The Tyranny of Science

The Tyranny of Science
Author: Paul K. Feyerabend
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-05-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780745651897

Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century and his book Against Method is an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping tale: the story of the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece that eventually led to the entrenchment of a mythical ‘scientific worldview’. In this wide-ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction, and as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and our experience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting away from the subjective experience that makes life meaningful. Feyerabend concludes by arguing that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory, by itself, ever could be, and he stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if it is exerted with the best possible intentions. Provocative and iconoclastic, The Tyranny of Science is one of Feyerabend’s last books and one of his best. It will be widely read by everyone interested in the role that science has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of the modern world.

The Tyranny of Science

The Tyranny of Science
Author: Paul K. Feyerabend
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-04-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780745651903

Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century and his book Against Method is an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping tale: the story of the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece that eventually led to the entrenchment of a mythical ‘scientific worldview’. In this wide-ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction, and as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and our experience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting away from the subjective experience that makes life meaningful. Feyerabend concludes by arguing that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory, by itself, ever could be, and he stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if it is exerted with the best possible intentions. Provocative and iconoclastic, The Tyranny of Science is one of Feyerabend’s last books and one of his best. It will be widely read by everyone interested in the role that science has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of the modern world.

Science in a Free Society

Science in a Free Society
Author: Paul Feyerabend
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2017-11-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1788731921

No study in the philosophy of science created such controversy in the seventies as Paul Feyerabend's Against Method. In this work, Feyerabend reviews that controversy, and extends his critique beyond the problem of scientific rules and methods, to the social function and direction of science today. In the first part of the book, he launches a sustained and irreverent attack on the prestige of science in the West. The lofty authority of the "expert" claimed by scientists is, he argues, incompatible with any genuine democracy, and often merely serves to conceal entrenched prejudices and divided opinions with the scientific community itself. Feyerabend insists that these can and should be subjected to the arbitration of the lay population, whose closes interests they constantly affect-as struggles over atomic energy programs so powerfully attest. Calling for far greater diversity in the content of education to facilitate democratic decisions over such issues, Feyerabend recounts the origin and development of his own ideas-successively engaged by Brecht, Ehrenhaft, Popper, Mill and Lakatos-in a spirited intellectual self-portrait. Science in a Free Society is a striking intervention into one of the most topical debates in contemporary culture and politics.

Farewell to Reason

Farewell to Reason
Author: Paul Feyerabend
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1987
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780860918967

Farewell to Reason offers a vigorous challenge to the scientific rationalism that underlies Western ideals of “progress” and “development,” whose damaging social and ecological consequences are now widely recognized. For all their variety in theme and occasion, the essays in this book share a consistent philosophical purpose. Whether discussing Greek art and thought, vindicating the church’s battle with Galileo, exploring the development of quantum physics or exposing the dogmatism of Karl Popper, Feyerabend defends a relativist and historicist notion of the sciences. The appeal to reason, he insists, is empty, and must be replaced by a notion of science that subordinates it to the needs of citizens and communities. Provocative, polemical and rigorously argued, Farewell to Reason will infuriate Feyerabend’s critics and delight his many admirers.

Tyranny of Reason

Tyranny of Reason
Author: Yuval Levin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

The astonishing success of the natural sciences in the modern era has led many thinkers to assume that similar feats of knowledge and power should be achievable in human affairs. That assumption, and the accompanying notion that the methods of modern science ought to be applied to social and political questions, have been at the heart of a number of prominent philosophical schools in the modern age, and much of the politics of the past century. Is the application of scientific logic to the study of human affairs philosophically defensible? Does it aid or hinder our efforts at a genuine understanding of the human world? Why have so many modern ideologies, including those responsible for some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, advanced themselves under the banner of science? Why, in other words, do we assume that modern science holds the key to an understanding of human affairs? Are we right to make this assumption? And what does the assumption mean for contemporary society and politics? Tyranny of Reason, which is designed for the interested lay reader and for undergraduate or beginning graduate students in the social sciences, attempts to answer these important questions in the context of the history of philosophy

The Worst Enemy of Science?

The Worst Enemy of Science?
Author: John Preston
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2000-02-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0195351711

This stimulating collection is devoted to the life and work of the most flamboyant of twentieth-century philosophers, Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend's radical epistemological claims, and his stunning argument that there is no such thing as scientific method, were highly influential during his life and have only gained attention since his death in 1994. The essays that make up this volume, written by some of today's most respected philosophers of science, many of whom knew Feyerabend as students and colleagues, cover the diverse themes in his extensive body of work and present a personal account of this fascinating thinker.

Against Method

Against Method
Author: Paul Feyerabend
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1993
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780860916468

Modern philosophy of science has paid great attention to the understanding of scientific 'practice', in contrast to concentration on scientific 'method'. Paul Feyerabend's acclaimed work, which has contributed greatly to this new emphasis, shows the deficiencies of some widespread ideas about the nature of knowledge. He argues that the only feasible explanations of scientific successes are historical explanations, and that anarchism must now replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge. The third edition of this classic text contains a new preface and additional reflections at various points in which the author takes account both of recent debates on science and on the impact of scientific products and practices on the human community. While disavowing populism or relativism, Feyerabend continues to insist that the voice of the inexpert must be heard. Thus many environmental perils were first identified by non-experts against prevailing assumptions in the scientific community. Feyerabend's challenging reassessment of scientific claims and understandings are as pungent and timely as ever.

The Tyranny of Metrics

The Tyranny of Metrics
Author: Jerry Z. Muller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691191263

How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government—and the quality of our lives Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself—and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.

The Tyranny of the Ideal

The Tyranny of the Ideal
Author: Gerald Gaus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691183422

In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

Newton's Tyranny

Newton's Tyranny
Author: David H. Clark
Publisher: W. H. Freeman
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2001-11-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780716747017

One of the great figures in history, Sir Isaac Newton personifies the triumph of scientific reason over ignorance. Yet for all his contributions to the Enlightenment, Newton was a deeply complex man who sometimes aggressively tried to obscure the intellectual achievements of others of others. Newton's Tyranny is the story of two men who felt the full wrath of the great man's hostility-the Reverend John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Stephen Gray, a humble dyer and amateur scientist. United not only by a love of science, but by a bitter and protracted conflict with Newton, the two men made significant contributions to science despite the observational astronomy and navigation. Drawing upon letters and historical documents, Newton's Tyranny vividly recreates the British scientific community of the early 18th century. It was an era of great achievement, but the crucible of science was often heated by Machiavellian intrigue, uncontrollable ambition, and larger-than-life personalities. Against this dramatic setting, the saga of Newton, Flamsteed and Gray unfolds, a story of loyalty and commitment against great odds. A fascinating look at a forgotten piece of science history, Newton's Tyranny exposes the dark side of flawed genius while celebrating the ultimate triumph of two unsung heroes.