Against Method

While we're on the subject of science this week, I'd love to cast a spotlight on one of my favorite scholars of science, the twentieth century epistemologist out of Berkley, Paul Feyerabend (here's another look back at scientific epistemology vs. religion, for those interested).

His seminal work, Against Method, came out in 1975 and serves as a counterpoint view to Thomas Kuhn's narrative of gradual waves of mounting revolutions in understanding.  By contrast, Feyerabend's view is anarchic, unstructured, and all encompassing.  He challenges the very epistemological narrative of the singular scientific method which produces steady increases in the body of human knowledge through repeated, inductive observations.

His alternative proposal - anything goes.  No method for producing knowledge should be preferred over any other, and in the swirling marketplace of ideas that would inevitably result, unpredictable synergies, interpretations of events that could radically expand our understanding of the Universe might be attained that would never be accessible if we constantly privilege one mode of knowledge production.

His case is persuasive; he builds his argument against privileging the scientific method by critically analyzing one of the seminal cases often presented as a victory of scientific methodology: Galileo's heliocentric theory.

For instance, one of the hallmarks of the classical narrative of scientific progress through continuous induction is the claim that as we refine our understanding of the Universe, we will be able to make more accurate predictions.  Except Galileo's predictions of astronomical trajectories were less accurate than those made with the prevailing geocentric models of the time.

Another example - replicability.  There are numerous documented cases of Galileo making claims of observations made through his telescope which other observers could not distinguish when gazing through his instruments.

A third - that scientific arguments propagate and succeed based on sound logical defense.  Galileo was largely successful in propagating his theories because he relied on his own cult of personality and a slew of fallacies that persuaded the unschooled layperson.  Galileo employed arguments he knew to be false in order to build support for his theory which he intuitively believed to be true.

And in the long view, history has vindicated Galileo.  Neither is Feyerbend's argument isn't that we should condemn Galileo.  On the contrary, he raises Galileo's tremendous success as proof positive that when we don't slavishly adhere to one version of creating and interpreting truth, that we might open our minds to considerably deeper understanding.