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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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

#71

Post by gowld »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #44
lacker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newtonian physics is a great example, because Newtonian physics is wrong! Due to relativity and quantum mechanics. If it were still our best guess at how the world worked, I think we would just call it "physics" rather than "Newtonian physics".

"Science isn't useful because it is right, science is right because it is useful." (Unknown philosopher of science, possibly but probably not Feyerabend) From this perspective, there's nothing "wrong" with Newtonian physics as long as you understand the domain in which it is useful (essentially: larger than molecules, smaller than planets). Newtonian physics, QM and relativity are all just stories we tell in our atte…

"All models are wrong. Some are useful."

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

#72

Post by 8bitsrule »

amatic wrote: post #26
jhbadger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's true that the cliched "scientific method" taught in high schools is a gross oversimplification, and many discoveries are made by accident rather than deliberately trying to test a clearly defined hypothesis. But in the 1980s-1990s "Science Wars", there was a movement by postmodernists to try to claim that science is just an ideology no better than religion or magic. This movement liked to quote Feyerabend…

That sounds interesting. Do you have a recommendation for some reading materials on those Science Wars?

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C.P. Snow (1959). An important shot over the bow.

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

#73

Post by QuesnayJr »

dang wrote: post #43
lacker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I found this comment to be useful. Supporting astrology and creationism is a pretty damning set of facts about someone.

It's not a useful or interesting representation of Feyerabend. The internet habit of reducing everything to its most sensational detail, and cleansing it of all context, for damning purposes, is a bad one. It's what that HN guideline is intended to cover.

There's a flipside, where certain writers get to be read with infinite charity, while everyone else has to take their lumps. Feyerabend really did make that argument -- it's right there in black-and-white in "Against Method". But since he's an "important thinker", we have to read him with more care than he wrote with.

"Against Method" is a fun book, and I enjoyed it when I read it back when the stakes didn't seem so high. But he chose to write a fun book rather than a serious one, and he can't complain when people take him seriously.

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

#74

Post by QuesnayJr »

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.

Lakatos was a great philosopher of science, while Feyerabend is a gadfly. His "Proofs and Refutations" doesn't really hold up -- once mathematics reached the modern standard of rigor the process he described stopped -- but his notion of progressive versus degenerating research programs is very powerful.

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

#75

Post by tokai »

Rochus wrote: post #57
tokai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be said to you. I wouldn't had posted if I knew you would go of the rails like you did.

[flagged]

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Be kind. Don't be snarky. [...] Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

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

#76

Post by QuesnayJr »

gowld wrote: post #67
QuesnayJr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you mean? Supersymmetry isn't falsifiable with current technology, as far as I know.

Some versions are, and some versions aren't. I think the theoretically most appealing versions (like the MSSM) have been ruled out by the LHC.

(Anyway, my main point is that there was nothing problematic about advancing supersymmetry as a hypothesis, whether or not it turns out to be true.)

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

#77

Post by ukj »

jnwatson wrote: post #48

Feyerabend's work reminds me a bit of Alvin Plantinga's. As a young objectivist at university, I had the idealistic idea that if two people could use logic and science to determine certain facts, they could settle any disagreement, even moral ones. However, science is built upon certain assumed first principles, like causation and other minds sharing your reality. Plantinga argued that one could start with additional…

Have you heard of Aumann’s agreement theorem? [1]

Consensus is possible, provided that the interlocutor have a shared goal and maximize for information exchange.

Otherwise, the whole notion of discussing one’s “beliefs“ is philosophical (non-empirical) nonsense. If I shut my mouth there is no way to empirically determine whether “I believe in God or not”.

I don’t have beliefs - I have methods of various degrees of effectiveness that get me what I want. To those ends knowledge is only instrumental. Which makes me an unapologetic opportunist/pragmatist/instrumentalist.

To you it may be “knowledge” - that Earth is round, to me it is inconsequential and immaterial even if I “believed“ (whatever that means) Earth was triangular.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem

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

#78

Post by Rochus »

tokai wrote: post #75
Rochus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind. Don't be snarky. [...] Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

That's what I do. And I'm not hiding behind a pseudonym.

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

#79

Post by tghdjsk »

Rochus wrote: post #57
tokai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be said to you. I wouldn't had posted if I knew you would go of the rails like you did.

[flagged]

> If you'd read this stuff, you'd know that Critical Theory is the continuation of Marx's ideas.

Some of it is, yes. But what's wrong with Marx? His main work, Das Kapital, was actually an extremely thorough and sober critique of capitalist systems.

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

#80

Post by ukj »

There may well be a method to “science” (whatever that is), or acquiring knowledge in general.

Is just that we haven’t invented the ‘right’ language to describe the process with.

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. —Donald Knuth

In as much as software development is theory-building and iterative development is about hypothesis testing/experiment validation/reproduction - it is scientific/empirical.

Beyond that ... We are forever stuck with theory, which is never a good enough substitute for practice.

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