Feyerabend’s Against Method: Rationalism vs. Pseudo-irrationalism
Document Type
Book Section
Publication Date
8-29-2021
Publication Title
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo
Publisher
Springer, Cham
Publisher Location
Cham, Switzerland
Volume
40
First page number:
389
Last page number:
405
Abstract
This is a critical examination of Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method (originally published in 1975). I argue that, although Feyerabend’s book may superficially appear as primarily destructive, he is really practicing a relatively novel and essentially sound approach to the analysis of scientific rationality; Feyerabend’s approach is a concrete, empirical, historical, and rhetorical one, and his account of Galileo’s methodology is meant to be a case study. I also argue that Feyerabend’s account of Galileo’s methodology is not really irrationalistic, but pseudo-irrationalistic; in reality, Galileo proceeds rationally for Feyerabend, as long as the concept of scientific rationality is expanded to allow for rhetorical factors that are a-logical rather than anti-logical, and for epistemological practices neglected by orthodox scholars but ultimately reducible to reasoning and argumentation. Finally, I elaborate, along such lines, a critical appreciation of Feyerabend’s discussion of Galileo’s critique of the vertical-fall argument against the earth’s motion.
Controlled Subject
Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642; Rationalism; Methodology
Disciplines
Philosophy of Science
Language
English
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Repository Citation
Finocchiaro, M. A.
(2021).
Feyerabend’s Against Method: Rationalism vs. Pseudo-irrationalism.
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo, 40
389-405.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer, Cham.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77147-8_20