Abstract
Over twenty years ago, the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science heard a series of papers concerning Paul Feyerabend’s philosophy of science. On that occasion, Feyerabend defended his views against a variety of criticisms brought forward by J. J. C. Smart, Hilary Putnam, and Wilfrid Sellars. Although I was not privileged to hear these papers, my study of the published version of this debate, appearing in the Boston Studies for the Philosophy of Science, volume II,1 greatly influenced my own views and was one of the chief factors leading me to write my dissertation on Feyerabend’s philosophy of science. It is, therefore, only appropriate for me to continue the debate over Feyerabend’s work in the present paper.
…only those revolutions in science will prove fruitful and beneficial whose instigators try to change as little as possible and limit themselves to the solution of a particular and clearly defined problem. Any attempt to make a clean sweep of everything or to change things quite arbitrarily leads to utter confusion.... True, I don’t know whether scientific revolutions can be compared with social revolutions, but I suspect that even historically the most durable and beneficial revolutions have been the ones designed to serve clearly defined problems and which left the rest strictly alone.
Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Beyond (p. 148)
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Burian, R.M. (1984). Scientific Realism and Incommensurability: Some Criticisms of Kuhn and Feyerabend. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Methodology, Metaphysics and the History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 84. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6331-3_1
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