Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge is a 1975 book by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend.
Feyerabend began writing Against Method in 1968[3] and it was originally released as a long paper in the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series in 1970.
[17] Feyerabend argues for counterinduction by showing that theories that conflict with known facts are useful for revealing 'natural interpretations' which must be made explicit so that they can be examined.
[citation needed] The primary case study in Against Method is Galileo's hypothesis that the earth rotates on its axis.
According to Feyerabend's reconstruction, Galileo did not justify this hypothesis by reference to known facts nor did he offer an unfalsified conjecture that had more empirical content than its predecessor.
Rather, Galileo's hypothesis would rationally have been considered to be false by the existing evidence at the time and it is lower in empirical content than Aristotelian theory of motion.
[20] According to the existing evidence in the early 17th century, the position that the earth rotates on its axis would have rightly been regarded as false.
For example, Galileo's theory of the tides suggested by the motion of the earth was inaccurate and the differences "were big enough to be known even to the most bleary-eyed sailor.
"[21] In addition, the motion of the earth on its axis leads to the wrong predictions of the relative brightness of Mars and Venus when measured with the naked eye.
The best theory of optics was Kepler's, which Galileo didn't understand personally, which says nothing about how light reflects off convex lenses.
[23] Moreover, there were well-confirmed reasons to think – as the Aristotelians thought – that light behaves differently outside of the sublunar sphere and so telescopic vision would not have any justification for being veridical.
[citation needed] Galileo's hypothesis also does not follow Popper's falsificationism, which suggests that we do not use ad hoc hypotheses.
[28] After accepting a theory for a long period of time, natural interpretations become implicit and forgotten and, therefore, difficult to test.
Therefore, to fully scrutinize the Aristotelian worldview, Feyerabend suggests that Galileo was right to conjecture a new theory that revealed its natural interpretations.
The main example of the influence of natural interpretations that Feyerabend provided was the tower argument presented as an objection to the theory of a moving earth.
Because of this, Lakatos' theory on its own provides no advice and the specific advise follows from considerations of concrete research practices.
[38] His third criticism concerns Lakatos' argument that theories of rationality should be tested against the value judgments of the 'scientific elite' in specific historical episodes.
[39] Third, Lakatos assumes that the standards of the scientific elite are superior to other value judgments (e.g., of witches) and therefore does not provide an argument against relativism.
Lakatos claims that theories of scientific rationality reconstruct the 'internal' growth of knowledge and ignore the 'external' (e.g., sociological, psychological, political) features of scienfic practice.
He claims that the primary role of education was to stunt individual creativity by forcing them to accept and research on topics that students did not choose for themselves.
He also claims that education is responsible for what he calls "intellectual pollution" where "illiterate and incompetent books flood the market, empty verbiage full of strange and esoteric terms claims to express profound insights, 'experts' without brains, without character, and without even a modicum of intellectual, stylistic, emotional temperament tell us about our 'condition' and the means of improving it.
"[42] He distinguishes between a general education, which is focused on the development of free individuals, and professionalization where one learns the ideology of a specific trade.
"[49] This response led to Feyerabend's gradual removal from the academic community which also corresponded to changes of research topics in his work in the 1980s.