Epistemological Anarchism and Methodological Pluralism. Feyerabend, "Against Method".
Thought I'd share a few beautiful paragraphs from Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method".
Published in 1975, it argues against the existence of universally fixed methodological rules (e.g., 'the scientific method', etc.) and the privileging of rationality over anything else (psychology, politics, effective propaganda, religion, etc.) in the formation of scientific disciplines, paradigms and even facts. Feyerabend's so-called epistemological anarchism has had a significant influence in the social sciences and cultural studies (the field of Ethnomethodology comes to mind).
So, here. Enjoy:
"It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, 'objectivity', 'truth', it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It i s the principle: anything goes."
"Here as elsewhere knowledge is obtained from a multiplicity of views rather than from the determined application of a preferred ideology. And we realize that proliferation may have to be enforced by non-scientific agencies
whose power is sufficient to overcome the most powerful scientific institutions. Examples are the Church, the State, a political party, public discontent, or money: the best single entity to get a modern scientist away from what his 'scientific conscience' tells him to pursue is still the dollar (or, more recently, the Swiss franc)."
"Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to the truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness. Nothing is ever settled, no view can ever be omitted from a comprehensive account.
Plutarch or Diogenes Laertius, and not Dirac or von Neumann, are the models for presenting a knowledge of this kind in which the history of a science becomes an inseparable part of the science itself- it is essential for its further development as well as for giving content to the theories it contains at any particular moment.
Experts and laymen, professionals and dilettanti, truth-freaks and liars - they all are invited to participate in the contest and to make their contribution to the enrichment of our culture."