Paul Karl Feyerabend Boeken

From flea bites to galaxies, from love affairs to shadows, Paul Feyerabend reveled in the sensory and intellectual abundance that surrounds us. He found it equally striking that human senses and human intelligence are able to take in only a fraction of these riches. "This a blessing, not a drawback," he writes. "A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed." This human reduction of experience to a manageable level is the heart of Conquest of Abundance, the book on which Feyerabend was at work when he died in 1994. Prepared from drafts of the manuscript left at his death, working notes, and lectures and articles Feyerabend wrote while the larger work was in progress, Conquest of Abundance offers up rich exploration and startling insights with the charm, lucidity, and sense of mischief that are his hallmarks. Feyerabend is fascinated by how we attempt to explain and predict the mysteries of the natural world, and he looks at the ways in which we abstract experience, explain anomalies, and reduce wonder to formulas and equations. Through his exploration of the positive and negative consequences of these efforts, Feyerabend reveals the "conquest of abundance" as an integral part of the history and character of Western civilization. "Paul Feyerabend . . . was the Norman Mailer of philosophy. . . . brilliant, brave, adventurous, original and quirky."—Richard Rorty, New Republic "As much a smudged icon as a philosophical position holder, [Feyerabend] was alluring and erotic, a torch singer for philosophical anarchy."—Nancy Maull, New York Times Book Review "[A] kind of final testament of Feyerabend's thought . . . Conquest of Abundance is as much the product of a brilliant, scintillating style as of an immense erudition and culture. . . . This book is as abundant and rich as the world it envisions."—Arkady Plotnitsky, Chicago Tribune

Modern philosophy of science has paid great attention to the understanding of scientific ‘practice’, in contrast to concentration on scientific ‘method’. Paul Feyerabend’s acclaimed work, which has contributed greatly to this new emphasis, shows the deficiencies of some widespread ideas about the nature of knowledge. He argues that the only feasible explanations of scientific successes are historical explanations, and that anarchism must now replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge.The third edition of this classic text contains a new preface and additional reflections at various points in which the author takes account both of recent debates on science and on the impact of scientific products and practices on the human community. While disavowing populism or relativism, Feyerabend continues to insist that the voice of the inexpert must be heard. Thus many environmental perils were first identified by non-experts against prevailing assumptions in the scientific community. Feyerabend’s challenging reassessment of scientific claims and understandings are as pungent and timely as ever.

The text opens with an imaginary dialogue between Lakatos and Feyerabend, which Matteo Motterlini has constructed, based on their published works, to synthesize their positions and arguments. Part one presents the transcripts of the last lectures on method that Lakatos delivered. Part two, Feyerabend's response, consists of a previously published essay on anarchism, which began the attack on Lakatos's position that Feyerabend later continued in "Against Method." The third and longest section consists of the correspondence Lakatos and Feyerabend exchanged on method and many other issues and ideas, as well as the events of their daily lives, between 1968 and Lakatos's death in 1974.

Farewell to Reason offers a vigorous challenge to the scientific rationalism that underlies Western ideals of “progress” and “development,” whose damaging social and ecological consequences are now widely recognized. For all their variety in theme and occasion, the essays in this book share a consistent philosophical purpose. Whether discussing Greek art and thought, vindicating the church’s battle with Galileo, exploring the development of quantum physics or exposing the dogmatism of Karl Popper, Feyerabend defends a relativist and historicist notion of the sciences. The appeal to reason, he insists, is empty, and must be replaced by a notion of science that subordinates it to the needs of citizens and communities. Provocative, polemical and rigorously argued, Farewell to Reason will infuriate Feyerabend’s critics and delight his many admirers.

No study in the philosophy of science created such controversy in the seventies as Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method. In this work, Feyerabend reviews that controversy, and extends his critique beyond the problem of scientific rules and methods, to the social function and direction of science today. In the first part of the book, he launches a sustained and irreverent attack on the prestige of science in the West. The lofty authority of the “expert” claimed by scientists is, he argues, incompatible with any genuine democracy, and often merely serves to conceal entrenched prejudices and divided opinions with the scientific community itself. Feyerabend insists that these can and should be subjected to the arbitration of the lay population, whose closes interests they constantly affect—as struggles over atomic energy programs so powerfully attest. Calling for far greater diversity in the content of education to facilitate democratic decisions over such issues, Feyerabend recounts the origin and development of his own ideas—successively engaged by Brecht, Ehrenhaft, Popper, Mill and Lakatos—in a spirited intellectual self-portrait. Science in a Free Society is a striking intervention into one of the most topical debates in contemporary culture and politics.

Paul Feyerabend, a prominent 20th-century philosopher of science, presents a compelling narrative that explores the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece, which led to the establishment of a mythical ‘scientific worldview.’ In this accessible work, he challenges prevalent myths about science, particularly the notion that it is inherently successful. Feyerabend argues that fundamental assumptions about science are often misguided, with many scientific ideologies stemming from superficial generalizations that distort our understanding of human life. He contends that scientific theorizing fails to address pressing issues like war and poverty, instead favoring fleeting generalities over the real particulars that imbue life with meaning. The emphasis on objectivity and generality, rooted in abstraction, comes at a significant cost, creating a disconnect between thought and experience. Theoreticians impose a tyranny on concepts, neglecting the subjective experiences that enrich life. Feyerabend posits that practical experience serves as a more reliable guide to reality than theory alone and asserts that all forms of tyranny, even those with noble intentions, can be resisted. Provocative and iconoclastic, this work represents one of Feyerabend’s final contributions and is essential reading for those interested in the impact of science on the modern world.

Includes essays and excerpts from the works of prominent modern thinkers such as Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, and Isaiah Berlin among others.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Einleitung zu den Grenzen eines kritischen Realismus. Der Pluralismus als methodologisches Prinzip. Wissenschaftlicher und philosophischer Realismus: Historischer Hintergrund, Arten des Realismus, Maxwell und Mach, das Zweisprachenmodell, Inkommensurabilität. Wissenschaftliche Praxis und philosophische Theorie: Degenerationsprozess der Wissenschaftstheorie, Commonsense und abstrakte Philosophie, historische und abstrakte Traditionen, Aristoteles, philosophische Maßstäbe, Ernst Mach und seine Nachfolger, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos und das Ende des Rationalismus, politische Folgen. Erklärung, Reduktion und Empirismus: Annahmen des zeitgenössischen Empirismus, Kritik der Erklärung, methodologische Überlegungen, Sinninvarianz. Antwort an Kritiker: Pluralismus, starke Alternativen, Fortschrittsmodell, Konsistenz, historische und methodologische Fragen, Beobachtung. Der klassische Empirismus. Besprechung von Ernest Nagels „The Structure of Science“. Materialismus und das Leib-Seele-Problem. Verteidigung der klassischen Physik: Auffassungen von menschlicher Erkenntnis, Parmenideisches Vorgehen, Fortbestehen klassischer Ideen, klassische Statistik, Wahrscheinlichkeiten, Birkhoffs Satz. David Böhms Naturphilosophie. Quantentheorie der Messung: Probleme, von Neumanns Theorie, Stadien des Messprozesses, Schwierigkeiten. Dialektischer Materialismus und Quantentheorie. Zwei Theorien des Erkenntniswandels: Mill und Hegel. Wit

Der Ausspruch Wilfried Sellars‘, „Science is the measure of all things.“, der die Haltung vieler Wissenschaftler widerspiegelt, verbirgt nach Paul Feyerabend die autoritäre Ideologie eines wahren Wissens. Der Wissenschaftstheoretiker und Philosoph Feyerabend fordert dagegen die „demokratische Kritik der Wissenschaften“. Eine solche Kritik ist nach seiner Auffassung keine äußerliche Störung und Verunreinigung, sondern gehört wesentlich zur Genese von Wissen. Deshalb begibt er sich in seinen Trentiner Vorlesungen ebenso auf das Terrain des tagespolitischen Geschehens wie der Philosophie. Er untersucht nicht nur Schriften der Vorsokratiker, Sophisten, Platons und Galileis, sondern diskutiert auch Fragen der Kosmologie und Religion und kommt auf die griechische Tragödie sowie auf den Krieg in Ex-Jugoslawien zu sprechen. Einer der brillantesten Texte dieses Philosophen und sein letztes Werk, verführerisch durch den spontanen Stil der Vorlesungen, auf denen er basiert.

Paul Feyerabend, ein unkonventioneller Wissenschaftler, ist bekannt für sein Konzept des "Anything Goes". Wenig bekannt ist, dass er über Jahre an einer umfassenden Naturphilosophie arbeitete, die von der Steinzeit bis zur Atomphysik reichen sollte – ein Projekt, das ihn fast um den Verstand brachte. Das Manuskript galt lange als verloren, bis ein Typoskript des ersten Bandes im Archiv der Universität Konstanz entdeckt wurde. In diesem Band untersucht Feyerabend die Rolle von Mythen in der frühen Naturphilosophie und den Übergang vom "Aggregatuniversum" Homers zu Parmenides' Einheitsdenken. Er kritisiert den Aufstieg des Rationalismus in der griechischen Antike und die damit verbundene Entfremdung des Menschen von der Natur. Mit seiner gewohnten Polemik und umfassenden Bildung beleuchtet er die Vorgeschichte der modernen Wissenschaft. Der Band enthält zahlreiche Abbildungen, darunter archaische Kunstgegenstände und persönliche Skizzen Feyerabends. Ergänzt wird das Werk durch bislang unveröffentlichte biografische Dokumente, die das Gesamtbild des Denkers abrunden. Eine Einführung der Herausgeber erläutert die Bedeutung der Naturphilosophie in Feyerabends Denken.