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It always surprises me how Feyerabend never gets mentioned in these arguments about postmodernism and relativism.
a lot of the stuff that gets attributed to Foucault and Derrida about relativism and questioning objective knowledge is really not true of them...but is much closer to being true of Feyerabend, who basically argued that Galileo was wrong (it's a good argument!)
I wonder if people are afraid of Feyerabend because he's very knowledgeable about the science? or maybe he's just less known and so there's less cache in caricaturing him.
Feyerabend is really fun and insightful, imo, though I think he'd probably be in favor of anti vax stuff, which would not be so great.
he basically uses systems of historical truth making to put a wrecking ball through systems of scientific truth making. Which I find exhilarating and entertaining, but ymmv.
again, though, I feel like he's really the person Lindsay should be arguing with. maybe he mentions him at some point, but hasn't really sounded like it from the reviews.
I sort of ruined a date way back when by talking about Feyerabend and explaining why pointing to gravity as an empirical truth doesn't really work.
among other things we don't know how gravity functions really.
so I said that and she said, "we do! it's because of the rotation of the earth!"
so I said that and she said, "we do! it's because of the rotation of the earth!"
I said that was really wrong and things never really recovered.
Feyerabend's point there is that most people use ad hoc experience to form theories about what will happen, and that scientists do much the same, which means that almost everything you learn about the scientific method is nonsense.
so, "gravity is real; if you don't believe me, jump out the window!" is in fact a bad argument, since we don't know what gravity is,and you don't need to accede to any given theory to act on ad hoc experience.
another Feyerabend argument I loved was about reproducibility. supposedly scientists decide something is true if it's reproducible, no matter who tries it.
But then...what about kids in science class? If they can't reproduce a result, do we throw out the science?
But then...what about kids in science class? If they can't reproduce a result, do we throw out the science?
of course not; we say, "well the kids did it wrong."
students aren't qualified enough to invalidate the science. so reproducibility is actually about authority.
students aren't qualified enough to invalidate the science. so reproducibility is actually about authority.
not *anyone* can reproduce the experiment. only qualified people.
when Galileo first started using the telescope, he was basically the only one who could see anything with it.
when Galileo first started using the telescope, he was basically the only one who could see anything with it.
so, were his scientific observations true if they were essentially unreproducible?
