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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
by 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.
- Quekid5 8y ago> 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. Isn't this extremely post-hoc reasoning? If you're on the bleeding edge, you'll formulate theories based on whatever context you have -- and experiment with that. I don't see how the idea of a "paradigm" helps here. It's what everybody does all the time. Maybe I'm just confused about the definition of "paradigm". ... which Kuhn does define, but it's a definition just fuzzy enough that it's pretty easy to argue either way on any given area of science. EDIT: Basically, I think more of a fan of the David Deutsch school of knowledge.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago>Maybe I'm just confused about the definition of "paradigm". Well, as the article points out, Kuhn himself never fully defined it. However, I think we can get a productive account out of reading it as "overhypothesis"[1]. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b182/a0184613376d49dcec5f5aa78ac0b7d8c829.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b182/a0184613376d49dcec5f5a...