Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being by Feyerabend, Paul (2001) Paperback

by Paul Karl Feyerabend

From flea bites to galaxies, from love affairs to shadows, Paul Feyerabend reveled in the sensory and intellectual 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. "This a blessing, not a drawback," he writes. "A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed." This human reduction of experience to a manageable level is 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 rich 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 looks at the 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, History Of Science

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989).

His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge.

Reviews

[Omar Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

The philosopher of science and contrarian anarchist thinker, Paul Feyerabend, was born in Austria in 1924 and died in 1994. At the time of his death, he was working on a book tentatively titled "conquest of abundance". In his autobiography "killing time", he said of this book:
"The book is intended to show how specialists and common people reduce the abundance that surrounds and confuses them, and the consequences of their actions...I also try to emphasize the essential ambiguity of all concepts...without ambiguity, no change ever... Conquest of Abundance should be a simple book, pleasant to read and easy to understand...one of my motives (is) ...to free people from the tyranny of philosophical obfuscators and abstract concepts such as "truth", "reality", or "objectivity", which narrow people's vision and ways of being in the world".

After his death, his widow cooperated with Bert Terpstra to produce this book from the notes and essays that he left behind. The book consists of four chapters put together (very scrupulously) from Paul's notes; followed by 12 essays that he had written on similar themes. It is a collage rather than a systematic and well-organized argument, but considering that Paul Feyerabend was the pre-eminent anti-systemic philosopher of the twentieth century, this is quite appropriate!

The first chapter presents an episode from the "Odyssey" and Feyerabend uses it to argue that "potentially, every culture is all cultures". Every cultural trait possesses an ambiguity that allows its meaning and usage to be modified by creative individuals as the need arises. Some philosophers are obsessed with abstracting a rigid "true meaning" from every situation (the "true scientific method", the "true Homeric viewpoint" and so on) and freezing it at that point. This procedure restricts the freedom of human beings to confront the richness of being and extract meaning from it with tools that themselves change their meaning as they are used.

This argument is then repeated in various forms throughout the book. Feyerabend wants to challenge the most cherished prejudices of the "educated person". The belief that abstracting the essential features out of a rich and variegated scene is somehow closer to the truth comes in for harsh criticism. Feyerabend does not deny that such abstraction may have its uses. But he feels that we have raised it to a fetish and have lost sight of the importance of the details. In trying to see the wood all the time, we have lost sight of the trees. The wood may be the correct image for SOME problems, but the individual trees are also the correct image for other problems. And no procedure exists to tell us beforehand what the correct image may be. Individual human beings facing particular problems use what they can, and how they can, to get the answers that interest them. Epistemological anarchy is not only desirable, it already exists.
He admires Aristotle above all other philosophers because he did not reduce the abundance of being to one formula. He investigated a hundred fields and tacked each on its own merits. And much to Feyerabend delight, he said " real is what plays a central role in the kind of life we identify with".

Paul Feyerabend was not a detached and objective philosopher. He denied that any such species exists. He was frequently contrarian and deliberately provocative. "Conquest of abundance" is an excellent (and very readable) guide to his philosophical obsessions but may be easier to understand in conjunction with his autobiography, where he states:

"It seems to me that love and friendship play a central role and without them even the noblest achievements and the most fundamental principles remain pale, empty and dangerous".

"A humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life".

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is filled with 4-star ideas, and several times i could feel him stretching out and almost touching a 5-star epiphany. so close. unfortunately, Feyerabend died while writing it, leaving a half-finished manuscript, and no clear instructions what to do with it. his wife let one of his admirers cobble together this book in two parts. the first part is the unfinished manuscript, and the second is twelve previously published short essays on themes introduced in part one. but the result is that the book is extremely repetitive, with certain quotes from aristotle and einstein repeated 5 or 6 times, and whole paragraphs and pages repeated verbatim. hence my 3-star rating.

anyway, the basic idea is to expose the myth that there is this monolith called "science" which has proved itself every time in its quest to encapsulate all of reality in a few universal, exact, mathematical laws.

first of all, he argues, there is not one universally accepted "scientific method". some scientists start from data and try to find laws which fit patterns they find (e.g. kepler). others start from abstract principles and deduce the conequences, in spite of the fact that experience seems to contradict the resulting law (e.g. einstein). sometimes these speculations turn out to be supported by new data. usually they are tossed on the scrap heap.

second of all, there is this belief among scientists that the "scientific method" is value-free and "objective", and thus is the only reliable way to find the Truth, which surely exists independently of history and ethics. but this way of thinking shows a profound blindness to the UNPROVEN ASSUMPTIONS upon which this philosophy is based. how does one prove the objective truth of the statement, "the scientific method is the only way to establish the objective truth"? by use of the scientific method? haha! how does one ignore the implict values, norms, and politics contained in the statement, "it is very important for all good scientists to strive to find universal laws, and never to be distracted by politics, personal values, or subjective thinking"?

making a definition of knowledge requires knowledge. theories about theorizing are self-referential. the criticism determines what is being criticized. there is a relationship between a platonic argument and the thing it proves.

the reason the scientific method succeeds again and again is not because it is universally successful, but because it is only used on problems where it can succeed. it follows the path of least resistance, and ignores the difficult problems, such as psychology, politics, and basically every aspect of actual human experience.

the claim is not that science is bad, but simply that its practitioners refuse, like adherents in so many other universal faiths, to concede that it has any limitations, even in the face of numerous glaring problems.

usually, when i stumble upon an interesting thinker/writer (often while wikipediaing) and decide to try one of his books, i choose the latest one, since i figure it will be the most up-to-date and modern. well, this one taught me never to start with posthumously-published half-written ones. duh. i will read more Feyerabend, but this book is not the place to start. good ideas, bad editing.

[Brooke Salaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not previously read any of Feyerabend's work. This book was posthumously assembled from the final thoughts he was committing to paper along with some talks and published articles relating to the same topic that the editor felt relevant to include. Repetitive at times which I didn't really mind since I felt it helped me grasp his ideas in the slight variations presented. I understood from the foreword written by his wife that consistency was not a prized attribute to Feyerabend and his opinions were continually evolving and even changing radically. This work tackles received notions about the nobility of some monolithic "science". He takes issue with the ways in which generalized theories, beginning with Plato and his stance that the detail and materiality we get bogged down with in daily life are but a shadow of the truth and "good", have resulted in a loss and flattening of experience. Concepts are given primacy over the petty daily struggle and the particulars. Feyerabend aims to take us back to a love of multiplicity and a recognition of the abundance we are privileged to be surrounded by.

[Matthew Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been years since I read it, but I remember finding it fascinating and though-provoking, although I don't agree with all the author's ideas. How interesting was it? Well, I was listening to an audio version while I was driving, and I almost ran off the road twice because I got so caught up in the book. (No, I wasn't falling asleep!) I had to stop listening for my own safety. I finished reading it later.

[Ryan Frantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I vaguely recall coming across this book while starting to pursue the topic of cognition, discovered gestalt psychology, and followed a Wikipedia trail to Feyerabend.

This book was published posthumously by Feyerabend's wife and friend. The first half is their attempt to merge 3 versions of the book that Feyerabend left incomplete. The latter half is a set of supporting essays. When I started reading this book, I felt like I'd walked into a cocktail party (so I was already out of place) and stumbled across a conversation between 3 folks that seemed interesting. I quickly learned that I was woefully ignorant of nearly every reference (Feyerabend appears to have broad knowledge of several areas of study such as astronomy, physics, microbiology, epistemology, literature, etc. that he uses as support for his arguments) and needed to spend a lot of time catching up before I could even begin to internalize the ideas laid down in this book.

While I decided to table this book before finishing it, I did glean some interesting perspective on the evolution of thought, perspective, and both the natural and self-imposed limitations of humans' ability to observe the universe. I hope that I can one day return to this book with a better grasp of the underlying content and learn more.

[Matthew Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

What struck me in re-reading this book is the depth, subtlety, and power of the set of METAPHYSICAL views in the book and related essays. It turned the paper I was writing from one about the relation of science and democracy really into a paper on the metaphysics of science.

Feyerabend's picture is one where science is disunified in results and method. The so-called "scientific world-view" of materialism is a fiction or a prediction about some future results of science, not a consequence of science as it stands. Feyerabend proposes that we take current science seriously and explore what sort of world-view results. The result is not entirely consistent throughout the book. Sometimes, what Feyerabend seems to argue for is Kantian transcendental idealism plus multiple changing categories. Sometimes, it is more like Taoist / Gnostic way/God that cannot be named. The view I like the best is a radical ontological pluralism, a deep abundance of structure and noise, ambiguity, indeterminateness, and malleability, which can successfully yield to a number of conceptual approaches, none of which can adequately capture the whole.
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Re-reading for a paper I'm writing. I'm sure I'll have more to say along the way.
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This is Feyerabend's unfinished manuscript published posthumously, along with a collection of later published papers on the theme of the manuscript. Covers greek mythology, philosophy, and medicine, renaissance art, quantum physics, and "Reality." Really interesting read, engaging, demonstrates the sheer breadth and subtlety of Feyerabend's scholarship.

[Daniel Schechtel · Rating 5 out of 5]

INCREÍBLE este libro. Fue como la contraparte escrita de una enseñanza DESMESURADA que tuve el último año, y que voy sintiendo en mi experiencia recién hace menos de un mes: el universo es un caos de acontecimientos y personas únicos, y que a cada problema hay que mirarlo en sí mismo, sin abstraerse a ninguna fórmula ni modelo; no existe el Hombre, existe cada tipo en particular; no existe la Mujer, existe cada tipa en particular.
La conquista de la abundancia hace referencia a eso: a reconquistar la abundancia de detalles, sensaciones y vivencias que se pierden en la categorización, abstracción, catalogación, caracterización, generalización. Feyerabend hace pedazos el mito de que la Ciencia tiene una sola forma de trabajar, un solo método, y muestra a través de la historización cómo se llegó a pensar de manera sistemática, cómo cambió el lenguaje, cómo cambiaron los dioses de las religiones, cómo nos fuimos abstrayendo y por ende perdiendo la sensibilidad de lo que nos rodea, yéndonos a las nubes. Demuestra que el punto de vista es el que rige la forma en que miramos el mundo, y al final uno siente que, sin irse a los extremos, tanto la religión como el arte o la ciencia son diferentes formas de explicarse el mundo y de vivirlo, y que todas tienen sus pros y sos contras. Al final reclama que la filosofía se deje de inventar categorías abstractas imbéciles y se ponga a pensar en concreto, y con esto no zafa prácticamente ningún filósofo.
ME ROMPIÓ LA CABEZA

[Toby Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uncompleted when he died, "Conquest of Abundance" is Feyerabend's acerbic farewell to the human world of ideas, as 'leveraged', to their mainly material advantage, by the Masters of the Universe.

His concern is scientific overreach and scientific orthodoxy, which takes people who have ceased thinking into areas they would be better advised to leave stopped.

Surveying the tenor of our times, he notes: "Of course, ideas can get stuck; imagination can be dimmed by dogma, financial pressures, education, and boredom. If that happens, then the ideas of a closed system with precise concepts and rules slavishly followed will appear to be the only correct representation of Thought. But that situation should be avoided, not praised."

If that's, indeed, how it is, then his diagnosis is accordingly dusty: "What we find, with very few exceptions, are intellectual leaders, repeating slogans, which they cannot explain, and which they often violate, anxious slaves following in their footsteps and institutions, offering or withdrawing money in accordance with the fashions of the day."

Rather than this lockdown, Feyerabend argues for enterprise: keeping an open mind, adumbrating a Gestalt that waxes and wanes, that pulses in and out of focus, appears as X, on closer inspection more like Y, a weasel not so much a whale, or what who yet knows?

Feyerabend rightly frets about the premature end of History.