-
Paul Karl Feyerabend; Birth
Born on January 13, 1924 in Vienna, Austria. Son of a civil servant and a seamstress. -
1942
After graduatng High School in March of 1942, Feyerabend was drafted into the Arbeitsdienst (work service introduced by the Nazis). He did his basic training in Pirmasens, Germany. Opting to stay in Germany, away from the fighting. Feyerabend eventually got bored with this and requested to be Christmas to join Wehrmacht's Pioneer Corps. -
Period: to
WWII
Feyerabend's time in service -
1943
Feyerabend volunteered for officer's school to avoid going into the fighting anymore where the trainees were sent to Yugoslavia. In July, he learned of his mother's suicide. Feyerabend did not appear to show any emotion among his peers. In December, feyerabend's unit was deploy to Russian front but ultimately did not encounter any Russian soldiers. -
Return to Vienne
Feyerabend returned home to his parents apartment in Vienne in 1947, post war. Wanting to go to school for scienc, math, and astronomy, Feyerabend chose instead to read history and sociology at the University of Vienna's Institut für Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung -
University of Bristol
Feyerabend's first full-time academic appointment as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bristol, England. -
University of California, Berkeley
Feyerabend took a lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley in 1958. This is where his two most important papers would be written. “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience”, and “Complementarity”. Where Feyerabend, using Karl Popper's falsification views were the grounds, "argued against positivism and in favor of a scientific realist account of the relation between theory and experience."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/ -
1959
Feyerabend applied for both a permanent position at UC Berkeley and a U.S. Green Card for work. -
Interview with Paul Feyerabend
Parts of an interview with the controversial philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend, an Austrian-born thinker who was an influential figure in the philosophy of science and sociology of science. He was well known for being something of a provocateur or gadfly. In his most famous work "Against Method", he developed an anarchist view of knowledge (epistemological anarchism), the view that "anything goes" in science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDwoGtPbO5w -
Feyerabend; Death
Feyerabend died on February 11, 1994 in the Genolier clinic (Genolier, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland). In the two years to follow, there were several memorial symposia and colloquia on his work.
