Dear Anthony,

I agree with you about Feyerabend's aims, and the importance of those aims,
and I would add that he writes vividly on the topic.  But the problem is, I
think, that he overshoots the mark.  It is one thing to point out in
retrospect that, in the complexity of human affairs, deception and political
interference might have occasionally produced positive results.  Quite
another to endorse their legitimacy going forward.  But F does do this. 
Against Method p. 195 ‘deception is necessary for advancing it’ (science); 
p. 216  ‘political interference is necessary’ (to science) etc.

The important thing note here I think is that F seems to have come to
similar conclusions himself.  He wrote 'Killing Time' on his deathbed,
(dying of cancer), and said: (p. 179)

‘One of my motives for writing Against Method was to free people from the
tyranny of philosophical obfuscators and abstract concepts such as “truth”,
“reality”, or “objectivity”, which narrow people's vision and ways of being
in the world. Formulating what I thought were my own attitude and
convictions, I unfortunately ended up by introducing concepts of similar
rigidity, such as “democracy”, “tradition”, or “relative truth”.'

It remains my view that things quite close to deception and political
interference are rife in studies of monetary history, and that this is a
‘bad thing’.

yours sincerely

Rob

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From:         Anthony Waterman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: "Inside Job" and code of ethics for economists

Dear Rob, 

Thank you for your answer. I think that to say that Feyerabend claimed that
'science benefits from political interference, and from dishonesty, and is
on a par with myth' is to misrepresent F's purpose in AM. Perhaps we can
find passages here and there that are consistent with that interpretation
(though I have just spent half an hour with my own copy of AM and haven't
found them). But it seems to me that what F is trying to tell us is that we
can't lay down in advance any hard and fast procedures for deciding whether
'knowledge' has been obtained in some particular case; that in fact
scientists don't work that way; that much history of science has indeed been
myth, and myth with an ideological axe to grind, such as the notorious
Galileo vs Church episode; that we can occasionally find examples of
political interference in the scientific enterprise which has had benign
effects; and perhaps most importantly, that human intellectual activity is
larger and more comprehensive than any disciplinary specialization can
contain -- that what we call 'science', 'religion', 'art', 'politics',
'philosophy', 'magic' etc. may be convenient abstractions for some local
purposes, but must never be taken too seriously. For to lock ourselves up in
any of these may be to stultify thought. 

Yours sincerely, 

Anthony