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ANGELA GARCA GMEZ

agarcia545@ikasle.ehu.es

ESSAY 2 PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE I

CRITIQUE TO FEYERABEND'S VISION OF FREEDOM

The philosopher of science Alan Chalmers in his book What Is This Thing Called

Science?, dedicates one chapter to the as well philosopher of science Paul K.

Feyerabend. I am going to use the perspective of this chapter to explain Feyerabend's

defense of freedom.

One of the main ideas of Feyerabend in

Against methodinvolves there is not a method

to explain the history of physics and that is able to establish the superiority of physics

over other forms of knowledge using an scientific method.

However, there is a positive aspect, since he defends what he calls humanitarian

attitude.This would be that human beings should be free and have freedom.

Feyerabend was agreed on of the attempt to increase the freedom to lead a full and

rewarding life, because is the only way to produce well-developed humans.

The anarchist conception of Feyerabend increases freedom of individuals when it

suppress all the methodological imperatives. Whereas, on a broader context promotes

freedom for the individuals choosing between science and other forms of knowledge.

From the point of view of Feyerabend, institutionalization of science in our society is

incompatible with humanitarian attitude. What we have to do is release the society from

an ideological petrified science, just as our ancestors freed us from the burden of the

religion.

In the free society offered by Feyerabend, science would not have preference over

other forms of knowledge or other traditions. The state should be neutral and guarantee

the freedom of choice. This notion of freedom ignores the possibilities that individuals

have access inside the social structure.

All individuals are born in a preexisting society and therefore not freely chosen . The

freedom of an individual depends on the position occupied in the social structure, so

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that the analysis of the social structure is a prerequisite for understanding the

individual's freedom .

The scientist is also limited by many factors like the instrumental available, the

economical resources for the project, the teams that surrounds you, where you havestudied, etc

If we want to change society for the better, the only choice is that we have to work with

what we have with the ways available. So the utopian society proposed by Feyerabend

does not fulfill this requirement.

Bibliography

Chalmers, Alan. (2012). Qu es esa cosa llamada ciencia?.

(https://ulagos.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/libro-que-es-esa-cosa-llamada-ciencia.pdf)