"Science in a Free Society" by Paul Feyerabend

Feyerabend's thesis is that rationalism has too firm a grip on society and that the best medicine is a little anarchy.

He defines rationalism as "a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God." (p 20) which believes itself to be "'objective' and tradition-independent" but he suggests that although modern society bases itself on science "as uncritically as one once accepted the cosmology of bishops." (p 74) it is just another tradition fighting for itself in a world of alternative traditions. No tradition, he asserts, can judge another tradition because the values and beliefs of each tradition are different; this is a form of Kuhn's incommensurability thesis. You can't even damn a tradition on the basis that it is internally contradictory. Contradictions are not necessarily signs of a weak argument. The idea "that we do not live in a paradoxical world" so that our "knowledge must be self-consistent ... loses it authority the moment that we find that there are facts whose only adequate description is inconsistent and that inconsistent theories may be fruitful."

OK. These are serious issues. We have to acknowledge that science is 'just' another tradition and that it is difficult to make an objective judgement about whether as a tradition is is one of the best. But Feyerabend then appears to assert that this difficulty therefore means that anything ought to go.

He asserts that "a free society is a society in which all traditions are given equal rights, equal access to education and other positions of power." (p 30). Thus Hopi creation myths should be taught alongside the Big Bang Theory, astrology with astronomy, homeopathy with scientific medicine (he doesn't like scientific medicine!). Thus far he is relativist; he is also anarchist is the sense that "rules have their limit" (p 32) though he probably doesn't go on to assert that "all rules and standards are worthless and should be given up." (p 32). 

He appears to advocate the Socratic view that everything should be examined (although he places a significant restriction on the ability to examine if we can only examine any one tradition from inside). But Feyerabend does not appear to examine his basic assumption which seems to be that we 'should' live in a 'free' and 'democratic' society. 

Because if he is right that a 'free' society must give all traditions equal rights then it would follow that a 'free' society must give "equal rights, equal access to education and other positions of power" to 'traditions' such as racism and Nazism and Aztec human sacrifice. I don't think I want to live in such a society.

The second half of the book is dedicated to vitriolic attacks on those who have dared to criticise him, suggesting that he has been misunderstood. He seems hurt by the violence of the reaction to what he thinks are reasoned views but the section in which these protestations are made is entitled "Conversations with illiterates" which doesn't sound either friendly or reasoned. 

Some interesting points but the overall conclusions seem ridiculous. September 2016; 217 pages

"Against Method" by Paul Feyerabend

Feyerabend is a firebrand, an iconoclast, whose purpose is to demolish any theory that seeks to systematise the processes of scientific discovery. He starts with the statement that "anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science" (p 1). The history of science is "complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining." (p 3) And he continues to challenge throughout the book. Don't be misled by the italics, which he peppers with the abandon of a Caribbean chef. This is not the work of an obsessed dilettante. He is thoroughly immersed in the history of science and proceeds to provide extensive evidence from the Copernican revolution.

Although it is a little worrying, given his tendency to make broad-brush statements such as "There is not a single interesting theory that agrees with all the known facts in its domain" (p 14; my emphasis), that the evidence he cites comes exclusively from the Copernican revolution (with a little bit added in about Newton but he rarely strays into biology or chemistry or even quantum physics).

His essential thesis is that scientists are mavericks who don't assess theories in terms of the facts they can explain (and certainly, despite Popperianism, don't reject theories because they are falsified by inconvenient facts). Nor do scientists neatly construct methodologies. Indeed, in Feyerabend's eyes, the process of scientific discovery is an essentially ad hoc muddle of methodological innovation, new philosophical insights and perspectives, and facts. In order for science to make progress it is necessary, from time to time, to flout the rules of scientific methodology. (p 7) "Inventing theories and contemplating them in a relaxed and 'artistic' fashion, scientists often make moves that are forbidden by methodological rules." (p 150)

This is an interesting book and contains many insights into the work of Galileo in particular. He can get carried away: "his natural sense of humour and not the inbred and always rather nasty kind of jocularity one finds in specialized professions" combines yet another of his italicisings with the naturalistic fallacy with a sweeping generalisation ('always') and bitchiness. But on the whole it is well written, with reams of footnotes (some pages have more footnote than text) and tons of well-argued evidence.

I often do not read the Appendices of books. Hence, having reached Appendix One, I put the book down and wrote the blog post above. Then, for some reason, I took the book back up and discovered that there were five more chapters after Appendix One (including, interspersed, Appendix Two). And a Post Script. That really is it. So below is the rest of the blog post.

The remaining chapters investigate the processes involved when two inconsistent ideas interact, which is where he differs from Thomas Kuhn who his classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions has suggested that paradigms can be so different as to be incommensurable with no possibility of interaction. Feyerabend believes that "Incommensurability depends on covert classifications." (p 171) and he defines "Covert classifications are sensed rather than comprehended." (p 170) This means that when, for example,an iconoclastic young Turk in, say, theatre despairs of the theatre of his time and, by searching outside the box, promotes a revolution in drama, his new revolutionary school can and does interact with the old school which may "lead to a slight modification of the original practice, it may eliminate it, it may result in a tradition that barely resembles either of the interacting elements." (p 224) This is a very common-sense view.

But his overall argument, summed up in his title Against Method, is that "all rules have their limits" although "I do not argue that we should proceed without rules and standards" (p 242). He uses a nice analogy which will even work in the sat nav era: "The wanderer uses the map to find his way but he also corrects it as he proceeds ... Using the map no matter what will soon get him into trouble. But it is better to have maps than to proceed without them." (p 233)

But one of the reasons why a single uniform method should not be imposed is that we are always seeking to explore hitherto unmapped regions. "We don't know the region, we cannot say what will work in it." Fair point, although one suspects that the human reaction will be to try to apply whatever has worked so far.

He's right of course. Scientists don't follow their own rules. Who does? Exploration must always involve a great deal of making-it-up-as-you-go-along. We should not try to discern, still less impose, a single Method on research. That is just common sense. But Feyerabend's gift for communication sometimes makes him seem more like a prophet than a philosopher, more of an iconoclast than an academic, and ever so slightly a crank. When he seems to suggest that physics as a way of discovering the universe is not as good as mysticism, it is easy to see why his opponents should accuse him of an 'anything goes' platform when actually his 'anarchy' is merely a plea against totalitarianism.

June 2016; 287 pages

"What is this thing called science?" by A F Chalmers

This is an extremely readable account of the history and philosophy of science. He explains some difficult ideas with brilliant clarity.

He talks about the problem of induction, expressed by Bertrand Russell as the problem the turkey faces when, following daily examples, he induces that he is always fed at 9AM ... until he discovers he is wrong on Christmas Eve. Furthermore, since what you see depends on what you expect, in some sense theory comes before observation; Chalmers illustrates this rather neatly with an example about junior doctors learning to see what the weird marks on X-rays actually mean.

He then discusses Popperian ideas about falsificationism at length and shows the weaknesses of this theory.

He then looks at alternative accounts of the historical development of Physics from the point of view of Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend.

For me, the most important moments came when he was talking about concept networks. He argues that "the Newtonian concept of mass" is more precise than "the concept of democracy" (pp 77 - 78) because "the concept plays a specific, well-defined role in a precise, structured theory." (p 78). "If this suggested close connection, between precision of a term or statement and the role played by that term or statement in a theory, is valid, then the need for coherently structured theories follows fairly directly from it." (p 78). For example, a dictionary definition requires one to understand many other words. He also quotes Feyerabend as asserting the importance to Copernicus of the "internal connectedness" of the parts of his system. (p 103)

This of course links to the idea that Kuhn viewed "normal science as a puzzle-solving activity" (p 92) and, putting coherence above correspondence, stated that "puzzles that resist solution are seen as anomalies rather than as falsifications of the paradigm." (p 92)

But Chalmers also provides a justification which I can use for my choice of Grounded Theory as a methodology for exploring liminality: "Precise experimentation can only be carried out if one has a precise theory capable of yielding predictions in the form of precise observation statements." (p 79) and since Galileo was creating a new paradigm "it need not be surprising that his efforts involved thought experiemtns, analogies and illustrative metaphors rather than detailed experimentation." (p 79)

This is a well written and readable account of the history of physics though perhaps a little out of date with the latest ideas.

April 2016; 170 pages