Farewell to Reason offers a vigorous challenge to the scientific rationalism that underlies Western ideals of "progress" and "development," whose damaging social and ecological consequences are now widely recognized. For all their variety in theme and occasion, the essays in this book share a consistent philosophical purpose. Whether discussing Greek art and thought, vindicating the church's battle with Galileo, exploring the development of quantum physics or exposing the dogmatism of Karl Popper, Feyerabend defends a relativist and historicist notion of the sciences. The appeal to reason, he insists, is empty, and must be replaced by a notion of science that subordinates it to the needs of citizens and communities. Provocative, polemical and rigorously argued, Farewell to Reason will infuriate Feyerabend's critics and delight his many admirers.

Recent decades have witnessed the extraordinary growth of radical relativism, a doctrine which now dominates the entire culture, from popular music to journalism and from religion to school curricula. According to the radical relativist creed, any proposition can be true or false in relation to a chosen framework, the evaluation of fundamental theories or 'paradigms' is beyond argument, there are no universal standards of rationality, and, methodologically, 'Anything goes!'. As James Harris explains in Against Relativism, the new relativism undoes the work of the Enlightenment and inevitably leads to the conclusion that Galileo was wrong to insist that the Earth indeed moves. Succor for relativism has come from many philosophical schools, both Analytic and 'Continental'. Among the sources of the new relativism are the collapse of Logical Positivism and the shift within anthropology from a linear evolutionary model to numerous models for understanding human culture. In this detailed critique, Professor Harris has selected the strongest and most plausible arguments for relativism within contemporary academic philosophy. He turns the techniques of relativism against relativism itself, showing that it is ultimately self-refuting or otherwise ineffectual. He demonstrates that Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction appeals to the very analytic truths Quine tries to dispel; that Kuhn's celebrated account of paradigms must be either self-refuting or unintelligible; that Rorty cannot avoid presuppposing the epistemological principles he attacks; and that (although feminist criticisms of science exert a welcome corrective) attempts to develop a distinctively 'feminist science'are misconceived and unhelpful to feminism. In all these discussions, the author explains the arguments he is criticizing, for the benefit of the non-specialist reader, so that this work can serve as a partisan but fair introduction to some of the most important of present-day philosophy.

Adiós a la razón' - ¿Ciencia-grupo de presión política o instrumento de investigación? - y - Ciencia como arte son los trabajos de Paul Feyerabend que integran el presente volumen, encabezado por un prólogo a la edición castellana titulado 'Conocimiento para la supervivencia', donde queda resumido el ideal final de la filosofía del autor com las siguientes palabras - '...desarrollemos uma nueva clase de conocimiento que sea humano, no porque incorpore uma idea abstracta de humanidad, sino porque todo el mundo pueda participar em su construcción y cambio, y empleemos este conocimiento para resolver los dos problemas pendientes em la actualidad, el problema de la supervivencia y el problema de la paz; por un lado, la paz entre los humanos y, por otro, la paz entre los humanos y todo el conjunto de la Naturaleza'.

ÒSchrag has addressed the important problems put forth by thinkers ranging from Habermas to Lyotard and Deleuze and has confronted them openly and honestly. . . . This work will be useful to all who wonder what to do about the largely negative results of postmodern thought.Ó ÑJoseph C. Flay The Resources of Rationality addresses the postmodernist assault on the claim of reason and develops a refigured notion of rationality to meet the charges and challenges of postmodern thought. Calvin O. Schrag responds to the postmodernist indictment of the claims of reason by working out a fresh approach, which he calls Òthe transversal rationality of praxis.Ó With the concept of transversality as a binding theme, Schrag identifies and delineates the function of three powerful resources of reasonÑcritique, articulation, and disclosure. Cutting across multiple and changing discursive and social practices, transversal thinking, as delineated by Schrag, charts a new course between the classical and modern overdetermination of rationality and the dissolution of the rational subject in postmodern philosophy.