Quote

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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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
Putting
Examined
Taking
Observations
Theory
Experimental
Results
Ideology
Means
Observation
Ever
Granted
Without
Proof
Mean
Burden
Observational

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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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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.
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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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Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.
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Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions.
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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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Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
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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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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.
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Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise.
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Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.
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A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around.
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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).
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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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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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In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.
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Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.
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