I haven't had much motivation to write lately. Not sure why. I have, however, had plenty motivation to read. Among the books I've been reading are Richard Feynman's The Meaning of It All and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.
I've read three or four of Feynman's books before. This one is a collection of three lectures on science, religion, and philosophy. The lectures are transcriptions. And it shows; they're not very well written. But there are lots of Feynman's always-interesting anecdotes used to illustrate abstract ideas. I like this argument style a lot--although I can follow abstract arguments, I don't have a lot of faith in them to demonstrate anything important. Only when they're woven together with concrete examples do I really pay attention to the conclusions. Like Feynman, my allegiance lies with empiricism, not rationalism.
The book itself is most interesting for its exposition of science and scientific thinking. The main idea is that there's... not a method, exactly, but a set of values intrinsic to scientific thinking. These values are crucially important for truth-seeking, and they ought to be better respected, but truth-seeking isn't the only important thing in the world. Values themselves, for example, can't be discovered by the scientist. And values, of course, are valuable. Feynman, by his own admission, is not a philosopher, and some of his arguments are dubious, but they're all thought-provoking.
Feyerbend's book is a polemic on the philosophy of science, written by a philosopher. The thesis is interesting: Feyerbend argues for methodological "anarchy" in epistemology and science. The actual evidence to support the thesis isn't very impressive, however. There are too many controversial claims with too few--or zero!--specific citations to back them up. For that reason, it's hard to accept the claims of a philosopher about science over the views of an actual physicist--and a highly respected one at that. But don't take my word for it. Feynman wouldn't want you to.
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I think you should read Feyerabend a little closer. His position is much closer to the one you ascribe to Feynman (science as a set of values) than you realize. See Robert P. Farrell's wonderful book Feyerabend and Scientific Values for more info.
Feyerabend also makes it pretty clear that he isn't arguing for epistemological anarchy. He lays out his book's thesis pretty well in chapter 2 (p. 23): "to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits." He also makes it clear in the preface that "...'anything goes' is not a 'principle' I hold ... but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history." In other words, he isn't arguing FOR epistemological anarchy, rather he is arguing that if a person insists on some universal method for science then the only method he or she will find is "anything goes." This was meant to serve a reductio ad absurdum against people who claim there is a universal method because "anything goes" is basically not a method.
Fair enough. I got frustrated by the lack of evidence and citations and probably didn't read him as closely as I ought to have. (To be fair, though, he does call his book a polemic, not a rigorous analysis). Still, he seems to carve out a position more extreme than, say, Quine, or the other, more moderate Kuhnians. Would you agree that that's a fair characterization? (Ironically, I've packed away some of my books, including that one, so I can't make specific references. Sorry!).
I'll keep your recommendation in mind, by the way.
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