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Paul Feyerabend and Richard Feynman on the Limits of Defining Science and Methodological Prescription

Abstract

This paper presents a re-evaluation of Paul Feyerabend’s philosophy of science and connects him with an unlikely ally in the physicist Richard Feynman. The essay argues they share critical, latent insights into the dynamic nature of science via the ideas of Michael Polanyi. Where Feyerabend has acquired the label of “anti-science radical”, this paper will contend that this is a fundamental misreading, mistaking his thoughts about science for prescriptive methodological claims for doing science. Such mis-readings play into a wider construction of the public image of both Feyerabend and Feynman that have been utilised in “science-culture wars”. However, both thinkers recognised the fundamental distinction between doing (a tacit, lived practice) and thinking about science (explicit knowledge, philosophy) to the extent that “science” cannot be accurately defined without misrepresenting it. Ultimately, both Feynman and Feyerabend were concerned at the growth of scientism masquerading under the name of science.