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Irish Theological Quarterly

DOI: 10.1177/0021140008098846 2009; 74; 89 Irish Theological Quarterly

Thomas J. Hickey Understanding Feyerabend on Galileo

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Irish Theological Quarterly74 (2009) 89–92

© 2009 Irish Theological QuarterlySage Publications, Los Angeles, London,

New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DCDOI: 10.1177/0021140008098846

89

Understanding Feyerabend on GalileoThomas J. HickeyRiver Forest, Illinois

In 1990, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger used Feyerabend’s analysis of Galileo to illustratemodernism’s complacency about science. Feyerabend had used Galileo’s writings to illus-trate some limitations of empirical science. He claimed further that Galileo practised‘counterinduction’ to create a new observation language.

KEYWORDS: counterinduction, Feyerabend, Galileo, McMullin, Ratzinger

In his ‘Quoting Feyerabend on Galileo’ Ernan McMullin is critical of aspeech that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) had

given in 1990, in which the Cardinal invoked the views of three writersthat included Paul Feyerabend’s philosophical analysis of Galileo’s conflictwith Pope Urban VIII.1 Feyerabend was an iconoclastic philosopher of sci-ence whose theatrical rhetoric and unorthodox ideas made him an easytarget for caricature by his scandalized critics. Certainly not everything inhis philosophy will endure, but Feyerabend has original and valid philo-sophical insights into Galileo.

Philosophers have noted that eminently successful scientists have attimes disregarded falsifying evidence and, to the dismay of many,Feyerabend justified such an apparently irrational practice, since he sawit as a productive strategy in what he termed a ‘pluralistic methodology.’2His philosophy contains two basic principles. They are the principle oftenacity and the principle of theory proliferation. He defines tenacity as:

The advice to select from a number of theories the one that prom-ises to lead to the most fruitful results, and to stick to this

1. Ernan McMullin, ‘Quoting Feyerabend on Galileo,’ Irish Theological Quarterly 73(2008):164–173. Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Crisis of Faith in Science,’ in A Turning Point in Europe:The Church and Modernity in the Europe of Upheavals (Rome: Paoline, 1992), 76–79.Translated by National Catholic Reporter: www.ncrcafe.org (accessed September 15, 2008).2. Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 2nded. (London: Verso, 1978), 47.

COMMENTARY

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90 IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

one theory even if the actual difficulties it encounters areconsiderable.3

Tenacity is an unabashedly prejudicial decision by the scientist onbehalf of the theory he selects in utter disregard of contrary evidence. ButFeyerabend says it is reasonable, because theories are capable of develop-ment, can be improved, and may eventually be capable of accommodat-ing their difficulties.4 On his second principle, theory proliferation, heobserves:

Having adopted tenacity we can no longer use recalcitrant facts forremoving theory, T, even if the facts should happen to be as plainand straight-forward as daylight itself. But we can use other theories,T', T'', T''', etc. which accentuate the difficulties of T while at thesame time promising means for their solution. In this case the elim-ination of T is urged by the principle of tenacity itself.5

He maintains that this interplay between tenacity and proliferation is an‘essential feature of the actual development of science.’6 Application ofthese two principles in turn enables a practice he calls ‘counterinduction,’which he defines as ‘the invention and elaboration of hypotheses incon-sistent with a point of view that is highly confirmed and generallyaccepted.’ Furthermore he says it is ‘the invention, elaboration and use oftheories which are inconsistent, not just with other theories, but evenwith experiments, facts, observations.’7

Feyerabend used Galileo’s defence of the heliocentric theory to illus-trate counterinduction. Quoting Galileo, Feyerabend observes: ‘theCopernican view at the time of Galileo was inconsistent with facts soplain and obvious that Galileo had to call it “surely false.”’8 But by prac-tising counterinduction Galileo used the Copernican theory to detect thegeocentric semantics in the apparently obvious facts and to reinterpretthose observations that were marshalled to refute heliocentrism. ThusFeyerabend points out that Galileo ‘introduces a new observation language.’9In this way Galileo reconceptualized observations so as to transform themfrom a falsifying to a corroborating role.

3. Paul K. Feyerabend, ‘Consolations for the Specialist,’ in Criticism and the Growth ofKnowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University,1970), 203.4. Ibid., 204.5. Ibid., 205.6. Ibid., 209.7. Feyerabend, Against Method, 55.8. Ibid., 55.9. Ibid., 79.

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UNDERSTANDING FEYERABEND ON GALILEO 91

The members of the Physics Faculty at Rome’s La Sapienza University,who recently wrote a letter of protest to Pope Benedict about his 1990speech, should note that the Nobel laureate physicist Werner Heisenbergpractised counterinduction in his development of the revolutionary inde-terminacy relations. Heisenberg’s description of his thinking is to be foundin his autobiographical writings:

It must have been one evening after midnight when I suddenlyremembered my conversation with Einstein and particularly hisstatement: ‘It is the theory which decides what we can observe.’ …We had always said so glibly that the path of the electron inthe cloud chamber could be observed. … In fact, all we do see in thecloud chamber are individual water droplets which must certainlybe much larger than the electron. The right question should thereforebe: can quantum mechanics represent the fact that an electron findsitself approximately in a given place and that it moves approxi-mately with a given velocity, and can we make these approximationsso close that they do not cause experimental difficulties?—A briefcalculation … showed that one could indeed represent such situa-tions mathematically, and that the approximations are governed bywhat would later be called the uncertainty relations.10

Galileo exploited the empirical under-determination in the celestialobservations by letting the heliocentric theory decide what the physicistcan observe, thereby neutralizing their potentially falsifying effect whenthey are conceptualized from within the geocentric theory. SimilarlyHeisenberg exploited the empirical under-determination in the cloudchamber observations by letting the quantum theory decide what thephysicist can observe, thereby neutralizing their potentially falsifyingeffect, ‘experimental difficulties’, when they are conceptualized fromwithin the Newtonian theory. Both scientists introduced a new observa-tion language. Thus Heisenberg’s counter-induction led to one of thegreatest theoretical developments in the history of physics. Furthermore,exploiting the observational ambiguity, Bohr and Heisenberg propagand-ized their interpretation no less strenuously than Galileo had propagandizedhis own.

In his 1990 speech Cardinal Ratzinger quoted Feyerabend as saying thatthe Church of Galileo’s day was much more faithful to reason than wasGalileo himself and took into consideration additionally the ethical andsocial consequences of Galileo’s doctrine.11 The consideration of ethicaland social consequences, which is of principal interest to the Cardinal,

10. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, trans. Arnold J.Pomerans (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 77–78.11. Ratzinger, ‘The Crisis of Faith in Science,’ 76–79.

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reflects Feyerabend’s generalist tradition and corresponds to the thenChurch’s wider view over against Galileo’s more specialist position. ThusFeyerabend asked rhetorically:

Now if it is legitimate to hold on to and to defend refuted viewswithin the sciences, if such a procedure can lead to scientificprogress, why, then, does the Church hesitate to do the same thingfrom outside?12

And about such a wider application of tenacity he says:

The Churches have many reasons to support such a view [i.e., ten-acity] and to use it for a criticism of particular scientific results aswell as of the role of science in our culture.13

McMullin believes that Galileo scholars may find Feyerabend’sassessment of Galileo to be ‘simplistic’ and ‘historically unsound.’14

Feyerabend’s philosophical analysis of Galileo is neither simplistic norhistorically unsound. It is an insightful and original contribution to thecontemporary pragmatist philosophy of science and philosophy of lan-guage. Feyerabend, the agnostic philosopher of science, concluded to whatthe Catholic Church and other churches have long recognized: that thescientistic world view is a myopic conceit. And the Cardinal referencedFeyerabend in order to illustrate the passing of modernism’s complacencyabout science and its distorted stereotyping of Galileo.

THOMAS J. HICKEY is a retired research econometrician. His publica-tions include Introduction to Metascience: An Information Science Approachto Methodology of Scientific Research (1976) and History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science (1995). Address: P.O. Box 5051, RiverForest, IL 60305–5051, USA. thickey3@hotmail.com

12. Feyerabend, Paul K. Farewell to Reason (London: Verso, 1987), 263.13. Ibid., 262.14. McMullin, ‘Quoting Feyerabend on Galileo,’ 172.

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