Banger quotes from Feyerabend's Against Method
Feyerabend is crazy enough to argue against what we’ve all been taught is at the heart of all scientific endeavor: the scientific method itself, and he ends up being quite convincing. I’m not gonna lay out his argument here, but I have another post that does touch on why Galileo wouldn’t be considered a follower of the scientific method.
His book is organized as a sketch, with very long titles for each chapter.
Some of his basic points:
Science at its best is anarchic. There’s no “method” to be followed other than “anything goes”
History bears this out when you look at how big discoveries are actually made
Scientific progress can happen counterinductively. Hypotheses can contradict well-confirmed theories, and well-established experimental results.
No theory agrees with all the facts anyways, not matter how established
The best way to test theories is by comparison, not inductively
Propoganda can be used productively to get people to come around to the truth
Contrast over analysis as the preferable method for finding truth
He argues that the best way to make scientific progress is to pit different views against one another rather:
The task of the scientist, however, is no longer ‘to search for truth’, or ‘to praise god’, or ‘to systemetize observations’, or ‘to improve predictions.’ These are but the side effects of an activity to which his attention is now mainly directed and which is ‘to make the weaker case the stronger’ as the sophists said, and thereby to sustain the motion of the whole.
He argues that contradictory evidence isn’t necessarily damning:
The second ‘counterrule’ which favours hypotheses inconsistent with observations, facts and experimental results, needs no special defence, for there is not a single interesting theory that agrees with all the known facts in its domain.
He states that different views carry assumptions that are not directly accessible. There’s always some medium that sits between us and the thing we observe, and this medium always has some distorting influence. And…
that we are not even aware of them [assumptions] and we recognize their effects only when we encounter an entirely different cosmology: prejudices are found by contrast, not by analysis.
He argues that the evidence can be wrong!
…a theory may clash with with the evidence not because it is not correct, but because the evidence is contaminated
This seems to put the cart before the horse. You’d expect evidence to judge a theory, and not the other way around. Now, if you’ve gone this far and think he’s a madman, I’m sorry but he backs up his claims quite convincingly, and you might have to hate-read his book to see it.
If we’re working in a system that is contaminated, how do we find out? He says:
we cannot discover it from the inside. We need an external standard of criticism, we need a set of alternative assumptions…
This is reminiscent of Godel’s incompleteness theorem.
In short, Feyerabend argues that unless you have an opposing theory, you don’t know if your theory is any good. And he argues the alternative shouldn’t be a token argument. He argues that if the weaker theory starts losing too badly, we either need to put more resources into it, or find another alternate theory that does stand a chance of winning.
How theories are discovered and develop prominence
When a new view is proposed it faces a hostile audience and excellent reasons are needed to gain for it an even moderately fair hearing. The reasons are produced, but are often disregarded or laughed out of court, and unhappiness is the fate of the bold inventors. But new generations, being interested in new things, become curious; they consider the reasons, pursue them further and groups of researchers initiate detailed studies. The studies may lead to surprising successes (they also raise a lot of difficulties). Now nothing succeeds like success, even if it is success surrounded by difficulties. The theory becomes acceptable as a topic for discussion; it is presented at meetings and large conferences. The diehards of the status quo feel an obligation to study one paper or another, to make a few grumbling comments, and perhaps to join in its exploration.
…and so a new view gains momentum until it becomes well established. The view gets its own popularizers. Problems are framed in its terms.
Unfortunately, this increase in importance is not accompanied by better understanding; the very opposite is the case. Problematic aspects which were originally introduced with the help of carefully constructed arguments now become basic principles; doubtful point turn into slogans; debates with opponents becomes standardized and also quite unrealistic, for the opponents, having to express themselves in terms which presuppose what they contest, seem to raise quibbles, or to misuse words. Alternatives are still employed but they no longer contain realistic counter-proposals; they only serve as a background for the splendour of the new theory.
Against consistency
According to our present results, hardly any theory is consistent with the facts. The demand to admit only those theories which are consistent with the available and accepted facts again leaves us without any theory (I repeat: without any theory, for there is not a single theory that is not in some trouble or other.)