Paul Karl Feyerabend: Trending quotes

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Paul Karl Feyerabend: 162 quotes16 likes

“The sciences of today are business enterprises run on business principles. Research in large institutes is not guided by Truth and Reason but by the most rewarding fashion, and the great minds of today increasingly turn to where the money is - which means military matters.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 102.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

“Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

pg 217.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

“Rationalism… is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg 227.
Against Method (1975)

“Science is not sacrosanct. The mere fact that it exists, is admired, has results is not sufficient for making it a measure of excellence. Modern science arose from global objections against earlier views and rationalism itself, the idea that there are general rules and standards for conducting our affairs, affairs of knowledge included, arose from global objections to common sense.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Source: Against Method (1975), p. 223.

“The validity of usefulness, adequacy of popular standards can be tested only by research that violates them.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

pg 35.
Science in a Free Society (1978)

“The ideas survived and they can now be said to be in agreement with reason. They survived because prejudice, passion, conceit, errors, sheer pigheadedness, in short because all the elements that characterize the context of discovery, opposed the dictates of reason and because these irrational elements were permitted to have their way. To express it differently: Copernicanism and other "rational" views exist today only because reason was overruled at some time in their past. (The opposite is also true: witchcraft and other "irrational" views had ceased to be influential only because reason was overruled at some time in their past.)”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg. 155.
Against Method (1975)

“Today science prevails not because of its comparative merits, but because the show has been rigged in its favour… It reigns supreme because some past successes have led to institutional measures (education; role of experts; role of power groups such as the AMA) that prevent a comeback of the rivals.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

pg 102.
Science in a Free Society (1978)

“If the world is an aggregate of relatively independent regions, then any assumption of universal laws is false and a demand for universal norms tyrannical: only brute force (or seductive deception) can then bend the different moralities so that they fit the prescriptions of a single ethical system. And indeed, the idea of universal laws of nature and society arose in connection with a life-and-death battle: the battle that gave Zeus the power over the Titans and all other gods and thus turned his laws into the laws of the universe.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 99, italics are feyerabends
Farewell to Reason (1987)

“All religion may be centered around a generally good idea, however, this has not stopped its adherents from acting like bastards”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

123.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

“Language became a colorless and as indistinct as the business suit which is now worm by everyone, by the scholar, by the businessman, by the professional killer. Being accustomed to a dry and dreary norm and sees in it an obvious sign of arrogance and aggression; viewing authority with almost religious awe he gets into a frenzy when he sees someone pluck the beard of his favorite prophet.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

Paul Karl Feyerabend Science in a Free Society (1978), pg. 150.
Science in a Free Society (1978)

“The existence of antagonistic "conspiracies" was recognized by the defenders of religious and political views. Iconoclasts knew that images might distort the basic message of their creed (which consisted of words and resided in Holy Books). Church architecture and church music were adapted to the needs of the Holy Faith. Alternative styles were either fought or made part of religious PR. I conclude that our 'field of experience' is molded, overlaid, and 'conspired' against not just by language, but by numerous other patterns and institutions, many of them in mutual conflict. An inference from a style, a particular linguistic apparatus, or, more recently, from scientific beliefs, to a cosmology, corresponding ways of life and an all-embracing "spirit of the age therefore needs special support; it cannot be made as a matter of course.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

pg 28.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

“Arguments hardly affect the faithful- their beliefs have an entirely different foundation.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

pg 212.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

“There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science"- except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche… There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

Pg 159.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

“The material which a scientist actually has at his disposal, his laws, his experimental results, his mathematical techniques, his epistemological prejudices, his attitude towards the absurd consequences of the theories which he accepts, is indeterminate in many ways, ambiguous, and never fully separated from the historical background. This material is always contaminated by principles which he does not know and which, if known, would be extremely hard to test.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg. 66.
Against Method (1975)

“The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Source: Against Method (1975), p. 295

“A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

pg 38, italics are feyerabends.
Science in a Free Society (1978)

“The purpose of education, so one would think, is to introduce the young into life, and that means: into the society where they are born and into the physical universe that surrounds the society. The method of education often consists in the teaching of some basic myth. The myth is available in various versions. More advanced versions may be taught by initiation rites which firmly implant them into the mind. Knowing the myth, the grown-up can explain almost everything (or else he can turn to experts for more detailed information). He is the master of Nature and of Society. He understands them both and he knows how to interact with them. However, he is not the master of the myth that guides his understanding.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

“The members of the Japanese enlightenment of the early 1870's, Fukuzawa among them, now reasoned as follows: Japan can keep its independence only if it becomes stronger. It can become stronger only with the help of science. It will use science effectively only if it does not just practice science but also believes in the underlying ideology. To many traditional Japanese this ideology-the scientific worldview- was barbaric. But, so the followers of Fukuzawa argued, it was necessary to adopt barbaric ways, to regard them as advanced, to introduce the whole of Western civilization in order to survive. Having been thus prepared, Japanese scientists soon branched out as their Western colleagues had done before and falsified the uniform ideology that had started the development. The lesson I draw from this sequence of events is that a uniform 'scientific view of the world' may be useful for people doing science… However, it is a disaster for outsiders(philosophers, fly-by-night mystics, prophets of a new age, the (educated public"), who, being undisturbed by the complexities of research, are liable to fall for the most simpleminded and most vapid tale.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

pg 160.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

“So far Unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality has succeeded only by excluding large areas of phenomena or by declaring, without proof, that they could be reduced to basic theory, which, in this connection, means elementary particle physics.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend

pg 215
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

“In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

Source: Science in a Free Society (1978), p. 87.