---
title: "Paul Feyerabend"
chunk: 3/12
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"
---

After getting wounded in action, Feyerabend was hospitalized in and around Weimar where he spent more than a year recovering and where he witnessed the end of the war and Soviet occupation. The mayor of Apolda gave him a job in the education sector and he, then still on two crutches, worked in public entertainment including writing speeches, dialogues, and plays. Later, at the music academy in Weimar, he was granted a scholarship and food stamps and took lessons in Italian, harmony, singing, enunciation, and piano. He also joined the Cultural Association for the Democratic Reform of Germany, the only association he ever joined.
As Feyerabend moved back to Vienna, he was permitted to pursue a PhD at the University of Vienna. He originally intended to study physics, astronomy, and mathematics (while continuing to practice singing) but decided to study history and sociology to understand his wartime experiences. He became dissatisfied, however, and soon transferred to physics and studied astronomy, especially observational astronomy and perturbation theory, as well as differential equations, nuclear physics, algebra, and tensor analysis. He took classes with Hans Thirring, Hans Leo Przibram, and Felix Ehrenhaft. He also had a small role in a film directed by G.W. Pabst and joined the Austrian College where he frequented their speaker series in Alpbach. Here, in 1948, Feyerabend met Karl Popper who made a positive impression on him. He was also influenced by the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, who invited him to be his assistant at the East Berlin State Opera, but Feyerabend turned down the offer. A possible reason was Feyerabend's instinctive aversion to group thinking, which, for instance, made him staunchly refuse joining any Marxist Leninist organizations despite having friends there and despite voting communist in the early Austrian election.
In Vienna, Feyerabend organized the Kraft Circle, where students and faculty discussed scientific theories (he recalled five meetings about non-Einsteinian interpretations of the Lorentz transformations) and often focused on the problem of the existence of the external world. There, he also met Elizabeth Anscombe who, in turn, led Feyerabend to meet Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the years between 1949 and 1952, Feyerabend traveled in Europe and exchanged with philosophers and scientists, including Niels Bohr. He also married his first wife (Jacqueline, 'to be able to travel together and share hotel rooms'), divorced, and became involved in various romantic affairs, despite his physical impotence. Cycles of amorous excitement, dependence, isolation, and renewed dependence characterized his relations with women for a good part of his life. He drew great pleasure from opera, which he could attend even five days a week, and from singing (he resumed his lessons even if his crutch excluded an operatic career). Attending opera and singing (he had an excellent tenor voice) remained constant passions throughout his life. In 1951, he earned his doctorate with a thesis on basic statements (Zur Theorie der Basissätze) under Victor Kraft's supervision.
In 1952-53, thanks to a British Council scholarship, he continued his studies at the London School of Economics where he focused on Bohm's and von Neumann's work in quantum mechanics and on Wittgenstein's later works, including Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics and Philosophical Investigations. He also attended Popper's lectures on logic and scientific method and became convinced that induction was irrational. During this time, he developed an early version of his theory of incommensurability, which he thought was a triviality, and was encouraged to develop it further by Popper, H.L.A. Hart, Peter Geach, and Georg Henrik von Wright. He met many others including J.O. Wisdom, A. I. Sabra, Joseph Agassi,  and Martin Buber. After his return to Vienna, Feyerabend met often with Viktor Frankl and with Arthur Pap, who offered him a position as his research assistant at the University of Vienna. Thanks to Pap, he became acquainted with Herbert Feigl. During this time, Feyerabend worked on the German translation of Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies and often met with Herbert Feigl and Philipp Frank. Franck argued that Aristotle was a better empiricist than Copernicus, an argument that became influential on Feyerabend's primary case study in Against Method.
In 1955, Feyerabend successfully applied for a lectureship at the University of Bristol with letters of reference from Karl Popper and Erwin Schrödinger and started his academic career. In 1956, he met Mary O’Neill, who became his second wife – another passionate love affair that soon ended in separation. After presenting a paper on the measurement problem at the 1957 symposium of the Colston Research Society in Bristol, Feyerabend was invited to the University of Minnesota by Michael Scriven. There, he exchanged with Herbert Feigl, Ernst Nagel, Wilfred Sellars, Hilary Putnam, and Adolf Grünbaum. Soon afterwards, he met Gilbert Ryle who said of Feyerabend that he was "clever and mischievous like a barrel of monkeys."

=== Berkeley, Zurich and retirement ===