Beyond Reason

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. A Deeper Unity: Some Feyerabendian Themes in Neurocomputational Form

   • Paul M. Churchland

   Pages 1-23

3. How to Be a Good Realist

   • Marx W. Wartofsky

   Pages 25-40

4. Between Formalism and Anarchism: A Reasonable Middle Way

   • C. A. Hooker

   Pages 41-107

5. Free of Prejudice and Wholly Critical?

   • Alastair Hannay

   Pages 109-129

6. Speculation, Calculation and the Creation of Phenomena

   • Ian Hacking

   Pages 131-157

7. Reason and Practice

   • John Kekes

   Pages 159-178

8. Science in Feyerabend’s Free Society

   • Gonzalo Munévar

   Pages 179-198

9. Letter to an Anti-Liberal Liberal

   • Margherita Von Brentano

   Pages 199-212

10. Obituary on the “Anarchist” Paul Feyerabend

    • Werner Diederich

    Pages 213-224

11. Ideology, Science and a Free Society

    • Noretta Koertge

    Pages 225-241

12. The Myth of Astronomical Instrumentalism

    • Alan Musgrave

    Pages 243-280

13. Feyerabend on Falsifications, Galileo, and Lady Reason

    • Gunnar Andersson

    Pages 281-295

14. The Observational Origins of Feyerabend’s Anarchistic Epistemology

    • Frederick Suppe

    Pages 297-311

15. Incommensurability, Its Varieties and Its Ontological Consequences

    • Anthony N. Perovich Jr.

    Pages 313-328

16. Feyerabend and the Facts

    • John Worrall

    Pages 329-353

17. Ideological Commitments in the Philosophy of Science

    • Jerome R. Ravetz

    Pages 355-377

18. As You Like It

    • Joseph Agassi

    Pages 379-387

19. Perceptions and Maturity: Reflections on Feyerabend’s Point of View

    • Vine Deloria

    Pages 389-401

20. Paul Feyerabend — a Green Hero?

    • Arne Naess

    Pages 403-416

Some philosophers think that Paul Feyerabend is a clown, a great many others think that he is one of the most exciting philosophers of science of this century. For me the truth does not lie somewhere in between, for I am decidedly of the second opinion, an opinion that is becoming general around the world as this century comes to an end and history begins to cast its appraising eye upon the intellectual harvest of our era. A good example of this opinion may be found in the admiration for Feyerabend's philosophy of science expressed by Grover Maxwell in his contribution to this volume. Maxwell, recalling his own intellectual transformation, says also that it was Feyerabend who "confirmed my then incipient suspicions that most of the foundations of currently fashionable philosophy and even a great deal of the methodology to which many scientists pay enthusiastic lip service are based on simple mistake- assumptions whose absurdity becomes obvious once attention is directed at them". And lest the reader thinks, as many still do, that however sharp Feyerabend's attacks upon the philosophical establishment may have been, he does not offer a positive philosophy (a complain made by C.A. Hooker and some of the other contributors), Paul Churchland argues otherwise.

• Galileo Galilei
• Paul Feyerabend
• falsification
• materialism
• philosophy of science

• The Evergreen State College, Washington, USA

  Gonzalo Munévar

Policies and ethics