Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Mostafa Taghavi, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science department, Sharif University,
Abstract
In the first of this three-part article, Feyerabend’s anarchistic theory of knowledge is briefly introduced. Here I explain why he is opposed to logical positivism, Popper’s philosophy of science, Lakatos and even Kuhn, and why he believes that science is not superior to other cognitive traditions. Feyerabend emphasizes that ‘Anything goes’ is the only undying principle that can be derived from real science. The first part of the article paves the way for the clarification of the meaning of this key sentence in the third section. In fact, the first part should be considered as a representation of Feyerabend’s anarchistic thoughts. The second part, which presents the main idea of the article, explains that Feyerabend's anarchistic theory has its roots in his view on ‘being’, ‘man’ and ‘theory’.
These three categories are closely interrelated: Man develops theories through which understands being. The second part, which describes the background of Feyerabend's anarchist theory, also indicates that the origins of his philosophy are not so much anarchistic. In the final part, some of the most important corollaries of Feyerabend’s thoughts such as ‘proliferation and tenacity’, ‘free society’ and ‘the difference between the respectable thinkers and inferior ones’ will be addressed.
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