Anarchist Epistemologies and the Separation of Science and State: The Critique and Relevance of Paul Feyerabend to Educational Foundations

Abstract

This article synthesizes Paul Feyerabend's controversial contributions to 20th-century philosophy of science through the synthesis of his works and the secondary literature, with specific foci on current trends in educational foundations and the potentials and pitfalls for applying Feyerabendian logics to our work. First, I situate his strains of thought within 20th-century philosophy of science contributions from Popper, Lakatos, and Kuhn. Drawing on this explication, the second section pushes against the primary misconception/controversy regarding Feyerabend as a science-hater. In reality, his contributions promote a pluralistic methodology, termed by Feyerabend (1975) as “anarchist epistemologies,” whereby (a) knowledge seekers draw from scientific methodologies and other traditions to develop competing theories and (b) they adjudicate the best methods to move forward as they seek knowledge and/or solve problems. In the third section, I tease out Feyerabend's complicated relationship to anarchism, where, on the one hand, he himself denounced political anarchism and, on the other, Feyerabend committed to anarchism by using its theory to discuss knowledge production and the role of science in society. Finally, a concluding discussion makes more explicit the specific relevance of these arguments to trends in educational foundations.