This book offers innovative historical scholarship on Feyerabend’s take on topics such as realism, empiricism, pluralism, materialism, and incommensurability. In addition to discussing certain debates in the philosophy of physics, it also considers the ways in which Feyerabend’s thought can contribute to contemporary debates in science and public policy. It does so by including questions about the nature of scientific methodology, the role of science in society, the public understanding of science, scientism, and the role of expertise in public policy. The chapters provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the topics that Feyerabend engaged with throughout his career, showing both the breadth and the depth of his thought. Though of great value to academics in philosophy of science, it is also accessible and appealing to non-academic audiences with a general interest in science.
Table of Contents:
Introduction (Roberta Corvi and Stefano Gattei).- Editorial Note.- Part I: Feyerabend And The History Of Philosophy.- Chapter 1. Feyerabend, Protagoras and Nietzsche (Helmut Heit).- Chapter 2. Feyerabend, Plato and Aristotle (Gonzalo Munévar).- Chapter 3. Feyerabend and Marx (Rory Kent and Ian James Kidd).- Chapter 4. Feyerabend and Mill (Elisabeth A. Lloyd).- Chapter 5. Feyerabend and Mach (John M. Preston).- Part II: Feyerabend And The History Of Science.- Chapter 6. Feyerabend and Galileo (Stefano Gattei).- Chapter 7. Feyerabend, Bohr and Quantum Physics (John L. Heilbron).- Part III: Feyerabend And His Contemporaries.- Chapter 8. Feyerabend and Brecht (Val Dusek).- Chapter 9. Feyerabend and the Vienna Circle (Friedrich Stadler).- Chapter 10. Feyerabend and Wittgenstein (Vasso Kindi).- Chapter 11. Feyerabend and Popper (Roberta Corvi).- Chapter 12. Feyerabend and Kuhn (Paul Hoyningen-Huene).- Chapter 13. Feyerabend and Lakatos (John Kadvany).- Chapter 14. Paul Feyerabend in Retrospect (Joseph Agassi).- Index.
About the Author :
Stefano Gattei teaches history and philosophy of science at the University of Trento, Italy. He has worked extensively on key issues and authors of contemporary philosophy of science, as well as on the history of early modern astronomy and cosmology. He is the author of Thomas S. Kuhn's 'Linguistic Turn' and the Legacy of Logical Positivism: Incommensurability, Rationality and the Search for Truth (Routledge, 2008), Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science: Rationality without Foundations (Routledge, 2009), and On the Life of Galileo: Vincenzo Viviani's Historical Account and Other Early Biographies (Princeton University Press, 2019). He co-edited, with Joseph Agassi, the fourth volume of Paul Feyerabend's collected philosophical papers: Physics and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Roberta Corvi teaches Theories of knowledge and Philosophy of mind at the Catholic University of Milan. Her research is mainly concerned with English-speaking contemporary epistemology, and several of her papers deal with issues related to rationality and the complexity of knowledge, chiefly focusing on post-positivist epistemology and American pragmatism, so as to identify a transdisciplinary path that emerges in the recently published, Frontiere aperte: Verso un'epistemologia transdisciplinare (Scholé, 2023). Her other monographs include I fraintendimenti della ragione: Saggio su P.K. Feyerabend (Vita e Pensiero, 1992), An Introduction to the Thought of Karl Popper (Routledge, 1997), and Ritorno al pragmatismo: L'alternativa Rorty-Putnam (Mimesis, 2017).
