Paul K. Feyerabend's Formative Years. The Feyerabend - Popper, Carnap, Kuhn, Watkins and Lakatos Correspondences
Final Report Abstract
The key findings of this project are discussed at length in the substantial research paper that resulted from it, which is directly based on the three volumes of previously unpublished archival material that were collected (from archives all over the world), transcribed and edited in the course of the project. See Feyerabend’s Formative Years, Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3, ca. 1350 pages. Volumes 1 and 2 are currently under consideration for publication by The University of Chicago Press. Collodel provides an overview of the many accounts of Feyerabend and Popper’s relation that have been proposed. He then disentangles the problems they deal with and analyzes the evidence supporting their conclusions as well as their different methodological approaches. The paper proceeds to tackle the question: ‘Was Feyerabend a Popperian?’ by reconstructing the social context within which Feyerabend’s intellectual trajectory developed, putting a special emphasis on the interplay between the perceived intellectual identity of Feyerabend, Feyerabend’s own intellectual self-concept, and the peculiar features of the evolving Popperian research group. The first two volumes of collected archival material include several previously unpublished early papers by Feyerabend; two previously unpublished papers by Popper; the complete surviving Feyerabend-Popper correspondence; a corrected, reordered and extended version of the Feyerabend-Kuhn correspondence; the Feyerabend-Hempel correspondence; and an unpublished paper by renowned physicist David Bohm – too name a few of the highlights in the wealth of material collected, edited and completed in the first two volumes. A number of important deviations became necessary or otherwise appropriate due to the discovery of a substantial amount of further relevant materials. This not only required a revision of the project plans for visits to archives, but eventually led to a complete reshaping of the planned output of the project from two to three volumes. By the beginning of 2012 it became clear that the entire set of three volumes could not be completed within the projects time limit and all efforts were put towards completing Volumes 1 and 2 within the time frame of the project. As a consequence, Volume 1 is finished and is under consideration for publication. Volume 2 is also finished and under consideration for publication (except for the introduction, whose structure will depend on whether it is published together with Volume 1 or separately). The main text for Volume 3 has been drafted. It could serve as a material basis for a follow-up project, as substantial work still needs to be done before it would be ready for publication. In addition, the material basis for another potential project (to produce a collection of Feyerabend’s unpublished autobiographical reflections as Inside Feyerabend) was acquired from Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend in the course of implementing this project.
Publications
- (2016) “Was Feyerabend a Popperian? Methodological issues in the History of the Philosophy of Science”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A Volume 57: 27–56
Collodel, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.08.004)
