosophy of Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Second Response to ‘The Politics of Demarcation’

Posted on May 3, 2011 by

Abstract. The most widely disseminated arguments against Intelligent Design have failed to produce invariant and objective demarcation criteria sufficient to establish that ID cannot be a matter of science. Ultimately, ID opponents rely heavily upon the fact of there being … Continue reading →

Posted in Current Affairs, Evolution, Feyerabend, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Politics, Religion, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

First Response to ‘The Politics of Demarcation’

Posted on April 29, 2011 by

Abstract: This is in response to The Politics of Demarcation, but the discussion here is largely limited to matters relating primarily to some assertions about whether demarcation is best regarded as a non-issue. In the comments section of this blog … Continue reading →

Posted in Current Affairs, Feyerabend, History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Politics, Religion, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Feyerabend on Kuhn and Historiography

Posted on March 4, 2011 by

This entry looks at some comments from the first of two letters of 1960-61 that Feyerabend wrote to Kuhn concerning a draft copy of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR), on which Feyerabend was commenting. He objected that in SSR … Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Science | 3 Comments

Astrology and its problems: Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend

Posted on February 14, 2011 by

The merits or otherwise of astrology have been subject to much discussion recently, resulting in attacks that have been critiqued by Rebecca Higgitt, amongst others. The problem, according to Higgitt, is that astrology is “rubbish” but not because of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend, History and Philosophy of Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Demarcation’s revisited demise

Posted on December 21, 2010 by

The latest edition of Synthese is dedicated to “Evolution and its rivals” and includes a contribution by Robert Pennock entitled Can’t philosophers tell the difference between science and religion?: Demarcation revisited (originally published in 2009). This piece is highly critical … Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend, History and Philosophy of Science, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Doubt and disunity

Posted on November 11, 2010 by

The question is: when does this incompleteness, coupled with a focus on anomalies for a given theory and an insistence that it may be wrong, become abuse – using our uncertainty to delay or undermine theories rather than developing alternatives? Continue reading →

Posted in Feyerabend, History and Philosophy of Science, Politics, Science | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Feyerabend’s methodological argument for realism

Posted on November 2, 2010 by

This is a slightly amended discussion of a methodological argument for scientific realism due to Feyerabend, focusing on a difficulty that arose from considering Einstein’s study of Brownian motion and the transition from the phenomenological to kinetic theories of gases. … Continue reading →

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