Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being

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.

From Homeric gods to galaxies to perspective in painting, Paul Feyerabend reveled in physical and cultural abundance. Struck, however, by the fact that human senses and intelligence can take in only a fraction of these riches, a fraction that limits and shapes our sense of reality, Feyerabend began writing Conquest of Abundance to decry these limitations. Unfinished when he died in 1994, this book represents a new way of thinking for this philosophical genius.

Paul Feyerabend (1924-94) held numerous teaching posts throughout his career in Europe and the United States. Among his books are Against Method; Science in a Free Society; Farewell to Reason; and Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, the last published by the University of Chicago Press.

Acknowledgments

Preface

A Note on the Editing

Part One: The Unfinished Manuscript

Introduction

1. Achilles' Conjecture

2. Xenophanes

3. Parmenides and the Logic of Being

Interlude: On the Ambiguity of Interpretations

4. Brunelleschi and the Invention of Perspective

Part Two: Essays on the Manuscript's Themes

1. Realism and the Historicity of Knowledge

2. Has the Scientific View of the World a Special Status Compared with Other Views?

3. Quantum Theory and Our View of the World

4. Realism

5. Historical Comments on Realism

6. What Reality?

7. Aristotle

8. Art as a Product of Nature as a Work of Art

9. Ethics as a Measure of Scientific Truth

10. Universals as Tyrants and as Mediators

11. Intellectuals and the Facts of Life

12. Concerning an Appeal for Philosophy