Realism and the historicity of knowlegde

REALISM AND THE HISTORICITY OF KNOWLEGDE

Paul Feyerabend, 1989

First assumption: Theories, facts and procedures are the results of idiosyncratic historical developments (they are bound to temporal variables). Cultural and historical factors, not empirical adequacy, determined the survival of the one statement (theory) and disappearance of the other. Each experimental fact to depend on compromises between different groups with different experiences, different philosophies and different bits of high theory to support their position.

Second assumption or separability assumption: the obtained results or the statements founds exists independently of the circumstances of its discovery (discovery of America). The phenomena happen without the necessity to describe them. They are loose to our observations and interpretations.

The power of science: the science cannot to explain all of phenomena. The science can be bound to subjectivity.

Forms to analyze the reality:

Dogmatism: to continue describing the world in accordance with one´s own pet metaphysics.
Instrumentalist, they drops the second assumption (separability), but they not drop it absolutely.
relativism: atoms exist given the conceptual framework that projects them.

Scientist are sculptors of reality, but they not merely act causally upon the world; they also create semantic conditions engendering strong inferences from known effects to novel projections and, conversely, from the projections to testable effects.