Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend - Softcover

Feyerabend, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226245322 ISBN 13: 9780226245324

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1996

Synopsis

Killing Time is the story of Paul Feyerabend's life. Finished only weeks before his death in 1994, it is the self-portrait of one of this century's most original and influential intellectuals.

Trained in physics and astronomy, Feyerabend was best known as a philosopher of science. But he emphatically was not a builder of theories or a writer of rules. Rather, his fame was in powerful, plain-spoken critiques of "big" science and "big" philosophy. Feyerabend gave voice to a radically democratic "epistemological anarchism:" he argued forcefully that there is not one way to knowledge, but many principled paths; not one truth or one rationality but different, competing pictures of the workings of the world. "Anything goes," he said about the ways of science in his most famous book, Against Method. And he meant it.

Here, for the first time, Feyerabend traces the trajectory that led him from an isolated, lower-middle-class childhood in Vienna to the height of international academic success. He writes of his experience in the German army on the Russian front, where three bullets left him crippled, impotent, and in lifelong pain. He recalls his promising talent as an operatic tenor (a lifelong passion), his encounters with everyone from Martin Buber to Bertolt Brecht, innumerable love affairs, four marriages, and a career so rich he once held tenured positions at four universities at the same time.

Although not written as an intellectual autobiography, Killing Time sketches the people, ideas, and conflicts of sixty years. Feyerabend writes frankly of complicated relationships with his mentor Karl Popper and his friend and frequent opponent Imre Lakatos, and his reactions to a growing reputation as the "worst enemy of science."

About this title

Review

If you view the Philosophy professor as a stodgy old curmudgeon wrapped up in theories, and forever spouting eminently sensible nonsense, Paul Feyerabend's autobiography may change your view. Then again, it may not, because he held the same view himself. Iconoclast, non-conformist and brilliant philosopher, Feyerabend reveals his roots through unadorned, journalist-style prose -- his childhood in Vienna, his aspirations to sing opera, his stint in World War II as a German soldier, his time with Popper in London, his love affairs, marriage and even a little philosophy for good measure.

From the Back Cover

Finished only weeks before Paul Feyerabend's death in 1994, Killing Time is a self-portrait of one this century's most original and influential intellectuals. Writing about 'big' science and 'big' philosophy, his experience in the German army, his innumerable love affairs, and the controversy he regularly provoked.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0226245322
• ISBN 13: 9780226245324
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 203