Universals as tyrants and as mediators

Paul Feyerabend

pp. 3-14

in: I. C. Jarvie, Nathaniel Laor (eds), Critical rationalism, metaphysics and science, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

As science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and compass whereupon the facts need no longer be known explicitly. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular. (The Art of the Soluble, London 1967, 114.)