David Stove
ANYTHING GOES
Origins of the cult of scientific irrationalism
Foreword by Keith Windschuttle,
Afterword by James Franklin
The most acrimonious controversy within intellectual debate today is over the status of Western science. Since the publication of the now famous Sokal hoax, the ‘science wars' have erupted. Critics from radical sociology, cultural studies and science studies have charged that, instead of being a universally valid method of attaining knowledge, science provides only an ethnocentric view of the world. Their opponents have replied that the debate has become a site of political demagoguery, theoretical obfuscation and plain ignorance.
The most remarkable book in this whole debate is Anything Goes by the Australian philosopher, the late David Stove, who in recent years has gained a cult following among philosophy students in both Australia and the USA. Long out of print but now republished by Macleay Press, this book has a new foreword by Keith Windschuttle and a new Afterword by James Franklin.
"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."
— Professor Michael Levin, City University of New York
"Written in a bracing, take-no-prisoners style, David Stove's literary analysis of the linguistic devices by means of which Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend make the irrationalist themes in their philosophies of science credible is genuinely illuminating, and his 'Helps to Young Authors' who hope to emulate them are wickedly funny. After reading this book you will look with new eyes at the rash of scare quotes — 'knowledge', 'evidence', 'fact', 'rationality' etc — that afflicts recent radical sociology of science."
— Professor Susan Haack, University of Miami
"It has been a long time since I have read a book of philosophy as entertaining and illuminating."
— Roger Kimball , The New Criterion
Publication information
Publication date: 1998
Recommended retail price: $29.95 (inc.GST)
Paperback, 215 x 140 mm, 218 pages, notes, bibliography, index
ISBN 1 876492 01 5
Publisher:
Macleay Press, PO Box 477, Paddington NSW 2021
Telephone 02 9360 2534 Fax 02 9331 7368
email: sales@macleaypress.com
