“There is no coherent knowledge, i. e. no uniform comprehensive account of the world and the events in it. There is no comprehensive truth that goes beyond an enumeration of details, but there are many pieces of information, obtained in different ways from different sources and collected for the benefit of the curious. The best way of presenting such knowledge is the list - and the oldest scientific works were indeed lists of facts, parts, coincidences, problems in several specialized domains.”

—  Paul Karl Feyerabend , book Farewell to Reason

pg 98, italics are feyerabends.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

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 "There is no coherent knowledge, i. e. no uniform comprehensive account of the world and the events in it. There is no c…" by Paul Karl Feyerabend?
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend 81
Austrian-born philosopher of science 1924–1994

Related quotes

Ken Wilber photo

“There are several different meanings of the words "religion" and "spirituality", all of which are important. The whole point about an integral or comprehensive approach is that it must find a way to believably include all of those important meanings in a coherent whole.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Source: Which Level of God Do You Believe In? (2004)

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Slickness of presentation didn’t imply comprehensiveness of knowledge.”

Arthur C. Clarke A Time Odyssey

Source: 2000s and posthumous publications, A Time Odyssey, Firstborn (2007), Chapter 13, “Fortress Sol” (p. 77)

Isaac Asimov photo

““Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence?”
Pelorat said, “If you list it like that—”
“List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.””

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 14 “Forward!” section 1, p. 281

Polybius photo

“We can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.”

Polybius book The Histories

The Histories

José Martí photo

“A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

On Oscar Wilde (1882)

“After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 33

Aristotle photo

“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

Aristotle book Posterior Analytics

I. 13, 78a.22
Posterior Analytics

“A comprehensive list of factors brings predictive stability and predictive stability and predictive power.”

Robert Haugen (1942–2013) American economist

Source: The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why (1999), Chapter 5, Predicting Future Stock Returns with the Expected-Return Factor Model, p. 56

“Executable UML is designed to produce a comprehensive and comprehensible model of a solution without making decisions about the organization of the software implementation. It is a highly abstract thinking tool to aid in the formalization of knowledge, a way of thinking about and describing the concepts that make up an abstract solution to a client problem.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Source: Executable Uml: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture, 2002, p. 10.

Related topics