麻豆传媒

IN THIS posthumously published book, the maverick philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend questions the dominance of abstract, theoretical, objectivist science over more human modes of thought. He also targets society鈥檚 adoption of scientism, the belief that science has the answer to all meaningful questions.

Feyerabend鈥檚 strategy is to take some hallowed idea 鈥� for instance, that the success of science is due to observation and experiment 鈥� and scrutinise its origins. In this case, he finds the roots of the idea in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. After assessing their reasoning, he finds the idea 鈥渙ptional鈥� in his value system, since he gives more weight to stories than arguments. Sadly, despite important remarks along the way, Feyerabend鈥檚 critique of scientism, and his proposed alternatives, remain unfocused and not well worked out.