What’s So Great About Feyerabend?!

5th Annual Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology Conference, UT Dallas, 21 May, 2015!!Ian James Kidd, Durham University !

‘Two fundamental questions’!

•  What is science?!

•  What’s so great about science?!

‘The worst enemy of science’!

The gist!

Feyerabend was more conservative, and less radical, than is realized.!!!He was devoted to a defense of the social and epistemic authority of science.!

‘Crazy’ then, commonplace now!

The message of Against Method!

Science is esteemed as a social and epistemic authority due to its special methodological credentials.""!!But these are, on analysis, suspect, so we have work to do.!

Anti-scientism, not anti-science!

If our conception of the nature of science is suspect, then so, too, are credentials in support of of the authority of science that presuppose it.!

Blind-spots!

Odd neglects and absences, and their costs!

Did Feyerabend miss the boat?!

Absence is not always a result of a judgment.!

Contingency!

Feyerabend’s sensitivity, not only to contingencies within science, but to the deep contingency of science – its being shaped by suspect biases, prejudices, power plays.!

Contingency and ‘forms of life’!

The entrenchment of our scientific ‘form of life’ was not a result of careful deliberation, design, and decision, so should not be taken for granted.!

Fragility!

The authority of science is conditional on its continuing to ‘resonate’ with the interests, concerns, and values that have contingently come to shape our ‘form of life’ – and is therefore fragile.!!!!!!Do not take the authority of science for granted.!

Science, society, values, and policy!

A critique of scientific reason requires that we constantly ask (and can give good answers to) those two questions – what is science, and what’s so great about science.!

The real enemies of science!

Scientism, ‘universal punditry’, doubt-mongering, ignorance.!

The friends of science!

What’s so great about our (messy, pluralistic, bias-ridden, ethically messy, socially situated, ideologically-aggressed, politically complex) science?!

The best friend of science!

Feyerabend urged us to ‘bust’ cozy but false myths about science, to be honest about its messiness, and to acknowledge and respond to its fragility.!

Some readings!

Brown, M.J. and Kidd, I.J., Reappraising Feyerabend, special issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.!!Kidd, I.J., ‘Feyerabend on politics, education, and scientific culture’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.!!Lloyd, E.A., ‘Feyerabend, Mill, and pluralism’, Philosophy of Science: Supplement 64 (1997): S396-S407.!!Oberheim, E., Feyerabend’s Philosophy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 2007)!