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How can we possibly test, or improve upon the truth of a theory if it is built in such a manner then any conceivable event can be described, and explained, in terms of its principles? The only way of investigating such all-embracing principles would be to compare them with a different set of equally all embracing principles- but this procedure has been excluded from the very beginning.

— Paul Karl Feyerabend Against Method (1975)

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More quotes by Paul Karl Feyerabend

Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.

Against Method (1975)

A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power.

Science in a Free Society (1978)

In a war a totalitarian state has a free hand.

Science in a Free Society (1978)

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)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paul Karl Feyerabend (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.