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Feyerabend's Epistemological Anarchism: How Science Works and its Importance for Science Education
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Feyerabend's Epistemological Anarchism: How Science Works and its Importance for Science Education
Current price: $109.99
Barnes and Noble
Feyerabend's Epistemological Anarchism: How Science Works and its Importance for Science Education
Current price: $109.99
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Most science curricula and textbooks provide the following advice to students: Do not allow theories in contradiction with observations, and all scientific theories must be formulated inductively based on experimental facts. Feyerabend questioned this widely prevalent premise of science education in most parts of the world, and in contrast gave the following advice: Scientistscan accept a hypothesis despite experimental evidence to the contrary and scientific theories are not always consistent with all the experimental data. No wonder Feyerabend became a controversial philosopher and was considered to be against rationalism and anti-science. Recent research in philosophy of science, however, has shown that most of Feyerabend´s philosophical ideas are in agreement with recent trends in the 21
century. Of the 120 articles from science education journals, evaluated in this book only 9% recognized that Feyerabend was presenting a plurality of perspectives based on how science really works. Furthermore, it has been shown that Feyerabend could even be considered as a perspectival realist. Among other aspects, Feyerabend emphasized that in order to look for breakthroughs in science one does not have to be complacent about the truth of the theories but rather has to look for opportunities to “break rules” or “violate categories.”
Calvin Kalman, Concordia University, Canada
David Geelan, Griffith University, Australia