Against Method

A polemical book subtitled 'Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge', first planned as one half of a debate with Feyerabend's friend Imre Lakatos, who died before writing his reply. Feyerabend argues that no fixed set of methodological rules has ever governed scientific progress, and that the only principle which does not inhibit progress is 'anything goes'. He calls this epistemological anarchism. He recommends counterinduction, developing theories that clash with accepted facts, because the facts themselves are shaped by older theories. The centre of the book is a long case study of Galileo, arguing that he won acceptance for Copernicanism through propaganda, rhetoric and the untested telescope as much as through evidence, and that by the standards of his time his opponents were reasonable. Feyerabend also discusses incommensurability, and ends by asking why science should be privileged over myth or tradition, proposing a separation of state and science. Critics charge him with relativism and irrationalism; he described his position as provocation as much as doctrine.

It is the boldest challenge to the idea of a single scientific method, and it forces readers to say what actually makes science reliable.