Science:Criticism And Liberty

Feyerabend is an important philosopher in the western philosophical history and is addressed as one of the four scientific philosophical giants that include Popper, Lakatos, and Kuhn. However, because of his radical thinking, unique argumentative methods, his thoughts were much often misunderstood. How to effectively enter Feyerabend's philosophical world? In this article, the writer listed two musts. First, we must get to know the age background in which Feyerabend's philosophical thoughts came into being. That is the time when the western developed countries turned into the postindustrial society, when science and technology got extremely developed, and on the other hand, when the negative effect was fully exposed. Science has become the pet of the time with the unimpeachable position. In the postindustrial society, scientific philosophers have finished the job of defending for science. As critics, philosophers defending for science by criticizing metaphysics in the early time of the twentieth century now had to turn to criticize the limitation of science reason. Therefore, the postmodern situation became the age and cultural background of Feyerabend's thinking manner. So with the postmodern thinking manner, we can get a more effective comprehension on the features and nature of Feyerabend's ideas as well as his series of weird terms and thoughts, like "against method", "Anything goes", and "farewell to reason". Second, we must find out Feyerabend's spirit of criticism and style of controversy. There is great sense of criticism in Feyerabend's philosophy idea. That is not because Feyerabend wants to show his unorthodoxy or flub dub. In fact, Feyerabend is a serious scholar with sturdy basic training, whose spirit of criticism comes from scientific philosophy itself. Scientific philosophy presented as a radical critic on the stage of modern philosophy from the very beginning. Shlick claimed that Vienna school has discovered the philosophy that can cease all the philosophical debates, and that their task was to drive metaphysics away from science territory. Feyerabend not only succeeded the spirit of criticism of scientific philosophy, but draw more critical ideas from some other critical philosophers and scientists. Although he is not a Marxist, Feyerabend assimilated the spirit of dialectic criticism from Marx and Lenin's works. Refined and optimized by Feyerabend, the spirit of criticism emerged with extremely smashing wallop. With his philosophic ideas, Feyerabend corrected the mistake of modern thinking of logic-empiricism intentionally too much. To defend science before the age of science, one is courageous, while he is vulgar to do the same during the age of science without taking any risk and so his ideas are meaningless. To defend science in the developed countries can improve science no more, but can hinder the further development. Therefore, the leading philosophic criticism can guide science in the humanisticdirection. Feyerabend's philosophy embodies the leading critical spirit. It is really duly that Feyerabend criticized the limitation of science and defended the happy free life in science highly developed countries in 1970s, the age of science developing. At that time, nothing but drastic criticism can wake the enchanted science dream. Without knowing the special historical and clime background, one can easily misunderstand Feyerabend's thoughts and intention. Take the science underdeveloped background of China for example; it is impossible for Feyerabend's thought to emerge. Also, it is absolutely wrong to treat science in the developing China. What kind of critical philosophy is Feyerabend's appearing in the situation of postmodern age? To the question, there are quite various answers. Some called it "anarchistic knowledge theory". Others called it "philosopher of against method". Still others called him as an irrational philosopher, just opposite with those who regard Feyerabend as a rational one. According to the former research, we can safely say that in spite of his radical verbalism, Feyerabend is against neither means nor science, nor reason. What he is against is the idea and the point of view that means has the general applicability. He believes that each means has its limitation. No means is possibly omnipotent and universally applicable. He is against the idea that science is superior. His research shows that science has no crude superiority, that no science-superiority theory canever be drawn from the research either on science means or science results. Feyerabend uses his term of "farewell to reason"to explain that reason has it's limitation but is not omnipotent and hasn't the sole superiority. Thus, we say that Feyerabend's philosophy is neither irrational nor traditionally rational but is limited rational. This is my innovative comprehension on the nature of Feyerabend's philosophy, comparing with the other researchers. The feature of Feyerabend's theory of limited ration is: it is not purely constructive, thus the indirect narration belongs to Feyerabend's original philosophy; it is not purely devastating criticism, but it is just for the criticism of the old world that he discovered the new world and raised the optional views. In fact, Feyerabend's philosophy is not only critical, but also constructive. It is essentially the criticism in which explicates the constructive part instead of raising another set of philosophy in order to oppose his rival. He would take his rival's view as the premise, and then explicates the opposite conclusion from it. There are four major parts in the content of Feyerabend's theory of limited ration: I. Criticize universalism, reveal the particularity of rational method. Criticize universalism is the cut-in point of modern philosophy after Feyerabend's time. Feyerabend didn't criticize science generally. He is a philosopher in the community of scientific philosophy who knows thehistory and content of science thoroughly. Therefore, his animadversion explodes inside instead of outside entry. The philosophy thought of modern science universalism is the footstone, which is maintaining the superiority of scientism. Feyerabend have to explode this footstone in the first place. His method is to introduce the "anarchism"thought into scientific philosophy and use the epistemological anarchism to fight against universal criteria,universal rules and universal ideas。He pointed out that the knowledge, which was formed in specific history, would not have unique universalism and successful research would not fellow the common criterion. Criterion is competitive, thus, there is no fixed and universal applicable criterion. Universalism damages humanity and ruins science while anarchism is more close to human nature. He pointed out:"it is impractical and harmful to believe in the thought that science will develop according to the fixed and universal applicable criterion. Science is an anarchistic career in nature. Theoretical anarchism compare with its opposition―theoretical method and order―is more close to human nature and more inspiring."II. Animadverts on the rules of methodology and reveals the limitation of sense. Rationalism argues that modern society is set up according to the almighty ration and science is the symbol and sample of it, the basis of science is method. Feyerabend pointed out that ration is not almighty ,whereas, it has three major defects. 1.anti-others ;2.dogmatism of rules; 3.universal uniformity. All these caused the inconsistency between the logical rules and criterion of ration and the reality of science. Science is not an activity, which is made clear of its features with the method that follows the rule of absolute sanction. Of course, Feyerabend argue that all the rules and criteria have limitations doesn't mean we will have to give up these rules and criteria. In order to overcome the limitations of rational methods, he brought forward the thought of anti-induction, that is: 1. Introduce new hypothesis that is against the existing theories according to the principle of manifold. 2. not to adjudge hypothesis according to facts, but to maintain even invent the hypothesis that is disproved by facts. 3. discover and overthrow the natural explanation that is hiding in the observation language, take a new natural explanation instead, that is to introduce a new observation language. The new hypothesis would get support through the news facts that were described in new observation language. These supports would result in the progress of science. He thinks now that any method has its limitation, thus, we must use pluralism of methodology to substitute any so-called the only right method. Feyerabend argued that science would not exist without anti-deduction and anti-deduction is the routine and very necessary action of scientific games. III. Criticize the thought of delimitation while encourage free research of multi-range. Logicism science philosophy defends for thestatus of superiority of science conciliarism, instead of direct reasoning, it achieve its success indirectly through nonfigurative delimitation. Delimitation refers to the problem of how to draw the scientific and non-scientific borderline. Its purpose is to drive the non-scientific away from the scientific in order to make science a pure and stainless science. With these problems, we developed a more extensive thought of delimitation. The thought of delimitation refers to delimitation-aroused dichotomy thinking method commonly used by certain scientific philosophers when they were dealing with some scientific philosophic problems. Thought of delimitation essentially defends for the paramount position of science with the aim of elbow out the non-scientific culture―philosophy and the like. What Feyerabend wants to clear up is not only the problem of delimitation, but also thinking method of delimitation, which is used to solve scientific problems. The aim of Feyerabend's criticism of thought of delimitation is to caution against people that there is no pure and pure science that should not drive heterogeneity away, or this will block the way of scientific development. Feyerabend is against "spurning metaphysics ", advocates combination of science and philosophy―non-science, improving the multi-range research. IV. Criticize the superior position of science and advocates various traditional equality and free development. Feyerabend pointed out that no matter from the methodical or consequential point of view, science havenot inherited superiority over other things. Therefore, science should have equal status with other traditions; thus, the scientists who have grasped science should be eliminated from the center status of society. Publics should also supervise scientists. The precondition of the equality of all traditions is the separation of nation, education and science.