Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

Post by Rochus » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

tghdjsk wrote: post #60

Rochus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expressing opinions does not create new, reliable scientific knowledge. Instead scientists observe, make claims, deduce the effects of their claims, and then conduct experiments suited to possibly observe these effects. So it's not just claiming. And the laws of physics exist by themselves, even when there is no human society to discover and know them. It's a different story how knowledge is passed on or accepted by…

> In the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften", and similar disciplines) the situation is different. Knowledge is rather believable and not falsifiable, but only accepted on the authority of the person who uttered the sentence. It's pretty clear that you don't actually know what philosophy, social science or the humanities entails, and how knowledge is actually produced and vetted in these fields. edit: why was this fl…

Post by 8bitsrule » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #46

choonway wrote: post #17

Never heard of him. I read the article and now I know why. There are plenty of people like him out there all kinds of non-constructive thinking and talking.

Actually, there's almost nobody else remotely like Feyerabend. Imre Lakatos came close, but was more interested in mathematics than science. Feyerabend was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of the 20th century, whether or not he was right about some things, or about anything at all.

Post by QuesnayJr » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

LanguageGamer wrote: post #39

osullivj wrote: post #11

His insistence that there is no scientific method is pro-science. Science’s only method is “opportunism,” he said. “You need a toolbox full of different kinds of tools. Not only a hammer and pins and nothing else." This is what he meant by his much-maligned phrase "anything goes" (and not, as is commonly thought, that one scientific theory is as good as any other). Restricting science to a particular methodology--suc…

Perhaps worth noting that Kuhn wasn't attempting to lay out a methodology - he wasn't saying "this is how you should do science". Rather, he was a historian making generalizations about how different sciences developed.

Post by gowld » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

QuesnayJr wrote: post #62

danharaj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the replication crises and the utter failure of, for example, supersymmetry in theoretical high energy physics, maybe the criticism was warranted. Ignoring the ideological forces that drive science as it actually exists doesn't make them go away.

Supersymmetry was a theory that turned out not to be true. Are scientists not allowed to offer hypotheses that turn out not to be true? That's a job for oracles, not people.

Post by QuesnayJr » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #15

pjc50 wrote: post #12

> "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!" By modern social convention this is "trolling". > If he was not anti-science, I asked, what did he mean by his statement in Who's Who that intellectuals are cri…

> > "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!" > By modern social convention this is "trolling". Can you expand on this? That hardly sounds like trolling and more like "Strong opinions loosely held" which…