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I have a background in both science and philosophy, and so I have thought a lot about Kuhn. Here are my conclusions. To start, there are two parts to Kuhn's id

I have a background in both science and philosophy, and so I have thought a lot about Kuhn. Here are my conclusions. To start, there are two parts to Kuhn's ideas. First there is a historical analysis of the process of an old theory being replaced by a new one. Second Kuhn tries to come up with a metaphysical explanation of what is going on here. The historical analysis seems sound. I say that because it fits my own understanding, because scientists in general think it is right, and because philosophers of science, most of whom initially rejected it, have over the years come to mostly support it. Where Kuhn gets into trouble is his metaphysical explanation. He has a sort of dualistic view that leads to a type of anti-realism, though he can't quite admit it. What he should have done instead, in my view, is to explain his historical findings with a metaphysics from one of the anti-foundationalist philosophies, such as Pragmatism, existential-phenomenology, or the later Wittgenstein. This sort of approach makes possible a realism that fits his historical studies.

goatlover 8y ago
> First there is a historical analysis of the process of an old theory being replaced by a new one. Second Kuhn tries to come up with a metaphysical explanation of what is going on here. Sometimes this is overblown. The canonical case of Relativity replacing Newtonian mechanics doesn't invalidate Newton. Rather, it makes Newton's theory a special case of GR that's still valid for most everyday calculations.
- Aqueous 8y ago
  Exactly - and the same is true with regard to special vs. general relativity. Special relativity is another special case of general relativity for inertial reference frames. And special relativity itself is a necessary consequence of the theory of electrodynamics that Maxwell described holding true in every reference frame. But it no more replaces Maxwell's theory than brings it to its necessary conclusion. And even in the quantum world - which physicists famously can't reconcile with observations of general relativity - Maxwell's equations are true even though we have quantum electrodynamics - which include Maxwell's equations as their foundation. So the paradigm shifts aren't often as earth-shattering as they seem to outsiders or as Kuhn makes them out to be, because they often subsume and contain the prior theory. The way Morris characterizes Kuhn makes it seem like the different worlds of theory, before- and after- revolution, are orthogonal to each other - or can't even talk to each other at all, because they are using the same terms to describe totally different concepts. But I don't believe that to be true in the slightest. That said, I must admit that I haven't read Kuhn so I would have to rely on Morris' interpretation of Kuhn - which seems, ahem, somewhat slanted.
  - westoncb 8y ago
    Kuhn is very explicit on that the typical behavior is this kind of subsuming rather than outright replacement. He even points out cases where the new paradigm causes us to lose the ability to say certain things we were capable of in the old one.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  It's nearly always overblown. A new paradigm usually renders the evidence more probable, giving a more precise and accurate explanation, but it rarely fully contradicts old paradigms, since that would leave it with their replications and evidence to explain away!
  - Nomentatus 8y ago
    But a new paradigm also changes the definitions of terms. Once Newton had distinguished "mass" (resistance to acceleration) from "weight" (on the earth's surface) then the meaning of "weight" has also changed. (Medieval scholars had previously refined "weight" however, which helped Newton.) You can teach this new worldview, but it isn't obvious, and it doesn't consist merely in an addition to previous evidence or propositions.
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      >it doesn't consist merely in an addition to previous evidence or propositions. It mostly does, once you account for the fact that science isn't about language.
      - Nomentatus 8y ago
        Science doesn't use language for those "about" statements? Hunh. Math is language. Science doesn't partake of that? Doesn't expand that language? C'mon man. The post office is about parcels, but it uses addresses. Can't be helped.
      - Nomentatus 8y ago
        "it" above = the change in definition
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  > Rather, it makes Newton's theory a special case of GR ... Newtonian mechanics (and gravity) are a special-case approximation of relativistic theories. To me that's no biggie, but to some philosophers I've spoken to take the attitude that "approximately right is still wrong". That sounds silly to me, but they have a point which might made better by emphasising the special-case nature of the approximation. Within Newtonian mechanics, there is no hint that it is a special case of something, it's validity seems to go on for ever. And it is that seeming which is not even approximately correct.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    >Newtonian mechanics (and gravity) are a special-case approximation of relativistic theories. To me that's no biggie, but to some philosophers I've spoken to take the attitude that "approximately right is still wrong". Well, those philosophers should stop expecting a world measured in terms of continuous variables to have a discrete causal topology.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  Relativity didn't replace Newton for a specific subset of engineering calculations. But it absolutely destroyed Newton as a comprehensive scientific world view. Newtonian philosophical fundamentals such as absolute universal time and absolute relative velocity are absolutely wrong - not just wrong for specific high-energy problems, but fundamentally incorrect conceptually, which makes them useless for the development of non-trivial future insight. This is Kuhn's main point, and it's a shame so few people seem to understand it. A paradigm shift isn't just a new way of solving problems, it's a completely new conceptual map of reality, made of different entities connected by different relationships.
Quekid5 8y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not a historian nor a philosopher, though I do wonder (I like to think, at least) deeply about these things. I've also only just read the first two (three?) chapters so far, so this may be way to soon to opine. Still, he doesn't strike me as a "surprise twist" type of writer, so hopefully I'm doing the basic ideas justice. Anyway... I was actually really surprised at how ad-hoc the go-to example of "science-without-paradigm" seems to be, namely the study of electricity and the scientists of that era. All he seems to be doing is an absurd amount of cherry-picking and handwaving as to why these people were somehow "without a paradigm" whereas modern physics (or whatever) is somehow 'more paradigmatic'. Yes, there were a lot of weird ideas (fluids, etc.) about in those days for what electricity was, but that's just because the set of observations was very limited, thus expanding the space of hypotheses beyond what we consider reason these days[0]. I honestly don't understand how we can elevate that to a more 'noble' or 'pure'[1] way of doing science or reason. I might be a little to drunk to comment, but I'll do it anyway. Sorry. [0] ... but the thing is that we have a reason these days to consider many of those ideas crazy, namely observation that contradicts them. [1] This is what all of the book so far seems to be doing to me: "Floundering about without a set goal is much better!". Nevermind the fact that you always have to form a hypothesis before you can even think of anything to observe to confirm/deny it. EDIT: Just to say: Maybe I've been lied to in my general education on the ancients, but I'm really confused as to why we can't consider the Greeks to have had a "paradigm" (geometry, "perfection" in some sense) or the Egyptians who constructed the pyramids (I hear they were big on astronomy and astrology). Maybe I should just read further into the book.
- culturedsystems 8y ago
  "there were a lot of weird ideas (fluids, etc.) about in those days for what electricity was, but that's just because the set of observations was very limited, thus expanding the space of hypotheses beyond what we consider reason these days" That's pretty much what Kuhn means by pre-paradigm science: when scientists don't know enough about an area to have come up with general principles to guide their research. And Kuhn certainly doesn't think pre-paradigm science is better than science within a paradigm. He's primarily interested in trying to describe how science operates, rather than saying I way of doing science is better than another, but he's pretty clear that most of what scientists accomplish happens when they are working within paradigms.
jhbadger 8y ago
As a working scientist a big problem with Kuhn is that he got a lot of people thinking that it is "boring" to do "normal science" and that the exciting thing is to overthrow the "current paradigm". So you get people with very minor discoveries claiming that they've created a new paradigm because they've found some discrepancy with current theory. It really is unhelpful and leads to misleading magazine covers like "Was Darwin/Einstein wrong?" when new discoveries in biology or physics get made.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Isn't that like SV, where if you are not 'disrupting' an entire industry, you lack ambition and your work is boring?
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  > misleading magazine covers like "Was Darwin/Einstein wrong?" I doubt that journalists needed Kuhn to teach them how to mislead the public.
- masswerk 8y ago
  > "Was Darwin/Einstein wrong?" Isn't Kuhn rather about false/wrong not being applicable when comparing paradigms, and the controversy about Morris taking this a bit too general? Edit: On a semiotic level, we may describe Kuhn's approach as being about homonymous signifiers, which belong to different world-views or frameworks, by which they are also defined, while Kripke refers to the special case of names, which serve as an identifier pointing to an atomic entity, which may be extended or even merge with another one, but essentially remains this particular object, which is in turn generalized by Morris to apply to all classes and types of signified objects (rather reminding of the concept of the "referred" than of the more modern concept of cultural entities). Notably, 'truth' is in the first case more an effect of structure and social consensus, in the latter case a matter of discernible properties which may be assessed as facts.

goatlover 8y ago

> First there is a historical analysis of the process of an old theory being replaced by a new one. Second Kuhn tries to come up with a metaphysical explanation of what is going on here. Sometimes this is overblown. The canonical case of Relativity replacing Newtonian mechanics doesn't invalidate Newton. Rather, it makes Newton's theory a special case of GR that's still valid for most everyday calculations.

Aqueous 8y ago
Exactly - and the same is true with regard to special vs. general relativity. Special relativity is another special case of general relativity for inertial reference frames. And special relativity itself is a necessary consequence of the theory of electrodynamics that Maxwell described holding true in every reference frame. But it no more replaces Maxwell's theory than brings it to its necessary conclusion. And even in the quantum world - which physicists famously can't reconcile with observations of general relativity - Maxwell's equations are true even though we have quantum electrodynamics - which include Maxwell's equations as their foundation. So the paradigm shifts aren't often as earth-shattering as they seem to outsiders or as Kuhn makes them out to be, because they often subsume and contain the prior theory. The way Morris characterizes Kuhn makes it seem like the different worlds of theory, before- and after- revolution, are orthogonal to each other - or can't even talk to each other at all, because they are using the same terms to describe totally different concepts. But I don't believe that to be true in the slightest. That said, I must admit that I haven't read Kuhn so I would have to rely on Morris' interpretation of Kuhn - which seems, ahem, somewhat slanted.
- westoncb 8y ago
  Kuhn is very explicit on that the typical behavior is this kind of subsuming rather than outright replacement. He even points out cases where the new paradigm causes us to lose the ability to say certain things we were capable of in the old one.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
It's nearly always overblown. A new paradigm usually renders the evidence more probable, giving a more precise and accurate explanation, but it rarely fully contradicts old paradigms, since that would leave it with their replications and evidence to explain away!
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  But a new paradigm also changes the definitions of terms. Once Newton had distinguished "mass" (resistance to acceleration) from "weight" (on the earth's surface) then the meaning of "weight" has also changed. (Medieval scholars had previously refined "weight" however, which helped Newton.) You can teach this new worldview, but it isn't obvious, and it doesn't consist merely in an addition to previous evidence or propositions.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    >it doesn't consist merely in an addition to previous evidence or propositions. It mostly does, once you account for the fact that science isn't about language.
    - Nomentatus 8y ago
      Science doesn't use language for those "about" statements? Hunh. Math is language. Science doesn't partake of that? Doesn't expand that language? C'mon man. The post office is about parcels, but it uses addresses. Can't be helped.
    - Nomentatus 8y ago
      "it" above = the change in definition
adrianratnapala 8y ago
> Rather, it makes Newton's theory a special case of GR ... Newtonian mechanics (and gravity) are a special-case approximation of relativistic theories. To me that's no biggie, but to some philosophers I've spoken to take the attitude that "approximately right is still wrong". That sounds silly to me, but they have a point which might made better by emphasising the special-case nature of the approximation. Within Newtonian mechanics, there is no hint that it is a special case of something, it's validity seems to go on for ever. And it is that seeming which is not even approximately correct.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  >Newtonian mechanics (and gravity) are a special-case approximation of relativistic theories. To me that's no biggie, but to some philosophers I've spoken to take the attitude that "approximately right is still wrong". Well, those philosophers should stop expecting a world measured in terms of continuous variables to have a discrete causal topology.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Relativity didn't replace Newton for a specific subset of engineering calculations. But it absolutely destroyed Newton as a comprehensive scientific world view. Newtonian philosophical fundamentals such as absolute universal time and absolute relative velocity are absolutely wrong - not just wrong for specific high-energy problems, but fundamentally incorrect conceptually, which makes them useless for the development of non-trivial future insight. This is Kuhn's main point, and it's a shame so few people seem to understand it. A paradigm shift isn't just a new way of solving problems, it's a completely new conceptual map of reality, made of different entities connected by different relationships.

Quekid5 8y ago

Disclaimer: I'm not a historian nor a philosopher, though I do wonder (I like to think, at least) deeply about these things. I've also only just read the first two (three?) chapters so far, so this may be way to soon to opine. Still, he doesn't strike me as a "surprise twist" type of writer, so hopefully I'm doing the basic ideas justice. Anyway... I was actually really surprised at how ad-hoc the go-to example of "science-without-paradigm" seems to be, namely the study of electricity and the scientists of that era. All he seems to be doing is an absurd amount of cherry-picking and handwaving as to why these people were somehow "without a paradigm" whereas modern physics (or whatever) is somehow 'more paradigmatic'. Yes, there were a lot of weird ideas (fluids, etc.) about in those days for what electricity was, but that's just because the set of observations was very limited, thus expanding the space of hypotheses beyond what we consider reason these days[0]. I honestly don't understand how we can elevate that to a more 'noble' or 'pure'[1] way of doing science or reason. I might be a little to drunk to comment, but I'll do it anyway. Sorry. [0] ... but the thing is that we have a reason these days to consider many of those ideas crazy, namely observation that contradicts them. [1] This is what all of the book so far seems to be doing to me: "Floundering about without a set goal is much better!". Nevermind the fact that you always have to form a hypothesis before you can even think of anything to observe to confirm/deny it. EDIT: Just to say: Maybe I've been lied to in my general education on the ancients, but I'm really confused as to why we can't consider the Greeks to have had a "paradigm" (geometry, "perfection" in some sense) or the Egyptians who constructed the pyramids (I hear they were big on astronomy and astrology). Maybe I should just read further into the book.

culturedsystems 8y ago
"there were a lot of weird ideas (fluids, etc.) about in those days for what electricity was, but that's just because the set of observations was very limited, thus expanding the space of hypotheses beyond what we consider reason these days" That's pretty much what Kuhn means by pre-paradigm science: when scientists don't know enough about an area to have come up with general principles to guide their research. And Kuhn certainly doesn't think pre-paradigm science is better than science within a paradigm. He's primarily interested in trying to describe how science operates, rather than saying I way of doing science is better than another, but he's pretty clear that most of what scientists accomplish happens when they are working within paradigms.

jhbadger 8y ago

As a working scientist a big problem with Kuhn is that he got a lot of people thinking that it is "boring" to do "normal science" and that the exciting thing is to overthrow the "current paradigm". So you get people with very minor discoveries claiming that they've created a new paradigm because they've found some discrepancy with current theory. It really is unhelpful and leads to misleading magazine covers like "Was Darwin/Einstein wrong?" when new discoveries in biology or physics get made.

forapurpose 8y ago
Isn't that like SV, where if you are not 'disrupting' an entire industry, you lack ambition and your work is boring?
adrianratnapala 8y ago
> misleading magazine covers like "Was Darwin/Einstein wrong?" I doubt that journalists needed Kuhn to teach them how to mislead the public.
masswerk 8y ago
> "Was Darwin/Einstein wrong?" Isn't Kuhn rather about false/wrong not being applicable when comparing paradigms, and the controversy about Morris taking this a bit too general? Edit: On a semiotic level, we may describe Kuhn's approach as being about homonymous signifiers, which belong to different world-views or frameworks, by which they are also defined, while Kripke refers to the special case of names, which serve as an identifier pointing to an atomic entity, which may be extended or even merge with another one, but essentially remains this particular object, which is in turn generalized by Morris to apply to all classes and types of signified objects (rather reminding of the concept of the "referred" than of the more modern concept of cultural entities). Notably, 'truth' is in the first case more an effect of structure and social consensus, in the latter case a matter of discernible properties which may be assessed as facts.