List of Paul Feyerabend Quotes

Given Any Rule, However "fundamental" Or "necessary" For Science, There Are Always Circumstances When It Is Advisable Not Only To Ignore The Rule, But To Adopt Its Opposite. For Example, There Are Circumstances When It Is Advisable To Introduce, Elaborate And Defend Ad Hoc Hypotheses, Or Hypotheses Which Contradict Well-established And Generally Accepted Experimental Results, Or Hypotheses Whose Content Is Smaller Than The Content Of The Existing And Empirically Adequate Alternative, Or Self-inconsistent Hypotheses, And So On.

No Theory Ever Agrees With All The Facts In Its Domain, Yet It Is Not Always The Theory That Is To Blame. Facts Are Constituted By Older Ideologies, And A Clash Between Facts And Theories May Be Proof Of Progress. It Is Also A First Step In Our Attempt To Find The Principles Implicit In Familiar Observational Notions.

Not Only Are Facts And Theories In Constant Disharmony, They Are Never As Neatly Separated As Everyone Makes Them Out To Be.

Events And Developments, Such As ... The Copernican Revolution, ... Occurred Only Because Some Thinkers Either Decided Not To Be Bound By Certain "obvious" Methodological Rules, Or Because They Unwittingly Broke Them.

There Is No Coherent Knowledge , I.e. No Uniform Comprehensive Account Of The World And The Events In It. There Is No Comprehensive Truth That Goes Beyond An Enumeration Of Details, But There Are Many Pieces Of Information , Obtained In Different Ways From Different Sources And Collected For The Benefit Of The Curious. The Best Way Of Presenting Such Knowledge Is The List - And The Oldest Scientific Works Were Indeed Lists Of Facts, Parts, Coincidences, Problems In Several Specialized Domains.

What Is Surprising Is That Almost All The Trends That Developed Within The Sciences, Aristotelianism And An Extreme Platonism Included, Produced Results, Not Only In Special Domains, But Everywhere; There Exist Highly Theoretical Branches Of Biology And Highly Empirical Parts Of Astrophysics. The World Is A Complex An Many-sided Thing.

Unanimity Of Opinion May Be Fitting For A Church, For The Frightened Or Greedy Victims Of Some (ancient, Or Modern) Myth, Or For The Weak And Willing Followers Of Some Tyrant. Variety Of Opinion Is Necessary For Objective Knowledge. And A Method That Encourages Variety Is Also The Only Method That Is Comparable With A Humanitarian Outlook.

A Universal Good Should Reflect The Reality Of The Individual Benefits That Are Collected Under Its Name, Not The Other Way Around.

Copernicanism And Other Essential Ingredients Of Modern Science Survived Only Because Reason Was Frequently Overruled In Their Past.

Science Is Not Sacrosanct. The Mere Fact That It Exists, Is Admired, Has Results Is Not Sufficient For Making It A Measure Of Excellence. Modern Science Arose From Global Objections Against Earlier Views And Rationalism Itself, The Idea That There Are General Rules And Standards For Conducting Our Affairs, Affairs Of Knowledge Included, Arose From Global Objections To Common Sense.

I Had Studied Dadaism After The Second World War. What Attracted Me To This Movement Was The Style Its Inventors Used When Not Engaged In Dadaistic Activities. It Was Clear, Luminous, Simple Without Being Banal, Precise Without Being Narrow; It Was A Style Adapted To The Expression Of Thought As Well As Of Emotion. I Connected This Style With The Dadaistic Exercises Themselves

Human Paint, Produce Films And Videos; They Dance, Dream And Make Music; They Engage In Political Action, Exchange Goods, Perform Rituals, Build Houses Start Wars, Act In Plays, Try To Please Patrons- And So On... They Contain Patterns, Press The Practitioners To "conform" And In This Way Mold Their Thought, Their Perception, Their Actions, And Their Discriminative Abilities.