Phi loaophia VoL 6 No . 1 Pp. 1 6 5 . 1 9 1 March 19'76

A G A I N S T M E T H O D : O U T L I N E O F A N A N A R C H I S T I C T H E O R Y O F K N O W L E D G E , by Paul K. Feyerabend, London : New Left Books 1975, 339 pp.

JOSEPH AGASSI*

It is common subterfuge of those who dece ive the gullible with magic arts, or at least

who want to render such people credulous in general, to appeal to the scientists' confession of their

ignorance. Kant, Religion Within the Lirm'ts

o f Reason Alone, Book two, final note, i tal ics Kant's.

How do you read a book which extols lies? Do you at least admire its au thor for his excessive honesty and take literally what he says? Or do you consider him a mere con-man? Con-man, I am afraid, is what our au thor thinks Galileo was, d i f ferent words though he uses (he does call Galileo a moun tebank (p. 106n), to wit, a charlatan, and he does mock at the advocates o f full t ruthfulness in preference to thrill ing cheating; the choice be tween these two might pose a serious difficulty, I must admit , except that I find cheat ing such a bore). Our au thor quotes a license f rom the Philosophers ' Pope Himself, Immanuel Kant the First, no less, a blank permission to knowingly use poor arguments in defense o f a good cause. And he expressed the - sincere? - wish to be remembered (not as a Prussian phi losopher failing at a game of clowning by being too ~erious but) as a l ight footed charmer; " f l i ppan t " is his word. He wants, o f course, to charm Phi losophy - Newton said she was a harsh mistress, you remember - and make her reveal her charms. Though he cannot carry out his design to the end, he declares some of his imitators might. This is how he cons his readers; wi th false promises.

I confess all this is my bias. I confess I was incensed by the disregard to Gali leo's conscient ious devot ion, good faith, and high

"Paper read at the M a n n h e i m p h i l o s o p h y S e m i n a r in June 19"/5. I am grate- fu l to all its m e m b e r s , espec ia l ly H e l m u t Sp inner , for a very l ive ly d iscuss ion .

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standards (indeed his very creation of the high standard of no mumbo-jumbo (opening-of his first Dialogue); no wonder Feyera- bend cheats just here). Yet Feyerabend's cheap story of Galileo has marvellous material and an excellent moral. Clearly, on this Feyerabend is right: had Galileo tried to record and discuss all the difficulties which Feyerabend mock-accuses him of having con- cealed, he would remain impotent for ever. Does this mean, as Feyerabend suggests, that Galileo worried about none of the diffi- culties7 Is the choice only between the happy-go-hicky and the no-go?

This the crux of the matter. Feyerabend is against all rules and all regulations, against Law-and-order of any sort. Anything goes, he says. He sounds super-revolutionary, in politics as well as in methodology; he also practically equates the two and makes Lenin the greatest methodologist of them all (p. 17n and else- where). He means Herbert Marcuse, of course, but he says Lenin. For my part, I wish to make my stand clear before the start of this review. We, the true revolutionaries in matters scientific, should beware of ultra-revolutionaries (Left-wing deviants, in Lenin's jargon) no less than of compromisers (muddleheads and right-wing deviants, in Lenin's jargon), because the very excessive demands of the ultra-revolutionist can easily render the endeavour quite impotent ;rod thus allow the status quo ante to stay quo ante: ff the revolution means to bring back Voodoo - see below - then perhaps the status quo is not so bad. Feyerabend only plays the clown; he is not the clown; what he really is I cannot say; he may just happen to be a defender of the Established Order.

Feyerabend is against all method and for as much and as complete liberty as possible, he says. I shall later argue that this is not the fact, but let us accept what he says as true for the time being. He has predecessors in aesthetics (John Cage) and in politics (Danny the Red), but scarcely in the philosophy of science. I say scarcely, since he hints that he may have one, and he mentions one. The hint concerns Ludwig Boltzmann, who has allegedly anticipated Sir Karl Popper; and this anticipation is perhaps a Good Thing perhaps a Bad Thing. I do not see how anyone can decide the matter before Feyerabend himself makes up his mind and decides whether his admiration or his loathing of Sir Karl Popper have the upper hand. The predecessor mentioned is John Stuart Mill. Lest this upset the reader, who is bound to be at least remotely familiar with Mill's staunch defense of a method, indeed of the inductive method itself, I should at once stress that all inductivists are Bad Guys but Mill of On Liberty is decidedly a Good Guy. And the reader may wonder, at least so it seems to me, what does Feyerabend do with Mill's Logic while talking of his On Liberty. Feyerabend hints: Logic is the fruit of Mill's own

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labors, and On Liberty really belongs to the influence which Harriet Taylor had on him. The hint, of course, will not do at all. There is no reason to think that the lady every swayed his opinion radically. Did Harriet convince him, one might ask, that inductiv- ism is an error and intellectual anarchism is correct? What exactly did he or she say on scientific method in this most remarkable and first manifesto of anarchistic methodology and how come this was overlooked?

The thesis of Mill's - or Harriet Taylor's, ff Feyerabend would insist - On Liberty is bluntly declared in Chapter 1. It is political: no interference is allowed except in self-protection. As we shall see, Feyerabend's ideal is totalitarian China, and so he obviously rejects this thesis. In Chapter 2 Mill or Taylor recom- mends freedom of thought on the ground of fallibilism. This, to continue the report, may be contested on the ground that one opinion may be certain enough. Certain enough an opinion indeed may be, admits Mill, but only because attempts at refuting it have failed, whereas forbidding opposition may be the prevention of tests and thus the weakening of the very ground for the certainty that is used against the opposition. And he offers an example. "If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be ques- tioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its truth as they now do."

I do not quite know how to proceed. I feel that the above quotation makes it amply clear that Mill's On Liberty was not so very out of line with his Logic, yet I refuse to declare victory over Feyerabend because I do myself feel that there is a difference, be it even of a mere nuance , between these two books; and I feel that the difference is precious. Query: could this difference be due to the influence which Harriet had on Mill? Perhaps, but not necessarily so. We have a complete parallel here with at least one other - indeed many, but let me stick to one - great in ductivist liberal, David Hume, who likewise showed no sensitivity to the discrepancy between inductive authority and liberalism. Of Hume's inductivism I need not say much. Suffice it if I remind the reader that though he found induction unfounded, he refused to deny it its authority even though this authority remained but the tyranny of habit. Yet in his admirable essay "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" Hume expresses practically the same views and sentiments as cited above from Mill's On Liberty. And, as we all know, there was no Harriet Taylor in Hume's life.

But I still refuse to declare a victory. Fallibilism is not enough. Perhaps the magic word is not fallibilism but proliferation. Or, as Feyerabend says, anything goes; for, he says this is his thesis. And though Hume's already mentioned essay praises prolife- ration (as well as his "Of Civil Liberty" which, however, is only

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economic and political and so not exactly on our topic, which is methodology), we may wonder if this was not a mere aside with him. But we have, just made to order, a better example, namely that of William James, and one which has been elaborated enough in Ralph Barton Perry's impressive life of James. For, Perry was struck by the tragic quality of the conflict between James' strictest inductivism and his ardent liberal plea for proliferation - much more liberal than Hume or Mill, incidentally. And, as we all know, there was no Harriet Taylor in William James's life either.

So much for Feyerabend's ascription of his world-shaking thesis to the influence of Harriet Taylor. But I am not done yet with Feyerabend's nonsense about John Stuart Mill. Feyerabend does not even raise the question I have discussed, namely, how come Mill, the severe author of Logic, the defender of law and order, also wrote friendly anarchistic On Liberty; and so, a for- tiori, he does not answer it; and so, a fortiori, he does not answer it by ascribing the benefits of On Liberty to the influence of Harriet Taylor. What he does is append a note (p. 48) to his claim that the separations between history, philosophy, science and non- scielace, all vanish, saying "An account and a truly humanitarian defence of this position can be found in J.S. Mill's On Liberty. Popper's philosophy.., is but a pale reflection of Mill's." The reader who is familiar with either author may gasp: neither ever defended "this position", insisting as they did, each in his own way, on the importance of demarcating science from superstition, for example, quite contrary to our voodoo-enthusiastic author. But our author proceeds in a mood indulgent towards Popper immedi- ately after exposing the inferiority of his philosophy as compared with Mill's: "We can understand its peculiarities when we consider (a) the background of logical positivism" - here we may notice for once that Feyerabend does not think Popper's is the very worst twentieth century philosophy . "(b) the unrelenting puri- tanism of its author (and most of his followers)" - I am gratified to see in this volume a hint at the fact that I exist: but for the word "most" just quoted I would have begun to doubt my own existence; the reader, however, will be less sensitive to Feyera- bend's near-oversight of my own existence than to Feyerabend's near-oversight of Mill's puritanism which is quite legendary, of course, but Feyerabend is prepared for him with the last conside- ration - "and when [(c)] we remember the influence of Harriet Taylor on Mill's life and his philosophy. There is no Harriet Taylor in Popper's life." Really, I do not know ff this last sentence is a censure of Lady Popper, whose hospitality he and I enjoyed together more than once; it really may be nothing more than a mere confession of failure on the part of our author who may feel he could but did not free his erstwhile teacher of puritanism and

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other constraints. "The.foregoing argument should have made it clear", continues Feyerabend, "that I regard proliferation not just as an 'external catalyst' of progress.., but as an essential part of i t ."

So much in response to a few lines on page 48, where Mill's hberalism is so forcefully praised; yet on page 47 I read, "nor is political interference rejected", meaning the Chinese Communist imposition of acupuncture on the modern hospitals in China. Feyerabend speaks (p. 50) of "the revival of traditional medicine in Communist China" and I shall do him the courtesy of assuming that he does not know that in most of the vast Chinese country- side traditional medicine never died and modern medicine was hardly heard of and its practioners suffered from the Communist take-over more than other portions of the population (being large- ly foreign and/or missionary, of course).

If anything goes, then, of course tyranny goes too, and then there is an end to anarchism. The author takes up the political matter later on, and the reference to Chinese state intervention is here a mere preparation. Here he studies the question intellectual- ly: is there any idea which is passe? No, says he. And he quotes Mary B. Hesse's criticism of his view. She says, she can hardly imagine he would recommend the preference of Aristotle or of Voodoo over modern science. The reader will forgive me if I skip Aristotle. Voodoo, says Feyerabend, (p. 50), is Dr. Hesse's piece de resistance, but "nobody knows it... Voodoo has a firm though still not sufficiently understood material basis, and a study of its manifestations can be used to enrich, and perhaps even to revise, our knowledge of physiology." I do not know whether his treat- ment of Hesse is cheaper than his treatment of Popper. She says, he will not recommend Voodoo. He says, we know little of its "material basis". This is a piece of Voodoo - see motto to this essay. Feyerabend adds a footnote with a few references: two to IAvi-Strauss who never advocated the return to Voodoo and who has nothing to say of the "material basis" of Voodoo, except perhaps in the sense that Voodoo does exist and does have a material aspect and a social aspect and so on and so forth. IAvi-Strauss, ot e course, concerns himself with the intellectual as- pect of every social phenomenon, Voodoo included, but he never declares "the science of the concrete", i.e. primitive thinking, comparable to science and so he is no stick to beat Hesse with. Our author's other three references are, indeed, to physiology, two to Voodoo physiology, and one to one phenomenon called Voo- doo death, even though not in the least peculiar to Voodoo. It is the fact or alleged fact that a coupling of strong fear and deep sense of despair may, and reportedly indeed once did, cause death. How this relates to Hesse's criticism I cannot imagine.

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I go back to On Liberty as Feyerabend advises his reader to do in the end of the chapter at hand (Chapter 8). The pamphlet, as I say, is political, not methodological. It only touches on science when attacking the illiberal who uses science as a justifica- tion of political oppression, and in this, to repeat, it belongs to a long and venerable tradition - from Spinoza to Russell, I suppose, but I should also ment ion Polanyi and Popper here. I wish to quote one sentence from Mill. "As mankind improve, the number of doctrines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be measured by the number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point of being uncontested." This seems to me sufficient evidence that were Mill the judge between the Feyerabends and the Hesses, then the Hesses would have the day - as they still do. How Feyerabend can prefer this oldfashioned inductivism (while siding with Voodoo!) over Popper's refutation- ism would puzzle one, until one remembers that in Feyerabend's view anything goes, including total anarchy and including dis- guising an inductivist like Mill to make him look hostile to Hesse.

Anything goes, and now we go to pages 146-147, where we find a note on Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, amd Mao. The note is too hilarious for a full analysis, but let me mention something about this most remarkable note. The note is appended to this text: "Many of the conflicts and contradictions which occur in science are due to this heterogeneity of the material, to this 'unevenness' of the historical development, as a Marxist would say, and they have no immediate theoretical significance." What is at stake here is a plethora of topics and problems. Contradictions indeed occur in science between new ideas and old ones, and something has got to give. For an example Feyerabend mentions the fact that Coper- nicanism conflicted with older views of inertia and Galileo had to remedy the situation. Indeed, I find admirable his discussion of what Kuhn calls, somewhat metaphorically, the Gestalt switch that is a scientific revolution; Feyerabend does bring the switch so much to life and he makes us admire Galileo's boldness all the more. But why this pooh-pooh? Why has this " n o immediate theoretical significance"? Answer: In Marxism there are primary processes and secondary ones that depend on them and are also at times out of phase (i.e. secondary effects can precede their pri- mary causes), yet without thereby refuting Marxism. This, of course, is a cheap transition from contradiction between theories, old and new, to the interplay between primary and secondary processes in Marxist philosophy. Moreover, thesr primary and secondary processes may be conflicts, and the word in Marxism for conflicts is "contradictions;" in the text just quoted Feyera- bend speaks of "the conflicts and contradictions which occur in

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science" meaning contradictions proper; but just as some social conflicts are of little theoretical concern for Marxists so some contradictions are declared by Feyerabend to be of "no immediate theoretical significance"; such as Galileo's worry about squaring Copernicanism with inertia.

The note quotes Marx to say that he permits the material base and the socio-cultural superstructure to be out of phase somewhat. Trotsky is quoted to repeat this, Marx's Phase Law. Why quote Trotsky though he adds nothing here? In order to let you that he is a Good Guy or in order to show that a Good Guy says so? I do not know. And "See also Lenin", who also endorsed Marx's Phase Law, I presume, "concerning the fact that multiple causes of an event may be out of phase and have an effect only when they occur together." And see also, I should add, Descartes' remark to the effect that two plus two equal four, and Danny the Red's claim that fun is fun. The link between all this and Marx's Law evades me. The European bourgoisie, quotes Feyerabend from Lenin, are backward. Tu L tut. "But all young Asia grows a mighty democratic movement, spreading and gaining in strength." In or out of phase? When? "All young Asia"! Ban-zai! "For this very interesting situation, which deserves to be exploited for the philo- sophy of science," says unabashed Feyerabend, see Meyer on Lenin and Althusser on Marx. I do not think that all the years of my personal and professional contact with him and all my detailed familiarity with his detailed writings, to boot, could prepare me for the fact that in his books Althusser is a Good Guy rather than a Bad Guy. Why? Where have I failed? "The philosophical back- ground is splendidly explained in Mao Tse-Tung's essay On Contra- diction (... especially section IV)." The "especially" is a gentle coaxing to read the whole of the brilliant essay of the Philosopher King - or should I say, the Poet Chairman? - which has nothing to do with the discussion of things being in or out of phase. Section IV, however, does. It says, - oh, yes! I am going to tell you, and if you do not much care about it you are at liberty to skip this paragraph, or the whole of this essay; I promise I shall take no offence at all; feeling a slight obligation to tell you something about Feyerabend's scholarship, I shall ruefully do it as best as I know how, and please forgive my heavy-handedness - there are major contradictions and minor ones, and these differ from the essential and apparent ones. Thus, essential is the contra- diction between capitalist and worker, but, say, under an imperial - ist attack local forces may join and consequently the major contr- adiction will be between colonizer and colonized. At each phase, says Mao's Law, one conflict plays the leading role. I do not deny that Mao's Law does not conflict with Marxism-Leninism; but it does not follow from it; nor does it help us predict when which of

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the existing contradictions will become major. Back to Mao, and only one familiar with the very specific peculiarities of Chinese Communist propaganda for internal consumption, especially of the older days, will take this in his stride: there are contradictions, says Mao, between little knowledge of Marx's texts and the much knowledge of them which is to be achieved through much com- mendable labor of love. And now comes, at last, Feyerabend's point, Marx's Law. Some people think that the changeability of phase between base and superstructure refutes dialectical material- ism; but it refutes only mechanistic materialism. When we notice what is principal in a conflict, says Mao, the problem vanishes. What connects Marx's Phase Law with Mao's Law, Mao does not tell. And this is how "the philosophical background is splendidly explained." Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Feyerabend's thesis is, anything goes. His proof is easy: I say, you must agree that I may be right or else you are a bloody dogmatist; if you say I may be right, then, since all I say is, Voodoo may be right, Voodoo may be right. (The possibly pos- sible is possible, t ) And so you have conceded my point. On the other hand, you may be wrong; hence you are. Q.E.D.

Check! What remains as a loose end in this splendid proof is the bloody dogmatist. This is why politics must enter the picture, I suppose. Even some of Feyerabend's best friends are bloody dogmatists: This volume is dedicated to, and was planned to be written in collaboration with, lmre Lakatos who was, alas! a mafioso (p. 210) and a sheer terrorist (pp. 181, 200). Parenthetic- ally, I really do not know whether this was meant as a compli- ment or as censure; nor do I know whether Lakatos took this as a censure, perhaps as a censure which made him decide, as he did, to disengage: he loved to be called a terrorist, but strictly in private: in public he greatly chafed when he was called names that he did not think helped the cause. Anyway, as we have seen, Chairman Mao's terror was not rejected. Is science dogmatic and terroristic or not? Yes, says Feyerabend, and refers his readers to Thomas S. Kuhn (p. 298). Does he like it? Is primitive thought better? It seems that not: the same development as that which can be seen in J. yon Neumann's bullying work on quantum mechan- ics, we are told, explicitly, also occurs in Nupe sand divination and other allegedly primitive modes of thought. Do not believe me: read note 23 to chapter 5 on pages 64-65. See also pages 296-297. And so, science is a dogmatic venture and its regulars are terror- ized by the yon Neumanns. And I am glad to hear that the spell von Neumann had cast on Feyerabend is broken. But Voodoo is a dogmatic venture, too, I presume, where its regulars can even be terrorised to Voodoo death, i.e. killed by psychological means, by some Voodoo big chief. Where is the little guy to go? Two

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answers. First, - or last: last two pages - anyone can go any- where he likes, but no coercion, please! Second, and this is the theme of the last chapter, when state and science collude there is too much terror, but when the Chinese government forced science to use acupuncture, there were excellent results (pp. 305-306). Similarly, it is excellent to have both Catholicism and Protestant- ism, and any one who does not like the former can leave and join the latter "instead of ruining it by such inane changes as mass in the vernacular" (p. 308, final paragraph of the book!). Become a Protestant in Communist China? Not on your life! But this does not matter. Feyerabend can live without Chinese Catholics or Chinese Protestants. The limit to what even a Feyerabend can tolerate is, however, Catholic mass in the vernacular, fiat-footed rationalism (p. 277n), contemporary philosophy of science which is "essentially unscientific and sterile since ahistorical" (p. 146n), and so on. Not bad for "a dadaist [who] would not hurt a f ly" (p. 2In). On the whole, I must admit, the hate blasts are at times a bit too much.

Perhaps the book should be dismissed as a bad joke. After all, it both claims that you cannot understand anything separately and explains things separately; it claims that two competing theories, whether both scientific or one scientific, one not, are both in a contradiction with each other and incommensurable; it claims that no empirical evidence would have made Einstein change his views without ever examining his repeated and persistent confessions of empiricism; finally it is a book Against Method which says, on p. 252, "that the anthropological method is the correct method for studying the structure of science (and, for that matter, of any other form of life)" (meaning by "the anthropoligical method", if anything at all, something akin to the classical British method, long ago exploded by I.C. Jarvie).

Yet the book is provocative. It contains all that the author can say in favor of non-scientific knowledge, it tries to criticize much popular mythology about science and some practices that should not occur. It is annoying but full of delights too. It looks as if the author tries to be impish and g e t away with anything. I confess my sympathy is with the author, and this review is simply an expression of regret over the loss of an ally to the forces of irresponsibility and irrationalism.

The book contains references and allusions to any kind of field of study possible (within the limits of the author's field of knowledge and erudition, of course, but the field is quite broad), to all sorts of social sciences and artistic and historical events; but there is no reference to Nazism, Fascism, or even to the Spanish civil-war, not to mention racism. He does say that it is not the state interference but the totalitarian state interference that was

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objectionable in the case of Lysenko (p. 306). (He does not explain how Communist China is different from Russia, but let this ride.) And he does speak of one who advocates (enlightened) self-interest as " a modern Frankenstein" (p. 188n). And he calls Lakotos a law-and-order philosopher. But how can one say any- thing goes without a single reference to theories of racial supre- macy? Of course, Feyerabend may protest that he ,would not hurt a fly"; but as he defends the Voodoo witches because they bloody well would cause Voodoo death, why not defend, say, the genteel racism of the learned Dr. Jensen, or of the sophisticated Enoch Powell, or the witty antisemitism of crafty Wilhelm Busch? Perhaps because antisemitism and racism may go too far and reach Dachau and Buchenwald? But then anything goes only if it goes not too far. And who can tell? The scientists? The Nupe sand diviner? Paul K. Feyerabend? What a pity. What a real loss. The only true cause, the cause of all liberty, including the liberty to search for truth despite all silly rules and regulations, has lost a brilliant champion and the cause of Voodoo has won a champion for whom it has no use.

There is no doubt that Feyerabend still has the master's touch. His Chapter l0 is a masterpiece. Partly it is so thanks to Vasco Ronchi who evidently moved him greatly - in this case he even breaks his own rule and makes a friendly and generous acknowledgement (p. 125n). Yet the chapter goes far beyond Ronchi - it also shows great erudition, clarity, and the absence of teutonic humor. One page is particularly moving - p. 126, where all the difficulties of telescopy, physical, psychological, and philo- sophical, collude. "I still remember my disappointment when, having a reflector with an alleged linear magnification of about 150, I found the moon was only about five times enlarged, and situated quite close to the ocular (1937)." I find this confession very moving, l do not know how old he was in 1937, but I know he was still a minor when he joined the German army in World War II; in 1937 Austria was no kind place for a lonely youth whose scientific escapades met, one might imagine, with little or no understanding for his disappointments - not even f rom high- school science teachers whose minds were elsewhere anyway. All this might explain a lot of the feeling shown in the present expos6 of the view of science as pretty-pretty. I wonder if it is a mere accident that the same page on which we have the confession is also the (seemingly?) most erudite, including, as it does, reference to a manuscript letter, in the Gregorian University in Rome, by the very gentleman who received a telescope from Galileo and gave it to Kepler. Also, the page contains a scathing attack on the Jesuits who succumbed to Galileo too quickly - Galileo promised magnification of about 30; but he could not provide even that

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much - as well as an a t tack on the modern Cathol ic scholar who approves of them. To endorse Gali leo's observat ions as factual only because of " the i r regularity and their in te rsubjec t iv i ty" is to forget all about mirages and ra inbows and microscopic sense illu- sions and " the phenomena of witchcraf t (every w o m a n repor ted an incubus to have an ice-cold member )" . "Every woman"? "Every w o m a n " ? Which witch repor ted an encounte r wi th an incubus and which did not? Even the regulari ty o f rainbows made t h e m more real, and mirages likewise became more real when and only when they became regular: we can now specify and repro- duce the condi t ions under which ra inbows or mirages occur. But we could never do so with condi t ions under which a woman will repor t an encoun te r wi th an incubus, let a lone the fine details. Or is this a teu tonic private j oke that I am missing?

I must grant that much: it is hard to ignore the nonsense and center on the valuable material in this book. Yet valuable material is there to enjoy and really benefit from. What a mess any scientific s i tuat ion really is when seen f rom close quarters is hard to believe not only because of the p re t ty -pre t ty reports. I th ink any s tudy of selenology before and after the first m o o n landing, any s tudy made f rom close-quarters that is, will show even a bigger mess; and will make us admire the venture all the more. And Feyerabend suggests - or do I read too much into his text?

- that a Gestal t-switch of ten occurs when the normal and the anomalous switch places. I think this is true. My instance (To- wards an Historiography of Science, p. 43) is very easy to state: whereas for Stahl the normal combus t ion was of charcoal, which a lmost left no ashes, for Lavoisier the normal was of metal , whose ashes are heavier than the original metal; whereas the one was t roubled by the o ther ' s instance, the o ther was t roubled by the former ' s - and overcame his t rouble! But Feyeraberrd 's example - end of chapter 12 - f rom Galileo is more intr icate, interesting, valuable. His conclusion that the great thinkers of the past were right to conceal - if conceal is what they did - diff icult ies may be a challenge; his r ecommenda t ion that we go on doing so is just absurd. But again I chafe instead of ending wi th a praise. I th ink I should say that we are now mature enough to be able to t ry not to sweep our diff icult ies under the carpet, and this will make us more accomodat ing to young bright exper imentors who c o m e to us with some obscure disappointments . This, I think, should ap- peal to Feyerabend when he is in his f r iendly humani tar ian mood.

The heart of the book is Gali leo 's a 'stronomy. F r o m then on it is bo th mopping-up and redundancies, including the discussion with Lakatos, which is less comprehensible than Lakatos himself, and a defence of Chinese total i tar ianism and more. Yet till the end the vo lume contains nice rid-bits. 1 should men t ion one i tem more.

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Chapter 17, which is quite remarkable, has no reference or allusion to Galileo and studies perception theory and its appli- cation to art appreciation, notices that much of one's picture of the world, or rules of seeing, cannot be conscious except after a long study, and that one of these rules is the rule of irrelevance (p. 237). This sheds much light on Galileo's supposed acts of deception and brings art and science much closer together than hitherto owned. It should much delight Feyerabend himself, but regrettably he does not make the connection.

Lest this might sound as if I too follow Lakatos and Feyera- bend to Polanyi's fashionable reactionary camp, let me say this. Not only do I deny what they all affirm, namely that science is a church like any, or worse, or better; also I deny, this time with Feyerabend, that there is such a thing as personal knowledge, or that learning the visual language required for empirical science renders scientific knowledge personal knowledge. For, personal knowledge is supposedly that expert knowledge that artists cannot articulate, yet they transmit it to apprentices; it is thus distinct from the foreign language, dead or alive, which one can learn in evening classes, by correspondence, etc. And, I suggest, visual language, and even the language of art, and any other, need not be so elitistic as. Polanyi or Kuhn or Lakatos suggests. But all this is an aside, as is Feyerabend's attack on esotericism. Indeed, were he of the opinion that Galileo could not explain his personal know- ledge, he would hardly have been in position to call him a mountebank. Yet, is Voodoo not esoteric?

In addition to quite a few interesting and uninteresting things which do and do not fall into pattern, what does this book say? That at times we all cheat, that we all say silly things now and then, etc. True enough. That therefore even the stupidest liar may say something worthwhile. True enough. So what? Should we all listen to any stupid liar? Should we aim to be stupid liars? Should we commend Voodoo? Should the U.S. Federal Government emu- late the wise government of the Chinese People's Republic and impose folk medicine on government hospitals and sponsor Voo- doo sessions in Federal City University? Should State colleges and Universities teach astrology? If Feyerabend says yes, he is a knave and a fool. If he says no, then he repudiates much that makes this book what it is. I do have the suspicion that he will waffle, that he merely cons his reader into a cheap fantasy, where science and Voodoo are both legit, and where all dreams come true, even horror dreams, but all ends well.

What is my verdict? In my opinion for what it is worth, does Foyerabend get away with murder? I think, yes. This is why I wanted to review Against Method and this is why I have decided to publish this review despite all my vacillations and misgivings

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and dislike of his violence and vulgari ty: I f ind e n o u g h in t he b o o k deserving the r eade r ' s a t t e n t i o n . F e y e r a b e n d h in t s he is no t going to c o n t i n u e o n a s imilar ven ture . Pe rhaps he had to get so much r u b b i s h ou t o f his sys tem so as to be able to s ta r t afresh. I hope he can n o w b e c o m e t he benign, f l ippan t , exc i t ing scholar t ha t he so m u c h wants to be.

My very best wishes to h im , then .

B o s t o n Univers i ty Bos ton , Mass. 02215

USA

and

Tel Aviv Univers i ty Tel Aviv, Israel

APPENDIX

Editorial Remark: For the benefit of our readers and with the consent of Professor Agassi, whose review of Professor Feyera- bend's book "Against Method" appears in the preceding pages, Professor Feyerabend was asked to comment on that review. The Feyerabend-Agassi correspondence, including comments and replies, follows. - AK

Berkeley, Ju ly 15, 1975

Dear Joske ,

There are th ree th ings wh ich never fail to amaze me w h e n reading reviews o f my book : the disregard for a r g u m e n t , t he violence o f the r eac t ion , t h e general impress ion I seem to make on my readers , and especial ly on ' ra t ional is ts ' ,

As I see it; m y b o o k is a l ongwinded and r a t h e r pedes t r i an a t t e m p t to cri t icise cer ta in ideas a b o u t sc ience and ra t iona l i ty , to reveal t he idols b e h i n d t he ideas, and to p u t t h e m in the i r p rope r place. Not being as b l inded by slogans as m y ra t iona l i s t cri t ics seem to be I investigate, and I r epor t the resul t s o f m y investiga- t ion . My inves t iga t ion is far f rom comprehens ive . The mos t impor - t an t p r o b l e m of the r e l a t i on b e t w e e n reason and fai th is no t even

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