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41. Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend by Paul Feyerabend | |
Hardcover: 203
Pages
(1995-05-15)
list price: US$22.95 -- used & new: US$17.99 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0226245314 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Trained in physics and astronomy, Feyerabend was best known as a philosopher of science. But he emphatically was not a builder of theories or a writer of rules. Rather, his fame was in powerful, plain-spoken critiques of "big" science and "big" philosophy. Feyerabend gave voice to a radically democratic "epistemological anarchism:" he argued forcefully that there is not one way to knowledge, but many principled paths; not one truth or one rationality but different, competing pictures of the workings of the world."Anything goes," he said about the ways of science in his most famous book, Against Method. And he meant it. Here, for the first time, Feyerabend traces the trajectory that led him from an isolated, lower-middle-class childhood in Vienna to the height of international academic success. He writes of his experience in the German army on the Russian front, where three bullets left him crippled, impotent, and in lifelong pain.He recalls his promising talent as an operatic tenor (a lifelong passion), his encounters with everyone from Martin Buber to Bertolt Brecht, innumerable love affairs, four marriages, and a career so rich he once held tenured positions at four universities at the same time. Although not written as an intellectual autobiography, Killing Time sketches the people, ideas, and conflicts of sixty years.Feyerabend writes frankly of complicated relationships with his mentor Karl Popper and his friend and frequent opponent Imre Lakatos, and his reactions to a growing reputation as the "worst enemy of science." Customer Reviews (14)
A beautiful lost time
The life behind the ideas
Scènes de la vie de bohème
moving
An awesome spiritual odyssee Only when Feyerabend approached the final fifteen years of his life and settled as a professor in the philosophy of science in Zürich - after having lectured four decades at Anglo-American universities - he started to relax. And eventually, a woman came and set things right. In 1983 he met the Italian physicist Grazia Borrini for the first time. Five years later they married. His relationship with Mrs. Borrini must have been the single most important event in Feyerabend's life. Reading his autobiography is an experience akin to listening to Sibelius' tone-poem 'Nightride and Sunrise': after 1983 the colours change dramatically and his prose is infused with warmth and immense gratefulness. It is a delight to read his rapt eulogies on the companion of the last decade of his life, on his most fortunate discovery of true love and friendship. Indeed, although Feyerabend is not interested in 'spoiling' his autobiography with an extensive reiteration of his philosophical positions, there are a few messages he clearly wants to drive home. The central role in life of love and friendship is one of them. Without these "even the noblest achievements and the most fundamental principles remain pale, empty and dangerous" (p. 173). Yet, Feyerabend clearly wants us to see that this love "is a gift, not an achievement" (p. 173). It is something which is subjected neither to the intellect, nor to the will, but is the result of a fortunate constellation of circumstances. The same applies to the acquisition of 'moral character'. This too "cannot be created by argument, 'education' or an act of will." (p.174). Yet, it is only in the context of a moral character - something which Feyerabend confesses to having only acquired a trace of after a long life and the good fortune of having met Grazia - that ethical categories such as guilt, responsibility and obligation acquire a meaning. "They are empty words, even obstacles, when it is lacking." (p.174) (Consequently, he did not think himself responsible for his behavior during the Nazi period). Contrary to someone like Karl Kraus, Feyerabend seems to think that men, at least as long as they have not acquired moral character, are morally neutral, whilst ideas are not. A question which remains, of course, is who is to be held responsible for intellectual aberrations and intentional obfuscation if this character is only to be acquired by an act of grace, an accidental constellation of circumstances. There is an enigmatic passage in the autobiography which may shed light on this important problem. After having seen a performance of Shakespeare's Richard II, in which the protagonist undoes himself of all his royal insigna, thereby relinquishing not just "a social role but his very individuality, those features of his character that separated him from other", Feyerabend notes that the "dark, unwieldy, clumsy, helpless creature that appeared seemed freer and safer, despite prison and death, than what he had left behind." (p. 172) It prompts him to the insight that "the sum of our works and/or deeds does not constitute a life. These . . . are like debris on an ocean . . . They may even form a solid platform, thus creating an illusion of universality, security, and permanence. Yet the security and the permanence can be swept away by the powers that permitted them to arise." (p. 172) These ideas do not exactly solve the question about moral responsibility, but they do suggest a tragic 'Lebensgefühl' - an acknowledgment of the fact that the spheres of reason, order and justice are terribly limited and that no progress in our science and technical resources will change their relevance - which seems to underpin Feyerabends very earthbound philosophy. ... Read more |
42. Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists (Pergamon International Library of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Social Studies) by David C. Stove, D. C. Stove | |
Hardcover: 128
Pages
(1982-12)
list price: US$19.25 Isbn: 0080267920 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Customer Reviews (2)
Excellent book, two retitles 1.Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists 2.Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism 3. Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult Author is David C. Stove. See the third title for my review.
This Book Has Been Retitled |
43. The Incommensurability Thesis (Avebury Series in the Philosophy of Science) by Howard Sankey | |
Hardcover: 227
Pages
(1994-03)
list price: US$94.95 Isbn: 1856286312 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (1)
Naive attempt at a"deflation" of incommensurability |
44. Versuchungen: Aufsatze zur Philosophie Paul Feyerabends (Edition Suhrkamp) (German Edition) | |
Perfect Paperback: 419
Pages
(1980)
-- used & new: US$14.95 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 3518110446 Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
45. Feyerabend and Scientific Values: Tightrope-Walking Rationality by R.P. Farrell | |
Kindle Edition: 260
Pages
(2003-09-30)
list price: US$149.00 Asin: B000PY3RX8 Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description |
46. I fraintendimenti della ragione: Saggio su P.K. Feyerabend (Scienze filosofiche) (Italian Edition) by Roberta Corvi | |
Paperback: 344
Pages
(1992)
Isbn: 8834306422 Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
47. La scientificita della scienza: Saggio sull'epistemologia negativa di P.K. Feyerabend (I problemi della scienza) (Italian Edition) by Cosimo Pacciolla | |
Paperback: 180
Pages
(1999)
Isbn: 887949192X Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
48. Anarchismo metodologico e scienze sociali (Sociologia e ricerca sociale) (Italian Edition) by Antonio Fasanella | |
Paperback: 122
Pages
(1987)
Isbn: 8820422689 Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
49. The noxiousitity of conventional wisdom: Whose rational(e) is rational(e)? (Human geography. Occasional paper / University of Waikato) by Peter Mark Robertson | |
Unknown Binding:
Pages
(1985)
Asin: B0007C71HQ Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
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