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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.

Paul Feyerabend

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Paul Feyerabend
Age: 70 †
Born: 1924
Born: January 13
Died: 1994
Died: February 11
Philosopher
University Teacher
Vienna
Austria
P. K. Feyerabend
Paul Karl Feyerabend
Certain
Obvious
Unwittingly
Rules
Developments
Decided
Thinkers
Revolution
Occurred
Development
Thinker
Events
Bound
Either
Bounds
Copernican
Science
Broke
Methodological

More quotes by Paul Feyerabend

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So far Unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality has succeeded only by excluding large areas of phenomena or by declaring, without proof, that they could be reduced to basic theory, which, in this connection, means elementary particle physics.
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Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.
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Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past.
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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.
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Teachers' using grades and the fear of failure mould the brains of the young until they have lost every ounce of imagination they might once have possessed.
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A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.
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Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.
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It is often assumed that science starts from facts and eschews counter-factual theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is one of the basic assumptions of the scientific world-view? That the variety of events that surrounds us is held together by a deeper unity.
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I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.
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Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.
Paul Feyerabend
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The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.
Paul Feyerabend
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Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise.
Paul Feyerabend
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In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.
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Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.
Paul Feyerabend
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Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it.
Paul Feyerabend
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All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards.
Paul Feyerabend
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An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).
Paul Feyerabend
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One knows quite well that harmony can be a harmony of appearances.
Paul Feyerabend
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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.
Paul Feyerabend
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The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.
Paul Feyerabend