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Kuhn never denies that there are facts about the universe that we can observe. And I agree with you about this general class of example: no number of scientific

Kuhn never denies that there are facts about the universe that we can observe. And I agree with you about this general class of example: no number of scientific discoveries or paradigm shifts will ever make the photoelectric effect cease occurring. Kuhn's argument is that science occasionally undergoes what he calls "paradigm shifts" -- a low-level shift in assumptions about a certain realm of scientific thought that fundamentally changes the way we approach a particular field. One example Kuhn gives is the Copernican Revolution. Copernicus, as we all know, proposed the heliocentric solar model. Before Copernicus, most people used Ptolemy's epicycles to model the movement of planetary bodies. Initially, it worked, but the cracks started to show as observations accumulated. A major shift in our assumptions about the organization and modeling of planetary bodies had to occur before scientific progress could move forward. In this sense, scientific knowledge progresses in giant shifts, rather than linearly or incrementally. Consider the theory of atomism how it was disrupted by the Rutherford Gold Foil experiment, or the Double-Slit experiment and what that did for physics. A dominant paradigm must always make way for a new paradigm in order for scientific progress to occur. The upshot of all of this, according to Kuhn, is that the criteria for scientific truth are always caught up in certain historical assumptions and that we have to take these assumptions into account when assessing the veracity of a given theory. He doesn't say that there aren't facts about the universe, but rather, that the scientific approach to understanding the universe is caught up in a paradigmatic frame which makes it impossible to derive a simple, objective algorithm/process for scientific discovery. Does that make sense?

JoshTriplett 12y ago
That doesn't invalidate the scientific method, nor does it preclude having a best-known model that matches all the currently available experimental data. New data that invalidates a model will necessitate a new model, or a new model may come along with better predictive power. And to use current rationalist terminology: any given scientific model has an associated probability estimate for being true, which is very close to but not equal to 1; any work built on top of that model will depend on the truth of the model; and invalidating a model in favor of a new one requires re-evaluating any work based on that model. The "giant shifts" you're referring to occur when a model lower down the stack, with a pile of things built on it, gets invalidated or replaced by a better model. On a day-to-day basis, you don't typically re-evaluate the validity of Newtonian or relativistic physics. Most of us regularly use Newtonian models despite knowing that they don't exactly match how the universe works. And we know that relativistic models don't exactly match how the universe works either (notably on a very small scale), though we don't have better models yet that work on both small and large scales.
- rpedroso 12y ago
  That doesn't invalidate the scientific method You're right, but neither I nor Kuhn ever said that it did. In fact, he echoes your thoughts about how models replace one another: First, the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors. He doesn't deny that there is such a thing as scientific progress, he only means to model scientific progress as an episodic cycle in which existing paradigms present with insoluble problems, and that these problems are only resolved when the old paradigm is replaced. It wasn't so long ago that Einstein declared that God doesn't play dice with the universe. Kuhn doesn't deny the existence of scientific facts or the utility of the scientific method -- he only hopes to illustrate that the notion of scientific truth is contingent on certain assumptions and that these assumptions often get in the way of future progress. It's also important to remember that Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" back in 1962. At that time, he was largely responding to the logical positivists. While I think a lot of the contemporary rationalist movement is caught up in old logical positivist modes of thought, your own willingness to invalidate models based on evidence wasn't fully developed before Kuhn and Popper brought such thinking into the mainstream.
the8472 12y ago
> He doesn't say that there aren't facts about the universe, but rather, that the scientific approach to understanding the universe is caught up in a paradigmatic frame which makes it impossible to derive a simple, objective algorithm/process for scientific discovery. I don't see how he gets from A to B. How is the fact that we obviously can only build models based on the past - since the future is not accessible to us - prove that it is impossible to refine models to asymptotically approach a hypothetical fundamental truth? We may not have a formalized algorithm. But whatever is running on human brains has worked so far. If I boil this down it sounds to me like he's claiming that a system that takes its past states as one of its inputs (observation of the universe being another) is incapable of refining scientific theories? Which, given the fact that's exactly how scientific discovery has been done so far, seems false. So what am I missing here?
- deleted 12y ago
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- rpedroso 12y ago
  I don't see how he gets from A to B There is only so much I can do to summarize his argument in an online forum without replicating the entire book. I recognize that I'm not doing the full-text justice, but it's hard to go into much more depth without simply recommending that you read the book itself. If I boil this down it sounds to me like he's claiming that a system that takes its past states as one of its inputs (observation of the universe being another) is incapable of refining scientific theories? Which, given the fact that's exactly how scientific discovery has been done so far, seems false. I wouldn't say that paradigm shifts like the Copernican revolution, the discovery of elementary particles, or the uncovering of quantum mechanics are acts of "refining" existing theories -- they largely involved throwing away a significant amount of work and starting from scratch. Scientists since Ptolemy created extraordinarily complex epicycle models to explain the movement of planetary bodies from a geocentric perspective. When the Copernican heliocentric model became accepted, all the work on epicycles became more or less useless. Now, we didn't have to abandon Newtonian mechanics entirely, but quantum mechanics have replaced Newtonian mechanics in most fields dealing with particles and small numbers of atoms. Kuhn's argument is that science has advanced, but not through a simple process of "refining". According to Kuhn, science isn't generally a linear or incremental process -- it is a cyclical one in which our existing models cease being useful and we have to find a better one. I hope that helps! If you're interested, I highly recommend reading the text -- Kuhn was an excellent writer [1]. [1] http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn...
cbd1984 12y ago
> The upshot of all of this, according to Kuhn, is that the criteria for scientific truth are always caught up in certain historical assumptions and that we have to take these assumptions into account when assessing the veracity of a given theory. If your historical assumptions are true in a useful way, your science will progress to the point where you have more-useful engineering; if they're wrong in an important way, your science will stall out, or give you the wrong answers. If they're neither, and they don't affect the ultimate utility of your predictions one way or the other, it all becomes a bit academic: Is it even useful to say your theories are wrong if they keep making good predictions and allow scientific progress to be made? Note well that atomism (pre-quantum) and geocentrism eventually stopped making good predictions, stopped being a gateway to more complete theories, or both. (For example, geocentrism is probably impossible to integrate with universal gravitation.) "Truth" is something mathematics has access to, not physics. Truth-With-A-Capital-T is Absolute, Perfect, Incorruptible, and utterly inconsistent with reality as it is outside of the symbol-games we play in our minds, because Platonism is downright insane. Therefore, "scientific truth" is contingent, sure, but it's contingent on more than mere fashions. It's contingent on experimentation and experiments don't care if your histories are contingent one way, the other, or the other way entirely. Nobody's histories were contingent enough to imagine the Earth repelled small rocks. So Kuhn agrees that there is a universe and that there are, at least potentially, facts about that universe humans are capable of discovering. That puts him a few up on some philosophers. However, I don't agree that our criteria for scientific truth is fully entwined with our historical accidents as long as we rely on science to predict what the non-human world is going to do.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

That doesn't invalidate the scientific method, nor does it preclude having a best-known model that matches all the currently available experimental data. New data that invalidates a model will necessitate a new model, or a new model may come along with better predictive power. And to use current rationalist terminology: any given scientific model has an associated probability estimate for being true, which is very close to but not equal to 1; any work built on top of that model will depend on the truth of the model; and invalidating a model in favor of a new one requires re-evaluating any work based on that model. The "giant shifts" you're referring to occur when a model lower down the stack, with a pile of things built on it, gets invalidated or replaced by a better model. On a day-to-day basis, you don't typically re-evaluate the validity of Newtonian or relativistic physics. Most of us regularly use Newtonian models despite knowing that they don't exactly match how the universe works. And we know that relativistic models don't exactly match how the universe works either (notably on a very small scale), though we don't have better models yet that work on both small and large scales.

rpedroso 12y ago
That doesn't invalidate the scientific method You're right, but neither I nor Kuhn ever said that it did. In fact, he echoes your thoughts about how models replace one another: First, the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors. He doesn't deny that there is such a thing as scientific progress, he only means to model scientific progress as an episodic cycle in which existing paradigms present with insoluble problems, and that these problems are only resolved when the old paradigm is replaced. It wasn't so long ago that Einstein declared that God doesn't play dice with the universe. Kuhn doesn't deny the existence of scientific facts or the utility of the scientific method -- he only hopes to illustrate that the notion of scientific truth is contingent on certain assumptions and that these assumptions often get in the way of future progress. It's also important to remember that Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" back in 1962. At that time, he was largely responding to the logical positivists. While I think a lot of the contemporary rationalist movement is caught up in old logical positivist modes of thought, your own willingness to invalidate models based on evidence wasn't fully developed before Kuhn and Popper brought such thinking into the mainstream.

the8472 12y ago

> He doesn't say that there aren't facts about the universe, but rather, that the scientific approach to understanding the universe is caught up in a paradigmatic frame which makes it impossible to derive a simple, objective algorithm/process for scientific discovery. I don't see how he gets from A to B. How is the fact that we obviously can only build models based on the past - since the future is not accessible to us - prove that it is impossible to refine models to asymptotically approach a hypothetical fundamental truth? We may not have a formalized algorithm. But whatever is running on human brains has worked so far. If I boil this down it sounds to me like he's claiming that a system that takes its past states as one of its inputs (observation of the universe being another) is incapable of refining scientific theories? Which, given the fact that's exactly how scientific discovery has been done so far, seems false. So what am I missing here?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rpedroso 12y ago
I don't see how he gets from A to B There is only so much I can do to summarize his argument in an online forum without replicating the entire book. I recognize that I'm not doing the full-text justice, but it's hard to go into much more depth without simply recommending that you read the book itself. If I boil this down it sounds to me like he's claiming that a system that takes its past states as one of its inputs (observation of the universe being another) is incapable of refining scientific theories? Which, given the fact that's exactly how scientific discovery has been done so far, seems false. I wouldn't say that paradigm shifts like the Copernican revolution, the discovery of elementary particles, or the uncovering of quantum mechanics are acts of "refining" existing theories -- they largely involved throwing away a significant amount of work and starting from scratch. Scientists since Ptolemy created extraordinarily complex epicycle models to explain the movement of planetary bodies from a geocentric perspective. When the Copernican heliocentric model became accepted, all the work on epicycles became more or less useless. Now, we didn't have to abandon Newtonian mechanics entirely, but quantum mechanics have replaced Newtonian mechanics in most fields dealing with particles and small numbers of atoms. Kuhn's argument is that science has advanced, but not through a simple process of "refining". According to Kuhn, science isn't generally a linear or incremental process -- it is a cyclical one in which our existing models cease being useful and we have to find a better one. I hope that helps! If you're interested, I highly recommend reading the text -- Kuhn was an excellent writer [1]. [1] http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn...

cbd1984 12y ago

> The upshot of all of this, according to Kuhn, is that the criteria for scientific truth are always caught up in certain historical assumptions and that we have to take these assumptions into account when assessing the veracity of a given theory. If your historical assumptions are true in a useful way, your science will progress to the point where you have more-useful engineering; if they're wrong in an important way, your science will stall out, or give you the wrong answers. If they're neither, and they don't affect the ultimate utility of your predictions one way or the other, it all becomes a bit academic: Is it even useful to say your theories are wrong if they keep making good predictions and allow scientific progress to be made? Note well that atomism (pre-quantum) and geocentrism eventually stopped making good predictions, stopped being a gateway to more complete theories, or both. (For example, geocentrism is probably impossible to integrate with universal gravitation.) "Truth" is something mathematics has access to, not physics. Truth-With-A-Capital-T is Absolute, Perfect, Incorruptible, and utterly inconsistent with reality as it is outside of the symbol-games we play in our minds, because Platonism is downright insane. Therefore, "scientific truth" is contingent, sure, but it's contingent on more than mere fashions. It's contingent on experimentation and experiments don't care if your histories are contingent one way, the other, or the other way entirely. Nobody's histories were contingent enough to imagine the Earth repelled small rocks. So Kuhn agrees that there is a universe and that there are, at least potentially, facts about that universe humans are capable of discovering. That puts him a few up on some philosophers. However, I don't agree that our criteria for scientific truth is fully entwined with our historical accidents as long as we rely on science to predict what the non-human world is going to do.