Against Method : Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge

Ex-library. Library stamps and markings, including barcode label on front panel of dust-jacket. Dust-jacket in plastic cover, taped to boards. One leaf of the "Analytical Index" (pages 15-16) is missing, and has been replaced with a photocopied facsimile leaf with adhesive tape at the inner margins. A good working or reading copy.; Second printing, August 1975 (in same year as the first edition). 339, [1 (blank)] pages. [1 leaf (pp.15-16) supplied in facsimile]. Grey boards with silver lettering on spine and front board. Silver publisher's emblem in corner of front board. Page dimensions: 208 x 135mm. This second printing was printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone (Printers) Ltd. This second printing has, added beneath the blurb on the front flap of the dust-jacket, five quotes from reviews of "Against Method". The double title page also lists both the UK and USA publishers - London: NLB and Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. An important work in the philosophy of science. "The following essay is written in the conviction that anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science." - from the Introduction, page 17. "Modern philosophy of science has paid great attention to an understanding of scientific practice, in contrast to the earlier concentration on 'scientific method'. The work of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos has provided varying accounts of what this practice is. Paul Feyerabend goes beyond this position: he argues that the most successful scientific inquiries have never proceeded according to a rational method at all. He examines in detail the arguments which Galileo used to defend the Copernican revolution in physics, and shows that this success depended not on rational argument but on a mixture of subterfuge, rhetoric and propaganda. His conclusion: 'Galileo cheated'. Claiming that anarchism must now replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge, Feyerabend argues that intellectual progress can only be achived by stressing the creativity and wishes of the scientist rather than the method and authority of science. In the latter half of the book he examines Popper's 'critical rationalism', and the attempt by Lakatos to construct a methodology which allows the scientist his freedom without threatening scientific 'law and order'. Rejecting both attempts to shore up rationalism he looks forward to the 'withering away of reason' and maintains that 'the only principle which does not inhibit progress is 'anything goes'." - from dust-jacket blurb. "A devastating attack on the claims of philosophy of science to legislate for scientific practice.' - New Society review, quoted on dust-jacket. "Feyerabend's excellent book will be as stimulating to this decade as Kuhn's was to the last." - Tribune review, quoted on dust-jacket. [References: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online), "Paul Feyerabend" accessed November 2020 - "Instead of the volume written jointly with Lakatos, Feyerabend put together his tour de force, the book version of 'Against Method' (London: New Left Books, 1975), which he sometimes conceived of as a letter to Lakatos (to whom the book is dedicated). A more accurate description, however, is the one given in his autobiography: 'AM is not a book, it is a collage. It contains descriptions, analyses, arguments that I had published, in almost the same words, ten, fifteen, even twenty years earlier [. . .] I arranged them in a suitable order, added transitions, replaced moderate passages with more outrageous ones, and called the result “anarchism”. I loved to shock people [. . .]'"].…