Ehrenhaft’s Experiments on Magnetic Monopoles: Reconsidering the Feyerabend-Ehrenhaft Connection

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces and reproduces a document from Feyerabend’s Nachlass including: (i) Feyerabend’s 1967 tentative translation into English of an original German typescript reporting the lecture notes of an academic course on magnetic monopoles delivered by physicist Felix Ehrenhaft (1879-1952) at the University of Vienna in the 1947 summer semester; and (ii) Feyerabend’s memoir focusing on Ehrenhaft in postwar Vienna.

In addition to making available to a larger audience Ehrenhaft’s lectures on a highly controversial topic, the publication of Feyerabend’s typescript offers the opportunity to reconsider, delve deeper into and cast a brighter light on a rather neglected aspect in the growing literature on Feyerabend’s thought: the significance of Ehrenhaft for the development of Feyerabend’s intellectual biography.

KEYWORDS:

• Feyerabend
• Ehrenhaft
• theoretical pluralism
• epistemological anarchism‌
• magnetic monopoles
• history of physics
• history of the philosophy of science

Acknowledgements

I would like to offer my special thanks to Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend, for her trust and for granting permission to publish Feyerabend's typescript and to quote from Feyerabend's unpublished correspondence; to Verso, for granting permission to reproduce extensively from Feyerabend's published work; and to Joseph Agassi, for generously giving me unconditional access to his archive. I am also indebted to two anonymous referees for providing constructive comments and suggestions that led to substantial improvements in the quality of the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The main reason why the typescript has remained unpublished until now is probably connected to the fact that a page of the only copy of the typescript which had been available in Feyerabend’s Nachlass at the Philosophical Archive of the University of Konstanz since the mid-1990s (PF 5-3-3, 37 ss.) was missing (Ehrenhaft 2022 [1947], Appendix 1, p. [2]; see below, n31). In the summer of 2019, I was entrusted by Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend to examine several boxes which Feyerabend had left in California when he finally moved to Switzerland in 1990 and which rested almost forgotten for about three decades in the basement of one of Feyerabend’s closest friends and former TA. The operation unearthed, among several other documents:

1. Feyerabend’s copy of the original German typescript of the lecture notes of Ehrenhaft’s course (16 ss.);

2. a typescript of Feyerabend’s English translation of the lecture notes, including 16 figures drawn by hand by Feyerabend (with a blue pen), reproducing corresponding figures in the original German typescript, and several revisions to the typed text made (with a black pen) by Feyerabend’s hand (38 ss.);

3. four photocopies of the unrevised typescript of Feyerabend’s English translation, including Feyerabend’s hand-drawn figures (38 ss.).

PF 5-3-3 turned out to be an incomplete photocopy of (b). Ehrenhaft 2022 [1947] provides a faithful reproduction of the typescript. The original pagination is indicated in bold superscript, within square brackets; editor’s comments and interpolations are given within angled brackets.

The following abbreviations are used henceforth in this introduction for references to archival sources: EFA (Archives of the European Forum Alpbach), JW (John W. N. Watkins Collection, LSE Library Archives and Special Collections), PF (Sammlung Paul Feyerabend, Philosophisches Archiv der Universität Konstanz). Added italicizations occurring in quotations are explicitly signalled; all translations from Feyerabend’s German works for which no English translation is available are mine.

2 See Holton 1978, 169n20; Trevor Pateman, who was a graduate student in London in 1968–1970 and attended Feyerabend’s classes at the LSE and/or UCL, remembers having received from Feyerabend a copy of the typescript in 1971, delivered by mail from Berkeley (see Pateman 2012).

3 A noteworthy exception is Oberheim 2006, Ch. 4 (pp. 116-122); see below, Sec. 3.

4 Ehrehanft features prominently in seven among Feyerabend’s autobiographical accounts; one from the early 1960s, three from the mid-to-late-1970s and one from the early 1980s: respectively, a page of his programmatic paper ‘How to Be a Good Empiricist’ (Feyerabend 1963, 23 and n* [92 and n27]); a footnote in the first edition of Against Method (Feyerabend 1975, 39–40n5; removed from the following editions); a sketchy memoir included in a letter of Feyerabend to Bechler, 1 January 1976 (reproduced in Feyerabend 2020, 29–30); a similar but significantly broader narrative, published verbatim in different venues, in English and German (Feyerabend 1977, 66–69 [170-172]; Feyerabend 1978a, 110–111 = Feyerabend 1979, 219–221 = Feyerabend 1988, 276–277); and Feyerabend’s contribution to a collection of reminiscences of Austrian intellectuals about their postwar experience (Feyerabend 1983). About ten years later, Feyerabend repeated his recollections on Ehrenhaft in a 1993 interview (Feyerabend 1995a, 116–117) and finally returned to them and enriched them with further details in his autobiography (Feyerabend 1995b, 66–67). Oberheim 2006 is based on Feyerabend 1978a and Feyerabend 1995b as well as on Ehrenhaft 2022 [1947] (PF 5-3-3; see above, n1).

5 ‘I had many live father figures. Ehrenhaft was one of them and I still praise him’ (Feyerabend to Watkins, 13 January 1976, JW 170).

6 This section is largely based on Dirac 1977; Holton 1978; Kragh 1981; Kragh 1990, 216–217, 351; Angetter and Martischnig 2005, and especially on Braunbeck 2003 and Santos 2011.

7 See Holton 1978, 169; Braunbeck 2003, 11–20; Angetter and Martischnig 2005; Santos 2011, 373.

8 See Holton 1978, 169; Kragh 1981, 152; Braunbeck 2003, 21–24; Angetter and Martischnig 2005; Santos 2011, 373.

9 See Holton 1978, 220–224 in particular; Kragh 1981, 153; Braunbeck 2003, 25–27, 41-49; Santos 2011, 379.

10 See Braunbeck 2003, 25–26; Angetter and Martischnig 2005.

11 See Kragh 1981, 153; Kragh 1990, 216; Braunbeck 2003, 31–32, 41-49; Santos 2011, 373-374.

12 See Kragh 1981, 153; Braunbeck 2003, 33–38; Santos 2011, 374; 377.

13 Braunbeck 2003, 55–100; Santos 2011, 376, 377, 394–395 in particular.

14 See Holton 1978, 169; Kragh 1981, 153–154; Kragh 1990, 216–217; Braunbeck 2003, 88–91, 96-100; Santos 2011, 383–384.

15 See Kragh 1981, 154; Kragh 1990, 216–217; Braunbeck 2003, 50–52, 54; Santos 2011, 380-383; 385.

16 See Kragh 1981, 154; Santos 2011, 376; 376n13.

17 See Braunbeck 2003, 39–40, 47-49, 53, 96-97; Santos 2011, 386–392 in particular.

18 Kragh 1981, 153; Kragh 1990, 217, 351n39; Santos 2011, 385-386.

19 See Braunbeck 2003, 66–68, Santos 2011, 382; 382n36.

20 See Braunbeck 2003, 105–107; Santos 2011, 392-393.

21 See Kragh 1981, 153–154; Braunbeck 2003, 109–130.

22 Braunbeck 2003, 107–108; Ehrenhaft 2003 [1947] [2003 [1947]], 142; Feyerabend, ‘Student record book 1946-1951’, PF 9-3-65.

23 ‘Soldbuch’, PF 9-3-3; ‘Certificate of Discharge’, Apolda 4 July 1945; ‘Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands, Mitgliedskarte’, 1 January - 12 April 1946; ‘Certificate of Discharge’, Apolda, 11 May 1946 and Vienna, 2 August 1946, PF 9-3-60; ‘Staatliche Hochschule für Musik zu Weimar, Registration form’, 13 March 1946; ‘Staatliche Hochschule für Musik zu Weimar, Registration form’, 2 April 1946; ‘Staatliche Hochschule für Musik zu Weimar, Notice of departure’; ‘Military Government of Germany - Personnel Questionnaire’, 13 June 1946, PF 3-9-15; Feyerabend 1995b, Chs 3-6.

24 Feyerabend’s autobiographical account is somewhat confused and does not fit the archival evidence. In its context, the phrase ‘[t]he following semester’ seems to be referring to the winter semester of the 1949–1950 session. However, the typescript explicitly presents its content as reporting Ehrenhaft’s lectures in the 1947 summer semester (see Ehrenhaft 2003 [1947] [2003 [1947]], 142; Ehrenhaft 2022 [1947], [0]; below, section 2). According to Feyerabend’s student record book, he took only another university course by Ehrenhaft: the seminar, again on single magnetic poles, delivered by Ehrenhaft in the 1948 summer semester (see ‘Student record book 1946-1951’, PF 9-3-65).

25 In his autobiography, the late Feyerabend recalls that he was initially recruited by the Austrian College Society to take shorthand records of the debates that would take place at the 1948 European Forum Alpbach: ‘This was the most decisive step of my life. I would not be where I am today […] had I not accepted [that] offer’ (Feyerabend 1995b, 70). Moreover, the lecture notes that Feyerabend took as research assistant to Arthur Pap, during the latter’s Fulbright visiting professorship at the University of Vienna in 1953-54, were instrumental to the publication of Pap 1955 (see Pap 1955, v).

26 Feyerabend used both identical and similar personal stamps as marks to indicate ownership of his books and documents throughout his formative years in postwar Vienna (1946-1955); date stamps can also be frequently found in the books acquired to Feyerabend’s personal library during this time.

27 For Feyerabend’s translation, see Ehrenhaft 2022 [1947], Appendix II, [4].

28 See also Braunbeck 2003, 119–121.

29 See ‘Österreichisches College – I. Mitteilungsblatt 1949/1950’, [September 1949], EFA. The parallel Natural Philosophy Workshop of the Austrian College Society, founded in the spring of 1948 under the scientific leadership of Viktor Kraft and the student leadership of Feyerabend, initially meeting on the premises of the University of Vienna, was later named by Feyerabend the ‘Kraft Circle’ and has also been called the ‘Third Vienna Circle’ (see Stadler 2006; Kuby 2010; Stadler 2010). It seems likely that memberships in the Physics, the Natural Philosophy as well as the Mathematics (and possibly other) study groups of the Austrian College Society overlapped considerably.

30 ‘Ehrenhaft is almost printed. I am really looking forward to your comment on him.’ (Feyerabend to Agassi, [September 1967]). ‘Did I send you my translation of Ehrenhaft’s lectures? Read the second appendix (the last seven pages) which is an eyewitness account of Ehrenhaft in Vienna and of a certain dramatic discussion between Ehrenahft, Rosenfeld, Popper et others. I think you will be amused.’ (Feyerabend to Watkins, 17 December 1967, JW 170)

31 Feyerabend’s translation presents the last section of Ehrenhaft’s lecture notes, which in the original German typescript is entitled ‘Photophorese’ – typed in a unique graphic text style but with no additional indication (see Ehrenhaft 2003 [1947] [2003 [1947]], 163–164) – as ‘Appendix I / A Lecture on Photophoresis’.

32 See above, n4. This holds particularly for Feyerabend’s main early narrative focusing on Ehrenhaft (Feyerabend 1977, 66–69 [170-172]; Feyerabend 1978a, 110–111 = Feyerabend 1979, 219–221 = Feyerabend 1988, 276–277).

33 Feyerabend is answering to the following question of the interviewer: ‘Were there some physicists, some scientists, not only theorists of science, who also encouraged you in your criticism of our idolatry of science?’ (Feyerabend 1994a, 116). In addition to Ehrenhaft, Feyerabend mentions Hans Thirring and Philipp Frank.

34 This quotation continues the one given above, p. 8. Feyerabend is referring to the uneasy combination of the scientists’ empiricist persuasion that observations and experimental results play a crucial role in scientific research and the theoretical entrenchment – tenacious attachment to cherished theories or dogmatic hesitation to reject well-established one – which scientists display when confronted with experimental anomalies.

35 This is typical of Feyerabend’s autobiographical reconstruction and rationalisation of his intellectual trajectory. Feyerabend made similar points about Wittgenstein, Frank and Kuhn, whose influences he came to recognise only in retrospect fully (see, e.g., Feyerabend 1978b; 289 and Feyerabend 1995b, 103). The assessment of the significance of such late acknowledgements is an especially complex issue due to the ordinary entanglement between the evidential component (the author’s testimony about one’s earlier self) and the reconstructive component (the author’s self-concept at the time of their composition), intensified by the long chronological distance.

36 For the sake of clarity, it must be emphasised that within a fallibilist, hence anti-foundationalist, methodological framework, such as Feyerabend’s, no rejection or falsification, however concrete, is ever final.

37 For Feyerabend’s contemporary understanding of the mythical tradition, along Popperian lines, see Feyerabend 1962b.

38 It seems that the envisaged project was eventually dropped. See Feyerabend to Popper, 14 October 1955; 23 December 1955; 6 February 1956; in Feyerabend 2020, 196, 211, 219.

39 Pryce (2003) had been Wykeham Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford since 1946 and moved to the University of Bristol in 1954 to take up the Head of the Department of Physics. He was a member of the commission who appointed Feyerabend as lecturer at Bristol (see Feyerabend 1995b, 101–102).

40 Interestingly, at the 1957 Colston Research Society Symposium in Bristol, Feyerabend witnessed another significant confrontation between physicists advocating respectively an established and mainstream position and a minority and marginalised position: the theoretical dispute between Léon Rosenfeld who represented the orthodox ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum theory, and the dissident David Bohm, who was trying to revive de Broglie’s project of a locally realistic, causal and deterministic, ‘hidden-variable interpretation’. On this occasion, however, the minority position temporarily prevailed: ‘Bohm […] turned the tables and made the event into a kind of coming out party for his programme, a victory that did not remain limited to the Symposium auditorium’ (Kožnjak 2018, 94). The impact of this event on the development of Feyerabend’s thought has started being properly examined only recently (see Kuby 2021), but it seems that the immediate outcome of the controversy may be easily made fit into, and thereby support, Oberheim’s reconstruction of the conceptual genesis of Feyerabend’s theoretical pluralism out of his Ehrenhaft experience.

41 Cf. Oberheim 2006, 118n141; the footnote cites the relevant page just passingly and tangentially, without any emphasis.

42 The same passage occurs verbatim in Feyerabend’s long essay ‘Problems of Empiricism’ (Feyerabend 1965), which incorporates Feyerabend 1963 (cf. Feyerabend 1965, 175–176, 249n119).

43 Theoretical pluralism rejects what Feyerabend calls ‘the autonomy principle’: the basic ‘assumption’ or ‘postulate of empirical method’ characterising monistic methodologies according to which ‘the collection of facts for the purpose of test […] which belong to the empirical content of some theory are available whether or not one considers alternatives to this theory’ (22). The far-reaching implications of the principle of relative autonomy of facts, which lies at the very core of Feyerabend’s theoretical pluralism, and the ultimate feasibility of Feyerabend’s methodological proposal deserve and still await a thorough examination in Feyerabend scholarship.

44 Citing Feyerabend 1963, 23 [92], Oberheim emphasises that ‘it seems as though at some later point Feyerabend was indeed willing to believe that [‘Eherehaft’s experiments undermined orthodox theory’]’ (Oberheim 2006, 141).

45 In the footnote referred to by Oberheim, Feyerabend is elaborating upon the (Popperian) link between methodological dogmatism and political totalitarianism, emphasising that the conscious elimination of alternatives through the suppression of opponents for the preservation of a single, hence dominant, point of view is applied today more liberally with respect to ‘physical theories’ as opposed to ‘political theories’ (Feyerabend 1962a, 69n85). Feyerabend made a similar point a few years later when he noticed, with reference to the bloc politics and the nuclear deterrence principle of the Cold War, that ‘[t]he situation in which we live today is characterised by […] the fear of attempting to forcibly remove one of the ideologies […] [which] prevents the reduction of pluralism through physical annihilation of the opponent.’ (Feyerabend 1967, 43).

46 A possible reason why Oberheim gives prominence to the arguably covert reference to Ehrenhaft in Feyearbend 1962 and almost neglects the explicit occurrence of Ehrenahft’s name in Feyerabend 1963 might be due to the fact that Oberheim’s reconstruction stands firm only if Ehrenhaft is at least evoked in the paper in which Feyerabend first announced his theoretical pluralism, whereas it wavers if Ehrehanft is mentioned only in the follow-up works in which Feyerabend reformulated or adjusted his proposal.

47 See Collodel 2018.

48 See Feyerabend to Bechler, 1 January 1976 in Feyerabend 2020, 32–33.

49 For an overview, see Collodel 2016: sec. 2.3; for a more detailed account, see Collodel (in preparation).

50 For Feyerabend’s contribution to debunking the ‘Galileo myth’, see Feyerabend 1965, 227–229n23; Feyerabend 1967; Feyerabend 1970a; and Feyerabend 1975.

51 See Ehrenhaft 2022 [1947], Appendix II, [1].

52 ‘It is my belief that science was advanced, and is still being advanced by dilettantes and that experts are liable to bring it to a standstill’ (Feyerabend 1970b: [112]); ‘most revolutionaries have unusual developments and often regard themselves as dilettantes.’ (Feyerabend 1978a, 40); ‘both scientists [Bohr and Einstein] (and some of their followers such as Max Born) regarded themselves as dilettantes, they defined and approached their problems independently of existing standards. They had no compunction about mixing science and philosophy and so about advancing the cause of both.’ (202-203; cf. 40n25)

53 Interestingly, starting from the mid-1960s, Feyerabend used the terms ‘charlatan’ or ‘dilettante’ as opposed to ‘crank’ as synonyms for, respectively, critical thinker and dogmatic thinker (for Feyerabend’s characterisation of ‘crank’, see Feyerabend 1964, 305). I thank Jamie Shaw for drawing my attention to this point (for the treatment of cranks in Feyerabend’s political relativism, see Shaw 2021).

54 See Collodel 2015.

55 The passage follows the quotation given above, p. 1; for the omitted part, see above, p. 7.