John Wilkins has an excellent essay on Paul Feyerabend up over at Evolving Thoughts. It begins:
Paul Feyerabend is famous for attempting to make science subject to democratic revision. How shall we assess this in the light of the present attacks on science? Is he naive, or is he merely wrong? Can epistemological dadaism of the kind that he offers resist subversion by the will of the majority?
In this talk I will attempt to show three things. First, the basis for Feyerabend’s claims are based on a liberal epistemic individualism, and ultimately a kind of rationalism. Second, that there are some fairly specific conditions under which his dadaist non-program might flourish, outside of which it can offer nothing to prevent antiscientific movements based on corporate interests that subvert the democratic process from gaining ground. Third, that the present state of science in society is, so far from being anything like an ideology, more like an embattled movement of resistance fighters against irrationality. PKF himself may have come out now on the side of scientific rationality rather than on the side, as he did, of encouraging astrology, creationism and so-called alternative medicine, in the light of this situation.
Wander over and check it out.
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