26 quotes
Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.
Against Method (1975)
First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.
Against Method (1975)
Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
Against Method (1975)
The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.
Against Method (1975)
At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.
Against Method (1975)
Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.
Against Method (1975)
Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.
Against Method (1975)
The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.
Against Method (1975)
Theories are abandoned and superseded by more fashionable accounts long before they have had an opportunity to show their virtues.
Against Method (1975)
This is how empirical "evidence" may be created by a procedure which quotes as its justification the very same evidence it has Produced.
Against Method (1975)
No single theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain
Against Method (1975)
The assertion...that there is no knowledge outside science – extra scientiam nulla salus – is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale.
Against Method (1975)
Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.
Against Method (1975)
Without a constant misuse of language, there cannot be any discovery, any progress.
Against Method (1975)
These are the assumptions we must make to give the questions the polemical force they are supposed to have. Not a single one of them stands up to closer examination.
Against Method (1975)
My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.
Against Method (1975)
An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice, and so on).
Against Method (1975)
Its "success" is entirely man-made.
Against Method (1975)
Counter-induction is... both a fact—science could not exist without it—and a legitimate and much needed move in the game of science.
Against Method (1975)
Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it.
Against Method (1975)