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Naturphilosophie
Philosopher, physicist, and anarchist Paul Feyerabend was one of the most unconventional scholars of his time. His book Against Method has become a modern classic. Yet it is not well known that Feyerabend spent many years working on a philosophy of nature that was intended to comprise three volumes covering the period from the earliest traces of stone age cave paintings to the atomic physics of the 20th century – a project that, as he conveyed in a letter to Imre Lakatos, almost drove him “Damn the ,Naturphilosophie.”The book’s manuscript was long believed to have been lost. Recently, however, a typescript constituting the first volume of the project was unexpectedly discovered at the University of Konstanz. In this volume Feyerabend explores the significance of myths for the early period of natural philosophy, as well as the transition from Homer’s “aggregate universe” to Parmenides’ uniform ontology. He focuses on the rise of rationalism in Greek antiquity, which he considers a disastrous development, and the associated separation of man from nature. Thus Feyerabend explores the prehistory of science in his familiar polemical and extraordinarily learned manner.The volume contains numerous pictures and drawings by Feyerabend himself. It also contains hitherto unpublished biographical material that will help to round up our overall image of one of the most influential radical philosophers of the twentieth century.
- GenresPhilosophy
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
About the author
Paul Karl Feyerabend
93 books287 followersPaul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989).
His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge.
His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge.
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September 4, 2019
This was the beginning of a very ambitious project by Feyerabend — an historical account of how we have thought about and experienced reality, from Stone Age times to modern quantum theory. This was to be the first of (at least) three volumes. Unfortunately all we have is this one volume, still in draft form, although I think we are fortunate to have it at all.
The Introduction by Heit and Oberheim is indispensable for understanding the context of the book. Usually, I’m not a fan of introductions, but this is well-written and well-needed. Feyerabend began the project in the 1970s, in the years leading up to the publication of his Against Method, still his major work. The aftermath of Against Method’s publication, responding to critics and refining his arguments, would consume him for years and may have kept him from getting back to and completing this project.
This volume begins with the Stone Age, progresses through Homeric Greece, the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and on up in mostly outline form through to modern and contemporary science.
What exactly Feyerabend is tracing the development of is critical to understanding his thinking. In an early passage, he distinguishes what he calls “refined” epistemology from “naive” epistemology. A naive epistemology is one in which knowledge of reality is relatively unproblematic — the facts about the world are simply presented to human consciousness. Concepts arise from facts and allow us to describe those facts. Thus, reality itself determines our experience of it, and our conceptual knowledge of it. The relation between the two, knowledge and reality, is a simple, untroubled one.
A refined epistemology is one in which reality does not determine our experience of it but is instead itself influenced by a host of factors, including language, social structures, religion, . . . This is the kind of epistemology we associate with Whorfian theories of language, constructivism, and overall a more contemporary, post-Kantian understanding of reality as something co-produced by human consciousness, social reality, and reality itself (however we can still talk about a “reality itself”).
Feyerabend doesn’t so much argue for the “refined” epistemology as place himself within it. Actually, the book is short on traditional philosophical argument, even for Feyerabend. This may be partly a matter of its being an unfinished work, as well as his general disdain for traditional philosophical argument.
In keeping with a refined epistemology, what Feyerabend is tracing the development of is not just how we think about nature in our theories, but how we experience it in everyday life, as informed as that experience is by language, social structures, and other factors. So, in a strong sense, it is “nature” itself that develops and changes over the course of history.
Feyerabend distinguishes three stages — the Homeric, the philosophical, and the modern scientific. Homeric nature is experienced as “aggregate” — without essences or substances defining the nature of things, but rather a melange of experiences, actions, effects, all interfacing with one another without strict requirements of laws of nature or even large-scale logical structure.
That experience is difficult to describe, since it isn’t our own. Feyerabend does his best to crawl inside Homeric poetry and Greek myth, to discover a different kind of sense that the world made to the pre-philosopical Greeks. He is adamant that this sense is every bit as legitimate (and complex) as our own, that within the poetry and the mythology there are ways of understanding and dealing with such things as seasons, chemical nature, etc. that may escape our current attention because we are simply not attuned to them.
Likewise the Homeric age’s experience of self is quite different. In the Homeric world, the human mind was much more transparent than we think of it now. Events passed through any border between mind and world such that thoughts were not entirely autonomous. The will could be determined by events, ideas could arise by events outside the mind. Mind was within nature.
But now, in the philosophical world, human consciousness is autonomous — it “interacts” with a world. “The separation liberated humans, it transformed them from a component of nature and society, directly subjected to the impact of both, into their observer and transformer. No longer was the world simply there; rather, it became something alien that had to be conquered anew, both conceptually and practically.”
Feyerabend singles out Xenophanes and Parmenides as critical to the turn toward the philosophical. Xenophanes for the development of a notion of “experience” that depends upon this separation of human consciousness from the world, whereby the world is experienced by a human consciousness (with the help of interpretive principles and concepts that make it more than just a chaotic confusion). And Parmenides for the development of the notion of Being — the nonchangeable aspects of reality that later become the basis, in modern science, for the laws, elements, etc. that do not change and by which we can understand everything that does change.
And Feyerabend stresses that the transition from the Homeric to the philosophical is not the result of an argument. It is historical change, in the full context of all that happens in historical change — political change, technological change, religious change, changes in social structures.
He is a little short on detail here, but he does refer to a transition between local, immanent gods of Homeric times, and more abstract gods and principles. As civilizations expanded and conquests were made, what had been a local religion or god had to encompass a broader scope, retreating into more abstract terms as it did so.
Feyerabend here is an historical thinker at the same time as he is an epistemologist, seeing the two as inseperable in a way reminiscent of Hegel. In fact, he recruits Hegel as a natural ally. Hegel’s Phenomenology in particular traces the history of knowing, whereby “reality” itself, what we experience, changes and develops. Feyerabend is doing something very similar here, and he is right to recruit Hegel as an ally.
But for Feyerabend, unlike for Hegel, there is no progress. In fact, he seems to mourn the loss of Homeric experience. This philosophical separation of consciousness from world comes at a cost, inviting us to think of critiques of modern technology (e.g., Heidegger’s) as well as Feyerabend’s own critiques of a kind of scientific imperialism, in which all other “non-scientific” ways of experiencing and understanding the world are repressed, deemed suspect or outright illegitimate.
Against Method and The Conquest of Abundance stand out as places to go to read more on this campaign for diversity in experience and understanding.
It’s certainly a shame that Feyerabend was unable to finish this project. I know that his portrayal of the Homeric experience has taken its share of criticism. Fair enough, but that doesn’t invalidate his over-riding point that the philosophical and scientific experiences of the world are historical in nature, not simply the emergence of the victors against the dangers of superstition and irrationality. And that there may be much lost in our treating them as rightful victors.
The Introduction by Heit and Oberheim is indispensable for understanding the context of the book. Usually, I’m not a fan of introductions, but this is well-written and well-needed. Feyerabend began the project in the 1970s, in the years leading up to the publication of his Against Method, still his major work. The aftermath of Against Method’s publication, responding to critics and refining his arguments, would consume him for years and may have kept him from getting back to and completing this project.
This volume begins with the Stone Age, progresses through Homeric Greece, the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and on up in mostly outline form through to modern and contemporary science.
What exactly Feyerabend is tracing the development of is critical to understanding his thinking. In an early passage, he distinguishes what he calls “refined” epistemology from “naive” epistemology. A naive epistemology is one in which knowledge of reality is relatively unproblematic — the facts about the world are simply presented to human consciousness. Concepts arise from facts and allow us to describe those facts. Thus, reality itself determines our experience of it, and our conceptual knowledge of it. The relation between the two, knowledge and reality, is a simple, untroubled one.
A refined epistemology is one in which reality does not determine our experience of it but is instead itself influenced by a host of factors, including language, social structures, religion, . . . This is the kind of epistemology we associate with Whorfian theories of language, constructivism, and overall a more contemporary, post-Kantian understanding of reality as something co-produced by human consciousness, social reality, and reality itself (however we can still talk about a “reality itself”).
Feyerabend doesn’t so much argue for the “refined” epistemology as place himself within it. Actually, the book is short on traditional philosophical argument, even for Feyerabend. This may be partly a matter of its being an unfinished work, as well as his general disdain for traditional philosophical argument.
In keeping with a refined epistemology, what Feyerabend is tracing the development of is not just how we think about nature in our theories, but how we experience it in everyday life, as informed as that experience is by language, social structures, and other factors. So, in a strong sense, it is “nature” itself that develops and changes over the course of history.
Feyerabend distinguishes three stages — the Homeric, the philosophical, and the modern scientific. Homeric nature is experienced as “aggregate” — without essences or substances defining the nature of things, but rather a melange of experiences, actions, effects, all interfacing with one another without strict requirements of laws of nature or even large-scale logical structure.
That experience is difficult to describe, since it isn’t our own. Feyerabend does his best to crawl inside Homeric poetry and Greek myth, to discover a different kind of sense that the world made to the pre-philosopical Greeks. He is adamant that this sense is every bit as legitimate (and complex) as our own, that within the poetry and the mythology there are ways of understanding and dealing with such things as seasons, chemical nature, etc. that may escape our current attention because we are simply not attuned to them.
Likewise the Homeric age’s experience of self is quite different. In the Homeric world, the human mind was much more transparent than we think of it now. Events passed through any border between mind and world such that thoughts were not entirely autonomous. The will could be determined by events, ideas could arise by events outside the mind. Mind was within nature.
But now, in the philosophical world, human consciousness is autonomous — it “interacts” with a world. “The separation liberated humans, it transformed them from a component of nature and society, directly subjected to the impact of both, into their observer and transformer. No longer was the world simply there; rather, it became something alien that had to be conquered anew, both conceptually and practically.”
Feyerabend singles out Xenophanes and Parmenides as critical to the turn toward the philosophical. Xenophanes for the development of a notion of “experience” that depends upon this separation of human consciousness from the world, whereby the world is experienced by a human consciousness (with the help of interpretive principles and concepts that make it more than just a chaotic confusion). And Parmenides for the development of the notion of Being — the nonchangeable aspects of reality that later become the basis, in modern science, for the laws, elements, etc. that do not change and by which we can understand everything that does change.
And Feyerabend stresses that the transition from the Homeric to the philosophical is not the result of an argument. It is historical change, in the full context of all that happens in historical change — political change, technological change, religious change, changes in social structures.
He is a little short on detail here, but he does refer to a transition between local, immanent gods of Homeric times, and more abstract gods and principles. As civilizations expanded and conquests were made, what had been a local religion or god had to encompass a broader scope, retreating into more abstract terms as it did so.
Feyerabend here is an historical thinker at the same time as he is an epistemologist, seeing the two as inseperable in a way reminiscent of Hegel. In fact, he recruits Hegel as a natural ally. Hegel’s Phenomenology in particular traces the history of knowing, whereby “reality” itself, what we experience, changes and develops. Feyerabend is doing something very similar here, and he is right to recruit Hegel as an ally.
But for Feyerabend, unlike for Hegel, there is no progress. In fact, he seems to mourn the loss of Homeric experience. This philosophical separation of consciousness from world comes at a cost, inviting us to think of critiques of modern technology (e.g., Heidegger’s) as well as Feyerabend’s own critiques of a kind of scientific imperialism, in which all other “non-scientific” ways of experiencing and understanding the world are repressed, deemed suspect or outright illegitimate.
Against Method and The Conquest of Abundance stand out as places to go to read more on this campaign for diversity in experience and understanding.
It’s certainly a shame that Feyerabend was unable to finish this project. I know that his portrayal of the Homeric experience has taken its share of criticism. Fair enough, but that doesn’t invalidate his over-riding point that the philosophical and scientific experiences of the world are historical in nature, not simply the emergence of the victors against the dangers of superstition and irrationality. And that there may be much lost in our treating them as rightful victors.
August 14, 2020
Feyerabend's PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE is the missing link in a decades spanning work that has principally been read as devoted to epistemology. AGAINST METHOD is an ambiguous book in this regard, and one tends to concentrate more on the accounts of the Galilean, Einsteinian, and Quantum revolutions, and less on Feyerabend's treatment of the passage from the Homeric to the Rationalist worldview.PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE allows us to recontextualise Feyerabend's philosophical evolution and to see Feyerabend's later work, collected in CONQUEST OF ABUNDANCE as belonging to the set of broader concerns that animated his work from the beginning. See: https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/20...
July 17, 2020
After reading some of his other works, this seemed the least 'theatrical display of his ideas and some of the strongest of his arguments. His investigation into the efficiency of the myths of Polynesian sailors which enabled them to achieve what western science only much later is a good case for alternative methods of science. A good mind on the shortcomings of science science in general but for entirely different reasons than most anti-science stances. Well worth the read and quite talented as a writer of which his 'For and Against Method is another great example.
March 26, 2018
very interesting but quite complex specially at the end
September 4, 2018
Interesting book. Perhaps a bit dated as it relates to the Idealist vs. Realist debate, but some interesting perspectives of the pre-Socratics and Homer.
August 19, 2022
Refreshing
May 31, 2022
Abandonado.
La lectura de este libro se me ha hecho insoportable. El autor defiende un par de hipótesis interesantes:
1. Que el hombre micénico, (homérico), es decir las personas de la edad de bronce pertenecientes a la civilización griega que invadió Troya, no concebían al ser humano como un todo integral, sino como una serie de partes trabajando conjuntamente, como en un muñeco o marioneta. Y por supuesto que no era responsable de sus actos sino que todo comportamiento era producto de los dioses quienes manipulaban al sujeto. (Esta hipótesis no es completamente original, ya la había leído)
2. Que los mitos, no son solo historias para entretener o explicar algún fenómeno sino que son verdaderas bibliotecas de conocimiento, que a través de historias registraban (aunque fuese solo oralmente), procedimientos útiles, cierto saber, etc.
Puede que haya más hipótesis, propuestas pero solo recuerdo estas. Sin embargo el autor no muestra demasiadas evidencias para respaldar lo que propone. El libro no está estructurado siguiendo un discurso científico, sino que el autor habla de forma desordenada y suele irse por las ramas, perdiendo el hilo conductor y haciendo que el lector se pierda (al menos eso me pasó a mí)
La lectura de este libro se me ha hecho insoportable. El autor defiende un par de hipótesis interesantes:
1. Que el hombre micénico, (homérico), es decir las personas de la edad de bronce pertenecientes a la civilización griega que invadió Troya, no concebían al ser humano como un todo integral, sino como una serie de partes trabajando conjuntamente, como en un muñeco o marioneta. Y por supuesto que no era responsable de sus actos sino que todo comportamiento era producto de los dioses quienes manipulaban al sujeto. (Esta hipótesis no es completamente original, ya la había leído)
2. Que los mitos, no son solo historias para entretener o explicar algún fenómeno sino que son verdaderas bibliotecas de conocimiento, que a través de historias registraban (aunque fuese solo oralmente), procedimientos útiles, cierto saber, etc.
Puede que haya más hipótesis, propuestas pero solo recuerdo estas. Sin embargo el autor no muestra demasiadas evidencias para respaldar lo que propone. El libro no está estructurado siguiendo un discurso científico, sino que el autor habla de forma desordenada y suele irse por las ramas, perdiendo el hilo conductor y haciendo que el lector se pierda (al menos eso me pasó a mí)
April 4, 2017
Filosofía Natural es una obra inacabada y publicada póstumamente. Posiblemente el último regalo de un autor fascinante y provocador.
Feyerabend nos abre los ojos, sacudiéndonos el academicismo y las visiones comunes que se arrogan la verdad.
Un autor por el que todos habríamos de pasar alguna vez (Contra el método o La ciencia en una sociedad libre). Una medicina que no se prescribe para siempre, sino necesaria para curar el dogmatismo en pequeñas dosis.
Feyerabend abre un horizonte nuevo y radical a la búsqueda personal.
Pero Filosofía Natural se queda a medias.
Defiende el sentido y propiedad de otras visiones del mundo y muestra la utilidad y racionalidad de aproximaciones denostadas por el positivismo científico.
Sin embargo, a ratos no funciona y la exposición se atasca y encalla, varada en un mar de tecnicismos y de la jerga que él mismo odiaba.
Me deja un sabor agridulce y me invita a releer sus obras más famosas.
Feyerabend nos abre los ojos, sacudiéndonos el academicismo y las visiones comunes que se arrogan la verdad.
Un autor por el que todos habríamos de pasar alguna vez (Contra el método o La ciencia en una sociedad libre). Una medicina que no se prescribe para siempre, sino necesaria para curar el dogmatismo en pequeñas dosis.
Feyerabend abre un horizonte nuevo y radical a la búsqueda personal.
Pero Filosofía Natural se queda a medias.
Defiende el sentido y propiedad de otras visiones del mundo y muestra la utilidad y racionalidad de aproximaciones denostadas por el positivismo científico.
Sin embargo, a ratos no funciona y la exposición se atasca y encalla, varada en un mar de tecnicismos y de la jerga que él mismo odiaba.
Me deja un sabor agridulce y me invita a releer sus obras más famosas.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews