Paul Feyerabend

By Danryan924

  • Birth

    Birth
    On January 13th, 1924, in Vienna Austria, Paul Feyerabend, "The Nazi who almost destroyed Science", was born. Paul was born into a middle-class family and times began to get hard in the 1920s. In his autobiography, he explains his childhood to be isolationist and that he was cut off from seeing his neighbors, other children, and the outside world. He indulged himself into books and gained an interest in physics from his high school physics teacher.
  • Period: to

    World War 2

    During this time, Paul Feyerabend was serving in World War 2 and got seriously injured on the Eastern Front. After he was drafted, his mother committed suicide. When he was in Russia, he was shot in the hand and belly which caused spinal damage. Source:
    Preston, J. (2016). Paul Feyerabend (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford.edu. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/
  • Period: to

    Studying of Science

    Attends Karl Popper's seminars in Alpbach, Austria, which steer him towards philosophy of science. Receives his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Vienna with a dissertation on observational statements.

  • Classical Empiricism

    Classical Empiricism
    In the summer of 1966, Feyerabend lectured on Church Dogma at Berkeley, because he believed the development of church dogma shares many features with the development of scientific thought. This eventually became a paper that was titled "Classical Empiricism" which was published in 1970. This publication discussed that empiricism shared certain problematic features with Protestantism.

  • Against Method

    Against Method
    Paul Feyerabend's key work was the Against Method. He not only did not entirely believe his opinions written in this, but enjoyed that it angered people and was known to enjoy to anger people. His claim is that there is no universal scientific method. He believes that scientists do not follow a specific method and that this is a good thing because scientific progress would not progress if they did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXgIKGBJq4s

  • Death

    Death
    On February 11th, 1994, Paul Feyerabend passed away in Switzerland. Here is a short video recapping Paul Feyerabend's life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oovqaJSOVLc Preston, J. (2016). Paul Feyerabend (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford.edu. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/