Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:46:07 -0800
Subject: PKF: Re: Feyerabend


>Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:09:05 -0800
>To: "Russell Sears" <siv9_-AT-hotmail.com>
>From: Terry Bristol <bristol-AT-isepp.org>
>Subject: Re: Feyerabend
>Cc:
>Bcc:
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>
>>At present I am working on a philosophy of science essay -
>>
>>Is Feyerabends "anarchism" self defeating?
>
>Keep in mind that PKF's anarchism is self-referentially paradoxical.  In
>other words the notion that "anything goes" includes, as one option,
>precisely the opposite position - namely fascism, meaning any intolerant
>ideological position.
>
>In some sense then PKF's position is not a position at all.  It allows
>everything.
>
>Historically, however, we observe that no society ever succeeded itself as
>the leader of a scientific and techno-economic era.  This suggests that
>specific "ways of doing things" (approaches to problem solving) become
>instantiated in the structure of a society.  "Look at how successful we
>have been!  And now YOU suggest this new way of doing things that doesn't
>make any sense in terms of the way WE accomplished our tremendous
>advances."
>
>The successful era doesn't expect new advances to be "incommensurable" (a
>big word meaning "different" - so different that they are "revolutionary"
>(Kuhn)).
>
>The successful form a network of relationships that tend to suppress the
>new ideas - the new ways of doing things.
>
>These "successful" people and their progeny then become the fascists.  And
>it is these people that PKF opposed.  His initial anarchism was simple and
>not self-referentially paradoxical.  It was pointing out that since
>advances tend (often but not always) to be revolutionary or
>incommensurable (that's what make them "new"), the established system will
>tend to suppress the emerging new systems.
>
>Therefore, the "self-defeating" strategy is the fascist strategy.  These
>societies stop and collapse in on themselves.  The new ideas and ways of
>doing things find soil in other societies.  (The scientific and
>technological advances that were really created in Britain only came to
>fruition in the United States.) This is why no society has ever succeeded
>itself as a leader in these enterprises:  the successful form
>relationships that control resources (that they created) and
>unintentionally suppress the emergence of the new.
>
>PKF's anarchism is designed to open things up.  In this sense it solves
>the "self-defeating" ways of the fascists.
>
>One can argue however that a totally unbridled anarchism
>(non-self-referential; i.e. not allowing any fascist periods) would be
>self-defeating for complementary reasons - viz. no stability, insufficient
>bias to allow a program to find its best solutions, before being replaced
>or undermined.  Imagine a new TYPE of solution to some problem being tried
>every few days, months, years.  Too much innovation CAN be self-defeating
>as well.  Although I think one is hard pressed to point to any significant
>historical examples of overly open and innovative societies.
>
>(All real examples are mixed.)
>
>But PKF's real point is to educate EVERYONE about how the history of
>problem solving is "emergent".
>
>NOTICE that if the establish crowd is AWARE that the new things are often
>incommensurable and  if they are interested in the advance of society in
>general or humanity (rather than just themselves) then they will tend to
>develop a society that a) allows new things that don't seems to make sense
>(in terms of the current ways of thinking) to be tried (viz. Pericles'
>Athens described itself this way about allowing products/ideas into their
>marketplace regardless of origin; anti-tariff policy);  or b) actively
>encourage same.
>
>This latter policy is alive and well in most modern industrialized
>countries.  In the U.S. the science grants policy specifically attempts to
>provide generous five year grants to young unproven researchers.  Although
>one might question exactly how these young researchers are choosen.
>
>New Research Programs are still difficult to launch.
>
>Another important area is entrepreneurial financing - the financing of new
>upstart technology companies.  Establshed companies are not always
>interested in new products hitting the marketplace.  Competition is likely
>to undermine there established position.  If those established companies
>are tightly networked with banking and finance interests then the tendency
>to finance new ways of doing things can be "overly conservative"
>(fascist).  PKF's theme about how progress occurs in history applies to
>technological development as much as to scientific.
>
>But again keep in mind that too much competition or a lack of common
>(enforced?) standards (viz. money, computers operating systems (Windows
>98), etc.) makes it impossible to build anything in a cumulative fashion.
>Imagine everyone with a different currency; untranslatable,
>unexchangeable), or every programmer working in a different programming
>language.  Enforced social universals are obviously in everyone's interest
>-- BUT, paradoxically, only (in the long-run) in so far as they allow more
>individual (non-universal) activity.
>
>Hegel and others have suggested that the new ways of doing things are
>often complementary to the established ways of doing things.  Perhaps the
>rise of one way of doing things --  over time -- prepares the soil for the
>emeregnce of a sort of complementary (incommensurable) way of bringing
>value into the world.  In other words if the "revolutions" are somehow
>complementary then this picture might start to look like dialectical
>materialism (Marx and Engels).  I believe that PKF was receptive to this
>idea but then realized that dialectical materialism (unless
>self-referentially paradoxical) was potentially fascistic as well (viz.
>USSR?) i.e. such that people (in power in the central committee) felt they
>could tell everyone else what the next advance would be; and
>control/engineer its coming to be (suppressing other proposals).
>
>This is where PKF became a strong advocate of the self-referentially
>paradoxical version of "anything goes".  BBC Science Journalist James
>Burke (Connections, The Day the Universe Changed) suggested that PFK's
>ideal society would have a "balance" between the fascists and the
>anarchists.  I agree as long as this is a dynamic balance -- allowing
>occasional periods where each totally dominates.  But this dynamic balance
>is only possible -- sustainable -- if the people in the society understand
>that the paradoxical position is the only reasonable position.
>
>Someone once expressed to me that the best articulation to date of the
>appropriate PKF attitude was what he called the "parliamentary attitude"
>-- where the opposition is the "loyal opposition".  You have your ideas
>about how things should be done, but accept at the same time that others
>with other (incommensurable) ideas and even different concepts of what the
>important problems are, might actually have either a piece of the solution
>or indeed a better approach altogether.  You may be right but you accept
>as a matter of course that your position is inherently incomplete (does
>not contain all truth/understanding).
>
>T.S. Eliot:  "The only wisdom is the wisdom of humility.  And humility is
>endless."
>
>A possible, advanced position might be where one accepts that there is a
>yin-yang dynamic between approaches to problems.  Here one imagines that
>the successes of individualistic (anarchistic) policies prepare the
>way/situation for the next phase of socialistic polices.  And likewise a
>period of good socialistic solutions creates the opportunity for a new
>explosion of individualistic activity.  In other words the successes of
>the opposition create new opportunities for your (the opposite) approach.
>This imagines that a constructive, "win-win" relation is possible between
>these otherwise paradoxical, frequently (historically) antagonistic
>meta-policies (viz. fasicsm/anarchism, individualism/socialism) concerned
>with "how we should live".
>
>Consider this copyrighted.
>Terry Bristol
>But you might get some ideas.  Thanks for the opportunity to write these
>ideas down.
>
>


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