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“Feyerabend, who defended astrology and creationism...” go ahead and stop right there, that’s all anyone needs to know, frankly.

• dang 7y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • lacker 7y ago
    Honestly I found this comment to be useful. Supporting astrology and creationism is a pretty damning set of facts about someone.
    • dang 7y ago
      It's not a useful or interesting representation of Feyerabend. The internet habit of reducing everything to its most sensational detail, and cleansing it of all context, for damning purposes, is a bad one. It's what that HN guideline is intended to cover.
      • QuesnayJr 7y ago
        There's a flipside, where certain writers get to be read with infinite charity, while everyone else has to take their lumps. Feyerabend really did make that argument -- it's right there in black-and-white in "Against Method". But since he's an "important thinker", we have to read him with more care than he wrote with. "Against Method" is a fun book, and I enjoyed it when I read it back when the stakes didn't seem so high. But he chose to write a fun book rather than a serious one, and he can't complain when people take him seriously.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago
      Maybe if you read a little more about why he "supported" them, you'd find that even more useful?