Incommensurability

Paul Feyerabend Paul Feyerabend was an Austrian philosopher of science and one of the most provocative thinkers of the twentieth century. Trained in Vienna and based for decades at Berkeley, he began close to logical empiricism and to Popper’s critical rationalism — he even studied under Popper at the London School of Economics — before becoming one of his sharpest critics. His best-known work, Against Method (1975), defends epistemological anarchism: the thesis that there is no single, universal, ahistorical scientific method capable of explaining the success of science. Examining real episodes from the history of science, above all the case of Galileo, Feyerabend argues that progress has often required breaking the methodological rules then in force. His provocation became synonymous with a radical defence of pluralism and intellectual freedom against every dogmatism — including the scientific one. ...