Paul Feyerabend Quotes

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.

One of Kuhn's marvellous legacies is science studies as we know it today.

The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.

Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there.

I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science.

I had then and still retain an interest in science for its own sake and as a metaphor for our current lives.

To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

Science has become something that everybody knows he has to pay attention to, but not everybody is a believer. So I don't think we should equate science with religion. But, that science is progressively playing a more and more important part in the life of every individual is obvious.

Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.

If one looks at the works of Newton to Einstein, they were never scientists in the way modernity understands the term.

I think that we scientists are seeking an understanding of the natural world. We come in various types - chemists and physicists and biologists and such - and we all have the same goal. We are making progress.

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.

We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.

The word scientist was coined in 1834, as the sciences were becoming professionalized and specialized

To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

Many of my friends are scientists.

Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.

Science is not ... a perfect instrument, but it is a superb and invaluable tool that works harm only when taken as an end in itself.

Science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

Epistemology has always been affected by technologies like the telescope and the microscope, things that have created a radical shift in how we sense physical reality.