Popper says that there is a method of gaining knowledge that IS better than other methods (the scientific method) but we have to understand that there is no outside observer and that all observations are infected with our beliefs. Different people have different belief systems (Popper calls these frameworks). Armed with the understanding that all observation is infected with beliefs and that each person has her own framework we can apply the scientific method to the examination of evidence, come to understand different frameworks and advance knowledge without falling into the kind of ideological blindness that led to the Holocaust or the Gulags.
Feyerabend seems to be saying that there is NO method that is better than any other method and that the scientific method is a “fairy tale” that inevitably(?) becomes corrupted by power.
Creative work and inspiration – scientific or otherwise – seems not to require a scientific method. The bed-bath-bus phenomenon for example or “Flow” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990).
I am not quite sure what you do about the “truth” conditions of inspiration. Would Feyerabend say it was just an ego/power trip to gather evidence in support of an inspired insight? I don’t think so. He seems to rate observation and suggests the world does have a material reality.
It is that tension whereby description so easily becomes normative prescription. But if there are no norms then are there no differences? For me this is becoming yet another 1000 mile question. If it interests you to follow this thread, here is where I have been working on these thoughts:
http://rworld2.brookesblogs.net/category/theory/1000-mile-questions/
http://www.rworld2.net/blog/category/thousand-mile-questions/
rWorld2 