Years in Berkeley and Elsewhere
摘要
Paul Feyerabend came to Berkeley as a visiting lecturer in September 1958. In 1960, he received a permanent position there. The philosopher and philosopher of science Thomas KuhnKuhn, Thomas had also been teaching in Berkeley since 1956. There, and later on, Feyerabend and KuhnKuhn, Thomas not only engaged in heated debates with each other, but also inspired one another. Paul Feyerabend gave lectures on the philosophy of science, went to the cinema, attended the theater, resumed his singing training, discovered his fondness for wrestling shows, married for a third time and divorced again. He received offers of professorships from London, Berlin, Yale, and Auckland. In Berkeley and Berlin, Feyerabend experienced the political student unrest of the 1960s, the civil rights movements, and the demonstrations against the Vietnam War. In London, Feyerabend met the philosopher of science Imre Lakatos. At the beginning of the 1970s, Feyerabend planned to publish a book with Lakatos in which both would argue the pros and cons of rational scientific methods. But Lakatos died too soon, and Feyerabend wrote “Against Method” alone in 1975. After guest lectureships in Brighton and Kassel, he considered retirement and a move to the theater. But things turned out differently. Erich Jantsch told him that a philosopher of science was being sought in Zurich. Feyerabend applied and got the position in 1980. He now commuted between Zurich and Berkeley, where he finally found his great happiness. In Berkeley, he met and fell in love with Grazia Borrini in 1983. They married in January 1989. A year later, Feyerabend retired in Berkeley, and in 1991 he retired in Zurich. Paul K. Feyerabend died on February 11, 1994, at the age of 70.