“Now - how can we possibly examine something we use all the time and presuppose in every statement? How can we criticize the terms in which we habitually express our observations? Let us see! The first step in our criticism of commonly-used concepts is to create a measure of criticism, something with which these concepts can be compared. Of course, we shall later want to know a little more about the measuring stick itself; for example, we shall want to know whether it is better than, or perhaps not as good as, the material examined. But in order for this examination to start there must be a measuring-stick in the first place. Therefore, the first step in our criticism of customary concepts and customary reactions is to step outside the circle and either to invent a new conceptual system, for example a new theory, that clashes with the most carefully established observational results and confounds with the most plausible theoretical principles, or to import such a system from outside science, from religion, from mythology, from the ideas of incompetents, or the ramblings of madmen. This step is, again, counter-inductive, Counter-induction is thus both a fact”

science could not exist without it - and a legitimate and much needed move in the game of science.
Pg 68.
Against Method (1975)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Now - how can we possibly examine something we use all the time and presuppose in every statement? How can we criticize…" by Paul Karl Feyerabend?
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend 81
Austrian-born philosopher of science 1924–1994

Related quotes

“We don't know what energy is, any more than we know what information is, but as a now robust scientific concept we can describe it in precise mathematical terms, and as a commodity we can measure, market, regulate and tax it.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 2, The Spell of Democritus, Why information will transform physics, p. 11

Henry Alford photo

“The Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us, knowing our wants better than we, Himself pleads in our prayers, raising us to higher and holier desires than we can express in words, which can only find utterance in sighings and aspirations.”

Henry Alford (1810–1871) English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer

The New Testament for English Readers (1865), Romans 8:26, p. 73, footnote.

Henri Poincaré photo

“It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.”

C'est par la logique qu'on démontre, c'est par l'intuition qu'on invente.
Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 129
Science and Method (1908)

Dorothea Lange photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Helen Keller photo
Henry Benjamin Whipple photo

“All we want in Christ, we shall find in Christ. If we want little, we shall find little. If we want much, we shall find much; but if in utter helplessness we cast our all on Christ, He will be to us the whole treasury of God.”

Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822–1901) Bishop of Minnesota

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 95.

George Bernard Shaw photo

Related topics