Feyerabend vs. Kuhn? Who would you agree more with?

Question:Who's philosophies do you agree more with? Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism? or Kuhn's paradigms? Please tell me why by critiquing them both. THANKS!~

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Who's philosophies do you agree more with? Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism? or Kuhn's paradigms? Please tell me why by critiquing them both. THANKS!~

Well, both were responding to the ways that Popper's rules bog down in the real world, and the ways that scientists actually work.

Kuhn noted that scientists normally accept some anomalies, and rarely pursue alternative research projects while the dominant research project still works. So he emphasized, and may have overemphasized, the alternation between "normal science" and "scientific revolutions" (or "paradigm shifts").

Feyerabend really opposes Popper, not Kuhn. Popper suggested that science advances through the creation of falsifiable theories and the falsification of most of them.

Feyerabend and Kuhn both emphasized the subjective considerations in what makes good and bad theories: not just "does it explain the data?" but "is is consistent with our other working theories?" "does it make sense?" "is it easy to use?" "is it simple?" etc.

Kuhn acknowledged that scientists' priorities (e.g. elegance vs. explanatory value) could change from time to time, but Feyerabend noted that their criteria could change as well, and could be arbitrary. I don't remember if he used this example, but consider Occam's razor. There's no rationally-defensible reason for it, but most scientists stick with it, and many consider it a defining feature of science. IIRC, Feyerabend went further and argued that these shifting standards, this "epistemological anarchy" could work better than any positivist rules.