---
title: "Paul Feyerabend"
chunk: 6/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Kraft Circle, hidden variables, and no-go proofs ====
During Feyerabend's PhD, he retrospectively describes himself as a "raving positivist." He was the head organizer of the 'Kraft circle' which discussed many issues in the foundations of physics and on the nature of basic statements, which was the topic of his dissertation. In 1948, Feyerabend wrote a short paper in response to Schrödinger's paper "On the Peculiarity of the Scientific Worldview." Here, Feyerabend argued that Schrödinger's demand that scientific theories present are Anschaulich (i.e., intuitively visualizable) is too restrictive. Using the example of the development of Bohr's atomic theory, he claims that theories that are originally unvisualizable develop new ways of making phenomena visualizable. His unpublished paper, "Philosophers and the Physicists," argues for a naturalistic understanding of philosophy where philosophy is "petrified" without physics and physics is "liable to become dogmatic" without philosophy.
Feyerabend's early career is also defined by a focus on technical issues within the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Feyerabend argues that von Neumann's 'no-go' proof only shows that the Copenhagen interpretation is consistent with the fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics but it does not logically follow from them. Therefore, causal theories of quantum mechanics (like Bohmian mechanics) are not logically ruled out by von Neumann's proof. After meeting David Bohm in 1957, Feyerabend became an outspoken defender of Bohm's interpretation and argued that hidden variable approaches to quantum mechanics should be pursued to increase the testability of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Feyerabend also provided his own solution to the measurement problem in 1957, although he soon came to abandon this solution. He tries to show that von Neumann's measurement scheme can be made consistent without the collapse postulate. His solution anticipates later developments of decoherence theory.