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Paul Karl Feyerabend
Born January 13, 1924 born and raised in Vienna, Feyerabend was a talented student who had a knack for physics and math. He stumbled into drama and eventually made singing a passion (Preston). (Image: vectorstock.com, reportman) -
The War (1939-1945)
Drafted into the Arbeitsdienst (the work service introduced by the Nazis). Feyerabend volunteered for officer school and was sent to Yugoslavia for training. He received the Iron Cross March 1944, promoted to lieutenant at the end of 1944.In January 1945, Feyerabend was sent to Poland where he succeeded multiple injured officers to the rank of Major. Feyerabend took a bullet to his spine and finished out the war in hospital. (Preston). (Image: iainbking.com) -
Return to Vienna
Feyerabend returned to Vienne to study theoretical physics. August 1948, he meets Karl Popper who proves to be the largest single influence (first positive, then negative) on his work. Became student leader of the "Kraft Circle"(Preston). -
First published paper
Two of his most important early papers, “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience”, and “Complementarity” appeared in the proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. In them, Feyerabend argued against positivism and in favor of a scientific realist account of the relation between theory and experience, largely on grounds familiar from Karl Popper’s falsificationist views (Preston). -
Noteable works before Against Method
Feyerabend took a permanent position at University of California, Berkeley and published a number of papers; “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism”, “How to be a Good Empiricist”, "Problems of Empiricism", and "Reply to Criticism", where his views started to shift away from Popper's and started to work more with Niels Bohr (Preston). (Image: pkfeyerabend.org) -
Fall out with Karl Popper
Publication of “Consolations for the Specialist”, in which Feyerabend attacked Popper from a Kuhnian point of view, and the essay version of “Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge”, in which “epistemological anarchism” was revealed for the first time. Feyerabend claimed to be applying the liberalism of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty to scientific methodology. Published little during the next few years (Preston). (Image: pkfeyerabend.org) -
Against Method
Feyerabend publishes his first book, Against Method, elaborating on his main idea of "epistemological anarchism"; there is no such thing as the scientific method. Scientists are not supposed to have rules because if scientists work within parameters they could be missing out on critical information/discoveries outside of their logic limits (Preston). This video covers the epistemological anarchism view of Paul Feyerabend. (Image: goodreads) -
Science in a Free Society
Against Method received some critical reviews. Feyerabend was taken aback and decided to respond to these reviews in a section of his next book, Science in a Free Society. This second book stressed the need to separate science and state to keep science from ruling society and erasing traditions (Preston). (Image: pkfeyerabend.org) -
Farewell to Reason
One of Feyerabend's favorite academic position was splitting time between UC Berkley and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich. During this time, Feyerabend published a collection of many important papers in Farewell to Reason. The major message of this book is that relativism is the solution to the problems of conflicting beliefs and of conflicting ways of life (Preston). (Image: pkfeyerabend.org) -
The Tyranny of Science
In the 1990s, Feyerabend developed five lectures based on ones he had given at Berkeley. Eric Oberheim edited and published this collection in the book The Tyranny of Science. The main theme of this book is that science is both incomplete and quite strongly disunified (Preston). (Image: goodreads) -
Death
February 11, 1994 at the Genolier Clinic, overlooking Lake Geneva.
His autobiography was published in 1995, a third volume of his Philosophical Papers appeared in 1999, and his last book The Conquest of Abundance, edited by Bert Terpstra, appeared in the same year (Preston). (Image: pkfeyerabend.org)
