Feyerabend Against Method 1993

1
Feyerabend Against Method 1993

• Science as Anarchy
• More humanitarian
• More likely to encourage progress
• History full of accidents and curious
  juxtapositions
• History of science contains
• Ideas
• Interpretations of facts
• Conflicting interpretations
• mistakes

2
Consistency condition

• Demands new hypotheses agree with accepted
  theories
• Unreasonable preserves older, not better theory
• Proliferation of theories beneficial
• Uniformity impairs critical power
• Uniformity endangers free development of the
  individual
• Feyerabend on Rationalists
• Narrow minded philosophical interference
• Narrow minded extension of the latest scientific
  fashions

3
Tower Argument

• Aristotelians used the tower argument to refute
  the idea that the earth was in motion
• Galileo Observation shows that heavy
  bodiesfalling down from on high, go by a
  straight and vertical line to the surface of the
  earth. This is considered an irrefutable
  argument for the earth being motionless. For if
  it made a diurnal rotation, a tower from whose
  top a rock has let fall, being carried by the
  whirling of the earth, would travel many hundreds
  of yards to the east in the time the rock would
  consume in its fall, and the rock ought to strike
  the earth that distance away from the base of the
  tower.

4
Tendency to Fit Observations to Theory

• Newton showed that much of Ptolemys data
  manufactured to fit his model
• Science today requires consulting with peers
  before going public (peer review)
• AMA attitude toward lay practitioners
• Church attitude toward lay interpreters

5
Point

• Accidental encounters lead to progress, not
  well-planned trains of thought
• What counts in public debate are not arguments,
  but ways of presenting ones case
• Need to question dogma

6
Hermeneutics

• Understanding
• in fields of intersubjectivity
• where interpretive effort is required
• the investigation of meaning

7
Roots

• Schleiermacher - theology, philosophy
• Dilthey - history, biography
• Heidegger - ontology
• Gadamer - iterative mental model
• Philosophical Hermeneutics 1976
• Truth and Method 1999

8
Literature

• Understand the true meaning of contents
• We can understand only in context
• can understand a text better when it is in the
  authors own language( Nabokov Cervantes)
• understand authors unconscious meaning
• can transcend what the author meant
• Bergson Language is the ice of words covering
  over the living stream

9
Jurisprudence

• Judge seeks to be correct - not arbitrary
• we come to understand the universal through the
  particular situations and instances of
  understanding
• Concretizing the law
• judgment required for correct evaluation of
  specific case
• Rules for filling gaps in codified law

10
Art

• Art possesses truth
• purely subjective
• Not the universal, but internal coherence is what
  matters
• Not necessarily what the artist meant
• Rather what the viewer perceives

11
Hermeneutic Circle

• We must understand the whole in light of detail,
  and detail in light of the whole
• Schliermacher subjective objective sides
• book belongs to authors works,
• also to literary genre
• focus on the small parts, place into larger
  context

12
Mingers

• Combining IS Research Methods
• Towards a Pluralist Methodology
• ISR 123, 2001, 240-259

13
IS Research Paradigms

• Orlikowski Baroudi 1991
• Positivist
• Interpretivist
• Critical
• Ngwenyama Lee 1997
• Habermas the basis

14
Uniformity?

• Benbasat Weber 1996
• Need uniformity within IS
• Robey 1996
• Diversity a positive source of strength
• Mingers
• Different research methods focus on different
  aspects of reality combine
• Lyytinen Klein 1985 join hermeneutic
  empirical-analytic

15
Conclusions

• Need pluralist approach in IS research
• In designing methodology for any study, consider
  different dimensions Material, social, personal
• Consider different tasks
• Consider research context
• Need more research on cognitive cultural
  obstacles to multimethod research
• Alternative theoretical frameworks for
  multimethod design are needed
• Cognitive psychological characteristics of
  individuals important in selecting methodologies
• A lot of multimethod research is already being
  undertaken but not yet published