Paul Feyerabend Quotes

80 Sourced Quotes

The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

Paul Feyerabend
The material which a scientist actually has at his disposal, his laws, his experimental results, his mathematical techniques, his epistemological prejudices, his attitude towards the absurd consequences of the theories which he accepts, is indeterminate in many ways, ambiguous, and never fully separated from the historical background. This material is always contaminated by principles which he does not know and which, if known, would be extremely hard to test.

Paul Feyerabend
So far Unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality has succeeded only by excluding large areas of phenomena or by declaring, without proof, that they could be reduced to basic theory, which, in this connection, means elementary particle physics.

Paul Feyerabend
When Western civilization invaded the Near and Far East and what is now called the Third World it imposed its own ideas of a proper environment and a rewarding life. Doing this, it disrupted the delicate patterns of adaptation and created problems that had not existed before.

Paul Feyerabend
Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.

Paul Feyerabend
There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

Paul Feyerabend
Science is not sacrosanct. The mere fact that it exists, is admired, has results is not sufficient for making it a measure of excellence. Modern science arose from global objections against earlier views and rationalism itself, the idea that there are general rules and standards for conducting our affairs, affairs of knowledge included, arose from global objections to common sense.

Paul Feyerabend
Mathematical Reasoning is not only exact; it has its own criteria of reality

Paul Feyerabend
Language became a colorless and as indistinct as the business suit which is now worm by everyone, by the scholar, by the businessman, by the professional killer. Being accustomed to a dry and dreary norm and sees in it an obvious sign of arrogance and aggression; viewing authority with almost religious awe he gets into a frenzy when he sees someone pluck the beard of his favorite prophet.

Paul Feyerabend
Science is not a closed book that is understood only after years of training. It is an intellectual discipline that can be examined and criticised by anyone who is interested, and that looks difficult and profound only because of a systematic campaign of obfuscation carried out by many scientists...

Paul Feyerabend
People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail.

Paul Feyerabend
First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.

Paul Feyerabend
An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).

Paul Feyerabend
Even bold and revolutionary thinkers bow to the judgment of science. Kropotkin wants to break up all existing institutions, but he does not touch science. Ibsen goes very far in his critique of bourgeois society, but he retains science as a measure of truth. Levi Strauss has made us realize that Western thought is not the lonely peak of human achievement it was once thought to be, but he and his followers exclude science from their relativization of ideologies. Marx and Engels were convinced that science would aid the workers in their quest for mental and social liberation.

Paul Feyerabend
A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance (the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.

Paul Feyerabend
Results from a given approach are "facts" as long as the approach fits the group or the tradition that is being addressed

Paul Feyerabend
There was a moment when I knew how nature worked. It had elegance and beauty. The goddam thing was gleaming.

Paul Feyerabend
A good teacher will not just make people accept a form of life, he will also provide them with means of seeing it in perspective and perhaps of even rejecting it.

Paul Feyerabend
Everywhere science is enriched by unscientific methods and unscientific results,... the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them.

Paul Feyerabend
My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits. The best way to show this is to demonstrate the limits and even the irrationality of some rules which she, or he, is likely to regard as basic. In the case that induction (including induction by falsification) this means demonstrating how well the counterinductive procedure can be supported by argument.

Paul Feyerabend
Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.

Paul Feyerabend
I had studied Dadaism after the Second World War. What attracted me to this movement was the style its inventors used when not engaged in Dadaistic activities. It was clear, luminous, simple without being banal, precise without being narrow; it was a style adapted to the expression of thought as well as of emotion. I connected this style with the Dadaistic exercises themselves

Paul Feyerabend
The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious.

Paul Feyerabend
The attitude of the Church was not as dogmatic as is often assumed. Interpretations of Bible passages had been revised in the light of scientific research before. Everyone regarded the earth as spherical and as freely floating in space though the Bible tells a different story.

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

Paul Feyerabend