6 ms·

Against Method

133 points by MichaelAO 11y ago

api 11y ago
In modern terms I think you could make this critique from a perspective of learning theory and combinatorics. Methodological monism implies that the fitness landscape being explored by science is "well behaved" and can be traversed using a simple stepwise or gradient descent function. We have no reason to believe this, and many reasons to believe that "unjustified leaps" and other heresies may be required to escape local maxima or traverse unconnected regions of state space. There is probably no deterministic "for(;;) { do X }" formula for learning in complex real-world domains. You could make an anthropic argument here: if there were, life and intelligence would not exist since whatever thermodynamically-favored auto-catalytic processes life does could be replaced by non-living systems of lower entropy and higher probability. The existence of life as the chaotic, ever-changing, evolving system that it is is itself evidence for the non-closed-form nature of evolutionary learning. I've thought for some time that the slow down in "fundamental invention" that some have observed since roughly the late 1960s to early 1970s is the result of "scientific fundamentalism" and Skepticism. Look into the backgrounds and thoughts of people like Einstein, Tesla, Engelbart, Turing, Edison, or Schrodinger, and you generally will not find them to be fundamentalist-positivist Skeptics. It seems like the general intellectual trend from roughly 1970 until maybe 2010 or so was the rise of fundamentalism of every kind, both religious and secular... maybe due to an emotional desire for the comfort of absolute certainty in the face of rapid dislocating change. There also seems to be an economic drive to commoditize humans. If learning can be completely systematized, then science can be rendered into an assembly line process that can be run by bureaucracies, scaled as needed, and in which individual workers can be treated as a 'human resource' commodity. Bureaucracies cannot deal with multi-modality, unpredictable and eccentric 'genius,' etc., so to admit that these things are required for the progress of science is to admit that bureaucracies are inherently limited. Of course this being startup central, we all know this. If learning could be systematized and bureaucratized, there would be no startups. Big companies, VC funds, and banks would just execute whatever deterministic steps are required to yield progress and maintain 100% ownership of everything.
- Retric 11y ago
  The obvious falsehood in this concept is science is based on idea nullification as such it seeks places where a theory breaks down. In physics for example it often seems that adding yet another decimal to some constant is more or less a waste of time, but precision has broken many theory's and as such it's not 'safe' territory. PS: Abstractly, gradient descent seems to get you stuck in a local optima, but fractals for example are not 'safe' places. Look to close at the head of a pin and there be dragons.
  - api 11y ago
    The two are not mutually exclusive. To say that all scientific progress can't be attained by just following a single scientific method does not imply that following that method is fruitless or wrong. It obviously does work sometimes. The fitness landscape is complex and multifaceted, and different approaches to learning will work to varying degrees at different times. The danger is in fundamentalism -- in the elevation of a single method or philosophy of science to an absolute One True Way and the (always attendant) purging and blacklisting of anyone who doesn't follow it. It seems to me that a lot of people, especially CS and math types, are really deeply uncomfortable with the sort of multi-modality I'm talking about. Studying biology deeply made me really comfortable with it. It's really very rational too. If you understand learning, search, combinatorics, and evolutionary theory, the absolute requirement for multi-modality is easy to grasp... even intuitive to visualize. One would not traverse a desert with snowshoes, an ocean with boots, or a mountain with a road bike. Fitness landscapes are also varied and demand a varying set of strategies to cope with different types of terrain. We need an epistemological toolbox with all kinds of different tools in it.
    - wfo 11y ago
      I think you'll find pure mathematicians and CS theorists more amenable to that creativity and flexibility you're speaking of it's the applied ones who have strayed too close to engineering and had their minds burned into a particular mode that I've found are altogether uncomfortable with multi-modality.
    - 11y ago
ivoras 11y ago
The fact that in certain times there are popular and less popular areas of study, or topics, has nothing to do with the scientific method. At any time, anyone, could posit any kind of idea, like "the Moon is made of cheese", and the whole scientific method boils down to basically everyone else demanding "prove it." The fact that at times people might be afraid or uninterested in testing ideas which seem far-fetched or unpopular in their community, is another thing entirely.
paulpauper 11y ago
the critics of string theory need to consider this, instead of just dismissing the theory as un-testable
- api 11y ago
  I agree. The thing that makes me critical of string theory isn't that it's (so far) difficult to test, but that it's been The Thing in certain quarters for a long time and has yet to yield much (unless something's happened I'm not aware of). It also seems to get more complex over time.
raldu 11y ago
A detailed discussion of the book at SEP can be found here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/#2.13 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/#2.13
rndn 11y ago
Some see it differently: http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/optimalscientist.html http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/optimalscientist.html But it would still be anarchic (without the laws of human psychology and social interactions at least). However, it would be an algorithm, and thus, in its broadest sense, a method.
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  From your link: "Check out the formal theory of creativity (1990-2010) which explains science, art, music, humor, and describes the simple algorithmic principles of artificial scientists & artists." I think most scientist would agree that science involves method, indeed most science involve multiple, nested methods. But I think most scientists would be very skeptical of any claim to have fully codified a single scientific method, much less a theory of all creative endeavors. So your link seems like bending the stick way too far the other way.
  - rndn 11y ago
    That's right, I should've written "diametrically different".
joe_the_user 11y ago
I remember taking a class from Feyerabend years ago. Similar to what Wikipedia describes, his basic argument, his only argument really, was starting with a certain form of rationalism and showing that it didn't work or couldn't exist. I felt like his entire deal was supremely boring. Take anything interesting, whether a scientific theory, a poem, a piece of music or a religious text. The interestingness of any of these things comes from there being layers of meaning and a structure one has to spend time learning. If someone's only activity is putting together a straw version of science and knocking it down, again and again and again, there's nothing interesting (even if the rationalism isn't entirely "straw" in the sense that some philosophers of science have pretty rigid schemas, the process of merely saying "no that wrong" remains dull). People compared Thomas Kuhn's work to Feyerabend and I think that's a disservice to Kuhn. Kuhn's work, correct or incorrect, involved a broad effort to draw a picture of what actually scientists actually does. Feyerabend's work seemed to me to be little more than a sort of act of petty vengeance, endless effort to tell STEM people "ha, you're not so smart after all".
- foldr 11y ago
  As you say, the straw version of science doesn't come from Feyerabend, it comes from the scientists and philosophers of science who he's criticizing. It's true that the observation that there is no such thing as the scientific method is boring in and of itself (probably about as interesting as the observation that there's no single method for writing a novel or composing a symphony). However, I think there's a bit more to Feyerabend's critique than that. It's ultimately a challenge to the prestige and power currently enjoyed by the scientific establishment. Feyerabend is attempting to show not merely that this or that conception of the scientific method is flawed, but to establish the much more discomfiting conclusion that scientific progress has frequently been driven by non-rational considerations, so that there is no hope of showing that science is in any sense intellectually superior to competing purported sources of reliable knowledge. This claim might be true or false but it's certainly not boring. If you ask a typical scientist why science ought to get lots of prestige, money and power, the answer will typically depend on the claim that science is in some sense intellectually superior.
  - 11y ago
tmalsburg2 11y ago
I love Paul Feyerabend. I believe that the titel "Against Method" was mainly supposed to be provocative. His main point really is to remind us that Popper's view of science is an idealization and that the process of scientific discovery is much more messy in reality. In other words, he is mainly stating facts about the history of science. Very interesting read with great examples. I also highly recommend his book (actually a set of lecture notes) "Science as an Art" in which he dicusses the similarities and the shared history of science and art.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  It has always surprised me that the scientific method begins only after a hypothesis is chosen. Forming a hypothesis is often based on inference, even instinct, that has little science behind it. The work of Barbara McClintock comes to mind.
  - pacaro 11y ago
    Also worth reading Peter Lipton's "Inference To The Best Explanation" [1] then :) Peter Lipton was my advisor for an undergraduate thesis in HPS at Cambridge, sadly he died quite young [1] http://www.amazon.com/Inference-Explanation-International-Library-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B000OI15SY http://www.amazon.com/Inference-Explanation-International-Li...
    - osullivj 11y ago
      I did Philosophy of Science as a 2nd and 3rd year option in the late 80s at Cambridge. I remember Redwood, but not Lipton. When did you do your thesis?
      - pacaro 11y ago
        I graduated in '93 - I loved the course, but definitely butted heads (to the detriment of grades) with the Marxist tendency of the faculty I have found the History and Philosophy of Science, to be s great preparation for a career as a developer, unfortunately the US CIS trends to disagree making visa/green-card stuff harder than it should have been
seliopou 11y ago
Those interested in the philosophy of science should be aware of Karl Popper[0], and his view that what makes a theory scientific is its falsifiability: If a theory can be false in some way, then you must be able to construct some sort of empirical experiment which could demonstrate its falsehood. This is in contrast to the verificationism that was popular in the Vienna Circle during during his time, which took the view that positive experimental results was evidence towards the truth of a theory. So in his view, science is a process that produce theories that converge on the truth, but never quite get there. For him, "scientific fact" is an oxymoron. He also famously got into a heated debate with Wittgenstein over the nature of philosophical inquiry. So heated, that Wittgenstein almost beat Poppers ass with a fire poker, or so the story goes[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmt2sCdd5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmt2sCdd5E
- siganakis 11y ago
  Also of importance in this area is Kuhn's [0] the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" [1], which not only first coined the term "paradigm shift", but is also probably the best account of how science really works. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
  - eruditely 11y ago
    He didn't even believe his theories at the end, outsider's overrate Kuhn's importance imho.
    - Confusion 11y ago
      Your comment does not make any sense to me. 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' does not just propose 'theories': it mainly shows how the Popperian and other accounts of 'how science works' are simply wrong, as a close consideration of historical evidence shows that science just does not work that way. It goes on to explain why it would also be impractical if science did work that way. Those parts are all pretty uncontroversial. The account of how science does work is still being debated. Perhaps Kuhn disavowed his account later, but that doesn't matter with respect to the most important parts of the book.
bra-ket 11y ago
the actual text: http://mcps.umn.edu/assets/pdf/4.2.1_Feyerabend.pdf http://mcps.umn.edu/assets/pdf/4.2.1_Feyerabend.pdf
- capnrefsmmat 11y ago
  This isn't the full text. Against Method is a full book; it's rather interesting if you're interested in the philosophy of science.
eternalban 11y ago
Read this a few days ago since Paper's We Love will have a meetup on this work. A strong element of his critique is the consideration of the psychological aspect of ideation. Since then have been bouncing in the background the idea of validity (or nature) of this thesis in context of (hypothetical) machine intelligence (Strong AI) and discovery.
sthatipamala 11y ago
This PBS Idea Channel video discusses some of Feyerabend's ideas in the context of pop culture (specifically "Is Rick from Rick & Morty The Ideal Scientist?") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLN1PN3L4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLN1PN3L4I It's a little hand-wavy for HN and the conclusions can be contrived, but Idea Channel overall is an interesting entry point to a lot of serious topics.
- sqrt17 11y ago
  One thing that really grates me with the Idea Channel is that they (or he) usually start from conclusions and then work their way back to a one-sided myopic argument instead of truly exploring an issue. So instead of enjoying the fact that they ask a potentially interesting question and pull out at least some relevant facts, I get worked up at all the trollish handwaving and have given up on it entirely. For those of us who enjoy both having talking heads in our video window and interesting thoughts: Is there some YouTube or other channel that is similarly well-informed as John Green's "crash course" videos, but with a bit more of the "deconstructing pop culture" theme that underlies Idea Channel's questions (but less handwavy and contrived)?
- derrickdirge 11y ago
  That's interesting, because reading about Feyerabend immediately reminded me of Rick. "Sometimes science is more art than science, Morty. A lot of people don't get that."
kriro 11y ago
"For and Against Method" which outlines the discourse between Feyerabend and Lakatos is an excellent book that collects their debates and private correspondence in a well editorialized way. Highly recommended for anyone with the slightest glimmer of interest in science theory. It remains one of my favorite random pickups. It's a very interesting friendship between academics with rather different views. On a related note, Lakatos is fairly underrated. Everyone knows Popper but Lakatos extended his ideas beautifully.

133 points by MichaelAO 11y ago

api 11y ago

In modern terms I think you could make this critique from a perspective of learning theory and combinatorics. Methodological monism implies that the fitness landscape being explored by science is "well behaved" and can be traversed using a simple stepwise or gradient descent function. We have no reason to believe this, and many reasons to believe that "unjustified leaps" and other heresies may be required to escape local maxima or traverse unconnected regions of state space. There is probably no deterministic "for(;;) { do X }" formula for learning in complex real-world domains. You could make an anthropic argument here: if there were, life and intelligence would not exist since whatever thermodynamically-favored auto-catalytic processes life does could be replaced by non-living systems of lower entropy and higher probability. The existence of life as the chaotic, ever-changing, evolving system that it is is itself evidence for the non-closed-form nature of evolutionary learning. I've thought for some time that the slow down in "fundamental invention" that some have observed since roughly the late 1960s to early 1970s is the result of "scientific fundamentalism" and Skepticism. Look into the backgrounds and thoughts of people like Einstein, Tesla, Engelbart, Turing, Edison, or Schrodinger, and you generally will not find them to be fundamentalist-positivist Skeptics. It seems like the general intellectual trend from roughly 1970 until maybe 2010 or so was the rise of fundamentalism of every kind, both religious and secular... maybe due to an emotional desire for the comfort of absolute certainty in the face of rapid dislocating change. There also seems to be an economic drive to commoditize humans. If learning can be completely systematized, then science can be rendered into an assembly line process that can be run by bureaucracies, scaled as needed, and in which individual workers can be treated as a 'human resource' commodity. Bureaucracies cannot deal with multi-modality, unpredictable and eccentric 'genius,' etc., so to admit that these things are required for the progress of science is to admit that bureaucracies are inherently limited. Of course this being startup central, we all know this. If learning could be systematized and bureaucratized, there would be no startups. Big companies, VC funds, and banks would just execute whatever deterministic steps are required to yield progress and maintain 100% ownership of everything.

Retric 11y ago
The obvious falsehood in this concept is science is based on idea nullification as such it seeks places where a theory breaks down. In physics for example it often seems that adding yet another decimal to some constant is more or less a waste of time, but precision has broken many theory's and as such it's not 'safe' territory. PS: Abstractly, gradient descent seems to get you stuck in a local optima, but fractals for example are not 'safe' places. Look to close at the head of a pin and there be dragons.
- api 11y ago
  The two are not mutually exclusive. To say that all scientific progress can't be attained by just following a single scientific method does not imply that following that method is fruitless or wrong. It obviously does work sometimes. The fitness landscape is complex and multifaceted, and different approaches to learning will work to varying degrees at different times. The danger is in fundamentalism -- in the elevation of a single method or philosophy of science to an absolute One True Way and the (always attendant) purging and blacklisting of anyone who doesn't follow it. It seems to me that a lot of people, especially CS and math types, are really deeply uncomfortable with the sort of multi-modality I'm talking about. Studying biology deeply made me really comfortable with it. It's really very rational too. If you understand learning, search, combinatorics, and evolutionary theory, the absolute requirement for multi-modality is easy to grasp... even intuitive to visualize. One would not traverse a desert with snowshoes, an ocean with boots, or a mountain with a road bike. Fitness landscapes are also varied and demand a varying set of strategies to cope with different types of terrain. We need an epistemological toolbox with all kinds of different tools in it.
  - wfo 11y ago
    I think you'll find pure mathematicians and CS theorists more amenable to that creativity and flexibility you're speaking of it's the applied ones who have strayed too close to engineering and had their minds burned into a particular mode that I've found are altogether uncomfortable with multi-modality.
  - 11y ago

ivoras 11y ago

The fact that in certain times there are popular and less popular areas of study, or topics, has nothing to do with the scientific method. At any time, anyone, could posit any kind of idea, like "the Moon is made of cheese", and the whole scientific method boils down to basically everyone else demanding "prove it." The fact that at times people might be afraid or uninterested in testing ideas which seem far-fetched or unpopular in their community, is another thing entirely.

paulpauper 11y ago

the critics of string theory need to consider this, instead of just dismissing the theory as un-testable

api 11y ago
I agree. The thing that makes me critical of string theory isn't that it's (so far) difficult to test, but that it's been The Thing in certain quarters for a long time and has yet to yield much (unless something's happened I'm not aware of). It also seems to get more complex over time.

raldu 11y ago

A detailed discussion of the book at SEP can be found here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/#2.13 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/#2.13

rndn 11y ago

Some see it differently: http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/optimalscientist.html http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/optimalscientist.html But it would still be anarchic (without the laws of human psychology and social interactions at least). However, it would be an algorithm, and thus, in its broadest sense, a method.

joe_the_user 11y ago
From your link: "Check out the formal theory of creativity (1990-2010) which explains science, art, music, humor, and describes the simple algorithmic principles of artificial scientists & artists." I think most scientist would agree that science involves method, indeed most science involve multiple, nested methods. But I think most scientists would be very skeptical of any claim to have fully codified a single scientific method, much less a theory of all creative endeavors. So your link seems like bending the stick way too far the other way.
- rndn 11y ago
  That's right, I should've written "diametrically different".

joe_the_user 11y ago

I remember taking a class from Feyerabend years ago. Similar to what Wikipedia describes, his basic argument, his only argument really, was starting with a certain form of rationalism and showing that it didn't work or couldn't exist. I felt like his entire deal was supremely boring. Take anything interesting, whether a scientific theory, a poem, a piece of music or a religious text. The interestingness of any of these things comes from there being layers of meaning and a structure one has to spend time learning. If someone's only activity is putting together a straw version of science and knocking it down, again and again and again, there's nothing interesting (even if the rationalism isn't entirely "straw" in the sense that some philosophers of science have pretty rigid schemas, the process of merely saying "no that wrong" remains dull). People compared Thomas Kuhn's work to Feyerabend and I think that's a disservice to Kuhn. Kuhn's work, correct or incorrect, involved a broad effort to draw a picture of what actually scientists actually does. Feyerabend's work seemed to me to be little more than a sort of act of petty vengeance, endless effort to tell STEM people "ha, you're not so smart after all".

foldr 11y ago
As you say, the straw version of science doesn't come from Feyerabend, it comes from the scientists and philosophers of science who he's criticizing. It's true that the observation that there is no such thing as the scientific method is boring in and of itself (probably about as interesting as the observation that there's no single method for writing a novel or composing a symphony). However, I think there's a bit more to Feyerabend's critique than that. It's ultimately a challenge to the prestige and power currently enjoyed by the scientific establishment. Feyerabend is attempting to show not merely that this or that conception of the scientific method is flawed, but to establish the much more discomfiting conclusion that scientific progress has frequently been driven by non-rational considerations, so that there is no hope of showing that science is in any sense intellectually superior to competing purported sources of reliable knowledge. This claim might be true or false but it's certainly not boring. If you ask a typical scientist why science ought to get lots of prestige, money and power, the answer will typically depend on the claim that science is in some sense intellectually superior.
- 11y ago

tmalsburg2 11y ago

I love Paul Feyerabend. I believe that the titel "Against Method" was mainly supposed to be provocative. His main point really is to remind us that Popper's view of science is an idealization and that the process of scientific discovery is much more messy in reality. In other words, he is mainly stating facts about the history of science. Very interesting read with great examples. I also highly recommend his book (actually a set of lecture notes) "Science as an Art" in which he dicusses the similarities and the shared history of science and art.

nickbauman 11y ago
It has always surprised me that the scientific method begins only after a hypothesis is chosen. Forming a hypothesis is often based on inference, even instinct, that has little science behind it. The work of Barbara McClintock comes to mind.
- pacaro 11y ago
  Also worth reading Peter Lipton's "Inference To The Best Explanation" [1] then :) Peter Lipton was my advisor for an undergraduate thesis in HPS at Cambridge, sadly he died quite young [1] http://www.amazon.com/Inference-Explanation-International-Library-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B000OI15SY http://www.amazon.com/Inference-Explanation-International-Li...
  - osullivj 11y ago
    I did Philosophy of Science as a 2nd and 3rd year option in the late 80s at Cambridge. I remember Redwood, but not Lipton. When did you do your thesis?
    - pacaro 11y ago
      I graduated in '93 - I loved the course, but definitely butted heads (to the detriment of grades) with the Marxist tendency of the faculty I have found the History and Philosophy of Science, to be s great preparation for a career as a developer, unfortunately the US CIS trends to disagree making visa/green-card stuff harder than it should have been

seliopou 11y ago

Those interested in the philosophy of science should be aware of Karl Popper[0], and his view that what makes a theory scientific is its falsifiability: If a theory can be false in some way, then you must be able to construct some sort of empirical experiment which could demonstrate its falsehood. This is in contrast to the verificationism that was popular in the Vienna Circle during during his time, which took the view that positive experimental results was evidence towards the truth of a theory. So in his view, science is a process that produce theories that converge on the truth, but never quite get there. For him, "scientific fact" is an oxymoron. He also famously got into a heated debate with Wittgenstein over the nature of philosophical inquiry. So heated, that Wittgenstein almost beat Poppers ass with a fire poker, or so the story goes[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmt2sCdd5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmt2sCdd5E

siganakis 11y ago
Also of importance in this area is Kuhn's [0] the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" [1], which not only first coined the term "paradigm shift", but is also probably the best account of how science really works. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
- eruditely 11y ago
  He didn't even believe his theories at the end, outsider's overrate Kuhn's importance imho.
  - Confusion 11y ago
    Your comment does not make any sense to me. 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' does not just propose 'theories': it mainly shows how the Popperian and other accounts of 'how science works' are simply wrong, as a close consideration of historical evidence shows that science just does not work that way. It goes on to explain why it would also be impractical if science did work that way. Those parts are all pretty uncontroversial. The account of how science does work is still being debated. Perhaps Kuhn disavowed his account later, but that doesn't matter with respect to the most important parts of the book.

bra-ket 11y ago

the actual text: http://mcps.umn.edu/assets/pdf/4.2.1_Feyerabend.pdf http://mcps.umn.edu/assets/pdf/4.2.1_Feyerabend.pdf

capnrefsmmat 11y ago
This isn't the full text. Against Method is a full book; it's rather interesting if you're interested in the philosophy of science.

eternalban 11y ago

Read this a few days ago since Paper's We Love will have a meetup on this work. A strong element of his critique is the consideration of the psychological aspect of ideation. Since then have been bouncing in the background the idea of validity (or nature) of this thesis in context of (hypothetical) machine intelligence (Strong AI) and discovery.

sthatipamala 11y ago

This PBS Idea Channel video discusses some of Feyerabend's ideas in the context of pop culture (specifically "Is Rick from Rick & Morty The Ideal Scientist?") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLN1PN3L4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLN1PN3L4I It's a little hand-wavy for HN and the conclusions can be contrived, but Idea Channel overall is an interesting entry point to a lot of serious topics.

sqrt17 11y ago
One thing that really grates me with the Idea Channel is that they (or he) usually start from conclusions and then work their way back to a one-sided myopic argument instead of truly exploring an issue. So instead of enjoying the fact that they ask a potentially interesting question and pull out at least some relevant facts, I get worked up at all the trollish handwaving and have given up on it entirely. For those of us who enjoy both having talking heads in our video window and interesting thoughts: Is there some YouTube or other channel that is similarly well-informed as John Green's "crash course" videos, but with a bit more of the "deconstructing pop culture" theme that underlies Idea Channel's questions (but less handwavy and contrived)?
derrickdirge 11y ago
That's interesting, because reading about Feyerabend immediately reminded me of Rick. "Sometimes science is more art than science, Morty. A lot of people don't get that."

kriro 11y ago

"For and Against Method" which outlines the discourse between Feyerabend and Lakatos is an excellent book that collects their debates and private correspondence in a well editorialized way. Highly recommended for anyone with the slightest glimmer of interest in science theory. It remains one of my favorite random pickups. It's a very interesting friendship between academics with rather different views. On a related note, Lakatos is fairly underrated. Everyone knows Popper but Lakatos extended his ideas beautifully.