Paul Feyerabend in the context of "Theory-ladenness"

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⭐ Core Definition: Paul Feyerabend

Paul Karl Feyerabend (/ˈfaɪərɑːbənd/; FY-ur-ah-bent; German: [ˈfaɪɐˌʔaːbm̩t]; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of science. He started his academic career as lecturer in the philosophy of science at the University of Bristol (1955–1958); afterward, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for three decades (1958–1989). At various points in his life, he held joint appointments at the University College London (1967–1970), the London School of Economics (1967), the FU Berlin (1968), Yale University (1969), the University of Auckland (1972, 1975), the University of Sussex (1974), and the ETH Zurich (1980–1990). He gave lectures and lecture series at the University of Minnesota (1958–1962), Stanford University (1967), the University of Kassel (1977), and the University of Trento (1992).

Feyerabend's most famous work is Against Method (1975), wherein he argues that there are no universally valid methodological rules for scientific inquiry. He also wrote on topics related to the politics of science in several essays and in his book Science in a Free Society (1978). Feyerabend's later works include Wissenschaft als Kunst (Science as Art) (1984), Farewell to Reason (1987), Three Dialogues on Knowledge (1991), and Conquest of Abundance (released posthumously in 1999), which collect essays from the 1970s until Feyerabend's death. The uncompleted draft of an earlier work was released posthumously in 2009 as Naturphilosophie and translated to English in 2016 as Philosophy of Nature. This work contains Feyerabend's reconstruction of the history of natural philosophy from the Homeric period until the mid-20th century. In these works and others, Feyerabend wrote about numerous issues at the interface between history and philosophy of science and ethics, ancient philosophy, philosophy of art, political philosophy, medicine, and physics. His final work was an autobiography, Killing Time, which he completed on his deathbed. Feyerabend's extensive correspondence and other materials from his Nachlass continue to be published.

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👉 Paul Feyerabend in the context of Theory-ladenness

In philosophy of science, an observation is said to be "theory-laden" when shaped by the investigator's theoretical presuppositions. According to this perspective, observers have a perspective that presupposes a theory, they inevitably make judgments about the observed information at the moment of observation. The thesis is chiefly associated with the late 1950s–early 1960s work of Norwood Russell Hanson, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend, though it was likely first put forth some 50 years earlier, at least implicitly, by Pierre Duhem.

Semantic theory-ladenness refers to the impact of theoretical assumptions on the meaning of observational terms, while perceptual theory-ladenness refers to their impact on the perceptual experience itself. Theory-ladenness is also relevant for measurement outcomes: the data thus acquired may be said to be theory-laden since it is meaningless by itself unless interpreted as the outcome of the measurement processes involved.

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Paul Feyerabend in the context of Unity of science

The unity of science is a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole. The variants of the thesis can be classified as ontological (giving a unified account of the structure of reality) and/or as epistemic/pragmatic (giving a unified account of how the activities and products of science work). There are also philosophers who emphasize the disunity of science, which does not necessarily imply that there could be no unity in some sense but does emphasize pluralism in the ontology and/or practice of science.

Early versions of the unity of science thesis can be found in ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, and in the later history of Western philosophy. For example, in the first half of the 20th century the thesis was associated with the unity of science movement led by Otto Neurath, and in the second half of the century the thesis was advocated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in "General System Theory: A New Approach to Unity of Science" (1951) and by Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam in "Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis" (1958). It has been opposed by, for example, Jerry Fodor in "Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)" (1974), by Paul Feyerabend in Against Method (1975) and later works, by John Dupré in "The Disunity of Science" (1983) and The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (1993), by Nancy Cartwright in The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999) and other works, and by Evelyn Fox Keller in Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines (2002) and other works.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Unity of science ← Theory-ladenness
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Austria → Philosopher → Philosophy of science → University of Bristol → University of California, Berkeley → University College London → London School of Economics → FU Berlin → Yale University → University of Auckland → University of Sussex → ETH Zurich → University of Minnesota → Stanford University → University of Kassel → University of Trento → Against Method → Politics of science → Science in a Free Society → Farewell to Reason → Conquest of Abundance → Homer → Ethics → Ancient philosophy → Philosophy of art → Political philosophy → Medicine → Physics → Killing Time (autobiography) →