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Ways of Knowing

Paul Feyerabend And The Monster ‘Science’

Ian James Kidd introduces an iconic iconoclast of the philosophy of science.

Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was not a conventional philosopher – a fact he delighted in and took great care to maintain. He trained as an opera singer and a physicist, and only came to philosophy by accident, as he freely admitted. He disliked academia and was consistently critical of the philosophy of science, once describing it as “a subject with a great past.” Feyerabend was also unwilling to confine his research to the bounds set by academic convention. His writing makes generous appeal to Hesiod and Homer, to Renaissance art and sculpture, and he moves easily between Platonic epistemology and astrology, quantum mechanics and the history of witchcraft.

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