Notes and Questions on Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolution

Historiography of science.

Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chs. 1-5.

• paradigms - definition and function
  • open-ended, fruitful, large body of adherents, demarcate, identify
• normal science - articulates paradigm, discovers significant facts; extends scope and precision but does not aim at novelty
• discovery and invention - novelty of fact and novelty of theory, inseparable because fact and theory are inseparable.
• science does not represent a cumulative linear progression
• Phlogiston Theory vs. Lavoisier exemplifies differential functioning of paradigms in explanation
• When do enough anomalies accumulate to cause a crisis?
• First thing to do with an anomaly is ignore it. E.g. the anomalous precession of the perihelion of Mercury - it didn't scuttle Newtonian mechanics
• No paradigm is ever overthrown without another waiting to replace it.

How Do Revolutions Occur?

"Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion." [Again!]

• Novelty and anomaly emerge against resistance, or the conceptual blinders of expectations; they are not simply counter-examples, but indications of a failure of rules, and they are not simply facts, because there are no simple facts -- fact and theory are inseparable.
• multiple discovery is frequent in science
• new theory: rare, requires reconstruction of a field
• leaders of theory change: either young, or new to the field
• paradigm choice: neither logical nor random
• revolutions: transitions - between incompatible, irreconcilable, incommensurable paradigms
  • e.g. Newtonian mechanics cannot be derived from Einsteinian
• reconstruction: obviates some old questions, creates new ones; makes some old questions unanswerable
  • [phlogiston explained shininess of metals; Lavoisierian chemistry could not; Hegel explained why there had to be exactly 7 planets, in the same year that the first asteroid was found.]
• Gestalt Switch -- a change in Weltanschauung. interpretes, articulates, but cannot 'correct'.
• sensory data: neither fixed nor neutral [cf. Bacon's Idols of Tribe, Den]
• Collections of sensory data: selective and purposive
• We see what we expect
  • [Cf. Anna Brito; Robert Boyle and calcination of tin, Oxygen or dephlogisticated air, Uranus before and after Herschel]
• Query: Do instruments represent embodied paradigms?
  • [do they carry expectations, which can be blinders?]

 A Model for Kuhn's Scientific Activity: the Jigsaw Puzzle

The issue of Relativism - not completely vicious or circular

Is there such a thing as systematic, corrigible, and time-tested knowledge? Objectivity?

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SSR, Chs. 11-13; Postscript: The Aftermath and Second Thoughts

• Why are revolutions invisible? How are revolutions resolved? Why do we think science is cumulative and progressive?
• Paradigms as different worlds. Not fully accountable by rules or appeals to rules. Conflict is really a debate over premises. Crisis is resolved by a reunification achieved through the replacement of one paradigm by another, or by revision and redefinition.
• Perhaps we should abandon teleology for evolution: change instead of progress.

  Postscript:

• "Disciplinary matrix" for a community of specialists [symbolic generalizations, shared metaphyics, values, exemplars, commitments]
• Paradigm as a shared example.
• Tacit knowledge - shared, learned through exemplary problems. integrity of perception
• Incommensurability is not insurmountable -- people can translate, for persuasion [or not], for conversion. Two paradigms in conflict do have some common ground
• Exemplars [Theory choice is more than mathematical or logical]
• Relativism: there is no coherent direction of ontological development, that is, all we have is ever "better" puzzle solvings

A few details:

• What's an experimentum crucis?
• What did Fizeau and Foucault think they were doing?
• How does the Fitzgerald-Lorenz Contraction Hypothesis represent an ad hoc hypothesis, and thus something not quite satisfactory?
• Distinguish between Aristotelian and Newtonian metaphysics.

History of Science/Science and Technology Studies 101