Product Description

From Homeric gods to galaxies, from love affairs to perspective in painting, Paul Feyerabend revelled in the physical and cultural abundance that surrounds us. He found it equally striking that human senses and human intelligence are able to take in only a fraction of these riches. From this fraction, scientists, artists, all of us construct encompassing abstractions and stereotypes. This basic human trait is at the heart of "Conquest of Abundance", the book on which Feyerabend was at work when he died in 1994. Prepared from drafts of the manuscript left at his death, working notes, and lectures and articles Feyerabend wrote while the larger work was in progress, "Conquest of Abundance" offers up exploration and startling insights with the charm, lucidity, and sense of mischief that are his hallmarks. Feyerabend is fascinated by how we attempt to explain and predict the mysteries of the natural world, and he describes ways in which we abstract experience, explain anomalies, and reduce wonder to formulas and equations. Through his exploration of the positive and negative consequences of these efforts, Feyerabend reveals the "conquest of abundance" as an integral part of the history and character of Western civilization. Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was educated in Europe and held numerous teaching posts throughout his career, including at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1959 to 1990. His "Against Method" - translated into 17 languages - is a classic of modern philosophy of science. The University of Chicago Press published his autobiography, "Killing Time", in 1995.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #173610 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 303 pages

Customer Reviews

A final look into a most original mind
Published posthumously, The Conquest of Abundance is Feyerabend's final signpost on the journey that began with Against Method. Explicitly he challenges the notion that categorisation is the only way we can experience knowledge, and instead points us back to the richness of reality removed from the abstraction that these categories produce.

staggeringly good
An amazing eye-opening look at attempts through the ages to limit our world view by defining reality, by categorizing. With stunningly rich references, he sweeps through many well known and lesser known world views and deftly points out their weaknesses. I got it for his challenging argument that the scientific world view is really just a jumble of presently working theories, often blatantly in hand with unsupportable assumptions, but I was more delighted by his enlightening look at the Homeric world view, so different to ours, but, having read this, I now feel I understand why we turn back to it again and again. This book is not a light read, but it is a life-changing read. If you are curious about how you can exist as a moral and good being, as Feyerabend did, but without the need to reduce everything to fixed categories and rules, but instead to accept the delightful uncountable particularness of things, then get this book!