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The revolutionary ideas of Thomas Kuhn

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C C Offline
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/publi...omas-kuhn/

EXCERPT: Thomas Kuhn’s influence on the academic and intellectual landscape in the second half of the twentieth century is undeniable.[...] But what did Kuhn espouse? In brief, he popularized the notions of the paradigm and the paradigm shift. A paradigm for Kuhn is a bundle of puzzles, techniques, assumptions, standards and vocabulary that scientists endorse and employ to undertake their day-to-day activities and thereby make remarkable advances in understanding and explaining the natural world. [...] Kuhn has his detractors and critics, of course – those who charge him with almost every conceivable academic failing, especially the promotion of relativism and irrationalism.

[...] In 1962, *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* – the book in which Kuhn set out his ideas on paradigms and scientific development – was published [...] Kuhn’s main aim was to criticize the widely accepted view – promoted by the Logical Positivists – that the accumulation of scientific knowledge across time is incremental and contiguous. [...] Kuhn also rejected the Logical Positivists’ verification principle. [...] No conceptual framework is flawless in terms of its predictions; there is simply the best one available for guiding normal scientific practice. According to Kuhn’s vision of historical scientific development, new theories do not converge on the truth; rather, they shift from one paradigm to another, and each one directs contemporary scientific practice.

[...] Unfortunately, paradigms do not fit or match up perfectly with natural phenomena, and anomalies eventually arise between what a paradigm predicts and what is observed empirically. If the anomalies persist, a crisis generally ensues – leading to the second movement – and the community enters a state of extraordinary science in the hope of resolving it. If a new, competing paradigm resolves the crisis, then a paradigm shift or scientific revolution occurs – the third movement – and a new normal science is established. This cycle recurs with no clear end point as science advances.

Kuhn articulated several important notions concerning scientific practice. Probably the most significant is the incommensurability thesis. As noted above, two paradigms that compete during a scientific revolution are incommensurable when their contents are completely incompatible; that is, when no common measure or mutual foundation exists between them. [...] Associated with this thesis is the assertion that paradigm shifts are not completely rational affairs: community members who switch to a crisis-resolving paradigm, must believe, beyond the available evidence, that it can lead the way forward for a new normal science. In other words, community members are converted through faith, but a faith – as Kuhn emphasizes later in defence of incommensurable shifts – that is not antirational.

Kuhn’s critics attacked many aspects of his theory. They argued that the very idea of the paradigm is simply too ambiguous to support a robust critical analysis of scientific practice. Moreover, in their view, Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis was too ambitious. Competing paradigms are obviously incompatible with one another in a limited way [...] But some overlap must nonetheless exist between them, they argued [...] Finally, Kuhn’s critics claimed that his ideas led to relativism, as he yoked the standard for scientific truth to a particular, and changeable, paradigm, and not to the mind- and theory-independent world that scientists investigate. [...] The philosopher Imre Lakatos claimed, if Kuhn were correct, science would advance through a type of “mob psychology” rather than rational assent.

[...] Responding to criticisms of the incommensurability thesis, Kuhn developed a more fine-grained and nuanced definition, distinguishing between local and global incommensurability. The former represented partial, but still substantial, differences among competing paradigms, such that rational comparison between them is possible. Yet global incommensurability still obtains between the most significantly divergent paradigms, such as those surrounding the Copernican Revolution.

Kuhn found the charge of relativism frivolous: a paradigm that solves another paradigm’s crisis is obviously better suited to guide normal science, he argued. Whether that paradigm is true or objectively correct is beside the point; normal scientists do not possess an Archimedean platform from which to justify, either absolutely or objectively, scientific knowledge. They work with the best standards of evidence and confirmation available to them.

And responding to the charge of irrationalism, Kuhn agreed with his critics that rational and empirical reasons are necessary to choose between paradigms – but they are also insufficient. He argued that values are also required. For example, simplicity in theoretical statements and natural laws is preferable to those working with them: a paradigm with simpler theories is much more appealing, and thus more likely to be adopted. Personal factors, beliefs and relationships may also guide a scientist to prefer one paradigm over another.

[...] Kuhn [...] later underwent a paradigm shift of his own. In the 1980s, Kuhn exchanged the historical philosophy of science – as promulgated in Structure – for an evolutionary one. [...] Kuhn planned to write a sequel to Structure, outlining this “evolutionary turn” [...] Unfortunately, Kuhn did not complete [...it...] before he died. The question that arises is whether the sequel would have had a significant impact on contemporary philosophy of science, which is more pluralistic in its perspective than when Kuhn wrote Structure. Today’s philosophers of science have no need for a consensus framework, since each natural science is studied by its own philosophical sub-field. [...] Although the full impact of Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science may never be realized, the marriage between Structure and academic discourse remains sacrosanct, as is evident from the recent celebration of Structure’s golden anniversary – with no divorce imminent....

MORE: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/publi...omas-kuhn/
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