For method

or, against Feyerabend

Larry Laudan

pp. 299-317

in: James BROWN, Jürgen Mittelstrass (eds), An intimate relation, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

During the last quarter century, the theory of scientific methodology has come in for more than its share of drubbing from a variety of sources. Polanyi, Quine, Hesse, Kuhn, Wittgenstein, and a host of others have urged the abandonment of the methodological enterprise. Most of the arguments against methodology boil down to one of two sorts. They typically allege either (a) that the rules of scientific investigation radically underdetermine theory choice (and are thereby presumed to be impotent), or else (b) that the explicit rules of methodology are so vague and ambiguous that they forbid nothing¹. I have tried to show elsewhere that the arguments lying behind these particular allegations will not support the conclusions drawn from them.² But I have yet to come to terms in print with the writings of the most forceful and persistent critic of methodology in our time, Paul Feyerabend.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig

Feyerabend Paul

Quine Willard Van Orman