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Outline 16 - Kuhn and Revolutions
Outline 16 - Kuhn and Revolutions
I. Review
A. Kuhn is trying to show that there’s always an arbitrary element that goes into
determining the scientific beliefs of a community at a time.
B. Pre-Paradigmatic Science
C. Paradigm
i. Scientific achievement that scientific community takes, for
some period of time, to supply the foundation of its practice.
ii. Examples: Ptolemaic Astronomy, Copernican Astronomy,
Newtonian Dynamics, Wave Optics
iii. Marked by two essential features: (1) Makes a sufficiently
unprecedented achievement that attracts followers away from
rival conception of topic and (2) Is sufficiently open-ended to
leave plenty of problems for practitioners to work on.
D. Normal Science
II. Crisis
C. Often, the theory that will replace the paradigm has been anticipated long
before the crisis, but was not taken seriously because there was no crisis. A
crisis is a necessary precondition for a novel theory to emerge.
D. Often, during the crisis, science starts to resemble the pre-paradigmatic stage
in that there are lots of different incompatible versions of the paradigm held
by different researchers.
D. Two different scientists can reasonably disagree about whether the same
anomaly is a normal puzzle to be solved or the start of a crisis.
V. Scientific Revolutions
VI. Incommensurability
According to Kuhn, rival scientific paradigms are incommensurable: there is no
common measure with which to compare rival paradigms.
From within the perspective of a particular paradigm, rival paradigms seem to
be inferior. But there is no objective standpoint from which we can compare
one paradigm to another.
Paradigms are incommensurable for two reasons:
o The scientific languages of rival paradigms are different.
o The standards of evidence and argument are different across rival
paradigms.
Because paradigms are incommensurable, logic and observation alone do not
determine which paradigm is better, or which paradigm a researcher should
choose.
Normal science (in which logic and experimentation play a crucial role)
cannot choose between paradigms since normal science is only possible
within a particular paradigm.
VIII. Relativism
o Relativism is characterized in many different ways. Here’s a first pass that
we’ll use for now. According to relativism, scientific claims are justified only
relative to a paradigm.
o Relativism is not the claim that people merely disagree about some subject
matter.
o Instead, relativism about science is the view that there is no perspective
independent fact of the matter about whether scientific claims are justified.
Objective chance
Paradigm:
BROAD
-scientists generally agree
-organized way of looking at the subject matter of science
NARROW
More advisement that captures attention
Open ended
Still problems to solve
Paradigm gives confidence that all problems are solvable within the paradigm
Crisis in revolution:
Crisis arises when anomalies cause researchers to question
Anomalies have to be persistant