31–40 of 69 posts
How does his argument work with the current belief that objectivity and the scientific method is white supremacist oppression? Does his argument support the "alternate ways of knowing" that are being pushed as "indigenous science"?
I struggle with Feyerabend a bit. First, a big part of that book is case studies and the problem with case studies is that they are not representative of the underlying population. It’s very easy to simply cherry pick examples that advance your thesis, whereas what we really care about is population averages. Second, let’s assume there is no method for arriving at truth. Well then how do we verify that some discovery…
Should programs be written in a procedural, object-oriented, or functional style? Just how much should you care about scalability when you're building your MVP? What's the best way to write tests for a program that makes API calls to servers you don't control? Rails or Next.js? Emacs or vi?
There's no tried and true method for determining the answer to any of the above. Most people will say "it depends." Depends on what? How do you tell if you made the right choice? Very often, you can only tell afterward when your company gets a bazillion users and your servers start crashing left and right. Even then, the answer is fairly subjective and boils down to whether your team, shareholders, and users are happy.
To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…
On top of it there is the awful truth that the ‘scientific method’ is not really practiced. In junior high school I remember getting taught about the scientific method, particularly the use of controls. I wrote 5 papers and didn’t use a control in any of them (it wouldn’t have been appropriate.). Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. There was that p…
This is not true in my experience (I have designed and run pharmaceutical clinical trials in humans). Can you give some examples?
Some treatment trials do compare the existing standard of care vs the new one rather than placebo against proposed treatment, but those are certainly controlled studies too.
I do know of cases where a control is impossible, such as some surgical procedures, though even then sometimes sham surgery is performed (this is controversial). Those are singly-blinded controls as the surgeon knows.
How does his argument work with the current belief that objectivity and the scientific method is white supremacist oppression? Does his argument support the "alternate ways of knowing" that are being pushed as "indigenous science"?
To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…
To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…
There's 'science', 'morality', etc. Not all decision are scientific, even if they require scientific knowledge as a factor. Here he aligns with Focualt when discussing power and the urge to use science, or Hayekian scientism, to say there is one true way and the decision should be X.
How does his argument work with the current belief that objectivity and the scientific method is white supremacist oppression? Does his argument support the "alternate ways of knowing" that are being pushed as "indigenous science"?
I have not seen this view expressed in this way except by people who do not support it. Do you remember or know any examples I could check out?
How does his argument work with the current belief that objectivity and the scientific method is white supremacist oppression? Does his argument support the "alternate ways of knowing" that are being pushed as "indigenous science"?
Please help me understand. Who currently believes this and more meta, which people believe that people believe this and who in reality are those groups?
To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…
When really the intention comes from a different place and requires a slightly more open mind to grok
Does anyone have a link to the original 1975 version, preferably a digital one? In the foreword to the new edition it says that the publisher now provides it online, but it seems to have vanished since then.
>vanished You weren't kidding. I managed to find a part of "Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology (1970)" where I think his first iteration of Against Method was published as a paper (113 pages). https://pixeldrain.com/u/mRL52iYs (50MB, PDF, with preview) https://gofile.io/d/rDASZh (50MB, PDF, with preview) https://1fichier.com/?2i8f0l8ns1gi3v6yf7ea (50MB, PDF, no preview)