Feyerabend, Experts, and Dilettantes

Paul Feyerabend’s 1970 article “Experts in a Free Society” tries to make the case that scientific experts can only be tolerated if they are dilettantes. He uses Galileo, Newton and Kepler as examples of great scientists whose writing is nothing like that of contemporary “experts’, these latter being represented by the authors of the well-known book Human Sexual Response, Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson. He goes on to argue against the idea that the Scientific Revolution represented the triumph of empiricism. I take issue with the way Feyerabend represents Galileo as implacably opposed to empiricism, with his supposition that good science requires a particular personality, and with the way in which he represents the work of Masters and Johnson.