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Birth
Paul Feyerabend was born in 1924 in Vienna where he attended primary school and high school. In this period he got into the habit of reading a lot, developed an interest in theatre, as music as philosophy. -
Drafted into the Military
When he graduated from high school in April 1942, he was drafted into the German Arbeitsdienst. -
Mother's Suicide.
When he was 23 years old, Feyerabend received word that his mother had committed suicide. He did attend the funeral but reports that he felt nothing about it. When his father died he did not bother to attend his funeral. -
Karl Popper
In 1948 he visited the first meeting of the international summer seminar of the Austrian College Society in Alpbach. This was the place where Feyerabend first met Karl Popper, who had a large influence on him and his work. -
Weimar Academy
He took various classes at the Weimar Academy, and returned to Vienna to study history and sociology. He was dissatisfied however, and soon transferred to physics, where he met Felix Ehrenhaft, a physicist whose experiments would influence his later views on the nature of science. Feyerabend changed the subject of his study to philosophy and submitted his final thesis on observation sentences. In his autobiography, he described his philosophical views during this time as "staunchly empiricist." -
Scholarship
In 1951, Feyerabend was granted a British Council scholarship to study under Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend moved to England. -
Poppor
Feyerabend then chose Popper as his supervisor instead, and went to study at the London School of Economics in 1952. In his autobiography, Feyerabend explains that during this time, he was influenced by Popper: "I had fallen for [Popper's ideas]." After that, Feyerabend returned to Vienna and was involved in various projects. He was paid to do a number of projects: he translated Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies into German, he did a report on the development of humanities in Austria. -
First Academic appointment
In 1955, Feyerabend received his first academic appointment at the University of Bristol, England, where he gave lectures about the philosophy of science. Later in his life he worked as a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the University of Sussex in Englznd, Yale University, the University of London, and the University of Berlin. During this time he developed a critical view of science. -
Work regarding the nature of scientific method
Feyerabend eventually developed these thoughts in a fascinating series of papers beginning in 1957, arguing that science needs realism in order to progress, and that positivism would stultify such progress. The argument was entirely in line with Popper's approach, as well as with his conclusions. -
Imre Lakatos
At the London School of Economics, Feyerabend met Imre Lakatos, a student of Popper. Feyerabend and lakatos planned to write a dialogue volume in which Lakatos would defend a rationalist view of science and Feyerabend would attack it. Lakatos' sudden death in 1974 put an end to this planned joint publication. Against Method, Feyerabend's half of that projected joint project, became a famous criticism of current philosophical views of science and provoked many reactions. -
Death
In 1994 Paul Feyerabend died.
