Paul Feyerabend - Science in a Free Society (1978)

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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
Today science prevails not because of its comparative merits, but because the show has been rigged in its favour... It reigns supreme because some past successes have led to institutional measures (education; role of experts; role of power groups such as the AMA) that prevent a comeback of the rivals.

Paul Feyerabend
One knows quite well that harmony can be a harmony of appearances

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
Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside.

Paul Feyerabend
A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like.

Paul Feyerabend
Do electrons exist, or are they merely fictious ideas for the ordering of observations (sense date, classical events)?... If there are only sensations, then terms such as 'election or 'St. Augustine' are auxiliary terms, designed to bring some order into our experiences.

Paul Feyerabend
The validity of usefulness, adequacy of popular standards can be tested only by research that violates them.

Paul Feyerabend
Traditions are neither good nor bad, they simply are... Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.

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

Paul Feyerabend
I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.

Paul Feyerabend
Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions.

Paul Feyerabend
Experts have a vested interest in their own playpens, and so they will quite naturally argue that 'education' is impossible without them (can you imagine an Oxford philosopher, or an elementary particle physicist arguing himself out of good money?)

Paul Feyerabend