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This book is so important to the conversation. Kuhn goes into detail on how everyone believed in Phlogiston until the adherents died and only then did the scie

This book is so important to the conversation. Kuhn goes into detail on how everyone believed in Phlogiston until the adherents died and only then did the science progress into modern thermodynamics. He gives example after example of this pattern. He coined the phrase "paradigm shift" in the book to describe the pattern. I think the great mistake every current generation of scientists makes is that they believe that this generation is fundamentally "right" and cannot undergo any further revolutions - at least on domains they "know" about. All other domains are up for grabs of course, and silly dogmatic them for believing otherwise! Only when someone goes against the "scientific consensus" does any progress get made in any field. It's too bad we are humans with egos and cannot let go of ideas that we hold too close to our hearts. Perhaps it's an evolutionary trait that we are so short lived? Without such short lives dogma might win the day!

RandomLensman 4y ago
I think there is also often an incentive problem. Could someone have monetized their disbelief in phlogiston? A lot of modern science is often largely inconsequential outside the business of science, so you need to monetize within the community, which makes "attacks" on what is common knowledge probably not very worthwhile.
jltsiren 4y ago
> Only when someone goes against the "scientific consensus" does any progress get made in any field. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of Kuhn's model. Progress gets made when scientists do normal science within the prevailing paradigm. That's the activity that turns fancy theories into something useful. Over time, scientists encounter issues that cannot be resolved within the paradigm. When a paradigm shift occurs, science takes many steps backwards and several steps sideways to deal with such issues.
- auggierose 4y ago
  Except, these are not steps backwards or sideways. They are forward steps.
  - scionthefly 4y ago
    That's because science is on a n>3-dimensional non-euclidian plane.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
It is very important and extremely apropos to the world today, in which urgent structural progress is held back by fleeting and trivial minority interests. At the heart of the matter is power. Nobody has to wait for the incumbent generation to die off because they are right, but because they are powerful. They select what's on the syllabus They get to grade your college work and fail you They get to reject or admit you to the research group They hold the grant money They review your papers The great myth of science is that it's a rarefied battle for truth. Sure, but it's also a battle between people - and real people can be small-minded, petty, vain, prejudiced, greedy, insecure, and spiteful, and they will put their personal needs ahead of truth. Science does itself a disservice because it considers itself separate and above human psychology and politics. Some of the best reforms we could make to scientific research are not around money, publishing or peer review, but around appointments. Character matters. In the longer, mature game, one good and moral scientist who is definitely half-right is worth three assholes who seem perfectly correct.

RandomLensman 4y ago

I think there is also often an incentive problem. Could someone have monetized their disbelief in phlogiston? A lot of modern science is often largely inconsequential outside the business of science, so you need to monetize within the community, which makes "attacks" on what is common knowledge probably not very worthwhile.

jltsiren 4y ago

> Only when someone goes against the "scientific consensus" does any progress get made in any field. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of Kuhn's model. Progress gets made when scientists do normal science within the prevailing paradigm. That's the activity that turns fancy theories into something useful. Over time, scientists encounter issues that cannot be resolved within the paradigm. When a paradigm shift occurs, science takes many steps backwards and several steps sideways to deal with such issues.

auggierose 4y ago
Except, these are not steps backwards or sideways. They are forward steps.
- scionthefly 4y ago
  That's because science is on a n>3-dimensional non-euclidian plane.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

It is very important and extremely apropos to the world today, in which urgent structural progress is held back by fleeting and trivial minority interests. At the heart of the matter is power. Nobody has to wait for the incumbent generation to die off because they are right, but because they are powerful. They select what's on the syllabus They get to grade your college work and fail you They get to reject or admit you to the research group They hold the grant money They review your papers The great myth of science is that it's a rarefied battle for truth. Sure, but it's also a battle between people - and real people can be small-minded, petty, vain, prejudiced, greedy, insecure, and spiteful, and they will put their personal needs ahead of truth. Science does itself a disservice because it considers itself separate and above human psychology and politics. Some of the best reforms we could make to scientific research are not around money, publishing or peer review, but around appointments. Character matters. In the longer, mature game, one good and moral scientist who is definitely half-right is worth three assholes who seem perfectly correct.