Abstract
This paper shows how late 1960’s student protests influenced the thought of Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. I argue that student movements shaped their work from this period, specifically Lakatos’s “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” and Feyerabend’s Against Method. Archival evidence shows that their political environments at London and Berkeley inflected their writing on scientific method, entrenching Lakatos’s search for a rationalist account of scientific development, and encouraging Feyerabend’s ‘anarchistic’ theory of knowledge. I document this influence and draw two broader lessons: one lesson about the role of biography in philosophy and the other about the historiography of student protests.
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17 January 2020
The following correction will help establish more clearly and fully the ways in which I drew on Matteo Collodel���s work in the composition of this paper. Given that we were researching similar topics and that I was acquainted with his achievements.
Notes
Expanding on a paper with the same title, Against Method was primarily drafted in the years 1968–71, with a break for publishing, a period which included the manuscript’s being lost in a London taxicab and subsequently returned to its author by Interpol.
Two exceptions include Lee Congdon’s (2002) article on Lakatos’s turn toward conservative politics, and Matteo Collodel’s excellent unpublished manuscript “Flippant Anarchism: Feyerabend and the Student Movement.”
IL to Karl Popper, 24 Sept 1964.
IL to Ruth Marcus, 1 May 1967.
The kind of biography toward which I gesture is not a single narrative thread that ties a life together. But neither is it mere socio-historical context, which would apply uniformly to people of a time and place. The kind of biography needed is an understanding of how socio-historical context matters to unique individuals, which varies between people depending on their own personal histories. Conant (2001) articulates a helpful ideal of philosophical biography in between “compartmentalists” who think philosophy is independent of biography, and “reductivists” who suppose non-philosophical factors (economics, psychology, &c.) simply cause philosophical beliefs.
Folders Lakatos11/19, 11/20, and 11/23 contain representative samples of his invective: “Rubbish”, “lie”, “Idiot”, and “ass.”
Lakatos13/568.6, IL to Alasdair MacIntyre, 13 Jun 1968.
IL to Thomas Kuhn, 9 May 1969.
For example, in his Open University radio broadcast “Science and Pseudoscience.”
Lakatos’s name is commemorated on the building housing LSE’s Department of Logic and Scientific Method, as well as the major award for most influential monograph in philosophy of science. Conversely, in parts of Hungary, his name is remembered with suspicion (Long 1998).
Lakatos13/8.14, Walter Adams to IL, 9 Jun 1969.
Lakatos1/10.
Lakatos13/963, IL to Hao Wang, 17 May 1962.
A series of handwritten notes titled ‘Kuhn versus Lakatos’s indicates the direction of his thinking. Lakatos10/4.
It is worth noting that other protests sometimes shared this quality of being galvanized by local issues and student empowerment. Even in Paris, where mass demonstrations in May 1968 practically shut down the nation’s economy and fears of revolution led President de Gaulle to flee the country, it is helpful to remember that Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s rise to prominence as the face of protests originated from his rather more collegiate contestation that men should be allowed into women’s dormitories (Gordon 1998, 40). This is not to deny the significant ideological disputes at hand, but only to recognize how those disputes could be stimulated by the sense of student identity and student empowerment. Such ideals served to unite and consolidate students’ manifold political commitments – which in Paris involved educational reforms and American imperialism. Meanwhile, French police brutality only strengthened new alliances: first between Communists and Cohn-Bendit’s anarchists, and soon also with millions of industrial workers (Marwick 1998).
Some of LSE’s abundant social scientists eagerly launched studies gathering data on a social movement at their own doorstep. There is good survey data on LSE students during this period which reveal a heterogeneity of beliefs and reasons for participation in protests. See Blackstone et al. 1970.
Lakatos11/17, Colin Crouch et al. 4 Nov 1968.
There were apparently few calls to violence even by Britain’s most ardent agitators. Tariq Ali, a high-profile Marxist leader of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and former President of the Oxford Student Union, advocated “defensive violence” and recollects being ready to give orders to storm the American Embassy during the 17 March 1968 anti-war rally (2006, 252). The brief but fierce exchange between riot police and protestors that day was uncoordinated. Even the most distasteful and militant pronouncements of LSE’s Socialist Society seem to have stopped well short of advocating personal violence (Dahrendorf 1995). In one story of encounter with a protestor (which must of course be taken with a grain of salt) Lakatos tells Feyerabend that “The only personal violence which occurred was that I kicked a rather nasty so-called Socialist, but unfortunately he did not dare kick me back, and the thing fizzled out. It is very difficult to introduce violence into British society” (6 Mar 1969).
IL to Jacob Lipsitz. It is difficult to assess Lakatos’s political thought in his first decade in Britain. It is worth remembering Donald Gillies’ report that academic life was only second to Imre’s primary interest in politics: Imre reported that his first ambition was to become prime minister in Hungary (Gillies 2011, 2). Nevertheless following his 1956 escape from Hungary Lakatos was quiet on politics, and his few mentions of politics involved commenting from a distance as a spectator: “This San Diego is Goldwater Country: ‘Extremism in pursuit of justice is no vice…’ We poor Hungarian moderates are in a difficult position…” (Watkins350, IL to John Watkins, 13 Nov 1964).
Lakatos wrote to the BBC complaining of the news program’s “anti-American bias” when covering the Vietnam war: Lakatos11/19, 29 Dec 1969.
IL to Jacob Lipsitz, 27 Nov 68.
Lakatos 12/5.124 IL to Kay Kuhn, 13 Feb 1970.
Lakatos13/735 IL to Richard Popkin, 26 Mar 1968.
“Next week Polanyi and Koestler are coming to the LSE for a discussion and supper – something Karl would have never allowed as long as he headed the department.” IL to Kay Kuhn, 13 Feb 1970.
Lakatos11/14 IL to Walter Adams, 28 Mar 1968.
Along with Oxford Professor of Government Max Beloff, Cox mounted a campaign soliciting academic signatories for the manifesto ‘Freedom in the Academic Community.’ The statement denounced sit-ins and argued against student representation on university committees. The latter views kept many UK academics from signing on (e.g. Cox/50, Cox/94, Cox/99, Cox/106).
Some of Cyril Burt’s data supporting claims of inherited mental capacity were later found to be fraudulent. But Lakatos was very interested in what he called the ‘hereditarian’ research programme of Arthur Jensen, and it is of note that his one and only application of the demarcation standard of MSRP to a real-world case of modern, contested science was when his research assistant Peter Urbach used that standard to adjudicate in favor of the hereditarian programme of Burt and Jenson, and against what they called the degenerative ‘environmentalist programme.’ See Urbach (1974) and reply by Tizard (1976). Feyerabend’s take on the Jensen controversy was characteristic: “The whole thing is a pseudo-problem because intelligence is not important anyway. It’s more important to be able to sing, for example” (Lakatos12/8.155, PKF to IL).
Cox/121 IL to Brian Cox, 28 January 1968.
The Times Friday January 31, 1969, “Complete breakdown of law and order, QC says.”
Lakatos11/19 “The occupation of the School by student extremists.”
Lakatos8/2.
Lakatos13/273.81 PKF to IL 15 July 1970.
In fact each claimed that the other’s position collapsed into theirs. Lakatos: “you do not believe your own skepticism and therefore you keep veering over to my position” (Lakatos13/273.93 IL to PKF 7 Aug 1970).
Lakatos13/89, David Bloor to IL, 19 Mar 1971.
“the sociologists of science whom I meet in England, with few exceptions, do frighten me…. they are all relativists and much worse than Tom” (Lakatos 13/633 IL to Robert Merton, 10 Jan 1974).
Lakatos12/8.222 IL to PKF, 10 Jan 1974.
Lakatos8/1 undated, likely late 1969.
A representative passage: “Pains are getting worse, for the last three weeks I have had pains almost every day, I am on pills almost continuously and may end up a dope addict… And now I am too dizzy from the pills to continue writing” (Lakatos12/8.184 PKF to IL 5 Jul 1971).
It is worth noting, in this context, that some early positivists and members of the Vienna Circle were explicitly addressing social-political concerns such as fascism and Nazism. See Reisch 2005.
PKF to IL, 11 Aug 1969.
PKF to Hans Albert, 20 Apr 1968.
Lakatos12/8.173, PKF to IL 11 Aug 1970.
For example, physicist David Bohm had joined a group of depression-era labor protestors involved in radical politics in 1930s Berkeley (Agar 2008).
In retrospect, the students’ concerns over corporatization and managerialism in the Academy appear prescient, as such trends have continued. See Halfmann and Radder 2015.
Feyerbend recommended that Lakatos watch Michaelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 feature film, “Zabriskie Point” which features a campus shootout between students and police at a California campus. Lakatos13/273.52, PKF to IL, 25 March 1970.
PKF to IL, 3 Mar 1969.
PKF to Agassi, 23 Jun 1968.
“I would not participate in a Popperian collection simply because I do not intend to join any party… A collection of the kind you suggest would be a step towards institutionalization – and therefore I cannot see any way towards being a part of it.” PKF to IL, 27 Jul 1968.
PKF to Agassi, 11 Jun 68, cited in Collodel “Flippant Anarchism.”
PKF to IL, 30 Jul 1968.
PKF to IL, 13 Aug 1968.
PKF to IL, 20 Aug 1968.
PKF to IL, 17 Jun 68.
Cited in Collodel ms.
PKF to IL, 18 Nov 1968.
PKF to Agassi, 8 Nov 1968.
See, e.g. Feyerabend 1995, 126. Feyerabend’s esteem for Cohn-Bendit seems exceptional in this regard. In personal communication, acquaintances corroborate that Feyerabend was generally supportive of student protestors.
PKF to Rolf Kaehr, 9 December 1968, available at Selected Works of Rudolf Kaehr, https://works.bepress.com/thinkartlab/36/
Feyerabend was critical of Marcuse’s ([1965] 1969) essay “Repressive Tolerance” in which Marcuse writes that tolerance – often considered the arch virtue of liberalism – must have its limits recognized because tolerance often serves the oppressive and unjust ends of the state. Marcuse’s essay argues that violent resistance may be justified against violent governments, and that John Stuart Mill’s arguments for democratic decision-making do not hold up if society “has entered the phase of total administration and indoctrination,” as he believed the US had.
PKF to IL, 12 Dec 1969.
PKF to IL, Jan 1969.
PKF to IL, 30 Apr 1969.
Lakatos12/8.161, PKF to IL, 6 Feb 1970.
Lakatos12/8.173 PKF to IL, 11 Aug 1970.
PKF to IL, 20 Feb 1970.
PKF to IL, 14 Feb 1969.
Lakatos12/8.174 IL to PKF, 20 Nov 1970.
Lakatos13/273.95, PKF to IL, 11 Aug 1970.
Lakatos13/275, IL to PKF 18 Jan 1974.
Lakatos 13/275.56, PKF to IL 25 Jan 1974.
G.E.R. Lloyd, personal communication.
Lakatos12/5 IL to Kuhn 13 Sep 1968.
Lakatos10/3; likely composed in 1970 or ‘71.
PKF to IL, 1 Nov 1968.
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Acknowledgements
This paper relies extensively on archival documents from London School of Economics, Manchester’s John Ryland Library, and Philosophisches Archiv der Universität Konstanz. I therefore owe a significant debt of gratitude to those institutions and archivists, including Sue Donnelly and Brigitte Parakenings. I have benefited from conversations with Donald Gilles, John Worrall, Geoffrey Lloyd, Anna Alexandrovna, Ian Kidd, Daniel Kuby, Jacob Stegenga, Adrian Currie, and Daniel Thomas. My interest in this project was reinforced by the assiduous scholarship of Matteo Collodel, who has generously shared archival references. I am especially thankful to J. Brian Pitts and to participants at the Cambridge Philosophy of Science seminar at which this paper was presented.
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Martin, E.C. “The Battle is on”: Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the student protests. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 9, 28 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-019-0251-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-019-0251-y