Paul Feyerabend: Farewell to Reason (1987)

Edition: Verso, 1987
Review number: 513

Farewell to Reason is a collection of essays on the subject of relativism. Though they were rewritten for inclusion in this volume, their independent origin still shows in a certain repetitiveness and in disparity of content - some are far more concentrated on a single theme than others (for example, some are criticisms of particular writers).

The essays pick on the same kinds of targets as Feyerabend's book Against Method, and attack the idea that science is a unified whole, with a single overriding method. Karl Popper is singled out for criticism, but much of what is said would apply to anyone who contrasts "scientific thinking" with other modes of thought (this is usually done do dismiss religious ideas).

Most of the criticisms that can be made of Against Method are also appropriate here. The rhetorical style of Feyerabend's argument, his use of Galileo as a paradigm of scientific method, and the use of counter examples from areas not always regarded as scientific such as economics are faults common to both. The essay form adds new problems, and some parts do not fit into the whole terribly well (notably the discussion of Aristotle's philosophy of mathematics, though it is interesting in itself). Neither Popper nor Feyerabend seem terribly convincing to me; while it is obvious that not all scientific thought is uniform, most practising scientists have quite similar ideas about what they are trying to do. These differ in details (such as the precise relationship between theory, experiment and whatever may count as underlying reality), but then philosophy does not interest many and certainly there are few who would let it affect their work.

The most interesting new point is part of the essay on Galileo and the church, in which Feyerabend parallels the attitude of Catholic cardinals then and the scientific establishment today. As the money and administrative side of scientific research grow every larger, it is more and more difficult to be a (successful, rather than starving) iconoclast. For science to have a religious orthodoxy of this kind is a bad thing, and we need people like Feyerabend to continually attack its genesis.

Paul Feyerabend: Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (1975)

Edition: Verso, 1993
Review number: 408

Possibly Feyerabend's best known book, Against Method is basically an attack on the idea that science has a single, monolithic 'method', one which has stood the test of time and produced the 'advances' (the advance of science is a subsidiary target) leading to the science we know today. Instead of the close connection between ideas of rationality and scientific method on which many thinkers would base their understanding of science on, Feyerabend points out contradictory and irrational ideas, to his mind not just part of science but at its very core. They are particularly important, he believes, in the challenging of fundamental assumptions which leads to 'revolutions'.

A major part of the book is taken up with brilliant analysis of the example he uses to underpin most of his argument, the writings of Galileo in which he sought to establish the Copernican system as against the accepted Ptolemaic one, and in particular to prove that the earth moves despite immediate appearances.

Feyerabend exposes the logical poverty and propagandist nature of Galileo's argument most convincingly. However, there are reasons which make it a bad example to use as a paradigm of scientific practice. Firstly, it comes from an early period of modern science in which mathematics was not established as the language of argument. Galileo's writing has a literary nature more akin to what would today be considered philosophy rather than physics (the major work quoted by Feyerabend, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, is modelled after the Socratic dialogues of Plato). To carry conviction, modern scientific reasoning is expected to be couched in mathematical terms, even if new mathematical ideas have to be introduced to express it. (Strong arguments can be introduced against this, though it is not Feyerabend's theme here; not least of these would be the important question as to why mathematics seems to so successfully model the universe.)

Secondly, few (if any) practising scientists today would cite Galileo as a paradigm for scientific reasoning. A hero, yes, but an example, no. To use him as the principal prop on which to base an attack on the scientific method does not make the attack significantly more convincing, particularly as Feyerabend occasionally tends to follow Galileo into propaganda. He does use examples other than this one, but they are not particularly convincing and often trivial (several optical illusions among them).

Feyerabend does have important things to say, but he has a tendency to make rather too much of them. The way in which scientists work is of course not monolithic, nor has it remained changeless over the last four centuries. Of course the assumptions underlying scientific thought need to be made clearer and are not unchallengeable. Of course scientists do not think as clearly in the heat of the moment as they may do later when formalising what they want to say for public consumption.