Reawakening to wonder

Abstract

This chapter reconstructs Feyerabend's anti-scientism by comparing it with the similar criticisms of one of his main philosophical influences - Ludwig Wittgenstein. The scholarship exploring Wittgenstein's influence on Feyerabend is largely focused on issues concerning meaning and language, orthogonal to the author's theme of scientism. A central theme of Wittgenstein's later writings is the dependence of our actions, beliefs and language in form of life or a picture of the world. An obvious criterion for criticism of a world-picture or form of life is that it obscures truths about the nature of reality. Both Wittgenstein and Feyerabend, however, rule out this possibility. Throughout their writings, Wittgenstein and Feyerabend target a variety of specific forms of scientism, within philosophy, science and society, but these are all rooted in the dominance of a scientific picture of the world of which they are deeply critical. The chapter suggests that Wittgenstein and Feyerabend can be seen to share a common doctrine of anti-scientism.