“Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.”

— Paul Karl Feyerabend , book Against Method

Pg. 33.
Against Method (1975)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 8, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress." by Paul Karl Feyerabend?

Paul Karl Feyerabend 81

Austrian-born philosopher of science 1924–1994

Paul Karl Feyerabend quote: “Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Association of American Colleges (1955) Liberal education. Vol. 41, p. 430
1950s

“The presentation of facts in logical form contributes to a confusion between discovery and proof.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Context: The presentation of facts in logical form contributes to a confusion between discovery and proof. If the process of discovery were mere synthesis, any mechanical manipulator of prior partial concepts would have reached the insight and it would not have taken a genius to arrive at it.

“The method of successive approximations is often applied to proving existence of solutions to various classes of functional equations; moreover, the proof of convergence of these approximations leans on the fact that the equation under study may be majorised by another equation of a simple kind. Similar proofs may be encountered in the theory of infinitely many simultaneous linear equations and in the theory of integral and differential equations. Consideration ofjkbni semiordered spaces and operations between them enables us to easily develop a complete theory of such functional equations in abstract form.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

"On one class of functional equations" (1936), as cited in: O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., " Leonid Kantorovich http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Kantorovich.html", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews

“All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 56
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life.... For self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act.... All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world.... by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it.... To rely on the evidence of senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.

“The greatness in an ideology is not, in fact, in the ideology; but it is in the subject which lives that ideology.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“We must now ask how changes of this sort can come about, considering first discoveries, or novelties of fact, and then inventions, or novelties of theory. That distinction between discovery and invention or between fact and theory will, however, immediately prove to be exceedingly artificial.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 52 (2012 ed.)

“Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. […] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Shields of Expectation—and Actuality", p. 425
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Section 3 : Work Democracy versus Politics. The Natural Social Forces for the Mastery of the Emotional Plague;
Variant translation: The fact that political ideologies are tangible, active realities does not prove their necessity. The bubonic plague was an extremely potent social reality. But nobody would have argued that, because it existed, it was necessary and nothing should be done about it.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy

“The inner connection between a positivism of numbers and quantities and one of human values and qualities is the excision of a critical distance and theory. Both surrender to different faces of reality—its facts or its ideology—and both stay clear and clean of antagonisms and contradictions.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 61

“Mainstream economics scholarship produces theory without facts ("pure theory") and facts without theory”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

"applied economics"
Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 2, Global Falsehoods, p. 27

“Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Paul Karl Feyerabend 81

Related quotes

Related topics