 Now, Coons have often been read as a form of relativism. How is that possible? Well, Coons said that different paradigms, even within the same scientific discipline, different subsequent paradigms, have usually different standards of what constitutes good science. Such that the old paradigm, from the perspective of the old paradigm that is replaced by the new paradigm, the new paradigm seems clearly wrong. And from the perspective of the new paradigm, the old paradigm looks clearly wrong. So each has its own idea of how you really ought to do science. For example, before Lavra's years, chemistry became dominant. There was another form of chemistry, the structure throughout the Flaugiston theory. The details don't really need to be important for us now. But the important point is that from the perspective of the previous chemistry, what Lavra's year was doing wasn't particularly sensible. It didn't really make sense to think that chemistry should be like physics. Why shouldn't chemistry be like pharmacy? Isn't that the heart of chemistry? How can this man come with his big instruments and say everything has to be quantifiable from now on? Why should we accept that? Whereas from Lavra's years perspective, what the people before him doing wasn't even really science. So then who is right? Well, from the old perspective, the old paradigm is right. From the new perspective, the new one is right. And Coons seemed to suggest that there is no neutral standpoint that would decide who is really right. And that, of course, should remind you of relativistic themes. Remember our initial characterization. In the same domain, here the same domain of chemistry, we have different judgments based on different background assumptions. And there is no way to say which one is really right. The one is right from its perspective, the other one is right from that perspective. So clearly there is a relativistic theme in Coon as well. Coon realized that but was very uneasy about it. And he said, well, maybe there is a way to, after all, say which one is a bit more right because there are certain virtues that we attach to scientific theories. For example, we want scientific theories to be as simple as possible. We don't want them to be too convoluted. We want them to be structured, simple, straightforward. We also want that the scientific theory covers a lot of ground. We want that the scope of the theory is broad. We want it that it's successful in its explanation and other things as well. And he thinks maybe there is a way with these kind of virtues to say who is a bit more right than the other. His critics immediately pointed out that none of these virtues that he was identifying was particularly neutral. Take, for example, the virtue of simplicity. Simplicity is a bit like beauty. It's in the eye of the beholder. Certainly the phrenologist thought, the chemists before Lavoisier, that their theory had the virtue of simplicity. Lavoisier thought that his had the virtue of simplicity. Think of it also this way. When is a theory more simple than another? If it has less laws in it, less laws of nature in it? Or if it postulates a smaller number of entities? Is it more simple if the overall theory can be more briefly stated? Or is it more simple if it can be stated in ordinary language rather than in technical language? So simplicity doesn't seem to be something that is really neutral between scientific paradigms, but might itself be interpreted differently by different scientific paradigms. So it seems like the Kunian model is itself rather relativistic. So what did Kun then say when he encountered the sociology of scientific knowledge? Did he say, hooray, I have an ally. I'm not the only one with a relativistic approach to science. There are other people as well, the sociologist of scientific knowledge. You might think that he should have said that. And the sociologist of scientific knowledge certainly saw Kun as an ally. They said, one of our central background figures is Kun, three cheers for Kun. Kun wasn't impressed. Kun said sociology of knowledge is deconstruction gone mad. Never mind what deconstruction is. It was at one time a very fashionable form of philosophy coming out of France that amongst certain Anglo-American philosophers was held in disrepute. So to say that sociology of scientific knowledge is deconstruction gone mad was just one long swear word. Why did Kun say that? I think Kun said that because notice one important difference between Kun and the sociology of scientific knowledge. The sociology of scientific knowledge tries to explain why a scientific theory is accepted by placing that theory into its broader social political context. Schopen explains the success of phrenology by saying, well, look at the social structure and the social battles in Edinburgh at the time. It's no way to understand science unless you play science in society. But that's precisely the move that Kun refuses to take. Kun says, no, no, we only should look properly at science itself. We should look at how scientists are organized around the paradigm. We should look at how anomalies start building up. We should look at scientists responses to the anomalies. We should understand how they feel they lose the ground under their feet and how eventually in ways that are hard to make fully explicit, they come up with a new paradigm. But Kun does not try to explain the emergence of a new paradigm by placing the science into its broader society. So therefore, ultimately, we have here two rather different forms of relativism in the study of science. Both have a methodological kind of relativism about them. Kun is not really evaluating the theories in the history of science he looks at. That is common ground. He's also a methodological relativist, at least. But they differ in what position they give to social political factors in the explanation for change and stability in science. So it's important for you to understand that relativism in the study of science is not one view, it's at least two views, namely Kun on the one hand and the sociology of scientific knowledge on the other hand. There's also a third line that's worth at least mentioning and this third line lies somewhere between Kun and the sociology of knowledge. And this is the work of the Austrian philosopher Paul Feierabend who roughly the same generation as Kun developed his ideas pretty much in tandem with Kun and there was much common ground between them. But Feierabend pushed Kun's ideas in a bit more radical fashion forward. Let me just explain a couple of his central ideas. One idea can be captured in a slogan that is often associated with relativism and this is the slogan anything goes. What did Feierabend mean by it? Or before I actually say what Feierabend meant by it I should say that whenever people want to criticize relativism quickly and want to explain that relativism is an utterly implausible indeed pernicious view they often say something like oh relativism must be wrong it's just not true that anything goes. So this formula relativism equals anything goes in some respects is treated most often as a stick with which to beat all relativist positions rather than that people really try to understand and try to get to the heart of it what did Feierabend actually mean by it. So let me give you a very brief characterization of what I think Feierabend meant by it. On a traditional picture of science and the rationality of science scientific work, rational scientific work is the application of general rules of good science to particular instances. I've given you an example of such a general rule of good science namely the Popperian rule according to which good science consists in putting your theories to the harshest possible tests never believing your theories fully because you always think well I can only believe it provisionally I can only say well so far my theory hasn't yet been refuted but I'll keep trying to refute it. That's the Popperian sensual methodological rule. Feierabend was a one-time student of Popper and he reacted first and foremost against the Popperian ideal that to be rational in science to exercise scientific rationality is to apply these general methodological rules to specific instances of scientific work. What Feierabend tried to show against Popper he took a number of Popper's general methodological rules and tried to show that important advances in the history of science science generally of course consists in flouting those rules. Feierabend tries to show that in important episodes like Galileo's famous experiments the genius of the scientific experiment and theoretician often lay in the systematic disregard for those rules of science. So the slogan anything goes means any rule of method that a philosopher of science has ever formulated can be shown to be dysfunctional in some historical episode or other. Scientific rationality simply isn't the application of those general rules but scientific rationality is the ability to judge particular instances, particular challenges and try to determine for that specific case how to proceed where those general rules may be somewhere in the background or play in fact no role at all. That idea in itself need not be relativistic but Feierabend was very skeptical with respect to all general absolutes in science. I've already characterized this with respect to the methodological rules no methodological rule is valid in anything like an absolute fashion every rule can be flouted and therefore Feierabend also thought that it's very hard to give general principles in terms of which we evaluate the history of science. There can be no general framework that gives you the platform from which you can judge scientific work in different periods as either falling on the side of rational or irrational. To understand what scientists did you really have to go into the nitty gritty of the challenges that they were facing. Feierabend took a very broad brush view to the history of science ultimately whereas the sociologist of science and Kuhn over time went into ever greater detail with respect to scientific episodes. Shapin started with a phrenologist, wrote a couple of papers on it later he studied the work of the physicists chemists Boyle in great detail in two books actually three books he also wrote a short introductory books on it. The sociologist's tendency was to go into ever greater detail in specific episodes. Kuhn actually did the same thing after he wrote this programmatic book The Structure of Scientific Revolution he later wrote a big big historical book about an important episode in history of quantum mechanics where he went to excruciating detail in trying to explain specific decision scientists made so they went into ever greater detail Feierabend somehow zoomed out of the details more and more and more and more looked at the history of western thought from antiquity to the present. And he took a very relativistic view on that history he didn't think that we had any right to judge that we now have got it right we now got the rational view on how to study the world but in the Stone Age they had it all wrong he tried as hard as he could to identify even in Stone Age engagement with nature a critical spirit a critical engagement with a natural world even an experimental attitude he studied witchcraft he studied medieval systems of predicting our behavior in terms of astrological ideas and he tried to explain the rationality even in those kinds of moves Mind you though, Feierabend never quite went the sociological direction either he never really tried to explain scientific results or witchcraft or any of these phenomena in terms of the product social cultural phenomena he tried to do that to some extent but never to the extent in which the sociologist of knowledge did it Feierabend also made another interesting move that became like a signature feature of his thinking it's relativistic thinking and this is the parallel between science and art Feierabend was a very cultured very educated man as most people who grew up in Vienna even if they don't want to end up that way simply because for the rich cultural heritage in the city so he knew his medieval art he knew his early modern arts he knew a lot about music as well and so he studied in some detail the cognitive character of art artists engagement with the world and then tried to show that scientific way of approaching the world is not as completely different as say a Poparian view of science would make you believe on the Poparian view you would say which artist would ever have tested their artworks so it's clearly different than science whereas Feierabend tries to show how experimental art endure and other people who experimented with perspective could be and how many interaction there has been in the past between say painting and scientific theorizing