Pierre Duhem was, among other things, a physicist, a philosopher, and a Roman Catholic apologist for the persecutors of Galileo. From this last point, I expect most of you readers would assume I despise him, but I honestly have more mixed feelings: while I think he’s dead-wrong to say that sound philosophy supports Galielo’s persecutors over Galileo, his Aim and Structure of Physical Theory is a good source for the history of physical theories about the world, informed by a working physicist’s understanding of the field, and makes worthwhile points about the ways that the ideas of theoretical physics seem to differ from common-sense beliefs about the world. Indeed, insofar as contemporary name-drops of Duhem tend to treat him as just a forerunner to some of Quine’s ideas, I think he’s underrated as a philosopher of science.
Contrast this with Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend, too, was an apologist for Galileo’s persecutors, but differed from Duhem in the important respect that he had nothing worthwhile to say. The main thread of his most famous book, Against Method runs like this: in intellectual inquiry, anything goes. We can see this in the fact that Galileo, one of the traditional heros of Western intellectual achievement, wasn’t even guided by respect for the facts. And what is Feyerabend’s basis for saying Galileo wasn’t guided even by respect for the facts? It takes a little figuring out at first, but eventually it becomes clear that Feyerabend is simply ignoring the usual definition of facts as objectively true, and using “facts” simply to mean whatever people take, or have taken, to be facts. The first clue is the fact that Feyerabend so often feels the need to put scare-quotes around the word “fact.” Then there are the occasional dropping of phrases such as “reason as defined then” (p. 125), implying that such things have no existence independent of how they are defined then. Finally the biggest howler: Feyerabend presents as a major insight that new scientific theories tend to ignore “older facts (most of the facts described in the Malleus Maleficarum… the facts of Vodoo… the properties of phlogiston or those of the ether)” (p. 155).
At that point, there can no longer be any doubt that all Feyerabend’s talk about scientific disregard for the facts is really just a point about scientific disregard for what people sometimes happen to believe. But the weakness of this point doesn’t prevent Feyerabend from drawing a whole series of bold and bizarre conclusions from it: that the Chinese communist party should be praised for suppressing scientific medicine in favor of traditional medicine (Against Method pp.36-37); that Vodoo, astrology, and rain dance ceremonies should be taught in public schools if that’s what the voter’s want; that scientists should look to Hopi creation myths for real cosmological insights; that science teachers are on par with, and perhaps worse than, the Nazi officers who carried out the Holocaust (Science in a Free Society pp. 134-135, 139); and even “the more Lysenko affairs, the better.”
This is just a hunch, but I suspect Feyerabend couldn’t have gotten anywhere in Duhem’s time. In Duhem’s time to be an intellectual you had to have training in some definite intellectual field (such as physics, in Duhem’s case). Nowadays, though, there is a market for thinkers who have no special knowledge of anything, and get by on simply making really crazy pronouncements (the Feyerabend essay linked above suggests Feyerabend understood this.) How’d that happen?
Also, Feyerabend’s “main thread” is NOT “in intellectual inquiry, anything goes.” It is very clear that Against Method is not prescribing a way to go about “intellectual inquiry.” Rather he is making a reductio ad absurdum argument against certain rationalist views of what science is like. He’s trying to show that all methodologies have their limits.
And where do you get the idea that Feyerabend doesn’t think Galileo respected the facts?
Feyerabend actually did study physics at university and as far as I know has never been criticized for his knowledge of physics. That’s one thing that even his critics will admit – he knew his science.
Apparently my first paragraph was deleted somehow. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what I had written.
“Also, Feyerabend’s ‘main thread’ is NOT ‘in intellectual inquiry, anything goes.’ It is very clear that Against Method is not prescribing a way to go about “intellectual inquiry.” Rather he is making a reductio ad absurdum argument against certain rationalist views of what science is like. He’s trying to show that all methodologies have their limits.”
The “anything goes” rhetoric is Feyerabend’s own worse. There’s a little room in Against Method to read this as not an actively pursued approach, but only what is left after every other method falls to reductio. But all the things Feyerabend says about, for example, teaching Voodoo in public schools suggests his intention is every bit as extreme as it sounds.
“And where do you get the idea that Feyerabend doesn’t think Galileo respected the facts?”
This idea is expressed throughout Against Method, though for quick evidence just go to the pages listed in the index under “counterinduction.”
“Feyerabend actually did study physics at university and as far as I know has never been criticized for his knowledge of physics. That’s one thing that even his critics will admit – he knew his science.”
Didn’t know that, guess my explanation of his awfulness is shot. But his work is still pretty awful.
There isn’t just a “little room.” It is explicitly laid out that he is using reductio. He makes it clear throughout chapter 1 but take a look at the context of where he talks about “anything goes”:
“To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, ‘objectivity’, ‘truth’, it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.”
Nowhere does he say that he accepts that principle. His argument is that those who look to the history of science for guidance on scientific method but who also insist on finding a clear, precise rule or method to distinguish “science” from “non-science,” then the only rule that they are going to come up with is “anything goes.”
He repeats makes it explicit at the end of chapter 2 that he doesn’t accept “anything goes” as a principle by which science should work:
“One might therefore get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy-tales instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.”
Then in the 3rd edition of the book, chapter 18, he writes again:
“Some reviewers have classified me as an idealist in the sense just describe with the proviso that I try to replace familiar rules and standards by more ‘revolutionary’ rules such as proliferation and counterinduction and almost everyone has ascribed to me a ‘methodology’ with ‘anything goes’ as its one ‘basic principle’. But in Chapter 2 I say quite explicitly that ‘my intention is not to replace one set of rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that, all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.”
Feyerabend’s suggestion about teaching voodoo in schools was a political point, not a scientific one. A main concern of Feyerabend’s that ran through most of his work was the relationship between freedom and truth. And Feyerabend’s stance was that it may be better to choose freedom over truth at times. He wasn’t saying “We should teach voodoo in public schools in America.” He was saying “People should have the freedom to reject science if they want to.”
As far as counterinduction goes, I don’t really see where Feyerabend suggests that Galileo doesn’t respect facts. Feyerabend does say that there are times when it is appropriate to choose theory over facts (because Feyerabend believes all scientific facts are theory-laden) but I don’t think he ever accuses Galileo of disrespecting the facts or somehow not caring about them.
On Vodoo: It’s true that Feyerabend writes sentences which, at face value, say merely that freedom may trump truth. But this is in context of a refusal to accept the ordinary concept of truth as something to be taken at all seriously, but rather asserts wtihout argumnt that nobody knows what it means to favo truth-telling, and a switch from talking about “truth” to talking about “Truth, as conceived by some ideologists.” He isn’t so much denying that many of the findings of science are true as refusing to let the thought corss his mind.