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International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
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Feyerabend and the Philosophy of Physics
Jamie Shaw & Michael T. Stuart
To cite this article: Jamie Shaw & Michael T. Stuart (2022) Feyerabend and the
Philosophy of Physics, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 35:1, 1-4, DOI:
10.1080/02698595.2022.2193369
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2193369
Published online: 06 Apr 2023.
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EDITORIAL
Feyerabend and the Philosophy of Physics
In a reference letter for Feyerabends application to UC Berkeley, Carl Hempel writes that
Mr. Feyerabend combines a forceful and penetrating analytic mind with a remarkably
thorough training and high competence in theoretical physics and mathematics(Collodel
and Oberheim, unpublished, 80). Similarly, Rudolf Carnap says of Feyerabend that he
knows both the physics and the philosophy thoroughly, and he is particularly well versed
in the fundamental logical and epistemological problems of physics(83). These remarks
echo a sentiment widely accepted amongst Feyerabends colleagues that his knowledge of
physics was at an extremely high level. Feyerabends acumen in physics goes back to his
youth, when, at the age of 13, he was oered a position as an observer at the Swiss Institute
for Solar Research after building his own telescope (Feyerabend 1995, 27). It is unsurprising,
therefore, that physics played an important and long-lasting role in Feyerabends work.
More specically, Feyerabends early work contains several papers engaging with technical
and general issues in physics, mostly quantum mechanics. Here, he provided analyses of
Bohrs complementarity and its relationship to positivism, von Neumanns no-go proof,
Bohms philosophy of physics, the measurement problem, the relationship between physics
and philosophy, hidden-variable theories and theoretical pluralism, and the use of three-
valued logic in quantum mechanics (to name just a few topics). These continued to play
important roles in his work of the 1970s, although now they appeared alongside more histori-
cal examples, such as Galileos work on the rotation of the earth in Against Method.
While scholarship on Feyerabends philosophy has been burgeoning, especially over the
past 10 years or so, comparatively little research has delved into his work in the philosophy
of physics. This special issue seeks to ameliorate that gap. The hope is to better understand
Feyerabends philosophy of physics, its historical impact and reception, and discern what
fruits Feyerabends philosophy of physics may still bear.
This special issue comes in two parts. Here, we introduce only the rst half, which contains
four contributions, touching upon dierent aspects of Feyerabends philosophy of physics. It
begins with Flavio Del Santos paper, Beyond method: the diatribe between Feyerabend and
Popper over the foundations of quantum mechanics.Here, Del Santo looks at the relation-
ship between Feyerabend and his mentor and eventual philosophical enemy, Karl Popper
with fresh eyes. Specically, Del Santo provides a new explanation for the fracture between
Feyerabend and Popper by looking at their recently published correspondence (Collodel
and Oberheim 2020) and focusing on the personal nature of their relationship. Del Santo
shows how Feyerabends growing resentmenttoward his authoritarian father-gure and
Poppers growing frustration with Feyerabend centred on disagreements concerning
quantum mechanics: how to interpret it, how to criticize it, and how to teach it. The juicy
details in Del Santos paper range from funny to heart-breaking, and we are left to wonder
whether philosophy of science would have lost something without such a conict.
Matteo Collodels paper, Ehrenhafts Experiments on Magnetic Monopoles: Reconsider-
ing the Feyerabend-Ehrenhaft Connection,presents a newly discovered document from
© 2023 Open Society Foundation
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https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2022.2193369
Feyerabends Nachlass, one that includes a draft translation of Felix Ehrenhafts 1947 lectures,
and Feyerabends memoir of Ehrenhaft. Collodel shows how signicant Ehrenhaft was as a
real-life example of a charlatanwho argued against the orthodox physics establishment.
In the end, Feyerabend was convinced neither by Ehrenhaft nor by his critics, but he
learned important lessons about the tentative, complex, and historically contingent relation
between theory and experience, as well as the importance of rst-hand participation in
science.
Collodel then turns to Eric Oberheims account of Ehrenhaftsinuence on Feyerabend.
According to Oberheim, Feyerabends experiences with Ehrenhaft grounded his entire phi-
losophical outlook(Oberheim 2006, 116). Ehrenhafts presentation of recalcitrant exper-
iments did not convince rival physicists, not because of any aw in the experiments, but
because he did not have a competing theoretical perspective to back them up. This
grounds Feyerabends view that scientic progress requires competing theories. Collodel
draws attention to the virtues of this explanation, but ultimately rejects it for several
reasons, including the fact that Feyerabend does not reference Ehrenhaft where we would
expect him to, and Oberheims interpretation conicts with Feyerabends own account of
his evolving thinking. Instead, Collodel proposes a new interpretation, according to which
Feyerabends work in the 1960s, which was characterized by skepticism and pluralism and
then anarchism, gave Feyerabend the framework he needed to go back and make sense of
his experiences with Ehrenhaft. The story nishes with a twist: even if Ehrenhaft was not
the inspiration for Feyerabendsentire outlook,he was nevertheless a major inspiration
for Feyerabends famous teaching style, which adopted aspects of Ehrenhaftsamboyant
charlatanism.
Rory Kents paper, Paul Feyerabend and the Dialectical Character of Quantum Mech-
anics: A Lesson in Philosophical Dadaism,emphasizes that Feyerabends Dadaism was not
a mere presentation device, provocation, or fun exercise, but a serious position concerning
seriousness itself. Kents goal is to say just what Feyerabends Dadaism was and how it devel-
oped, and then develop it further, via a close reading of Feyerabends short article Dialectical
Materialism and the Quantum Theory,published in 1966.
According to Kent, Dadaism is a core methodological feature of Feyerabendsphilosophy.
The Dadaist must be ready to take any human position or practice seriously (especially those
that are outside the mainstream), and put it into dialogue with others. A central aim of
employing this methodology is to develop openness, humility and readiness, and become
more epistemically responsible citizens (Kidd 2016). The point, and this coheres nicely
with Collodels article, is to allow oneself to be provoked, and nd value in traditionally mal-
igned places. This is precisely what Feyerabend does with the Marxist philosophy of dialec-
tical materialism. A popular criticism of dialectical materialism was that governments should
not interfere with science. But why not, especially if the government has the best interests of
the people in mind? Feyerabend presents dialectical materialism as a number of pieces,
including mandates to see science as fallible, historically contingent, and to overcome the dis-
tinction between theory and practice. Feyerabend then analyzes Bohrs changing views on
quantum mechanics from a dialectical materialist standpoint. Using this framework, he is
able to capture the mainstream judgment of physicists and philosophers concerning Bohr,
but also to go beyond them in interesting ways. Kent nishes by pointing out that merely
pointing out a problem is not enough for progress. To avoid making the same mistake as
Feyerabend, Kent then outlines a set of strategies that a Dadaist could use to make people
minimally open-minded, which is required to get Dadaism itself othe ground in the rst
place.
2EDITORIAL
Finally, we have Daniel Kuby and Patrick Frasers paper entitled Feyerabend on the
Quantum Theory of Measurement: A Reassessment.This paper has a historical dimension,
which is to unearth and present Feyerabends only technical contribution to physics, On the
quantum-theory of measurement,delivered at the Colston Research Symposium in Bristol in
1957. It has a philosophical dimension as well, which is to relate this paper to Feyerabends
famed theoretical pluralism. And it also has a contemporaneous physics dimension, which is
to look at the ways in which Feyerabends theory anticipates modern theories of quantum
decoherence. Kuby and Fraser reconstruct Feyerabends paper as an attack on the philosophi-
cal positivism he saw in von Neumanns wave function collapse account of measurement.
Wave function collapse is supposed to make sense of the transition between quantum and
classical phenomena and allow for a clean separation between theoretical and observational
terms (a central goal of positivism). Wave function collapse chafed against Feyerabends
realism, as that it was postulated to be fundamentally non-knowable. Feyerabend argued
that collapse can occur in a quantum system before that system is observed by humans,
and such a system would now be classical (because collapsed), yet still necessarily described
at least partially in quantum terms. The existence of such incompletemeasurements tells us
that whether something counts as classical or quantum depends not only on that thing itself,
but on our epistemic relation to it. In response, Feyerabend presents an account of measure-
ment without a collapse process.
Ultimately, Kuby and Fraser think that Feyerabends approach to the measurement
problem fails on several fronts. This is not too worrisome for Feyerabend fans, since Feyer-
abend not only never even mentions this attempt again in subsequent papers on adjacent
topics but eventually came to abandon the view himself. In any case, Kuby and Fraser specu-
late that Feyerabend wasnt particularly invested in the solution itself but was more concerned
with raising red ags with quantum orthodoxy to open the door to alternatives. In other
words, the paper was principally an exercise in proliferation. Still, Feyerabends failure is
interesting not only for historical reasons but also as it substantially anticipates and nds
stronger motivation in more recent research on decoherence theory.
Overall, these four papers build on and complicate earlier work on Feyerabends philos-
ophy of physics (e.g., Del Santo 2019; Kuby 2021; van Strien 2020). Through them, we
learn more about Feyerabends changing relationship with Popper in terms of their work
on quantum mechanics, we see an early exemplar for Feyerabends charlatanism (via
access to a new original document and interpretation of that document), we better under-
stand Feyerabends Dadaism in view of an exercise using Marxism to analyze Bohr, and we
get the rst serious attempt to understand Feyerabends only technical contribution to
physics. Stay tuned for the second iteration of this special issue on Feyerabend and the phil-
osophy of physics for more!
References
Collodel, M., and E. Oberheim, eds. 2020.Feyerabends Formative Years. Volume 1. Feyerabend and Popper:
Correspondence and Unpublished Papers (Vol. 5). Cham: Springer Nature.
Collodel, M., and E. Oberheim. unpublished.Feyerabends Formative Years: Correspondences and Unpublished
Papers (Volume 2): Logical Empiricism. Bohm: Springer Press.
Del Santo, F. 2019.Karl Poppers Forgotten Role in the Quantum Debate at the Edge Between Philosophy and
Physics in 1950s and 1960s.Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and
Philosophy of Modern Physics 67: 7888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2019.05.002
Feyerabend, P. 1995.Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Kidd, I. 2016.Feyerabend on Politics, Education, and Scientic Culture.Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science Part A 57: 121128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.11.009
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 3
Kuby, D. 2021.Feyerabends Reevaluation of Scientic Practice: Quantum Mechanics, Realism, and Niels
Bohr.In Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Essays, edited by K. Bschir, and J. Shaw, 132156.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oberheim, E. 2006.Feyerabends Philosophy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
van Strien, M. 2020.Pluralism and Anarchism in Quantum Physics: Paul Feyerabends Writings on Quantum
Physics in Relation to his General Philosophy of Science.Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part
A80: 7281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2019.03.006
Jamie Shaw
Leibniz Universität Hannover
Michael T. Stuart
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
London School of Economics, University of York
jamieco.shaw@utoronto.ca
4EDITORIAL
Article
Full-text available
This paper aims to show that the development of Feyerabend’s philosophical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s largely took place in the context of debates on quantum mechanics. In particular, he developed his influential arguments for pluralism in science in discussions with the quantum physicist David Bohm, who had developed an alternative approach to quantum physics which (in Feyerabend’s perception) was met with a dogmatic dismissal by some of the leading quantum physicists. I argue that Feyerabend’s arguments for theoretical pluralism and for challenging established theories were connected to his objections to the dogmatism and conservatism he observed in quantum physics. However, as Feyerabend gained insight into the physical details and historical complexities which led to the development of quantum mechanics, he gradually became more modest in his criticisms. His writings on quantum mechanics especially engaged with Niels Bohr; initially, he was critical of Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics, but in the late 1960s, he completely withdrew his criticism and even praised Bohr as a model scientist. He became convinced that however puzzling quantum mechanics seemed, it was methodologically unobjectionable – and this was crucial for his move towards ‘anarchism’ in philosophy of science.
Chapter
This collection of new essays interprets and critically evaluates the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It offers innovative historical scholarship on Feyerabend's take on topics such as realism, empiricism, mimesis, voluntarism, pluralism, materialism, and the mind-body problem, as well as certain debates in the philosophy of physics. It also considers the ways in which Feyerabend's thought can contribute to contemporary debates in science and public policy, including questions about the nature of scientific methodology, the role of science in society, citizen science, scientism, and the role of expertise in public policy. The volume will provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the topics which Feyerabend engaged with throughout his career, showing both the breadth and the depth of his thought.
Book
This book offers an inside look into the notoriously tumultuous, professional relationship of two great minds: Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend. It collects their complete surviving correspondence (1948-1967) and contains previously unpublished papers by both. An introduction situates the correspondence in its historical context by recounting how they first came to meet and an extensive editorial apparatus provides a wealth of background information along with systematic mini-biographies of persons named. Taken together, the collection presents Popper and Feyerabend’s controversial ideas against the background of the postwar academic environment. It exposes key aspects of an evolving student-mentor relationship that eventually ended amidst increasing accusations of plagiarism. Throughout, readers will find in-depth discussions on a wide range of intriguing topics, including an ongoing debate over the foundations of quantum theory and Popper’s repeated attempts to design an experiment that would test different interpretations of quantum mechanics. The captivating exchange between Feyerabend and Popper offers a valuable resource that will appeal to scientists, laymen, and a wide range of scholars: especially philosophers, historians of science and philosophy and, more generally, intellectual historians.
Article
It is not generally well known that the philosopher Karl Popper has been one of the foremost critics of the orthodox interpretation of quantum physics for about six decades. This paper reconstructs in detail most of Popper's activities on foundations of quantum mechanics (FQM) in the period of 1950s and 1960s, when his involvement in the community of quantum physicists became extensive and quite influential. Thanks to unpublished documents and correspondence, it is now possible to shed new light on Popper's central –though neglected– role in this “thought collective” of physicists concerned with FQM, and on the intellectual relationships that Popper established in this context with some of the protagonists of the debate over quantum physics (such as David Bohm, Alfed Landé and Henry Margenau, among many others). Foundations of quantum mechanics represented in those years also the initial ground for the embittering controversy between Popper and perhaps his most notable former student, Paul Feyerabend. I present here novel elements to further understand the origin of their troubled relationship.
Article
The aim of this paper is to give an account of the change in Feyerabend's (meta)philosophy that made him abandon methodological monism and embrace methodological pluralism. In this paper I offer an explanation in terms of a simple model of 'change of belief through evidence'. My main claim is that the evidence triggering this belief revision can be identified in Feyerabend's technical work in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, in particular his reevaluation of Bohr's contribution to it (1957-1964). This highlights an under-appreciated part of Feyerabend's early work and makes it central to an understanding of the dynamics in his overall philosophy of science.
Article
The purpose of this paper is to offer a sympathetic reconstruction of the political thought of Paul Feyerabend. Using a critical discussion of the idea of the 'free society' it is suggested that his political thought is best understood in terms of three thematic concerns-liberation, hegemony, and the authority of science-and that the political significance of those claims become clear when they are considered in the context of his educational views. It emerges that Feyerabend is best understood as calling for the grounding of cognitive and cultural authorities-like the sciences-in informed deliberation, rather than the uncritical embrace of prevailing convictions. It therefore emerges that a free society is best understood as one of epistemically responsible citizenship rather than epistemically anarchistic relativism of the 'anything goes' sort-a striking anticipation of current debates about philosophy of science in society.
Article
Killing Time is the story of Paul Feyerabend's life. Finished only weeks before his death in 1994, it is the self-portrait of one of this century's most original and influential intellectuals. 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."
Feyerabend's Formative Years
  • M Collodel
  • E Oberheim
Collodel, M., and E. Oberheim, eds. 2020. Feyerabend's Formative Years. Volume 1. Feyerabend and Popper: Correspondence and Unpublished Papers (Vol. 5). Cham: Springer Nature.
Pluralism and Anarchism in Quantum Physics: Paul Feyerabend's Writings on Quantum Physics in Relation to his General Philosophy of Science
  • E Oberheim
  • M Van Strien
Oberheim, E. 2006. Feyerabend's Philosophy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. van Strien, M. 2020. "Pluralism and Anarchism in Quantum Physics: Paul Feyerabend's Writings on Quantum Physics in Relation to his General Philosophy of Science." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 80: 72-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2019.03.006