Paul Feyerabend

The following essay has been written in the conviction that anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly an excellent foundation for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science.

The reason is not difficult to find.

"History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and subtle than even" the best historian and the best methodologist can imagine. [1] History is full of “accidents and conjunctures, and curious juxtapositions of events" [2] and it demonstrates to us the "complexity of human change and the unpredictable character of the ultimate consequences of any given act or decision of men.” [3]

Are we really to believe that the naive and simple-minded rules which methodologists take as their guide are capable of accounting for such a "maze of interactions"? And is it not clear that successful participation in a process of this kind is possible only for a ruthless opportunist who is not tied to any particular philosophy and who adopts whatever procedure seems to fit the occasion?

This is indeed the lesson that has been drawn by intelligent and thoughtful observers. "From this [character of the historical process]," writes Lenin continuing the passage just quoted, "follow two very important practical conclusions: first, that in order to fulfil its task, the revolutionary class [i.e., the class of those who want to change either a part of society, such as science, or society as a whole] must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception [it must be able to understand, and to apply, not only one particular methodology, but any methodology, and any variation thereof it can imagine]…; second, [it] must be ready to pass from one to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner.” [4] "The external conditions," writes Einstein [5], "which are set for [the scientist] by the facts of experience do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world, by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist . . . " A complex medium containing surprising and unforeseen developments demands complex procedures and defies analysis on the basis of rules which have been set up in advance and without regard to ever-changing conditions of history.

Now it is, of course, possible to simplify the medium in which a scientist works by simplifying its main actors. The history of science, after all, does not just consist of facts and conclusions drawn from facts. It also contains ideas, interpretations of facts, problems created by conflicting interpretations, mistakes, and so on. On closer analysis we even find that science knows no 'bare facts' at all but that the 'facts' that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a certain way and are, therefore, essentially ideational. This being the case, the history of science will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as the ideas it contains, and these ideas in turn will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as are the minds of those who invented them. Conversely, a little brainwashing will go a long way in making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchangeable rules.

Scientific education as we know it today has precisely this aim. It simplifies 'science' by simplifying its participants: first, a domain of research is defined. The domain is separated from the rest of history (physics, for example, is separated from metaphysics and from theology) and given a 'logic' of its own. A thorough training in such a 'logic' then conditions those working in the domain; it makes their actions more uniform and it freezes large parts of the historical process as well. Stable 'facts' arise and persevere despite the vicissitudes of history. An essential part of the training that makes such facts appear consists in the attempt to inhibit intuitions that might lead to a blurring of boundaries. A person's religion, for example, or his metaphysics, or his sense of humour (his natural sense of humour and not the inbred and always rather kind of jocularity one finds in specialized professions) must not have the slightest connection with his scientific activity. His imagination is restrained, and even his language ceases to be his own. This is again reflected in the nature of scientific 'facts' which are experienced as being independent of opinion, belief, and cultural background.

It is thus possible to create a tradition that is held together by strict rules, and that is also successful to some extent. But is it desirable to support such a tradition to the exclusion of everything else? Should we transfer to it the sole rights for dealing in knowledge, so that any result that has been obtained by other methods is at once ruled out of court? This is the question I intend to ask in the present essay. And to this question my answer will be a firm and resounding NO.

There are two reasons why such an answer seems to be appropriate. The first reason is that the world which we want to explore is a largely unknown entity. We must, therefore, keep our options open and we must not restrict ourselves in advance. Epistemological prescriptions may look splendid when compared with other epistemological prescriptions, or with general principles - but who can guarantee that they are the best way to discover, not just a few isolated 'facts', but also some deep-lying secrets of nature? The second reason is that a scientific education as described above (and as practised in our schools) cannot be reconciled with a humanitarian attitude. It is in conflict with ‘the cultivation of individuality which alone produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings’ [6]; it 'maims by compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make a person markedly different in outline’ [7] from the ideals of rationality that happen to be fashionable in science, or in the philosophy of science. The attempt to increase liberty, to lead a full and rewarding life, and the corresponding attempt to discover the secrets of nature and of man entails, therefore, the rejection of all universal standards and of all rigid traditions. (Naturally, it also entails the rejection of a large part of contemporary science.)

It is surprising to see how rarely the stultifying effect of 'the Laws of Reason' or of scientific practice is examined by professional anarchists. Professional anarchists oppose any kind of restriction and they demand that the individual be permitted to develop freely, unhampered by laws, duties or obligations. And yet they swallow without protest all the severe standards which scientists and logicians impose upon research and upon any kind of knowledge-creating and knowledge-changing activity. Occasionally, the laws of scientific method, or what are thought to be the laws of scientific method by a particular writer, are even integrated into anarchism itself. ‘Anarchism is a world concept based upon a mechanical explanation of all phenomena,' writes Kropotkin. Its method of investigation is that of the exact natural sciences …’ [8] the method of induction and deduction. ‘It is not so clear,’ writes a modern ‘radical’ professor at Columbia, 'that scientific research demands an absolute freedom of speech and debate. Rather the evidence suggests that certain kinds of unfreedom place no obstacle in the way of science .... ' [9].
There are certainly some people to whom this is 'not so clear’. Let us therefore, start with our outline of an anarchistic methodology and a corresponding anarchistic science.[10] There is no need to fear that the diminished concern for law and order in science and society that characterizes an anarchism of this kind will lead to chaos. The human nervous system is too well organized for that [11].
There may, of course, come a time when it will be necessary to give reason a temporary advantage and when it will be wise to defend its rules to the exclusion of everything else. I do not think that we are living in such a time today.

* * *

The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress. Indeed, one of the most striking features of recent discussions in the history and philosophy of science is the realization that events and developments, such as the invention of atomism in antiquity, the Copernican Revolution, the rise of modern atomism (kinetic theory; dispersion theory; stereochemistry; quantum theory), the gradual emergence of the wave theory of light, occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound by certain 'obvious' methodological rules, or because they unwittingly broke them.

This liberal practice, I repeat, is not just a fact of the history of science. It is both reasonable and absolutely necessary for the growth of knowledge. More specifically, one can show the following: 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. For example, there are circumstances when it is advisable to introduce, elaborate, and defend ad hoc hypotheses, or hypotheses which contradict well-established and generally accepted experimental results, or hypotheses whose content is smaller than the content of the existing and empirically adequate alternative, or self-inconsistent hypotheses, and so on [12].

There are even circumstances - and they occur rather frequently - when argument loses its forward-looking aspect and becomes a hindrance to progress. Nobody would claim that the teaching of small children is exclusively a matter of argument (though argument may enter into it, and should enter into it to a larger extent than is customary), and almost everyone now agrees that what looks like a result of reason - the mastery of a language, the existence of a richly articulated perceptual world, logical ability - is due partly to indoctrination and partly to a process of growth that proceeds with the force of natural law. And where arguments do seem to have an effect, this is more often due to their physical repetition than to their semantic content.

Having admitted this much, we must also concede the possibility of non-argumentative growth in the adult as well as in (the theoretical parts of) institutions such as science, religion, prostitution, and so on. We certainly cannot take it for granted that what is possible for a small child - to acquire new modes of behaviour on the slightest provocation, to slide into them without any noticeable effort - is beyond the reach of his elders. One should rather expect that catastrophic changes in the physical environment, wars, the breakdown of encompassing systems of morality, political revolutions, will transform adult reaction patterns as well, including important patterns of argumentation. Such a transformation may again be an entirely natural process and the only function of a rational argument may lie in the fact that it increases the mental tension that precedes and causes the behavioural outburst.

Now, if there are events, not necessarily arguments, which cause us to adopt new standards, including new and more complex forms of argumentation, is it then not up to the defenders of the status quo to provide, not just counter-arguments, but also contrary causes? (‘Virtue without terror is ineffective,' says Robespierre.) And if the old forms of argumentation turn out to be too weak a cause, must not these defenders either give up or resort to stronger and more 'irrational' means? (It is very difficult, and perhaps entirely impossible, to combat the effects of brainwashing by argument.) Even the most puritanical rationalist will then be forced to stop reasoning and to use propaganda and coercion, not because some of his reasons have ceased to be valid, but because the psychological conditions which make them effective, and capable of influencing others, have disappeared. And what is the use of an argument that leaves people unmoved?

Of course, the problem never arises quite in this form. The teaching of standards and their defence never consists merely in putting them before the mind of the student and making them as clear as possible. The standards are supposed to have maximal causal efficacy as well. This makes it very difficult indeed to distinguish between the logical force and the material effect of an argument. Just as a well-trained pet will obey his master no matter how great the confusion in which he finds himself, and no matter how urgent the need to adopt new patterns of behaviour, so in the very same way a well-trained rationalist will obey the mental image of his master, he will conform to the standards of argumentation he has learned, he will adhere to these standards no matter how great the confusion in which he finds himself, and he will be quite incapable of realizing that what he regards as the 'voice of reason' is but a causal after-effect of the training he has received. He will be quite unable to discover that the appeal to reason to which he succumbs so readily is nothing but a political manoeuvre.

That interests, forces, propaganda and brainwashing techniques play a much greater role than is commonly believed in the growth of our knowledge and in the growth of science, can also be seen from an analysis of the relation between idea and action. It is often taken for granted that a clear and distinct understanding of new ideas precedes, and should precede, their formulation and their institutional expression. (An investigation starts with a problem, says Popper.) First, we have an idea, or a problem, then we act, i.e. either speak, or build, or destroy. Yet this is certainly not the way in which small children develop. They use words, they combine them, they play with them, until they grasp a meaning that has so far been beyond their reach. And the initial playful activity is an essential prerequisite of the final act of understanding. There is no reason why this mechanism should cease to function in the adult. We must expect, for example, that the idea of liberty could be made clear only by means of the very same actions, which were supposed to create liberty. Creation of a thing, and creation plus full understanding of a correct idea of the thing, are very often parts of one and the same indivisible process and cannot be separated without bringing the process to a stop. The process itself is not guided by a well-defined programme, and cannot be guided by such a programme, for it contains the conditions for the realization of all possible programmes. It is guided rather by a vague urge, by a 'passion' (Kierkegaard). The passion gives rise to specific behaviour which in turn creates the circumstances and the ideas necessary for analysing and explaining the process, for making it 'rational'.

The development of the Copernican point of view from Galileo to the 20th century is a perfect example of the situation I want to describe. We start with a strong belief that runs counter to contemporary reason and contemporary experience. The belief spreads and finds support in other beliefs which are equally unreasonable, if not more so (law of inertia; the telescope). Research now gets deflected in new directions, new kinds of instruments are built, 'evidence' is related to theories in new ways until there arises an ideology that is rich enough to provide independent arguments for any particular part of it and mobile enough to find such arguments whenever they seem to be required. We can say today that Galileo was on the right track, for his persistent pursuit of what once seemed to be a silly cosmology has by now created the material needed to defend it against all those who will accept a view only if it is told in a certain way and who will trust it only if it contains certain magical phrases, called 'observational reports'. And this is not an exception - it is the normal case: theories become clear and 'reasonable' only after incoherent parts of them have been used for a long time. Such unreasonable, nonsensical, unmethodical foreplay thus turns out to be an unavoidable precondition of clarity and of empirical success.

Now, when we attempt to describe and to understand developments of this kind in a general way, we are, of course, obliged to appeal to the existing forms of speech which do not take them into account and which must be distorted, misused, beaten into new patterns in order to fit unforeseen situations (without a constant misuse of language there cannot be any discovery, any progress). 'Moreover, since the traditional categories are the gospel of everyday thinking (including ordinary scientific thinking) and of everyday practice, [such an attempt at understanding] in effect presents rules and forms of false thinking and action - false, that is, from the standpoint of (scientific) common sense.’ [13] This is how dialectical thinking arises as a form of thought that 'dissolves into nothing the detailed determinations of the understanding’ [14], formal logic included.

(Incidentally, it should be pointed out that my frequent use of such words as 'progress', 'advance', 'improvement', etc., does not mean that I claim to possess special knowledge about what is good and what is bad in the sciences and that I want to impose this knowledge upon my readers. Everyone can read the terms in his own way and in accordance with the tradition to which he belongs. Thus for an empiricist, 'progress' will mean transition to a theory that provides direct empirical tests for most of its basic assumptions. Some people believe the quantum theory to be a theory of this kind. For others, 'progress' may mean unification and harmony, perhaps even at the expense of empirical adequacy. This is how Einstein viewed the general theory of relativity. And my thesis is that anarchism helps to achieve progress in any one of the senses one cares to choose. Even a law-and-order science will succeed only if anarchistic moves are occasionally allowed to take place.)

It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, ‘objectivity’, ‘truth’, it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development.
It is the principle: anything goes.

[To this respect is worth stressing what Feyerabend says in a note: I do not intend “to start just another movement, the slogans ‘proliferate’ or ‘anything goes’ replacing the slogans of falsificationism or inductivism or research-programmism.”]

Notes by the author

[1] V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, 1920.

[2] Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, 1965, p.66.

[3] Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, 1965, p.21.

[4] V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, 1920.

[5] Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist, ed. P. A. Schilpp, 1951, pp.683f.

[6] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859, Chapter III.

[7] Ibidem.

[8] Pëtr Kropotkin, La Science Moderne et l’Anarchie, 1913

[9] R. P. Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism, 1968.

[10] When choosing the term 'anarchism' for my enterprise I simply followed general usage. However anarchism, as it has been practised in the past and as it is being practised today by an ever increasing number of people has features I am not prepared to support. It cares little for human lives and human happiness (except for the lives and the happiness of those who belong to some special group); and it contains precisely the kind of Puritanical dedication and seriousness which I detest. (There are some exquisite exceptions such as Cohn-Bendit, but they are in the minority.) It is for these reasons that I now prefer to use the term Dadaism. A Dadaist would not hurt a fly - let alone a human being. A Dadaist is utterly unimpressed by any serious enterprise and he smells a rat whenever people stop smiling and assume that attitude and those facial expressions which indicate that something important is about to be said. A Dadaist is convinced that a worthwhile life will arise only when we start taking things lightly and when we remove from our speech the profound but already putrid meanings it has I accumulated over the centuries ('search for truth'; 'defence of justice'; 'passionate concern'; etc., etc.) A Dadaist is prepared to initiate joyful experiments even in those domains where change and experimentation seem to be out of the question (example: the basic functions of language). I hope that having read the pamphlet the reader will remember me as a flippant Dadaist and not as a serious anarchist.

[11] Even in undetermined and ambiguous situations, uniformity of action is soon achieved and adhered to tenaciously. See Muzafer Sherif, The Psychology of Social Norms, New York, 1964.

[12] One of the few thinkers to understand this feature of the development of knowledge was Niels Bohr: ' ... he would never try to outline any finished picture, but would patiently go through all the phases of the development of a problem, starting from some apparent paradox, and gradually leading to its elucidation. In fact, he never regarded achieved results in any other light than as starting points for further exploration. In speculating about the prospects of some line of investigation, he would dismiss the usual consideration of simplicity, elegance or even consistency with the remark that such qualities can only be properly judged after [my italics] the event .. . .' L. Rosenfeld in Niels Bohr, His Life and Work as seen by his Friends and Colleagues, ed. S. Rosental, New York, 1967, p. 117. Now science is never a completed process, therefore it is always 'before' the event. Hence simplicity, elegance or consistency are never necessary conditions of (scientific) practice.

[13] Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, London, 1941, p. 130,

[14] Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Vol. I, Meiner, Hamburg, 1965, p. 6.