From: "Kenneth Allen Hopf" <khopf-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: RE: PKF: On Liking Popper AND Feyerabend ...
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 20:00:26 -0800



Well .. I didn't expect my post to produce such a flurry of responses.
Of those who expressed an opinion about what I said, it seems to me
that David Geelan is pretty much on target.  

I don't think that my assessment of Popper is nothing more than a
subjective value judgment, and I don't think that Kuhn has superseded
either Popper or Feyerabend, though I do think that Kuhn has gotten an
awful lot more attention than Popper or Feyerabend.  Horgan's discussion of
Popper is utterly wretched.  In fact, his whole book is wretched ... a
piece of hack work if I ever saw one.  The man is a bleeding nincompoop.  

Everyone here surely realizes that Feyerabend in some sense was one of
Popper's students.  I think that Feyerabend is a Popper derivative to a
much greater extent than Feyerabend ever would have admitted.  The
situation between Popper and Feyerabend reminds me of the situation between
Wagner and many other composers shortly before the end of the 19th century.
Wagner had such a convincing and powerful way of writing that others were
often just smothered by his influence.  What you get in a situation like
that is often a kind of love/hate relationship: one cannot help but admire
the man for his genius, but at the same time one is resentful because one's
own voice gets drowned out as a result.

My speculation is that something like this happened to Feyerabend in his
reaction to Popper.  He *had* to get away, and write all sorts of
ridiculous criticisms of Popper, or risk losing his own personality and
distinctive voice.  I admire Feyerabend, but with Popper one can only stand
in awe.  I realize that John Fox and plenty of others don't agree with
this.  But I think we're a long way from seeing the final verdict on
Popper.  I suspect that, as the 20th century recedes, Popper will tower
above it.  He's not the minor gadfly that so many would have us believe.
The thing is ... you've got to actually read what he wrote, and really
think about it, to get any sense of what I'm talking about.  My general
impression is that the vast majority of Popper's critics haven't actually
done this.
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