too distractible to post posts so have some more Feyerabend:

[thene]

From Against Method:

The so-called scientific revolution led to astounding discoveries and considerable extended our knowledge of physics, physiology, and astronomy. This was achieved by pushing aside and regarding as irrelevant, and often as non-existent, those facts which had supported the older philosophy. Thus the evidence for witchcraft, demonic possession, the existence of the devil, etc., was disregarded together with the 'superstitions' it once confirmed. The result was that 'towards the close of the Middle Ages science was forced away from human psychology, so that even the great endeavour of Erasmus and his friend Vives, as the best representatives of humanism, did not suffice to bring about a reapproachment, and psychopathology had to trail centuries behind the developmental trend of general medicine and surgery. As a matter of fact . . . the divorcement of medical science from psychopathology was so definite that the latter was always totally relegated to the domain of theology and ecclesiastic and civil law - two fields which naturally became further and further removed from medicine. . . .' G Zilboorg, MD, The Medical Man and the Witch. Baltimore, 1935 pp. 3ff and 70ff. Astronomy advanced, but the knowledge of the human mind slipped back into an earlier and more primitive stage. Another example is astrology. 'In the early stages of the human mind,' writes A. Comte (Cours de Philosophie Positive, Vol. III, pp. 273-80, ed. Littre, Paris, 1836), 'these connecting links between astronomy and biology were studied from a very different point of view, but at least they were studied and not left out of sight, as is the common tendency in our own time, under the restricting influence of a nascent and incomplete positivism. Beneath the chimerical belief of the old philosophy in the physiological influence of the stars, there lay a strong, though confused recognition of the truth that the facts of life were in some way dependent on the solar system. Like all primitive inspirations of man's intelligence this feeling needed rectification by positive science, but not destruction; though unhappily in science, as in politics, it is often hard to reorganize without some brief period of overthrow.' A third area is mathematics. Aristotle had developed a highly sophisticated theory of the continuum that overcame the difficulties raised by Zeno and anticipated quantum theoretical ideas on motion. Most physicists returned to the idea of a continuum consisting of indivisible elements - if they considered such recondite matters, that is.