[aredox]

An interesting book for pointing out that actual scientific progress sometimes doesn't follow strict methodology (see e.g. Mendel's approximations). Alas, like most writing from the 60's/70's, it overstates its case through heavy sophistry that may go well with polemists and (pseudo-science) hacks, but not in real life.

[cscheid]

Yeah, I mostly agree.

I would put it slightly differently, and I honestly don't know if I'm being kinder or not. I'd say that in this book, Feyerabend is being a troll. He's out to get a reaction out of you more than to argue in great faith. In my view it's actually to the detriment of his point.

I'm still happy I read it, but I think it's one of those finicky, "meso-scale" ideas that's useful, but doesn't apply at very small or very large scales. It's also interesting that it came out a good decade after moral particularism came out, and it feels to me that his principle is "simply" methodological particularism.

[tgv]

Sophistry unfortunately didn't die in the 70s, but it's not a bad book, IIRC. It's ages ago that I read it, but it does take a very formal, undergrad-philosophy-of-science model as the one and true model, which everybody religiously adheres to. Pedantic might be a better predicate. Which is odd, now that I think about it, because you can't really be pedantic without believing you know the truth.

[mistermann]

One can certainly be accused or perceived as being pedantic without thinking oneself to know the truth though, or actually being pedantic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics