himself with certain philosophical groupings, despite a strong group-aversiveness.
But among those who knew him there seems to be some consensus that in his
later years he found peace with a new life-partner (his last wife, Grazia), together,
perhaps, with a somewhat more stable philosophical position when not associated
with any particular philosophical tribe.

Bas van Fraassen's essay is concerned with one of Feyerabend's attempts to
refute the 'classical empiricism' of Newton, drawing on a formally parallel argu-
ment leveled by Jesuits against the fundamentalist Protestant idea that Holy Scrip-
ture can and should be one's only guide to faith. Feyerabend's argument purports
to show that experience cannot be our only guide to belief, and that tradition
must also be taken into account as a separate source of information. Van Fraassen
questions whether this response is cogent. He is concerned partly with the scope
of the parallel antiempiricist argument that Feyerabend endorses. Does it tell
against all empiricist epistemologies, or against all foundationalist ones? Does em-
piricism still have a place, even after we have renounced foundationalism? Van
Fraassen's essay also raises questions such as whether a more Aristotelian empiri-
cism, which conceives experiences as processes undergone rather than as sets of
perceptual data (and which Feyerabend seemed to favor in his later work), might
escape the argument. And one of the wider issues it broaches is that of Feyera-
bend's attitude to the enlightenment.

One of the most controversial and, perhaps, most misunderstood ideas devel-
oped by Feyerabend is the 'principle of proliferation', which advocates the genera-
tion of incommensurable alternatives to current orthodox theories. Feyerabend's
appeal to proliferation is closely linked to several notorious slogans, which he
frequently endorsed, such as 'anything goes' and his alleged preference for 'episte-
mological anarchism'. Nevertheless, Feyerabend's thoughts on proliferation are
immensely complex and worthy of serious study. This task is carried out in differ-
ent ways here in the essays by Peter Achinstein, Elisabeth Lloyd, and Paul
Churchland.

Peter Achinstein claims that there is something at fault with Feyerabend's
appeal to proliferation. The simple invention of a contrary theory without con-
straints, argues Achinstein, is unlikely to undermine a well-established point of
view. Achinstein considers various interpretations of the 'principle of proliferation',
draws attention to Newton ' Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy', and defends New-
ton's claim that the generation of a hypothesis that is contrary to a universal propo-
sition need not weaken the argument in favor of that universal proposition. Sup-
pose, for example, that it is possible to imagine that there is no such thing as
universal gravity, that there is some peculiar grue-type universal force that will be
an inverse-square force for another five hundred years, but not thereafter. Such
imaginings, says Achinstein, will neither test nor diminish the argument in favor
of universal gravity. The mere logical possibility that a conclusion is false is not
enough to cast doubt on it if it otherwise has support, he contends.

There is still room for argument over whether Feyerabend's rejections of ' Ra-
tionalism' and ' Reason' ("with a capital 'R'", as he would say) are correctly inter-
preted as rejections of reason tout court. John Watkins's essay contrasts with
Reaven's in this respect. Reaven's presentation, in his account of Feyerabend's life

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