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NOTE:
Introductory Essay by Ian Hacking
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Kuhn’s
finding that there are “scientific revolutions but also that they have a
structure” (p. x)
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“The
book ends with the disconcerting thought that progress in science is not a
simple line leading to the truth.
It is more progress away from less
adequate conceptions of, and interactions with, the world.” (p. xi)
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“Normal
science and puzzle-solving” (p. xv)
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“paradigm”
(p. xvii)
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“anomaly”
(p. xxvi), “crisis” (p. xxvii)… etc
I.
Introduction: A Role for History
Distinction between
normal science (cumulative) and scientific revolutions (non-cumulative):
Overview of scientific progress in
history: Normal science dominated – rare extraordinary sciences:
“Normal
science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all
their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community
knows what the world is like.” And the community of such normal science has
the tendency to “defend” their assumptions and “suppresses fundamental
novelties” that goes against their assumptions. (p. 5)
Yet again, extraordinary science is
something inevitable, where normal science is limited in the ability to
suppress the fundamental novelties for long… “extraordinary episodes… are the
tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal
science” (p. 6).
*Kuhn’s examples:
Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein (the big discoveries…)
*Characteristics of these extraordinary
sciences – “the defining characteristics of scientific revolutions” (p. 6):
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“Each
of them necessitated the community’s rejection of one time-honored theory in
favor of another incompatible with it”
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“Each
produced a consequent shift in the problems available for scientific scrutiny
and in the standards by which the profession determined …as legitimate.”
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“And
each transformed the scientific imagination in ways that we shall ultimately
need to describe as a transformation of the world within which scientific
work was done.”
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Additionally:
the new revolution “requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the
re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is
seldom completed by a single man and never overnight”
~ TENSION BETWEEN
NORMAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
II.
The Route to Normal Science
Further note on
normal science and scientific revolutions
Kuhn’s definition of normal science: “In
this essay, ‘normal science’ means research firmly based upon one or more
past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific
community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further
practice.” (p. 10)
And the “past scientific achievements”
are equivalent to Kuhn’s “extraordinary science” or scientific revolutions:
e.g. “Aristotle’s Physica, Ptolemy’s
Almagest, Newton’s Principia and Opticks, Franklin’s Electricity, Lavoisier’s Chemistry, and Lyell’s Geology” (p. 10)
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Kuhn further points out here the “two
essential characteristics”:
1)
“Their
achievement was sufficiently unprecedented
to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific
activity.” (p. 10)
2)
“Simultaneously,
it was sufficiently open-ended to
leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to
resolve.” (p. 10-11)
Normal Science and
Paradigms
As Kuhn himself clarifies, these past
achievements are referred to as “paradigms” (“a term that relates closely to ‘normal
science’) which he means to “suggest that some accepted examples of actual
scientific practice… provide models from which spring particular coherent
traditions of scientific research…” Paradigms are extensive conceptual mix
that once one becomes a member of “the particular scientific community … he
there joins men who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete
models,” making “his subsequent practice… seldom evoke overt disagreement
over the fundamentals. Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are
committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That
commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for
normal science… for the genesis and continuation of a particular research
tradition.” (p.11)
Scientific
Revolutions and Paradigms
“…transformations of the paradigms…
are scientific revolutions, and the successive transition from one paradigm
to another via revolution” (p. 12)
The route to normal
science is therefore the replacement of normal science with another: shift in
paradigms… And this appears in the following pattern from disseminated facts
to conformity…:
“…During that period there were almost
as many views about the nature of [X] as there were important
[experimenters/thinkers], men like [A, B, C, D, E, F] and others. All their
numerous concepts of [X] had something in common – they were partially
derived from one or another version of the [x] that guided all scientific
research of the day. In addition, all were components of real scientific
theories, of theories that had been drawn in part from experiment and observation
and that partially determined the choice and interpretation of additional
problems undertaken in research. Yet though all the experiments were [in
relation to x] and though most of the experimenters read each other’s works,
their theories had no more than a family resemblance…
… In the absence of a paradigm or
some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to
the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. As a
result, early fact-gathering is a far more nearly random activity than the
one that subsequent scientific development makes familiar. Furthermore, in
the absence of a reason for seeking some particular form of more recondite
information, early fact-gathering is usually restricted to the wealth of data
that lie ready to hand. The resulting pool of facts contains those accessible
to casual observation and experiment… [although] this sort of fact-collecting
has been essential […] the casual fact-gatherer seldom possesses the time or
the tools to be critical… Only very occasionally… do facts collected with so
little guidance from pre-established theory speak with sufficient clarity to
permit the emergence of a first paradigm.
… No wonder, then, that in the
early stages of the development of any science different men confronting the
same range of phenomena, but not usually all the same particular phenomena,
describe and interpret them in different ways. What is surprising, and
perhaps also unique in its degree to the fields we call science, is that such
initial divergences should ever largely disappear.” (pp. 14-17)
Overall, interesting logical outline
of how we come to experience scientific revolutions on the basis of normal
science (~ accepted and shared practices..)
Scientific revolution, extraordinary
science as a strong “guide” to the whole community’s research.
III.
The Nature of Normal Science
More expansion on the
nature of normal science...
Most importantly, I think, Kuhn makes here
the distinction between the normal usage of the word ‘paradigm’ (normally
used as “an accepted model or pattern” that permits “replication of examples”)
and Kuhn’s use of the word paradigm in science: the distinction is that the paradigm
in science is “rarely an object for replication” but more of a
shared/accepted context that requires “further articulation and specification
under new or more stringent conditions,” and this is what normal science is
about – confirmation and precision of the given paradigm. (p. 23)
Normal science
focuses on “three classes of problems” (p. 34):
1) “determination
of significant fact”
2) “matching
of facts with theory”
3) And
“articulation of theory”
Nevertheless Kuhn
makes it clear here that normal science is of trivial value: Kuhn states that they “are also
extraordinary problems” that are in many times required for extraordinary
science – appearing after the “advance of normal research” (p. 34).
Point here is the
almost inevitableness to depart from existing paradigms: “Inevitably… the overwhelming
majority of the problems undertaken by even the very best scientists usually
fall into one of the three categories outlined above. Work under the paradigm
can be conducted in no other way, and to desert the paradigm is to cease
practicing the science it defines…” (p. 34).
IV.
Normal Science as Puzzle-solving
Kuhn clearly concludes
here that normal science can be characterized as “puzzle-solving: with the
presence of strong commitment in shared context, the research becomes more or
less puzzle-solving that are largely identifiable and solvable within the
boundaries of the same paradigm:
“The existence of this strong network
of commitments – conceptual, theoretical, instrumental and methodological –
is a principal source of the metaphor that relates normal science to
puzzle-solving. Because it provides rules that tell the practitioner of a
mature specialty what both the world and his science are like, he can concentrate
with assurance upon the esoteric problems that these rules and existing
knowledge define for him. What then personally challenges him is how to bring
the residual puzzle to solution.” (p.
42)
V.
The Priority of Paradigms
Kuhn
suggests here that there is a common understanding within the research
community that forms the research paradigm. However he thinks that
scientists are often unaware of the specifics of the research paradigm
and instead rely on an intuitive understanding much akin to that proposed
by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein proposed that we know a game by its family
of properties. Even if a game doesn’t have all of the properties we identify
with a game, we will still be able to recognize it as such through these
flexible recognition mechanisms.
Paradigms
can be found as recurrent patterns (p. 43):
“Close
historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set of recurrent and quasi-standard
illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and
instrumental applications. These are the community’s paradigms, revealed in
its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises.”
Important
distinction Kuhn points out here is that “shared paradigms” are not “shared
rules.” (p. 43):
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In absence
of rules, paradigms can still guide research by becoming the shared context
(p. 42) – paradigm is a better and
loose term, above rules, for such characteristic…
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“paradigms
could determine normal science without the intervention of discoverable rules”
(p. 46).
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“paradigms guide research by direct modelling as
well as through abstracted rules. Normal science can proceed without rules only so long as the relevant scientific community
accepts without question the particular problem-solutions already achieved.”
(p. 48)
VI.
Anomaly and the Emergence of
Scientific Discoveries
Important note: “Normal science,
the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative
enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the
scope and precision of scientific knowledge… Normal science does not aim at
novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none…
Anomaly within normal
science: “New and
unsuspected phenomena are, however, repeatedly uncovered by scientific
research, and radical new theories have again and again been invented by
scientists… research under a paradigm must be a particularly effective way of
inducing paradigm change. (p. 52)”
Emergence of anomaly
and discoveries (process of “first paradigm” (p. 64) -> “precision-of-match”(p.
65) -> rigidity -> anomaly (against the background provided by the
paradigm):
“In the development of any science,
the first received paradigm is usually
felt to account quite successfully for most of the observations and
experiments easily accessible to that sciences’ practitioners. Further development,
therefore, ordinarily calls for the
construction of elaborate equipment, the development of an esoteric
vocabulary and skills, and a refinement of concepts that increasingly
lessens their resemblance to their usual common-sense prototypes… The science has become increasingly rigid…(p.
64) … Anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm.
The more precise and far-reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive an
indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change
(p. 65)”
VII.
Crisis and the Emergence of
Scientific Theories
Crisis
as the “retooling”(p. 76) sign for normal science:
“Philosophers of science have
repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can
always be placed upon a given collection of data. History of science
indicates that, particularly in the early developmental stages of a new
paradigm, it is not even very difficult to invent such alternates. But that
invention of alternates is just what scientists seldom undertake except
during the pre-paradigm stage of their science’s development and at very
special occasion during its subsequent evolution. So long as the tools a
paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it
defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident
employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture so in
science – retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that
demands it. The significance of crises is the indication that they provide
that an occasion for retooling has arrived (p. 76)”
VIII. The
Responses to Crisis
In face of crises,
diverse responses, ultimately current paradigm called into question:
“…its different appearance results
simply from the new fixation point of scientific scrutiny. An even more
important source of change is the divergent nature of the numerous partial
solutions that concerted attention to the problem has made available… [and in
the end though] there still is a paradigm, few practitioners prove to be
entirely agreed about what it is. Even formerly standard solutions of solved
problems are called in question. (p. 83)”
But overall, crises
are dealt mostly in one of three ways/responses:
1) Crisis
is handled
2) Resistance
to radical approaches
3) Emergence
of new candidate for paradigm
Crisis loosens the
paradigm (note the use of the word “paradigm shift”): that all crises involve the blurring
of paradigms:
“…crisis simultaneously loosens the
stereotypes and provides the incremental data necessary for a fundamental paradigm shift.
Sometimes the shape of the new paradigm is foreshadowed in the structure that
extraordinary research has given to the anomaly (p. 89)”
Paradigm shift: “What
the nature of that final stage is – how an individual invents (or finds he
has invented) a new way of giving order to data now all assembled” (p. 90)
Important Note: He
makes an interesting point here that in criticizing one theory the scientist
must propose an alternative otherwise this is not the pursuit of science
IX.
The Nature and Necessity of
Scientific Revolutions
Scientific
revolutions: “non-cumulative developmental episodes in which an older
paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one.” (p. 92)
*Parallelism to
political development/revolution justified as (but with caution):
- political
organizations and scientific communities groups arise with significantly
different values from the mainstream:
“In much the same way, scientific
revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a
narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has
ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to
which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political and
scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is
prerequisite to revolution.” (pp.92-93)
X.
Revolutions as Changes of World
View
“What were ducks in
the scientist’s world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards” (pp.
111-112) although with some limits (p. 129):
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“After
a scientific revolution many old
measurements and manipulations become irrelevant and are replaced by other
instead. One does not apply all the same tests to oxygen as to
dephlogisticated air. But changes
of this sort are never total. Whatever he may then see, the scientist after a
revolution is still looking at the same world. Furthermore, though he
may previously have employed them differently, much of his language and most
of his laboratory instruments are still the same as they were before. As a
result, postrevolutionary science invariably includes many of the same
manipulations, performed with the same instruments and described in the same
terms, as its prerevolutionary predecessor… (p. 129)”
Scientist must learn to see a new
Gestalt.
XI.
The Invisibility of Revolutions
“Both scientists and laymen take much
of their image of creative scientific activity from an authoritative source
that systematically disguises – partly for important functional reasons – the
existence and significance of scientific revolutions (p. 135)”
Revolutions are invisible because of “historical
revisionism in science textbooks” – that the textbooks are written after the
revolutions…
XII.
The Resolution of Revolutions
Those involved in scientific
revolutions have characteristics which are different from those of scientists
involved in ‘normal science’ Thus he suggests that such scientists are
usually new to the field and for various reasons are not under an obligation
to operate within the boundaries of the paradigm but instead are able to
challenge the paradigm shift.
Models of theory
validation:
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Categorical model of theories: theory expected to account for
all of the data (but unrealistic)
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Probabilistic model (more
likely): theory
accounts for most of the findings
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Contrasting: identification of evidence for
the theory and falsification (Karl Popper)
XIII. Progress
through Revolutions
Here Kuhn questions what it is
that makes a science.
He suggests that a strong sense
of identity within a scientific discipline occurs when there is agreement
within the community on past and present accomplishments.
Kuhn also suggests that although
science progresses it does not necessarily progress towards any specific
goal. He also reiterates the effectiveness of scientific revolutions followed
by periods of normal science in developing a body of scientific knowledge.
However he leaves the reader to answer the question ‘what must the world be
like for us to know it?’
Postscript
Written 7 years after the publication
Addresses many of the criticisms
Clarification on his definition of
paradigms
*Revolution as a special renegotiation
of relationships within a community
*Crises can be generated by groups
other than those that experience them ~ i.e. disciplinary matrix where there
is symbolic representation, shared belief and values of the scientific
community.
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