Protecting society from science

EXACTLY half a century ago, the great philosopher of science, Paul K. Feyerabend (1924-94), gave a historically prophetic talk to the Philosophy Society at Sussex University.

- RICHARD HOUSE

The talk was provocatively titled 'How to defend society against science', with Feyerabend speaking of the authoritarian nature of mainstream science long before such tendencies became recognised in mainstream culture.

Were he alive today, Feyerabend would surely be writing for The Light about the flagrant abuse of science evident in the course of the covid atrocity.

I first came across Feyerabend when studying the philosophy of science at university in 1976-7, shortly after his iconic 1975 book, Against Method: Towards an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, was published.

That book blew me (and many others) away, but only later did I discover his ultra-radical counter-cultural writings about the tyrannical inclinations of modern science. In Against Method, Feyerabend wrote that '[science] is not infallible and it has become too powerful, too pushy and too dangerous to be left on its own.' In his uber-critical 1974 presentation, Feyerabend made many claims that make for breathtaking reading today. Here are just a few sumptuous gems from that talk: 'I want to defend society and its inhabitants from all ideologies, science included. There is nothing inherent in science... that makes it essentially liberating... Science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight.

'Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilisation has to offer... Science has become rigid, [and] it has ceased to be an instrument of change and liberation... Modern science... inhibits freedom of thought....