The cosmological divergent proliferation in Feyerabend's pluralism

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Feyerabendian proliferation is best understood as cosmologically divergent proliferation. The divergent aspect is inspired by a Darwinian background, and it affects other elements of Feyerabend’s philosophy, as much as the way his pluralism advances, like the cosmological dimension. This cosmological item influences not only how theories should proliferate - divergently - but also why they must be tenaciously retained and compared. On this account, we underline Feyerabend’s view that the principle of proliferation is never alone; instead, it is always coupled with the principle of tenacity. This is the reason we take these two principles as two sides of the same coin. Moreover, when approaching tenacity, we discuss three aspects of tenacity (attractiveness, fruitfulness, and retainment) under two forms of how they are related to the cosmologically divergent proliferation. First, working on many cosmologies, allowed by proliferation, to develop them. Second, retaining all theories by what is called a practical suspension or setback. As a result, we argue that such an approach, divergent pluralism, is an adequate way for understanding Feyerabend’s pluralism and a clear way of avoiding misunderstandings of his view.

Keywords

• Cosmological divergent proliferation
• theory suspension
• tenacity
• Darwinism