`In attacking the "tyranny" of science, Feyerabend is not attacking science but rather the ideology of science and the metaphysical pronouncements of philosophers and theoreticians. He makes an eloquent and imaginative plea for the importance of the diverse forms of knowledge embodied in the practicalities of everyday life.' David Bloor, University of Edinburgh<BR><BR>The Tyranny of Science is no work of arid scholarship or technical philosophy. It is the work of a philosophical story-teller who recounts "fairytales" to situate the ideas he discusses. Feyerabend brings science and philosophy down from the heights of abstract theory to the ground of practice and experience which animates them.' Howard Sankey, University of Melbourne<BR><BR>Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century and his book Against Method was an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping tale: the story of the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece that eventually led to the entrenchment of a mythical `scientific worldview'.<BR><BR>Feyerabend argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful.<BR><BR>Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction and, as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and our experience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting from the subjective experience that makes life meaningful. Feyerabend argues that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory by itself ever could be, and stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if exerted with the best possible intentions.<BR><BR>Provocative and iconoclastic, The Tyranny of Science is one of Feyerabend's last books and one of his best. It will be widely read by everyone interested in the role that science has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of the modern world.