7 ms·

The revolutionary ideas of Thomas Kuhn

67 points by benbreen 9y ago

herodotus 9y ago
A lot of Kuhn's argument about "paradigm shift" centred on Copernicus vs Ptolemy. Owen Gingerich wrote an article disputing this view which is available here: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4258973/Crisis%20vs%20Aesthetic%20OGingrich.pdf?sequence=2 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4258973/Crisis%2...
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Interesting article, thanks for sharing. It seems Gingerich mainly focuses on how a shift occurs -- he makes a strong critique of the supposed crisis in Ptolemic astronomy that was the precursor to Copernicus and instead argues for that broader sociocultural developments enabled the change in cosmological perspective. For me, the concept of paradigms themselves was the most fundamental part of the book. Gingerich doesn't seem to take issue with this, at least not in this article.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  I think this article misses a point that has become standard. My understanding is that the historical consensus already was that the Copernican system was no more accurate than previous Ptolemaic system and for that reason in practice had as many ad-hoc corrections as the Ptolemaic system. The only thing the Ptolemaic system had was conceptual simplicity, simplicity in it's outline and that really can't be determined by a direct comparison of tables. That increased conceptual simplicity was a response to practical complexity may seem a bit strange but only if you want to ignore fairly natural intellectual impulses (if your system is moving towards complexity-overload, organizing it with simple principles seems like something worth investing in even if you see immediate improvements). And naturally, "intelligent design" proponent Owen Gingerich might not the most unbiased in his judgments of obviousness here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gingerich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gingerich
  - westoncb 9y ago
    The above is my understanding of the situation too (based on E.A. Burtt's 'The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science', in my case). Additionally, in Kuhn's book, there is an abstract argument in addition to many examples. Copernicus is one example—and a good one because of its clarity via the whole epicycle vs ellipse 'refactor'—but not the only one).
laxd 9y ago
I remember writing an essay on Kuhn vs Popper as a final assigment in Ex.Phil. My memory of Kuhn has now been distilled into "Science advances one funeral at a time."
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  Max Planck said something similar: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
glenstein 9y ago
I think science and technology are closely intertwined, and for all the debate about scientific progress, I think it's indisputable that a term like "progress" can be meaningfully used to describe the gains in capability and complexity of technology over time. I don't think any analysis of technology would yield to an interpretation that insisted different technological ages were merely a succession of untranslatable frameworks to which no notion of progress could be descriptive. Some things worked better than others, and that was that. And if it's true of technology, which depends on science, why couldn't it be true of science too? I'm not even sure there's a clear dividing line between them.
- bbvnvlt 9y ago
  Science and engineeing may be intimately intertwined, but technology does not "depend on" science in any straightforward way. People were reliably producing alloys before metallurgy, flight happened well before any meaningful understanding of aerodynamics, and most famously, steam engines led to the development of thermodynamic science, not the other way round.
  - joe_the_user 9y ago
    Science and engineeing may be intimately intertwined, but technology does not "depend on" science in any straightforward way. Sure, technology does not depend on science in a straightforward way - it's dependency is quite complex but it's there. You can't translate Schroedinger's equation directly into an understand of semiconductors but you certainly need the basics of quantum mechanics for an understanding of modern chips.
  - glenstein 9y ago
    As Joe said, the relation of dependence is complex. You added an extra caveat, of it being "straightforward" which wasn't part of my claim and I would argue is not even a good faith interpretation of the claim. And all of this seems lateral to the point I was making: can we really trust Kuhn's arguments, which demand we dispense with a notion of scientific progress or independent reality of scientific truths, when we would never take such an argument seriously if made about technology?
ibeckermayer 9y ago
No wonder our culture is careening off the tracks, when contradictory metaphysics like Kuhn's are considered important to philosophy.

67 points by benbreen 9y ago

A lot of Kuhn's argument about "paradigm shift" centred on Copernicus vs Ptolemy. Owen Gingerich wrote an article disputing this view which is available here: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4258973/Crisis%20vs%20Aesthetic%20OGingrich.pdf?sequence=2 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4258973/Crisis%2...

dwaltrip 9y ago
Interesting article, thanks for sharing. It seems Gingerich mainly focuses on how a shift occurs -- he makes a strong critique of the supposed crisis in Ptolemic astronomy that was the precursor to Copernicus and instead argues for that broader sociocultural developments enabled the change in cosmological perspective. For me, the concept of paradigms themselves was the most fundamental part of the book. Gingerich doesn't seem to take issue with this, at least not in this article.
joe_the_user 9y ago
I think this article misses a point that has become standard. My understanding is that the historical consensus already was that the Copernican system was no more accurate than previous Ptolemaic system and for that reason in practice had as many ad-hoc corrections as the Ptolemaic system. The only thing the Ptolemaic system had was conceptual simplicity, simplicity in it's outline and that really can't be determined by a direct comparison of tables. That increased conceptual simplicity was a response to practical complexity may seem a bit strange but only if you want to ignore fairly natural intellectual impulses (if your system is moving towards complexity-overload, organizing it with simple principles seems like something worth investing in even if you see immediate improvements). And naturally, "intelligent design" proponent Owen Gingerich might not the most unbiased in his judgments of obviousness here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gingerich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gingerich
- westoncb 9y ago
  The above is my understanding of the situation too (based on E.A. Burtt's 'The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science', in my case). Additionally, in Kuhn's book, there is an abstract argument in addition to many examples. Copernicus is one example—and a good one because of its clarity via the whole epicycle vs ellipse 'refactor'—but not the only one).

laxd 9y ago

I remember writing an essay on Kuhn vs Popper as a final assigment in Ex.Phil. My memory of Kuhn has now been distilled into "Science advances one funeral at a time."

pmoriarty 9y ago
Max Planck said something similar: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

glenstein 9y ago

I think science and technology are closely intertwined, and for all the debate about scientific progress, I think it's indisputable that a term like "progress" can be meaningfully used to describe the gains in capability and complexity of technology over time. I don't think any analysis of technology would yield to an interpretation that insisted different technological ages were merely a succession of untranslatable frameworks to which no notion of progress could be descriptive. Some things worked better than others, and that was that. And if it's true of technology, which depends on science, why couldn't it be true of science too? I'm not even sure there's a clear dividing line between them.

bbvnvlt 9y ago
Science and engineeing may be intimately intertwined, but technology does not "depend on" science in any straightforward way. People were reliably producing alloys before metallurgy, flight happened well before any meaningful understanding of aerodynamics, and most famously, steam engines led to the development of thermodynamic science, not the other way round.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  Science and engineeing may be intimately intertwined, but technology does not "depend on" science in any straightforward way. Sure, technology does not depend on science in a straightforward way - it's dependency is quite complex but it's there. You can't translate Schroedinger's equation directly into an understand of semiconductors but you certainly need the basics of quantum mechanics for an understanding of modern chips.
- glenstein 9y ago
  As Joe said, the relation of dependence is complex. You added an extra caveat, of it being "straightforward" which wasn't part of my claim and I would argue is not even a good faith interpretation of the claim. And all of this seems lateral to the point I was making: can we really trust Kuhn's arguments, which demand we dispense with a notion of scientific progress or independent reality of scientific truths, when we would never take such an argument seriously if made about technology?

ibeckermayer 9y ago

No wonder our culture is careening off the tracks, when contradictory metaphysics like Kuhn's are considered important to philosophy.