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Early Life and Education
Paul Feyerabend was born in Vienna in 1924. After being shot during WWII, he studied physics at the Weimar Institute in Vienna in 1947. Feyerabend met Karl Popper in 1948 at the Alpbach seminar of the Austrian College Society and began studying under Popper at Cambridge in 1951. He returned to Vienna in 1953 and published his first articles on quantum mechanics and Wittgenstein in 1954. In 1955, he became a full time philosophy lecturer at the University of Bristol in England. -
Early Academic Publishing – a Popperian Positivist
One of Feyerabend’s earliest publications was his 1955 review of Wittgenstein’s work Philosophical Investigations. Over the next three years, he published an article on the paradox of analysis and lectured on the quantum theory of measurement at the University of Bristol. In 1958, as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkley and published “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience” and “Complementarity” in which he cited Popper’s falsification theory. -
Immigration
In 1959, Feyerabend immigrated to the US and became a full time Berkley employee, where he published “Das Problem der Existenz theoretischer Entitäten”. In this paper, Feyerabend posited that “all entities are hypothetical” and that there is no special problem with theoretical entities. -
Incommensurability and Eliminative Materialism
In 1962, he introduced the concept of incommensurability with “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism”. The next year, he introduced the concept of “eliminative materialism” with a position paper titled “How to be a Good Empiricist”. Feyerabend’s 1965 papers “Problems of Empiricism” and “Reply to Criticism” were his last attempts to subscribe to the current version of empiricism, and in his 1967 paper “On a Recent Critique of Complementarity”, he supported recent criticisms of Popper’s ideas. -
Philosophical Evolution – from Positivist to Relativist
As a student of Popper in his early academic years, Feyerabend was once described as a raving positivist. However, he began to argue against positivism and for scientific realism in the relationship between theory and experience in his 1958 Berkley lectures. In 1968, he put forward the idea of “theoretical pluralism” and argued that scientists should find as many alternative theories as possible in order to maximize the chance of falsifying existing theories. -
The End of Empiricism - Against Method
He finally gave up empiricism with the 1969 article “Science without Experience” in which he argued that experience is not necessary to science. And in the early 1970s, Feyerabend began to openly criticize Popper’s ideas, publishing works such as “Consolations for the Specialist” and a review of “Objective Knowledge”. In1975, he introduced “epistemological anarchy” for the first time in an essay version “Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge”. -
Major Works
He officially published his first book “Against Method” in 1975, in which he argued for his idea of epistemological anarchism; that there is no such thing as “the” scientific method and that “great scientists are methodological opportunists who use any moves that come to hand, even if they thereby violate canons of empiricist methodology.” He explicitly endorsed the relativist point of view for the first time in 1977 in replies to reviews of “Against Method”. -
Major Works
In 1978, Feyerabend published “Science in a Free Society”, both as a reply to critiques of Against Method and to clarify his position on epistemological anarchism, which hadn’t changed much since his initial description. He also used this opportunity to endorse relativism and discuss some of the political ramifications of epistemological anarchism. -
Major Works
In the mid to late 1980s, Feyerabend published "Science as an Art" and "Farewell to Reason", a book and a collection of papers which defended relativism and supported the ideas of Ernst Mach. In 1988, he published a second edition of Against Method, and until just before his death, worked on a third edition while publishing small philosophy papers in a variety of academic resources. The third edition of Against Method was published in 1993, just before he became seriously ill. -
Legacy
Feyerabend died of a brain tumor in Switzerland in February1994. His autobiography Killing Time and Conquest of Abundance were published posthumously in 1995 and 1999 respectively. -
Epistemological Anarchism - Video
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Major Works Cited
Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 4th ed., New York, NY: Verso Books, 2010.
