The two words together don't make much sense, but the key point does: *Science started as a liberating movement, but over time it has become increasingly dogmatic and rigid, and therefore has become increasingly an ideology.*
It seems this rigid dogmatism is especially more present though in physicists than other scientists, like chemists or biologists. @philipthrift On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 10:53:53 PM UTC-5, Pierz wrote: > > Yes, though it was a fairly strong claim based on the cited evidence, > which was his demonstration that all the principles of the so-called > scientific method have been violated at various times in the course of > important scientific discoveries. By analogy one might show that all laws > have been broken at some time in the course of acting morally - for example > a person may have been murdered in circumstances that most people would > agree were morally warranted. Yet demonstrating such a thing would not lead > inevitably to the conclusion that we should embrace legal anarchy - no laws > at all. Rather we might conclude that laws are good guidelines most of the > time, just that we need sometimes to exercise our judgement as to > circumstances in which we might feel compelled to break them. So > falsifiability for instance is a good rule of thumb to assess scientific > theories, but there may be cases in which we don't invoke it. For example, > we mostly consider Drake's equation a worthwhile way of assessing the > probability of life arising in the universe, but I'm not sure it's > "falsifiable". I think Feyerabend's arguments were valuable to counter > excessive rigidity in scientific thinking and method, but "epistemological > anarchism" should be regarded as a rhetorical flourish. > > On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 7:18:09 PM UTC+10, Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> >> >> Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological theory advanced by >> Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend which holds that there are >> no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of >> science or the growth of knowledge. It holds that the idea of the operation >> of science by fixed, universal rules is unrealistic, pernicious, and >> detrimental to science itself. >> >> The use of the term anarchism in the name reflected the methodological >> pluralism prescription of the theory, as the purported scientific method >> does not have a monopoly on truth or useful results. Feyerabend once >> famously said that because there is no fixed scientific method, it is best >> to have an "anything goes" attitude toward methodologies. Feyerabend felt >> that science started as a liberating movement, but over time it had become >> increasingly dogmatic and rigid, and therefore had become increasingly an >> ideology and despite its successes science had started to attain some >> oppressive features and it was not possible to come up with an unambiguous >> way to distinguish science from religion, magic, or mythology. He felt the >> exclusive dominance of science as a means of directing society was >> authoritarian and ungrounded. >> >> continues at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_anarchism >> >> @philipthrift >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2e208409-41f4-4dab-ab0d-2f4a40e0c5e2%40googlegroups.com.
