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Well worth the long read. Astonished that the author is a "mere" grad student. Keep an eye on this one. Nice to see a sympathetic account of Kuhn from a scient

Well worth the long read. Astonished that the author is a "mere" grad student. Keep an eye on this one. Nice to see a sympathetic account of Kuhn from a scientist. I've always felt that he wasn't worthy of admission to the Sokal Rogue's Gallery. (I sometimes wonder if I've been too quick to judge some of the other big names in that gallery)

solarmist 8y ago
I’m unfamiliar with the particular rogues gallery you mention. And a google search for that term didn’t turn up anything obvious to me. Can you elaborate?
- hcs 8y ago
  Possibly a reference to criticism of Kuhn in this book, among his other writings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense
- FabHK 8y ago
  Almost surely an allusion to Sokal's eponymous hoax: He published a hilarious gibberish paper in "Social Text", with the glorious title Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Later, Sokal and Bricmont published a book, Intellectual Impostures (Fashionable Nonsense in the US) about postmodern "intellectuals" abusing scientific terminology (eg Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard); that would be the rogue gallery presumably. It's an entertaining book, and I think those writers are guilty as charged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense
jules 8y ago
The problem with Kuhn is that his central thesis of incommensurability as it is commonly interpreted is false. Classical mechanics arises as a specific limit of quantum mechanics. Galilean invariance arises as a specific limit of special relativity. Ray optics arises as a specific limit of wave optics. Newtonian gravity arises as a specific limit of general relativity. In fact, many of these theories were explicitly developed with the constraint that they reproduce the old theory in a certain limit, see e.g. Bohrs correspondence principle. Kuhn knows this, but many of his fans don't. That is partly the fault of the biases his fans, but partly the fault of Kuhn for intentionally deemphasising this most critical aspect of scientific revolutions. What's special about scientific revolutions in physics is not the supposed "incommensurability", but the mathematically precise way in which the old theories survive as limiting cases of the new theories. That doesn't happen for other paradigm shifts. The god-is-punishing-us-for-our-sins theory of disease did not survive as a specific limit of the germ theory of disease. That physics is not like that is what's surprising! Kuhn has his story exactly backwards. If you want to understand those scientific revolutions, don't read Kuhn; get a physics bachelor.
- rotexo 8y ago
  It has been a while since I read Structure, but I don't quite see how his examination of Phlogiston theory vs. the contemporary understanding of oxidation fits in with your dismissal. It seems to me that Phlogiston theory isn't really a special case of oxidation, as currently understood.
  - jules 8y ago
    I didn't say that it is.

solarmist 8y ago

I’m unfamiliar with the particular rogues gallery you mention. And a google search for that term didn’t turn up anything obvious to me. Can you elaborate?

hcs 8y ago
Possibly a reference to criticism of Kuhn in this book, among his other writings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense
FabHK 8y ago
Almost surely an allusion to Sokal's eponymous hoax: He published a hilarious gibberish paper in "Social Text", with the glorious title Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Later, Sokal and Bricmont published a book, Intellectual Impostures (Fashionable Nonsense in the US) about postmodern "intellectuals" abusing scientific terminology (eg Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard); that would be the rogue gallery presumably. It's an entertaining book, and I think those writers are guilty as charged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

jules 8y ago

The problem with Kuhn is that his central thesis of incommensurability as it is commonly interpreted is false. Classical mechanics arises as a specific limit of quantum mechanics. Galilean invariance arises as a specific limit of special relativity. Ray optics arises as a specific limit of wave optics. Newtonian gravity arises as a specific limit of general relativity. In fact, many of these theories were explicitly developed with the constraint that they reproduce the old theory in a certain limit, see e.g. Bohrs correspondence principle. Kuhn knows this, but many of his fans don't. That is partly the fault of the biases his fans, but partly the fault of Kuhn for intentionally deemphasising this most critical aspect of scientific revolutions. What's special about scientific revolutions in physics is not the supposed "incommensurability", but the mathematically precise way in which the old theories survive as limiting cases of the new theories. That doesn't happen for other paradigm shifts. The god-is-punishing-us-for-our-sins theory of disease did not survive as a specific limit of the germ theory of disease. That physics is not like that is what's surprising! Kuhn has his story exactly backwards. If you want to understand those scientific revolutions, don't read Kuhn; get a physics bachelor.

rotexo 8y ago
It has been a while since I read Structure, but I don't quite see how his examination of Phlogiston theory vs. the contemporary understanding of oxidation fits in with your dismissal. It seems to me that Phlogiston theory isn't really a special case of oxidation, as currently understood.
- jules 8y ago
  I didn't say that it is.