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168 of 178 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, hilarious and irreverent, June 19, 1999
By A Customer
by Dr. Scott Campbell, Philosophy Programme, School of Advanced Study, University of London The late David Stove was one Australia's greatest ever intellectuals, writers, polemicists and wits, and one of the two or three best philosophers this country has ever produced. However, because of his distaste for self-promotion, he is not well-known outside a small circle of fans, and what's more, he is actively disliked by many of those in the intelligentsia who know of him. The re-release of this classic book by Sydney's Macleay Press may begin to change all that. This book was originally released in 1982, when it was called Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists. It gained a small cult following amongst the more irreverent philosophers of science, but it was also roundly condemned by some of the more pompous for its disrespectful attitude towards twentieth-century philosophy of science, as well as for its polemical style. What Stove did in the first part of this book (which he entitled 'Philosophy and the English Language: How Irrationalism About Science Is Made Credible'), was to brilliantly and hilariously analyse the means by which four of the most famous philosophers of science of the century, Sir Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, managed to sound convincing whilst putting forward doctrines that entailed that scientific knowledge was impossible. Stove's analysis here is masterful, and is compulsory reading for any student of the philosophy of science. Using impeccable philosophical reasoning, he rescues common-sense from the depths of philosophical nonsense. His wit is breathtaking, quite literally so - during some passages I found myself holding my breath - and his bon mots are a constant delight.[6] You can see why Michael Levin wrote 'Reading Stove is like watching Fred Astaire dance. You don't wish you were Fred Astaire, you are just glad to have been around to see him in action'. Popper reacted to Stove's criticisms by insisting that he is a defender of science. But while Popper himself may well believe in science, the problem is that his philosophy entails that science cannot produce knowledge. According to Popper's view, induction (the making of claims about the unobserved on the basis of what has so far been observed), which is ordinarily supposed to underpin science, is irrational. Popper holds that scientific knowledge can only proceed from logical deductions made on the basis of basic observation statements. As Popper points out, though, no scientific laws, and no universal statements, such as 'All unimpeded objects above a certain weight fall to the ground', can be deductively derived from basic observation statements. And this is true: no amount of observation of unimpeded objects above a certain weight falling to the ground will logically entail the statement 'All unimpeded objects above a certain weight fall to the ground', because there's always the logical possibility that some day one such object won't fall down. So all science can tell us, says Popper, is which scientific laws and theories have been shown to be false (because they have been refuted by at least one basic observation statement). Science provides us with no basis for taking any scientific laws or theories to be true, though. Nor is there any such thing, he thinks, as the evidence providing some support for a scientific theory, and there is certainly no such thing as one theory having more support from the evidence than another theory. Despite these claims, Popper nevertheless thought that we can still say that those scientific theories and claims that have not been refuted are in some sense 'better' than those which have. However, critics have long pointed out that Popper's 'deductivist' view of science leads to absurdity. Among other fatal problems, it entails that the probability of any scientific statement being true is zero, the same as a self-contradictory statement. It also makes it impossible for scientists to justifiably make perfectly ordinary probability claims, such as that the probability of a new-born baby being female is 50%, claims which Popper admits are scientific. And his belief that his view allows that some scientific theories can be 'better' than others is simply not consistent with other implications of his theory. Popper spent decades trying to worm his way out of such contradictions and absurdities, and Stove is particularly devastating and hilarious in his discussion of the illegitimate methods Popper uses here.[1] Many philosophers of science since the 1950's were schooled in Popperism. Many of them gradually became aware of the impossibility of scientific knowledge on the Popperian model. You'd think that this would have resulted in them simply throwing Popper out as a bad mistake.[2] What in fact happened, though, was that they either became some sort of relativist, like Kuhn, or they resorted to even more desperate methods to patch up Popper's views, like Lakatos, or they become 'epistemological anarchists' like Feyerabend, who claimed that science was just another myth among many. Such views are still the orthodoxy in philosophy of science.[3] Part of the value of Stove's work in the first part of Anything Goes is that he identifies the linguistic devices which are used to disguise their absurdity. One of the simplest such devices was to place words like 'knowledge', 'discovery', 'fact', 'prove', 'explanation', 'confirm', 'objective', 'truth' in scare quotes. A Popperian, for example, might say that through science we have come to 'know' that the 'law' of gravity is a 'fact'. Popper's philosophy, though, entails that we do not and cannot possibly know any such thing. But the presence of the words 'know' and 'fact' (despite the fact that they are in scare quotes), deflects attention away from this fact.[4] Stove points out, though, that once the implications of Popper's views are presented non-evasively, no-one will take them seriously for a moment, as they are clearly ridiculous. David Papineau, a leading philosopher of science, has written, 'Stove has got Sir Karl Popper exactly right... Popper and After will serve as an excellent antidote for the many philosophical innocents who are still in danger of being bewitched by Popper'. In the second half of Anything Goes (which Stove entitled 'How Irrationalism About Science Began'), Stove traces the origins of such views back, through Popper, to Hume's famous argument to show that induction is circular. Stove closely analyzes this argument, and shows that it does not support the view that induction is circular and irrational.[5] This part is aimed more at those who have some background in philosophy, but it's an extremely lucid piece of writing nonetheless, as well as being a sublime and important piece of philosophical analysis. Anyway, the book is worth buying for the first part alone, which can be read by any non-philosopher with a passing acquaintance of Popper et al. Stove also has some other classic books that I highly recommend, and which are readable by non-philosophers. In The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), he sticks the boot into the persistent tendency of certain types of philosophers over the ages (especially those with religious leanings) to deny the reality of the external physical world. This is again done in his brilliantly witty and inimitable style, and in addition contains valuable and unique arguments against philosophical idealism. It also displays his vast knowledge of 19th century writings. Darwinian Fairytales (Aldershot: Avebury Press, 1995) is one of the few anti-Darwinian books that is worth reading. When I say 'anti-Darwinian', though, I should stress that Stove, who admired Darwin greatly, does not deny that natural selection is overwhelmingly likely to be the true explanation of our origins. What he mainly argues against in this book are the claims made about human behaviour by ultra-Darwinists (unfortunately one of the more famous contributors to the Skeptic, Richard Dawkins, gets the Stove treatment here). He also argues against simplistic Darwinian analyses of human populations (Julian Simon has made similar points in recent times), and he points out serious deficiencies in W. D. Hamilton's influential 'inclusive fitness' theory. Cricket versus Republicanism and Other Essays (ed. J. Franklin & R. J. Stove, Sydney: Quakers Hill Press, 1995) is a collection of Stove's essays on various topics. Stove is very unusual amongst modern philosophers in that he can write well on non-philosophical topics. But to put it like this is to massively understate the case. Stove is one of the greatest essayists this country has ever produced, and perhaps one of the best essayists of the century. It is these essays, though, that have made him so unfashionable, especially in academic circles, because of his conservative political views, and his witty assault on all that the average modern academic holds dear. This is not a book that will be found on 'Recommended reading' lists in sociology departments. Even an admirer like myself can find plenty to disagree with
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One Big Fat Balloon Punctured, June 8, 2007
I've re-read this book, now, I think six times. Each time I find myself busting out laughing. David Stove is so withering, so dry, and so damn incisive, that a few months after I've finished, I feel like reading the whole thing again. I don't think I've ever quite come across another philosophy book like it. Fodor's funny, as well as Hobbes in a sadistic sort of way, but Stove is in a class by himself. I first became aware of Stove and this book through Keith Windschuttle, who mentioned it in his "The Killing of History". By that time, I owned, I think, every book ever written by Karl Popper, including the later Routledge compilations, and I have to admit, I thought he was on to something in many instances. Yet, in the back of my mind, I did have the odd nagging doubt...some of his word usages did seem suspect...but all in all, I thought he might really be on to something. Why, he'd even "solved the problem of induction!" (groan) Well, budding Popperian as I was, reading the Stove book hurt - but it "hurt so good". It was excruciating - no sooner had I read the words, than that I could see that Stove was exactly right, and that I (and Popper) had been exactly wrong; and yet, it was so hilarious, all I could do was keep reading, laughing at the whole silly mess. (I think Stove's sarcasm is especially funny here because Popper was so unbelievably humourless about his whole project...and Kuhn seemed to have the personality of a dead halibut). Anyway, Stove makes a few key points in this little book. One is that Popper's (and his disciples's) philosophy of science, taken on its own terms, is patently ridiculous. Another is to show its source (Popper's uncritical acceptance of Hume's arguments against the rationality of induction). And maybe, in some sense, the most important point, is to show how Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos managed to render their spectacularly implausible accounts of science plausible. This is done, shows Stove, by the extreme violence each wreaks upon the English language. On this last point, take Popper on "knowledge" for example. One upset Stove reviewer on here has mentioned that Popper wrote entire books on knowledge. Indeed he did - but what he means by the word "knowledge", as Stove shows, is something very different than what others mean. Popper, in just "Conjectures and Refutations" alone, draws equivalence in meaning between "knowledge", and words like "conjecture", "hypothesis", "theory", and....(drum roll please....)...."GUESS"! And any "philosophy of science" which relies on equating "guessing" with "knowing" is, as Stove shows, and as will be obvious to most, just not really a philosophy of science at all. Or is it only just a "guess" that an atomic bomb can be built, or that hearts - not earlobes or fingernails - pump blood?. (Popper even sums up his philosophy in his autobiography, "Unended Quest", in this way: "we never know what we are talking about"). In any case, Popper and the other three discussed by Stove, are four of the most influential philosophers of science of the last half of the twentieth century. (In fact, I just read a few days ago that "The Arts and Humanities Index" shows Kuhn's fairly execrable "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" to be the most cited book in academic papers, of all time!). And Stove skewers them, quoting them at length to show just how untenable their claims really are. I only wish that Popper would have responded to Stove prior to his death. What an exchange that would have been! I hope this review has helped someone.
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33 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reason stirs in her sleep, March 31, 2002
This review is from: Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult (Hardcover)
Stove starts this book by observing that a philosophy of science which rules out any possibility of the accumulation of knowledge, while giving birth to a misbegotten relativism, must appear very implausible (naturally this is a trivial point to the philosophically sophisticated). How, Stove persists in asking, could such a thing have been made 'acceptable to readers who would reject it out of hand if it were presented to them without equivocation?' Then he shows how, with Helps to Young Authors on how to denature language and sabotage logic 'after the manner of the best authorities'. This part is dedicated to George Orwell. Read it, and 'scare' quotes will never 'look' the 'same' again. The great and good were not amused. Sir Karl an irrationalist? The sainted Thomas an obfuscator? It's true Stove can be unfair, and many readers will think that not all four of his bogeymen - Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend - are equally culpable. Nevertheless, they have more in common than you might think. According to Stove they have good reason, or rather unreason, to write that way. (But for a Popperian rejoinder, see the next review.) The second half of the book traces modern irrationalism back (insofar as it has an intellectual origin in the Anglo-Saxon tradition) to an unacknowledged premise of Hume's inductive skepticism. Whether that premise can bear the weight that rests on it is debatable. To follow the argument you won't need any great knowledge of analytic philosophy, but it may take some mental effort. Don't let that stop you; when Stove is being serious he's a master expositor. Far from being the Idiot's Guide to inductivism, this part is as demanding as anything in Kuhn or Feyerabend, only much better written. Remember, when you read some of the other reviews, that Stove treats Hume with the highest respect. Taking the book as a whole, it seems that readers either like it or loathe it. Apart from the obvious consideration that people don't like having their idols smashed, the probable reason is that Stove writes with too much clarity, wit and forthrightness for postmodern sensibilities. If you think, as some do, that the ponderous perverseness of Feyerabend's 'Against Method' is 'fun' and 'humorous', you won't appreciate this at all. Twenty years on, a kind of academic shanty-town sprawls on foundations of make-believe, for which at least some of Stove's 'four irrationalists' inspired the architecture and signed the building permit (they claimed later it was forged). To question the wisdom of this development is 'naive'; one must be 'half-educated' or 'an unwitting positivist' - witness reactions to Sokal & Bricmont's critique or the ecstatic praise still heaped on Kuhn's 'Structure'. (To be fair, some of the latter enthusiasts may not have understood the implications. One reader even persuades himself that Kuhn's ideas lend support to hard-core creationism. Kuhn is all things to all men.) Is it just a strangely persistent fad rooted in muddle, or a symptom of a deeper sickness? Some say that one Stove was enough; I think we need an Aga. "This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise" - Bertrand Russell.
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