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Title: For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence by Imre Lakatos, Paul K. Feyerabend, Matteo Motterlini ISBN: 0-226-46775-9 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Title is Misleading, but Entertaining Nonetheless.
Comment: This book looked very promising. After all, anyone whose read either Feyerabend or Lakatos knows that they had geared up to write, "For and Against Method" cut short by Lakatos's death. We've read "Against Method", just never the "For..". This book was to be our chance!
Why 'was'? Well, the correspondence that takes up most of this book is funny, personal, warm and caring. If you're looking for clarification of the thinkers, look elsewhere. Each letter will start "Dearest Imre/Paul, I just got your last article and am going to send you one of mine. Let's get together in Boston next week. By the way, I've something nasty to say about Popper/Kuhn/Searle. Take care, Imre/Paul." Not very insightful. To be sure, these letters ARE EXTREMELY ENTERTAINING and insightful into each thinker's personality. For instance, from reading this, it is easy to see that a large reason Feyarabend was a scientific 'anarchist' is because he loved to disagree with everyone and taking sides meant he had to agree with someone, thus spoil his devilish fun. In Lakatos, I see someone who wished he could be Feyerabend but could never shake that bugbear called common sense. As I said - insightful into each personality, not each philosophy.
There were, however, other parts of the book. The most educational was the opening dialogue (actually written by Matteo Matterlinski) where Feyerabend and Lakatos lay out their views and criticize the other's. Next, we have the Lakatos lectures which spend 7/8ths of the time reviewing other people's views and only then explaining his own (very badly, I may add). The two appendices were interesting. Lakatos and Feyerabend wrote on their views towards academic freedom. As one may expect, Lakatos is the more conservative here.
Still, I must give three stars as the correspondence was a treat to read. It will have you laughing, shaking your head and oddly enough, coming away with HUGE amounts of respect for both thinkers as their playful intellectual jabs at eachother and willingness to be on the recieving, as well as the giving, end, exemplify how all sciences should conduct themselves.
Rating: 5
Summary: a glimpse of what could've been....
Comment: This book is an excellent introduction to the two great philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. In the enlightening and lucid lectures, Imre Lakatos comes off as the established logician whose views on the philosophy of science is marvelously comprehensible and original, and serves as a springboard for the correspondence. What surprised me was the natural humor and gaiety in the letters, that they promised to annihilate one another in the joint efforts at a book, and yet they could not stop talking about the women in their lives. In a way, the book is also an autobiography, a profile of the two proud and brilliant men and serves as an inside peek at their relationship. Kudos to the editors of this book. I recommend reading this book in order to get your feet wet before tackling on Lakatos' other books and Feyerabend's Against Method.
Rating: 3
Summary: an amusing and instructive book
Comment: The most valuable part of the book is the first one, a collection of conferences where Lakatos wittily explains the shortcomings and inconsistencies of Popper's methodology of science, and develops his own views on scientific progress and rationality. The style is vivid. Lakatos apparently cannot avoid disparaging Popper every minute, and actually depicts him as a slobbering fool. I think this is psychologically explainable as a consequence of Popper's not having recognized any of Lakatos's criticisms of his views on empirical science. Lakatos had the dream of renewing popperism by subjecting it to a "hegelian" refutation, i.e. one which simply shows a view as merely initial and which needs a self-movement towards something richer. But Popper saw things differently, and spurned his disciple's heretic proposals. Lakatos must have been hurt by this. [Note: Lakatos' general criticisms of Popper's philosophy might be correct; but there are some points of detail in which he is wrong: for instance, when he says that Popper's analysis of the relations between Kepler's and Newton's laws added nothing to Duhem's treatment of this issue].
The Lakatos-Feyerabend correspondence is interesting. These were surely very special guys. Feyerabend, strange as it may seem, stands out as the meeker of the two; for Lakatos is pure cunning. Their exchange of opinions and invectives over Feyerabend's "Against Method" are worth reading ("Against Method" is worth reading along with this book, as a matter of fact).
Feyerabend compares the trio Popper-Lakatos-Feyerabend with Kant-Hegel-Lenin. I guess Popper himself might have thought this comparison quite fair.
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Title: Against Method by Paul Feyerabend ISBN: 0860916464 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1 : Philosophical Papers by Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie ISBN: 0521280311 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 16 October, 1980 List Price(USD): $42.00 |
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Title: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn ISBN: 0226458083 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Routledge Classics) by Karl Raimund Popper ISBN: 0415285941 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Volume 4 : Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, 1965 by Imre Lakatos, Alan Musgrave ISBN: 0521096235 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 02 September, 1970 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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