Agreed that F. sometimes exaggerated. And if it is really the case that 
'deception and political interference are rife in studies of monetary 
history'
agreed that this is a bad thing.

A.


On 22/10/2011 5:00 AM, Rob Tye wrote:
> 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
>
>