Resurrected Boosted Scientific Method

Feyerabend describes in Against Method a collapse of 19th century science based on the idea that there is a "scientific method" capable of leading scientists to discover "truths" about the World. Feyerabend describes 20th century science as a science without "method" where "Anything Goes",  connecting to Kuhn's analysis with "method" replaced by "fashion".

Feyerabend thus describes a change at the turn to the 20th century from rational positivism of enlightenment and modernity into postmodern pessimism, which is essentially the change from classical physics into modern physics.

But to give up rationality and "method" if it is not really necessary, may be stupid and so it is important to understand (i) the limits of the "method" of classical physics and (ii) what caused the collapse into modern physics.

Classical physics can be described by combinations of

• Lagrange equations of rigid body mechanics (Newton's equation of motion)
• Navier's equations of solid mechanics
• Navier-Stokes equations of fluid/gas mechanics
• Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetics.

The equations express balance of forces and constitutive relations describing material properties as sets of partial differential equations and the "method" consist of finding the constitutive relations by theory or experiment and then solving the equations. 

Combined with the computer this "method" is today used on a large scale in science and engineering as a rational approach to simulating, controling and understanding the world. Combined with the computer classical physics does not seem to have any real limits. Nothing of this can be described as "Anything Goes".

The collapse of classical physics around 1900 was caused by two perceived paradoxes:

• The ultraviolet catastrophe of blackbody radiation.
• The Michelson-Morley paradox of perceived non-existence of an ether medium for propagation of electromagnetic waves.

The ultraviolet catastrophe led to quantum mechanics and the ether paradox to relativity theory, the two pillars of modern physics, both representing the "Anything Goes" of Feyerabend as physical theories beyond rationality and human comprehension. 

But both paradoxes may be solved essentially within the "method" of classical physics as I seek to show in Mathematical Physics of Blackbody Radiation and Many-Minds Relativity. 

If I am right, then maybe scientific method can be resurrected, not as limitation but as an effective tool of both rationalization and discovery combined with an open mind of "Anything Goes" as a door to both invention and understanding. 

The computer thus boosts the scientific method of classical physics into a formidable tool and opens to a new modern positivism following postmodern pessimism. The introduction of the iPad 100 years after the collapse of classical physics, may well come to signify the new modernity of resurrected boosted scientific method. After all, an iPad app is nothing but computational mathematical physics created by an inventive mind using the "method".

As an example of resurrected boosted classical fluid mechanics, discover The Secret of Flight.