Philosophy of Science

The Origins of Feyerabend’s Anarchistic Epistemology

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

mostafa taghavi

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.

Keywords

Feyerabend’s Anarchistic Epistemology
human being
the principal of proliferation and tenacity
free society
Feyerabend, P. 1975. Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London: New Left Books.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1978. Science in a Free Society. London: New Left Books.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1981a. Problems of Empiricism (Philosophical Papers vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1981b. Realism, Rationalism & Scientific Method (Philosophical Papers vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1987. Farewell to Reason. London: Verso.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1995. Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1999a. Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 
Feyerabend, P. 1999b. Knowledg, Science and Relativism (Philosophical Papers vol. 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Newton-Smith, W. H. 1981. The Rationality of Science. London: Routledge.
 
Psimopoulos, M. and Theocharis, T. 1987. Where Science Has Gone Wrong. Nature, 15 October
 

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