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Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of scientific practice, and overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, logic, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and the concept of truth.
The Vienna Circle was formed in 1924. Louis De Broglie 's contribution in the Philosophical Magazine will subsequently be viewed as a crucial contribution to the birth of quantum mechanics, leading to a revolution in the philosophy of science. [1]
Aug 26, 1997 · Paul Feyerabend (b.1924, d.1994), having studied science at the University of Vienna, moved into philosophy for his doctoral thesis, made a name for himself both as an expositor and (later) as a critic of Karl Popper’s “critical rationalism”, and went on to become one of the twentieth century’s most famous philosophers of science.
- Biography
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- Secondary Literature
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Early life
Feyerabend was born in 1924 in Vienna. His paternal grandfather was the illegitimate child of a housekeeper, Helena Feierabend, who introduced the 'y' into 'Feyerabend.' His father, originally from Carinthia, was an officer in the merchant marine in World War I in Istria and a civil servant in Vienna until he died due to complications from a stroke. His mother's family came from Stockerau. She was a seamstress and died on July 29,1943 by suicide. The family lived in a working-class neighborho...
Nazi Occupation of Austria and World War II
Feyerabend's parents were both welcoming of the Anschluss. His mother was entranced by Hitler's voice and demeanor and his father was similarly impressed by Hitler's charisma and later joined the Nazi Party. Feyerabend himself was unmoved by the Anschluss or World War II, which he saw as an inconvenience that got in the way of reading and astronomy. Feyerabend was in the Hitler Youth as a part of compulsory policies and sometimes rebelled, praising the British or claiming he had to leave a me...
Post-WWII, PhD, and early career in England
After getting wounded in action, Feyerabend was hospitalized in and around Weimar where he spent more than a year recovering and where he witnessed the end of the war and Soviet occupation. The mayor of Apoldagave him a job in the education sector and he, then still on two crutches, worked in public entertainment including writing speeches, dialogues, and plays. Later, at the music academy in Weimar, he was granted a scholarship and food stamps and took lessons in Italian, harmony, singing, e...
In philosophy
While the immediate academic reception of Feyerabend's most read text, Against Method, was largely negative, Feyerabend is recognized today as one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th Century. Feyerabend's arguments against a universal method have become largely accepted, and are often taken for granted by many philosophers of science in the 21st century. His arguments for pluralism moved the topic into the mainstream and his use of historical case studies were influent...
Outside philosophy
Feyerabend's analysis of the Galileo affair, where he claims the Church was "on the right track" for censuring Galileo on moral grounds and were empirically correct, was quoted with approval by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in a speech in 1990. In its autobiography, Feyerabend recalls a conversation with Stephen Jay Gould, in 1991, when Gould stated that Against Method's arguments for pluralism motivated him to pursue research on punctuated equilibrium. Feyerabend's work was a...
Books
1. George Couvalis, Feyerabend's Critique of Foundationalism, (1989). London: Avebury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-108-47199-2 2. John Preston, Feyerabend: Philosophy, Science and Society, (1997). Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-1675-5, 0745616763 3. Robert Farrell, Feyerabend and Scientific Values: Tightrope-Walking Rationality, (2003). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4020-1350-8 4. Eric Oberheim, Feyerabend's Philosophy, (2006). Berlin: De Gruyter Press. ISBN 3-11-018907-0
Dissertations
1. Jamie Shaw, A Pluralism worth Having: Feyerabend's Well-Ordered Science, (2018).
Collected volumes
1. Gonzalo Munévar (ed.), Beyond Reason: Essays on the Philosophy of Paul Feyerabend, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (1991), ISBN 0-7923-1272-4 2. John Preston, Gonzalo Munévar and David Lamb (eds.), The Worst Enemy of Science? Essays in Memory of Paul Feyerabend (2000), Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512874-5 3. Karim Bschir and Jamie Shaw (eds.), Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Essays (2021), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-47199-2
Feyerabend, Paul (1995). Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend. University of Chicago Press.Feyerabend, Paul (1987). Farewell to Reason. Verso Books.Feyerabend, Paul (1965). "Reply to Criticism: Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam". Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science.Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Paul Feyerabend". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Nov 13, 2015 · The study of scientific method is the attempt to discern the activities by which that success is achieved. Among the activities often identified as characteristic of science are systematic observation and experimentation, inductive and deductive reasoning, and the formation and testing of hypotheses and theories.
The history of philosophy is the systematic study of the development of philosophical thought. It focuses on philosophy as rational inquiry based on argumentation, but some theorists also include myths, religious traditions, and proverbial lore.
Philosophy of science emerged as a distinctive part of philosophy in the twentieth century. Its defining moment was the meeting (and clash) of two courses of events: the breakdown of the Kantian philosophical tradition and the crisis in the sciences and mathematics in the beginning of the century.
