Paul Feyerabend

Austrian-born philosopher of science

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Lived 1924–1994, aged 70Austria

Austria AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
45 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1924–1994
Aged 70
Known for
The Trial
1948

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He argued there are no universal rules for doing science — that the scientific method, as a rigid playbook, is a myth. Against Method made him philosophy of science's most cheerful heretic.

Biography

About

Feyerabend taught philosophy of science at Bristol starting in 1955, then spent three decades at Berkeley from 1958 onward, holding joint appointments across London, Berlin, Yale, Auckland, and Zurich along the way. Against Method arrived in 1975 with the claim that no single methodological rulebook governs scientific inquiry, a position he expanded in Science in a Free Society three years later. His later books — Farewell to Reason, Three Dialogues on Knowledge, the posthumous Conquest of Abundance — ranged across ethics, ancient philosophy, art, politics, medicine, and physics, while an unfi…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Paul Feyerabend

Paul Feyerabend

said1991

My life has been the result of accidents, not of goals and principles. My intellectual work forms only an insignificant part of it.

— Who's Who in America (1991)

Paul Feyerabend

said1975

First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.

— Pg iii (Intro to the Chinese Edition of AM).

Paul Feyerabend

said1975

It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory or rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings.

— Pg. 27 & 28, italics are Feyerabend's

Paul Feyerabend

said1975