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Epistemological anarchism
 
 
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Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological
Epistemology

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. It addresses the questions:...
 theory advanced by Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
n philosopher of science
Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science....
 Paul Feyerabend
Paul Feyerabend

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades ....
 which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules
Methodology

Methodology can be defined as:# "the analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline";# "the systematic study of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within a discipline"; or...
 governing the progress of science
Scientific progress

Scientific progress is the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of some scientific method....
 or the growth of knowledge
Knowledge

Knowledge is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation....
. It holds that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself.

The use of the term anarchism
Anarchism

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing anarchist schools of thought which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, and/or undesirable....
 in the name reflected the methodological pluralism prescription of the theory; as the purported scientific method
Scientific method

Scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomenon, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and Measure evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning....
 does not have a monopoly on truth or useful results, the pragmatic approach is a Dada
Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Z?rich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature?poetry, art manifestoes, aesthetics?theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art...
istic "anything goes" attitude toward methodologies.






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Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological
Epistemology

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. It addresses the questions:...
 theory advanced by Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
n philosopher of science
Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science....
 Paul Feyerabend
Paul Feyerabend

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades ....
 which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules
Methodology

Methodology can be defined as:# "the analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline";# "the systematic study of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within a discipline"; or...
 governing the progress of science
Scientific progress

Scientific progress is the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of some scientific method....
 or the growth of knowledge
Knowledge

Knowledge is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation....
. It holds that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself.

The use of the term anarchism
Anarchism

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing anarchist schools of thought which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, and/or undesirable....
 in the name reflected the methodological pluralism prescription of the theory; as the purported scientific method
Scientific method

Scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomenon, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and Measure evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning....
 does not have a monopoly on truth or useful results, the pragmatic approach is a Dada
Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Z?rich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature?poetry, art manifestoes, aesthetics?theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art...
istic "anything goes" attitude toward methodologies. The theory advocates treating science as an ideology
Ideology

An ideology is a set of aims and ideas, especially in politics. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society....
 alongside others such as religion
Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
, magic
Magic

Magic may refer to:* Magic , anything that is not explainable by any present laws of science.** Magical thinking** Folk magic, traditional systems of magic...
 and mythology
Mythology

The word mythology refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that often use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity....
, and considers the dominance of science in society authoritarian and unjustified. Promulgation of the theory earned Feyerabend the title of “the worst enemy of science” from his detractors.

Rationale

The theory draws on the observation that there is no identifiable sole scientific method
Scientific method

Scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomenon, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and Measure evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning....
 that is consistent with the practices of the paradigm of scientific progress – the scientific revolution
Scientific revolution

The period which many History of science call the Scientific Revolution is commonly viewed as the foundation and origin of modern science.It was a time roughly coinciding with the later part of the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance in which scientific ideas in physics, astronomy, and biology evolved rapidly....
. It is a radical critique of rationalist
Rationalism

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive" ....
 and empiricist
Empiricism

In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "theory of knowledge"....
 historiography
Historiography

Historiography is the aspect of semiotics that is the study of how knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted. Broadly speaking, historiography examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods, drawing upon such elements such as authorship, sourcing, interpretation, style, bias, and audience....
 which tend to represent the heroes of the scientific revolution as scrupulous researchers reliant on empirical research
Empirical research

Empirical research is any research that bases its findings on direct or indirect observation as its test of reality. Such research may also be conducted according to Hypothetico deductive model procedures, such as those developed from the work of Ronald Fisher....
, whereas Feyerabend countered that Galileo for example, relied on rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
, propaganda
Propaganda

Propaganda is the dissemination of information aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to Objectivity providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience....
 and epistemological tricks to support his doctrine of heliocentrism
Heliocentrism

In astronomy, heliocentrism is the theory that the Sun is at the center of the Universe. The word came from the Greek language . Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the earth at the center....
, and that aesthetic criteria, personal whims and social factors
Social constructionism

Social constructionism and social constructivism are Sociological theory of knowledge that consider how social phenomena develop in social contexts....
 were far more prevalent than the dominant historiographies allowed.

Scientific law
Scientific law

A scientific law is a concise verbal or mathematical statement of a relation that is always under the same conditions. Only after numerous experiments by many scientists over an extended period of time can a hypothesis become a scientific law....
s such as those posited by Aristotelian
Aristotelian physics

The Greek philosopher Aristotle developed many theories on the nature of physics. These involved what Aristotle described as the Classical element, as well as a variety of other principles that differ significantly from modern ideas about the laws of physics....
 or Newtonian physics are regularly proven not only to be locally incorrect, but entirely false, relying on assumptions about non-existent entities. That the movement from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics to Einstein
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a Germany-born theoretical physics. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass?energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2....
's relativity theory is a paradigm of scientific progress and yet that each has been in turn proven false illustrates for the epistemological anarchist that scientific theories do not correspond to truth
Correspondence theory of truth

The correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world, and whether it accurately describes that world....
 but should rather be assessed on their desirability on other grounds. Feyerabend drew a comparison between the manner in which one scientific paradigm triumphed over or superseded another, and comparative mythology
Comparative mythology

Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes....
, in which elements of one myth are adapted and appropriated
Appropriation (sociology)

Appropriation in sociology is, according to James J. Sosnoski, "the cultural assimilation of concepts into a governing framework...[the] arrogation, confiscation, [or] seizure of concepts." According to Tracy B Strong it contains the Latin root proprius, which, "carries the connotations not only of property, but also of proper, stability,...
 by a new, triumphal successor. Feyerabend contended, with Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos

Imre Lakatos was a philosopher of Philosophy of mathematics and Philosophy of science, most famous today worldwide for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations', and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his methodology of scientific research programmes....
 whom he identified as a fellow epistemological anarchist, that the demarcation problem
Demarcation problem

The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience, and between science and religion....
 of distinguishing on objective grounds science from pseudoscience
Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is any knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific, or that is made to appear to be scientific, but which does not adhere to the scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, or otherwise lacks scientific status....
 was irresolvable and thus fatal to the notion of science run according to fixed, universal rules.

Furthermore, Feyerabend held that deciding between competing scientific accounts was complicated by the incommensurability
Commensurability (philosophy of science)

Commensurability or incommensurability is a concept in the philosophy of science to describe comparisons between different unit of measurement....
 of scientific theories. Incommensurability means that scientific theories cannot be reconciled or synthesised because the interpretation and practice of science is always informed by theoretical assumptions, which leads to proponents of competing theories using different terms, engaged in different language-game
Language-game

A language-game is a philosophy concept developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring to simple examples of language use and the actions into which the language is woven....
s and thus talking past each other. This for Feyerabend was another reason why the idea of science as proceeding according to universal, fixed laws was both historically inaccurate and prescriptively useless.

External links

  • by P.K. Feyerabend
  • - a brief summary of the argument from Marxists.org