Eric Oberheim - Böcker

Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century and his book Against Method is an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping tale: the story of the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece that eventually led to the entrenchment of a mythical ‘scientific worldview’. In this wide-ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurdmisconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confrontingthe real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction, and as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and ourexperience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting away from the subjective experience that makeslife meaningful. Feyerabend concludes by arguing that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory, by itself, ever could be, and he stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if it is exerted with the best possible intentions. Provocative and iconoclastic, The Tyranny of Science is one of Feyerabend’s last books and one of his best. It will be widely read by everyone interested in the role that science has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of the modern world.

This book offers an inside look into the notoriously tumultuous, professional relationship of two great minds: Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend.

The authors Matteo Collodel and Eric Oberheim take the reader on a journey through the early life of the famous Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whose groundbreaking work Against the Method forged new paths in the philosophical understanding of science.

The authors Matteo Collodel and Eric Oberheim take the reader on a journey through the early life of the famous Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whose groundbreaking work Against the Method forged new paths in the philosophical understanding of science. Collodel and Oberheim's book contains the translated correspondence of Feyerabend (1924-1994) with equally influential philosophers and scientists of the time, including Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Carl G. Hempel, J.J.C. Smart, David Bohm, and Thomas Kuhn.This book offers an entirely unique approach to the philosopher Paul Feyerabend. Informative, challenging and profound, it immerses the reader deeply in the mind of a truly revolutionary philosopher of science.The main focus lies on the explanation of Paul Feyerabend's ideas on logical empiricism and quantum mechanics, which he developed especially in the 1960s. In order to appreciate the celebrated work of the philosopher, it is important to create an understanding of these formative years in Feyerabend's life and work.Anyone who knows similar discussions, like the paradigm shift of Thomas Kuhn, or has a passion for history, philosophy and science will be fascinated by the works of Paul Feyerabend. As scientists and followers of Feyerabend, Collodel and Oberheim strive to pay respect to the philosopher and to make his work accessible to a whole new generation.

Paul Feyerabend ranks among the most exciting and influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. This reconstruction of his developing ideas combines historical and systematic considerations.Part I examines the three main influences on Feyerabend’s philosophical development: Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, Popper critical rationalism and Ehrenhaft’s experimental effects.Part II focuses on Feyerabend’s development and use of the notion of incommensurability at the heart of his philosophical critiques, and investigates his relation to realism. Feyerabend initially developed the notion of incommensurability from ideas he found in Duhem. He used the notion of incommensurability to attack many different forms of conceptual conservativism in philosophy and the natural sciences. He argued against many views on the grounds that that they would constrain the freedom necessary to develop alternative points of view, and thereby hinder scientific advance. Contrary to widespread opinion, he was never a scientific realist.Part III reconstructs Feyerabend’s pluralistic conception of knowledge in the context of his pluralistic philosophical method. Feyerabend was a philosophical pluralist, who practiced pluralism in pursuit of progress.