What is science? A common understanding of what differentiates science from other disciplines and pseudoscience is the scientific method. What then is this method? Philosophers of science have attempted to answer this question, and to understand what led Paul Feyerabend to his conclusions in his book Against Method, we need to understand the book in its context of prior theories put forward to answer these questions. To do this, we need a brief excursion through the history of the philosophy of science up to the time of the book’s publication in 1975.
Previous Theories
We start with logical positivism, an influential philosophical movement in the 1920s. The logical positivists believe that scientific theories need to be objectively grounded in facts based on abstract reasoning or experimental confirmation.
Karl Popper argues in the 1930s against this notion of confirmation: since there can always be future instances which disconfirms a theory, the criterion of confirmation can never be fully satisfied. In addition, he thinks that confirmations only count if they are the “results of risky predictions,”[1] where, if not for the theory, events incompatible with the theory would have been expected. Instead, the theory makes a bold prediction of events previously “undreamt of.”[2] He proposes a better criterion of demarcation: what makes a theory scientific is its falsifiability, where one specifies in advance a “crucial experiment (or observation) which can falsify it.”[3] However, Imre Lakatos observes that falsification is not what scientists do. When scientists encounter observations that cannot be explained by their theories, they do not discard them. Instead, they attempt to explain the anomalies or ignore them, considering them aberrations and not refutations.
Thomas Kuhn holds neither view. For him, science operates within paradigms. A paradigm is characterised by a set of fundamental theoretical assumptions which go unquestioned by the scientific community, leading to general agreement on how research should proceed, since there is a “constellation of shared assumptions, beliefs, and values” [4] which unites them. Kuhn terms such research “normal science,”[5] where scientists work within the prevailing paradigm. When anomalies occur, scientists operating in “normal science” are likely to believe they have made an error rather than question the veracity of the paradigm. However, over time, anomalies accumulate, leading to a growing “sense of crisis”[6] in the paradigm, finally culminating in a breakdown in confidence. This marks the start of a period of “revolutionary science” where alternative theories are proposed with the best one leading to a radical new paradigm. While Kuhn thinks revolution happens suddenly, he acknowledges that the switchover by all to the new paradigm is not instantaneous. It might take a generation, when the scientists sticking to the older paradigm die out or convert, allowing those who adhere to the new paradigm to become dominant.
I have covered this history and explained in another video how Lakatos’s theory on scientific research programmes can be viewed as a refinement of Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, and it can be found in the link in the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu8eDIcjGrM&t=6s
Figure 1: Landmarks in the Philosophy of Science[7]
Introduction to the Chinese Edition
Turning back to Feyerabend’s Against Method, where I draw from his Introduction to the Chinese Edition,[8] Feyerabend himself puts forward a theory that in short is, there is no one method. “The events, procedures and results that constitutes the sciences have no common structure,” he writes. He believes that if one tried to discover what is found exclusively in all scientific investigations but missing in other types of research, we would find nothing. What might have been successful in giving valuable scientific findings in the past might harm future investigations, hence stymying progress. He believes that there are no common standards to scientific investigation and proves his thesis by looking at historical examples.
He asserts that trying to treat unsolved problems in a standardised way is harmful. For instance, quantification might be useful in some cases but not in others. Feyerabend cites celestial mechanics which had to shift to qualitative topological considerations, but I think a more down to earth example is how measuring performance in the workplace through quantifiable key performance indicators, KPIs, while ignoring qualitative factors such as one’s leadership abilities or team spirit, has led employees to try to game their KPIs, leading to overall worse outcomes.
Feyerabend argues that another consequence of his thesis is that “‘non-scientific’ procedures cannot be pushed aside by argument.” He suggests this labelling of what is scientific and what is not has warped how research is funded to society’s detriment. Firstly, it assumes that science is successful and secondly its success comes from using uniform procedures. He points out that if science is defined by the activities of scientists, then there are many failures by scientists and not just successes. However, the second point is what Feyerabend is mainly attacking in his book, that there are uniform procedures for scientific research. His claim is that there are no such procedures. Scientists try different things — different methods and procedures and their success is only known after their attempts, and not before.
He argues that since “scientific achievements can be judged only after the event,” there is no way of ensuring success in advance through following a fixed method and hence “there exists no special way of weighing scientific promises.” He believes this means that “the public can participate in the discussion without disturbing existing roads to success,” which anyway does not exist. He argues that where the work of scientists affects the public, the public ought to participate since it is a “concerned party” which is affected by scientific decisions and also because “such participation is the best scientific education the public can get.”
He thinks “there can be many different kinds of science” and hence diversity among the participants can be fruitful, because people with different backgrounds “approach the world in different ways.” For instance, nomadic and tribal people have managed to preserve their lifestyles through knowledge acquired in non-scientific ways, if by science, we mean modern science. He writes that “Chinese technology for a long time lacked […] Western-scientific underpinning and yet it was far ahead of contemporary Western technology.” While Western science is leading today, he believes it is not due to any “inherent rationality” but because of power, where western colonisers imposed their ways of living and are driven by the need for more and better weapons. First-world science is only “one science among many” and he thinks that “by claiming to be [anything] more, it ceases to be an instrument of research [but] turns into a (political) pressure group.”
Feyerabend claims that his aim in Against Method is humanitarian. “I want to support people, not to ‘advance knowledge,’” he writes. People around the world have figured out meaningful ways to live that are different from the West, and the presumably civilising missions of the West and its values have “destroyed these wonderful products of human ingenuity and compassion without a single glance in their direction,” he writes. He thinks the revival of old traditions and its values is not anti-scientific. In fact, he thinks that it is necessary for physicians, anthropologists and environmentalists to “adapt their procedures to the values of the people they are supposed to advise.” He is against ideologies, by this he means the so-called scientific method, that uses the name of science to destroy other cultures.
Analytical Index
Feyerabend summarises his book in its table of contents, where he outlines his argument. Feyerabend proposes that science is not as commonly believed, an orderly enterprise but an anarchic one. He thinks that such anarchism is a positive feature of science because it is more humanitarian and more likely to give rise to progress.
To demonstrate this, he looks at the development of science in history devoting some chapters to Galileo’s role in the Copernican Revolution. From all this, he thinks that “the only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.” He suggests that by “proceeding counter-inductively,” using hypotheses that contradict well-established theories and experimental results, science might be advanced.
Instead, what happens is what he terms the “consistency condition, which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories.” This entrenches the older theories not because they are better but simply because they came before, to the detriment of progress. In fact, we need to pay more attention to “hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories [since they] give us evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way.” Hence “proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs its critical power.”
In what feels like Hegelian overtones, Feyerabend puts forward the notion that “there is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge.” In that way, “the whole history of thought is absorbed into science.” He suggests that science should not drive how society develops but instead political interference might be needed to overcome the “chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.”
We already seen that Lakatos had said that if Popper’s falsification is the criterion for science, then “no theory is born unrefuted.”[9] Feyerabend, agreeing with Kuhn, explains that facts are theory-laden, “constituted by older ideologies.” He adds however that a clash between new findings and existing theories is progressive since it compels us to look for the underlying assumptions and implicit principles that are embedded in the accepted facts and observations.
Feyerabend examines “the tower argument.” Prior to Galileo and the Copernican Revolution, the prevailing cosmological theory was from Aristotle. The tower argument was used to refute the notion that the earth moves. It is observed that when an object falls from a tower, it falls straight down. The argument goes, that if the earth was moving, the object would fall away from the tower. This interpretation might seem natural and corresponds closely to what is observed but there are embedded within ideas already presupposed. Galileo identifies what these natural interpretations are and replaces them with new natural interpretations concerning the relativity of all motion and the law of circular inertia, but he introduces them in such a way to make them seem as if they are already known so that they can be more easily accepted. Feyerabend believes Galileo had to resort to such “propaganda” and “psychological tricks,” because he would otherwise have failed to gain acceptance for his theory. The early use of the telescope in astronomical observations by Galileo was also not grounded on a comprehensive theory of optics and its observations conflicted with what can be viewed through the bare eyes but nonetheless, they aided the advance of science when we look at what he did retrospectively. Galileo’s method would have been considered irrational but Feyerabend asserts that Copernicanism, supported by Galileo’s work, survived because “reason was frequently overruled in their past.” His point is that if science was confined to the status quo, it would not have made new important findings. He goes further that science and rationality are themselves just particular traditions and not “universal measures of excellence.” He thinks that in a democracy, science needs to be separated from the state the same way the church is now separated from the state.
Conclusion
Some key takeaways from Feyerabend’s account are that:
1) Science is not one fixed way of doing things. Scientists historically have done things in non-standard ways which brought us important discoveries. If science is confined to a fixed way, we would not have made those discoveries. A current example would be, if scientific work always needed experimental confirmation, then work in advanced theoretical physics such as superstring theory would not be able to proceed at all since its hypotheses are not empirically testable. Policymakers who decide how funding for scientific research is allocated need to take note of this because if only ‘orthodox’ or in Kuhn’s term, “normal science,” i.e. scientific research in line with the prevalent theories were funded, it may hamper truly revolutionary discoveries.
2) Science is not a steady, progressive and rational movement. Too much rationality might even harm science. It might take what appears to be irrational, to be counter-inductive, for groundbreaking discoveries such as Galileo’s to be made.
3) Science is one tradition among many. We should not be dogmatic as to what constitutes science and how science should operate and progress. This is why Feyerabend uses the word ideology to refer to entrenched scientific theories. They are entrenched the same way dogmas and ideologies are entrenched, and they may in that same way as dogmas hinder progress.
4) Science instead should draw on diverse cultures and thinking, and be open to new approaches, in order to make truly revolutionary advances.
5) While Feyerabend advocates that “anything goes” in science, that in itself is not a method but is rather an attitude of openness. It remains crucial for scientists to retain their curiosity and not to take established theories as dogmatic truth but to continue to question their assumptions and try new approaches drawing from or inspired by other ‘non-scientific’ sources. Instead of thinking that the ‘scientific’ way is the best way and the only way, they should try to learn from and understand how other people have successfully lived in their environments.
Bibliography
Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. [2d ed., Enl. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Foundations of the Unity of Science, v. 2, No. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Lakatos, Imre. “Science and Pseudoscience.” In Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Okasha, Samir. Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge, 1963.
[1] Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge, 1963), 266.
[2] Imre Lakatos, “Science and Pseudoscience,” in Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 24.
[3] Ibid., 22–23.
[4] Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 75.
[5] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [2d ed., enl, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Foundations of the Unity of Science, v. 2, No. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
[6] Ibid., 76.
[7] While Lakatos’s Methodology was published in 1978, after his death in 1974, it is a compilation of papers which date back to the 1960s, hence pre-dating Against Method (1975).
[8] Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, 3rd ed (London: Verso, 1993).
[9] Lakatos, “Science and Pseudoscience.”
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