Paul Karl Feyerabend quotes - page 3

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian philosopher of science, renowned for his criticism of scientific rationalism and methodological uniformity. His work challenged the idea that science follows a universal, fixed method. He became famous for arguing that “anything goes” in the practice of science and for promoting epistemological pluralism. Here are 80 of his quotes:

Most scientists today are devoid of ideas, full of fear, intent on producing some paltry result so that they can add to the flood of inane papers that now constitutes "scientific progress" in many areas.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

My life has been the result of accidents, not of goals and principles. My intellectual work forms only an insignificant part of it. Love and personal understanding are much more important. Leading intellectuals with their zeal for objectivity kill these personal elements. They are criminals, not the leaders of mankind.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

And where is the boundary-if there is a boundary-between a collective outlook and "the world"?. Many cultures assume such a boundary, but they set it in different places. Divine appearances once were real- they are mere fantasies today. Where shall we, who examine the phenomenon, set the boundary?

Paul Karl Feyerabend

I want to defend society and its inhabitants from all ideologies, science included. All ideologies must be seen in perspective. One must not take them too seriously. One must read them like fairy-tales which have lots of interesting things to say but which also contain wicked lies, or like ethical prescriptions which may be useful rules of thumb but which are deadly when followed to the letter.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

The ideas survived and they can now be said to be in agreement with reason. They survived because prejudice, passion, conceit, errors, sheer pigheadedness, in short because all the elements that characterize the context of discovery, opposed the dictates of reason and because these irrational elements were permitted to have their way. To express it differently: Copernicanism and other "rational" views exist today only because reason was overruled at some time in their past. (The opposite is also true: witchcraft and other "irrational" views had ceased to be influential only because reason was overruled at some time in their past.)

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Experts have a vested interest in their own playpens, and so they will quite naturally argue that 'education' is impossible without them (can you imagine an Oxford philosopher, or an elementary particle physicist arguing himself out of good money?)

Paul Karl Feyerabend

The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

The Conceptual apparatus of the theory and the emotions connected with its application, having penetrated all means of communication, all actions, and indeed the whole life of the community, now guarantees the success of methods such as transcendental deduction, analysis of usage, phenomenological analysis - which are means for further solidifying the myth... At the same time it is evident that all contact with the world is lost and the stability achieved, the semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Theories are abandoned and superseded by more fashionable accounts long before they have had an opportunity to show their virtues.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Its "success" is entirely man-made.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

After Aristotle and Ptolemy, the idea that the earth moves - that strange, ancient, and "entirely ridiculous", Pythagorean view was thrown on the rubbish heap of history, only to be revived by Copernicus and to be forged by him into a weapon for the defeat of its defeaters. The Hermetic writings played an important part in this revival, which is still not sufficiently understood, and they were studied with care by the great Newton himself.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Many "educated citizens" take it for granted that reality is what scientists say it is and that other opinions may be recorded, but need not be taken seriously.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

These are the assumptions we must make to give the questions the polemical force they are supposed to have. Not a single one of them stands up to closer examination.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

This is how empirical "evidence" may be created by a procedure which quotes as its justification the very same evidence it has Produced.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

The material which a scientist actually has at his disposal, his laws, his experimental results, his mathematical techniques, his epistemological prejudices, his attitude towards the absurd consequences of the theories which he accepts, is indeterminate in many ways, ambiguous, and never fully separated from the historical background.

Paul Karl Feyerabend