Challenges and Prospects of Methodological Anarchism for Science and Epistemology in Africa

Abstract

This paper examjnes Feyerabend’s idea of Methodological Anarchism. Specifically, it looks at its challenges and prospects for the growth of science and epistemology in Africa. Feyerabend’s point is that people develop best in pluralistic societies; that contain many ideas, traditions and forms of life. It is argued that Feyerabend’s position involves giving up foundationalism and the search for certitude and that it provides the best approach to the problem of the nature of rationality. This coheres with the post-modernist, post-empiricist or post-structuralist perspectives that a liberalized and humanized orientation is a feasible alternative method of the philosophical and scientific enterprises. Essentially therefore, Africa must deemphasize the element of “formalization”, the levels of theories, reanalyze the nature and content of rationality and shift concentration on practice.