On the Limited Validity of Falsificationism Feyerabend’s Theoretical Pluralism and its Relation to Popper, Wittgenstein and Bohm

Abstract

This essay develops Feyerabend’s early philosophy of science as intended as a criticism of Karl Popper’s falsificationism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “quietism” in “Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism” [ERE (1962)]. It illustrates how Wittgenstein and David Bohm played central roles in the genesis of ERE (1962) as Feyerabend’s attempt to step out from under Popper’s shadow by criticizing his normative methodology. Part 1 shows how Feyerabend’s criticism of Popper was an attempted synthesis of Popper and Wittgenstein’s views with respect to meaning and methodology that was also intended to mediate Popper’s famous “Poker dispute” with Wittgenstein on the nature of genuinely philosophical problems. Specifically, Feyerabend argued that falsificationism cannot take testing incommensurable rival universal theories empirically into account, and so it has only a limited validity. It is limited to testing commensurable theories. Part 2 explains how this set the stage for Feyerabend’s infamous slogan “Anything goes!” — according to which all methodological rules can have only a limited validity. Feyerabend’s dispute with Popper’s school on methodology began in 1960 on a draft of ERE (1962). Seven years later, Feyerabend announced his break with Popper’s school with respect to methodology, which was sparked when Feyerabend awoke from his Popperian slumber on the 17th of December 1967, while watching Lakatos lecture falsificationism to his students. Feyerabend, who had gradually changed how he taught falsificationism over the years, realized just how far from Popper’s methodology he thought he had come. Falsificationism has only a limited validity and even ad hoc hypotheses can have a legitimate role in progress. In letters to Watkins and Lakatos, he explained that he was leaving Popper’s school because of the dispute about Popper’s methodology, which began with his 1960 draft of ERE (1962) according to which Popper’s methodology (falsificationism) shares a dogmatic element with school philosophies so that it impedes the progress it purports to promote. Part two also explains how and why Feyerabend awoke from his Popperian slumber in methodology into a living nightmare. Popper (and Popperians) misunderstood Feyerabend’s idea of incommensurability as Popperstein’s baby, just as Popper misunderstood Feyerabend’s arguments against his methodology as a “Lessing Effect”. Moreover, Feyerabend’s idea of incommensurability in ERE (1962) continues to be misrepresented by some Popperian interpretations of Feyerabend’s theoretical pluralism today. Part 3 of the essay shows how Feyerabend and Bohm were working closely together and why ERE (1962) should be seen as the fruits of that collaboration. Feyerabend directed and developed his views on incommensurability as a criticism of falsificationism while discussing these issues directly with Bohm, who was also trying to criticize what he took to be falsificationism in the same way, by limiting its validity to testing within frameworks. Bohm’s attempts to criticize Popper’s methodology clearly anticipate Feyerabend’s criticism of Popper’s methodology in ERE (1962) in many further significant respects. Bohm was using the Brownian motion example to defend his hidden variables proposal, which some had dismissed as pernicious ad hoc metaphysics and Feyerabend developed his test-model to show how incommensurable theories can be compared by crucial experiments despite meaning variance based on Bohm’s Brownian motion example and to support his methodological argument for theoretical pluralism: Because incommensurable alternatives can increase the empirical content of their rivals, they should always be welcome (even if they are ad hoc). In ERE (1962), Feyerabend developed his theoretical pluralism in contrast to and as part of a criticism of Popper’s methodology following Bohm’s lead and in support of Bohm’s quest to explain the results of quantum theory as a second kind of Brownian motion. In this way, Feyerabend’s views on methodology as set out in ERE (1962) were shaped by two formative experiences: the ad hoc dogmatic dismissal of Ehrenhaft’s effects in the late 1940s, and the dogmatic dismissal of Bohm’s ad hoc hidden variables proposal in the late 1950s.