book review of the structure of scientific revolutions-thomas s
TRANSCRIPT
A N G L A D E S H U N I V E R S I T Y O F P R O F E S S I O N A L
Individual Assignment on Review of
“The Structure of Scientific revolution”-Thomas Khun. Research Methodology
Date of submission: April 07, 2016
SUBMITTED TO Professor Dr. Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah Pro VC, Bangladesh University of Professional & Chairman, JANIPOP( Jatiya Nirbachon Parjabekkhon Parishad) (National Election Observation Council)
SUBMITTED BY Khaled Bin Arman ID No: 1407081 Reg. no. 10009140081 Ev. MBA: Batch 7, Section-A
LIST OF CONTENTS
Topics Page Number 1.0. Introduction i.
1.1. Book Information ii. 1.2. Author Information iii. 1.3. General Review iv. 1.4 Preface v-vi
2.0. Chapter Wise Summary 2.1. Introduction: A Role for History 1 2.2. The Route to Normal Science 1-2 2.3. The Nature Of Normal Science 2-3 2.4. Normal Science as Puzzle-solving 3 2.5. The Priority of Paradigms 4 2.6. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries. 4-5 2.7. Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories 5-6 2.8. The Response to Crisis 6-7
2.9. The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions 7-8 2.10. Revolutions as Changes of World View 8 2.11. The Invisibility of Revolutions 8-9 2.12. The Resolution of Revolutions 9 2.13. Progress through Revolutions 9-10
3.0. Core Factors 11 4.0. Influence 11
4.1. Philosophy 11-12 4.2. Sociology 12 4.3. Economics 12 4.4. Political Science 12 4.5. Implications 13
5.0. Observation (Positive & Negative) 14 5.1. Positive Criticism 14 5.2. Negative Criticism 14 5.2.1. Concept of Paradigm 14-15 5.2.2. Incommensurability of paradigms 15-16 5.2.3. Incommensurability and perception 16-17
6.0. Conclusion 18
1.0. INTRODUCTION
It’s been almost a half-century since the publication of Thomas S. Kuhn’s THE STRUCTURE OF
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, a slim little book that introduced the word “paradigm” into common
parlance and shattered our conventional way of looking at change. The book explores the
psychology of belief that governs the acceptance of new concepts and innovations in science.
Kuhn showed that the history of science is not one of linear, rational progress moving toward
ever more accurate and complete knowledge of an objective reality. Rather, it’s one of radical
shifts of vision in which a multitude of nonrational and nonempirical factors come into play.
A general overview of this book where we will be looking at Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions very broadly, with the aim of understanding its essentials. As we can gather from
the title of Kuhn's book, he is concerned primarily with those episodes in history known as
"scientific revolutions." During periods of this sort, our scientific understanding of the way the
universe works is overthrown and replaced by another, quite different understanding.
According to Kuhn, after a scientific discipline matures, its history consists of long periods of
stasis punctuated by occasional revolutions of this sort. Thus, a scientific discipline goes through
several distinct types of stages as it develops.
1.1. BOOK INFORMATION
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science
Title-Book review of “The structure of scientific revolution”
Author of the Book- Thomas S. Kuhn (Second Edition, Enlarged)
Editor-in-Chief Otto Neurath
Associate Editors- Rudolf Carnap Charles Morris
Foundations of the Unity of Science (Volumes I—II of the Encyclopedia)
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON
© 1962, 1970 by The University of Chicago.
All rights reserved. Published 1962. Second Edition, enlarged, 1970
Printed in the United States of America
81 80 79 78 11 10 9 8
ISBN: 0-226-45803-2 (clothbound); 0-226-45804-0 (paperbound)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-107472
1.2. AUTHOR INFORMATION
homas Samuel Kuhn (/ˈkuːn/; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American physicist,
historian, and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term
"paradigm shift", which has since become an English-language idiom.
Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, and Minette
Stroock Kuhn. He graduated from The Taft School in Watertown, CT, in 1940, where he became
aware of his serious interest in mathematics and physics. He obtained his B.S. degree in physics
from Harvard University in 1943, where he also obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics in
1946 and 1949, respectively, under the supervision of John Van Vleck.[1] As he states in the first
few pages of the preface to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, his
three years of total academic freedom as a Harvard Junior Fellow were crucial in allowing him to
switch from physics to the history and philosophy of science. He later taught a course in the
history of science at Harvard from 1948 until 1956, at the suggestion of university president
James Conant. After leaving Harvard, Kuhn taught at the University of California, Berkeley, in
both the philosophy department and the history department, being named Professor of the
History of Science in 1961. Kuhn interviewed and tape recorded Danish physicist Niels Bohr the
day before Bohr's death.[2] At Berkeley, he wrote and published (in 1962) his best known and
most influential work:[3] The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In 1964, he joined Princeton
University as the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science. He served as
the president of the History of Science Society from 1969-70.[4] In 1979 he joined the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of
Philosophy, remaining there until 1991. In 1994 Kuhn was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died
in 1996.
T
1.3. GENERAL REVIEW
It’s been almost a half-century since the publication of Thomas S. Kuhn’s THE STRUCTURE OF
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, a slim little book that introduced the word “paradigm” into common
parlance and shattered our conventional way of looking at change. Fifty years on, it still
represents perhaps the best thinking on how transformation happens, who drives it, why it’s so
vehemently resisted, and what it really asks of people.
The book explores the psychology of belief that governs the acceptance of new concepts and
innovations in science. Kuhn showed that the history of science is not one of linear, rational
progress moving toward ever more accurate and complete knowledge of an objective reality.
Rather, it’s one of radical shifts of vision in which a multitude of nonrational and nonempirical
factors come into play.
Kuhn stressed that a new paradigm is almost always the work of a young person or someone new
to the field. After a number of years in a certain discipline, a scientist tends to be too emotionally
and habitually invested in the prevailing paradigm. Indeed, the established leaders of the older
tradition may never accept the new view of reality. As Kuhn wrote, “Copernicanism made few
converts for almost a century after Copernicus death. Newton’s work was not generally accepted,
particularly on the Continent, for more than half a century after the ‘Principia’ appeared.
Priestley never accepted the oxygen theory, nor Lord Kelvin the electromagnetic theory, and so
on.” Adherents to the old paradigm usually go to their graves with their faith unshaken, Kuhn
wryly noted. Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence, they stubbornly stick with the
wrong but familiar.
The fact that Kuhn’s treatise an academic essay on a fairly specialized subject, the psychological
factors at work in the advancement of science went on to win a wide audience is one of the great
surprise stories in the history of ideas. But Kuhn had put his finger on something that was widely
intuited, if not openly acknowledged or articulated, namely that change proceeds by upheaval.
It’s not a smooth and gradual process. Transformations are violent because they necessitate the
destruction and reordering of our most basic conceptual frameworks. That was an insight even a
general readership was happy to embrace.
PREFACE
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was first published as a monograph in the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, then as a book by University of Chicago Press in 1962. In
1969, Kuhn added a postscript to the book in which he replied to critical responses to the first
edition. A 50th Anniversary Edition (with an introductory essay by Ian Hacking) was published
by the University of Chicago Press in April 2012.
Kuhn dated the genesis of his book to 1947, when he was a graduate student at Harvard
University and had been asked to teach a science class for humanities undergraduates with a
focus on historical case studies. Kuhn later commented that until then, "I'd never read an old
document in science." Aristotle's Physics was astonishingly unlike Isaac Newton's work in its
concepts of matter and motion. Kuhn concluded that Aristotle's concepts were not "bad Newton,"
just different.
In the review of book we saw that, there are so may specialist named who basically influence this
but particularly influential were Alexandre Koyré, Études Galiléennes (Paris,1939); Emile
Meyerson, Identity and Reality, trans. Kate Loewenberg (New York, 1930); Hélène Metzger,
Les doctrines chimiques en France du début du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1923), and
Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique (Paris, 1930); and Anneliese Maier, Die
Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhunder t(“Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik”; Rome,
1949). Because they displayed concepts and processes that also emerge directly from the history
of science, two sets of Piaget s investigations proved particularly important: The Child’s
Conception of Causality, trans. Marjorie Gabain (London,1930), and Les notions de mouvement
et de vitesse chez l’enfant (Paris, 1946).
Previous to the publication of Kuhn’s book, there are a number of ideas concerning the process
of scientific exploration and detection had already been proposed. Ludwig Fleck developed the
first system of the sociology of scientific knowledge in his book The Genesis and Expansion of a
Scientific Fact. He claimed that the exchange of ideas led to the establishment of a thought
collective, which, when developed sufficiently, served to separate the field into esoteric
(professional) and exoteric (laymen) circles. Kuhn wrote the foreword to the 1979 edition of
Fleck's book, noting that he read it in 1950 and was reassured that someone "saw in the history of
science what I myself was finding there.
These issues are deliberated in T. S. Kuhn, The Copernican Rebellion: Universal Astronomy in
the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1957),. Other effects of external
intellectual and economic conditions upon substantive scientific development are exemplified in
my papers, “Conservation of Energy as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery,” Critical
Problems in the History of Science, ed. Marshall Clagett (Madison, Wis., 1959), “Engineering
Precedent for the Work of Sadi Carnot,” Archives internationals d’histoire des sciences, XIII
(1960),; and “Sadi Carnot and the Cagnard Engine,” Isis, LII (1961),. It is, therefore, only with
respect to the problems discussed in this essay that I take the role of external factors to be minor.
2.0. CHAPTER WISE SUMMARY
2.1. INTRODUCTION: A ROLE FOR HISTORY
Kuhn begins by formulating some assumptions that lay the foundation for subsequent discussion
and by briefly outlining the key contentions of the book.
A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs.
These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses
the student for professional practice".
The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs
exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.
Normal science "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the
world is like"—scientists take great pains to defend that assumption.
To this end, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily
subversive of its basic commitments".
Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied
by professional education".
2.2. THE ROUTE TO NORMAL SCIENCE
In this chapter, Kuhn describes how paradigms are created and what they contribute to scientific
(disciplined) inquiry.
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". These achievements must be adequately unprecedented to
attract a continuing group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity and
adequately open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to
resolve. These achievements can be called paradigms. Students study these paradigms in order to
become members of the particular scientific community in which they will later practice.
We are largely learns from and is mentored by researchers "who learned the bases of their field
from the same concrete models" there is seldom difference over fundamentals. Men whose
research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for
scientific practice. A shared commitment to a paradigm ensures that its practitioners engage in
the classic observations that its own paradigm can do most to explain. Paradigms help scientific
communities to bound their discipline in that they help the scientist to create avenues of inquiry,
formulate questions, select methods with which to examine questions, define areas of relevance.
and establish or create meaning.
2.3. THE NATURE OF NORMAL SCIENCE
This consists of basic and incontrovertible assumptions about the nature of the discipline, what
questions are left to ask? When they first appear, paradigms are limited in scope and in precision.
But more successful does not mean completely successful with a single problem or notably
successful with any large number. Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success. Normal
science consists in the actualization of that promise. This is achieved by extending the
knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, increasing the
extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions, and further articulation
of the paradigm itself. In other words, there is a good deal of mopping-up to be done. Mop-up
operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. Mopping-up is what normal
science is all about! This paradigm-based research is "an attempt to force nature into the pre-
formed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies". No effort is made to call forth
new sorts of phenomena, no effort to discover anomalies. When anomalies pop up, they are
usually discarded or ignored. Anomalies are usually not even noticed and no effort is made to
invent a new theory. Those restrictions, born from confidence in a paradigm, turn out to be
essential to the development of science. By focusing attention on a small range of relatively
esoteric problems, the paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and
depth that would otherwise be unimaginable" and, when the paradigm ceases to function
properly, scientists begin to behave differently and the nature of their research problems changes.
THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY From the review understood that, a scientific discipline is defined sociologically: it is a particular
scientific community, united by education (e.g., texts, methods of accreditation), professional
interaction and communication (e.g., journals, conventions), as well as similar interests in
problems of a certain sort and acceptance of a particular range of possible solutions to such
problems.
THE ROLE OF EXEMPLARS
Exemplars are solutions to problems that serve as the basis for generalization and development.
The goal of studying an exemplar during one's scientific education is to learn to see new
problems as similar to the exemplar, and to apply the principles applicable to the exemplar to the
new problems. A beginning scientist learns to abstract from the many features of a problem to
determine which features must be known to derive a solution within the theoretical framework of
the exemplar. Thus, textbooks often contain a standard set of problems (e.g., pendulums,
harmonic oscillators, inclined plane problems). We can't learn a theory by merely memorizing
mathematical formulas and definitions; we must also learn to apply these formulas and
definitions properly to solve the standard problems. This means that learning a theory involves
acquiring a new way of seeing, i.e., acquiring the ability to group problems according to the
theoretical principles that are relevant to those problems.
2.4. NORMAL SCIENCE AS PUZZLE-SOLVING
According to Kuhn books, once a paradigm has been accepted by a scientific community,
subsequent research consists of applying the shared methods of the disciplinary matrix to solve
the types of problems defined by the exemplar. Since the type of solution that must be found is
well defined and the paradigm "guarantees" that such a solution exists (though the precise nature
of the solution and the path that will get you to a solution is often not known in advance), Kuhn
characterizes scientific research during normal or paradigmatic science as "puzzle-solving."
Doing research is essentially like solving a puzzle. Puzzles have rules. Puzzles generally have
predetermined solutions.
A striking feature of doing research is that the aim is to discover what is known in advance.
This in spite of the fact that the range of anticipated results is small compared to the possible
results.
When the outcome of a research project does not fall into this anticipated result range, it is
generally considered a failure, i.e., when "significance" is not obtained.
a) Studies that fail to find the expected are usually not published.
b) The proliferation of studies that find the expected helps ensure that the paradigm/theory
will flourish.
Even a project that aims at paradigm articulation does not aim at UNEXPECTED novelty.
"One of the things a scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a criterion for
choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have
solutions".
2.5. THE PRIORITY OF PARADIGMS
The paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease. The
"rules" used by scientists who share a paradigm are not so easily determined. Some reasons for
this are that scientists can disagree on the interpretation of a paradigm. The existence of a
paradigm need not imply that any full set of rules exist. Also, scientists are often guided by tacit
knowledge-knowledge acquired through practice and that cannot be articulated explicitly.
Further, the attributes shared by a paradigm are not always readily apparent.
Paradigms can determine normal science without the intervention of discoverable rules or shared
assumptions. In part, this is because it is very difficult to discover the rules that guide particular
normal-science traditions. Scientists never learn concepts, laws, and theories in the abstract and
by themselves. They generally learn these with and through their applications. New theory is
taught in tandem with its application to a concrete range of phenomena.
Sub-specialties are differently educated and focus on different applications for their research
findings. A paradigm can determine several traditions of normal science that overlap without
being coextensive. Consequently, changes in a paradigm affect different sub-specialties
differently. "A revolution produced within one of these traditions will not necessarily extend to
the others as well". When scientists disagree about whether the fundamental problems of their
field have been solved, the search for rules gains a function that it does not ordinarily possess.
When scientists disagree about whether the fundamental problems of their field have been
solved, the search for rules gains a function that it does not ordinarily possess.
2.6. ANOMALY AND THE EMERGENCE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES.
If normal science is so rigid and if scientific communities are so close-knit, how can a paradigm
change take place? Paradigm changes can result from discovery brought about by encounters
with anomaly.
Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
Nonetheless, new and unsuspected phenomena are repeatedly uncovered by scientific research,
and radical new theories have again and again been invented by scientists. Fundamental novelties
of fact and theory bring about paradigm change. So how does paradigm change come about?
There are two ways: through discovery - novelty of fact-or by invention–novelty of theory.
Discovery begins with the awareness of anomaly-the recognition that nature has violated the
paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science. The area of the anomaly is then
explored. The paradigm change is complete when the paradigm has been adjusted so that the
anomalous become the expected. The result is that the scientist is able "to see nature in a
different way".
Although normal science is a pursuit not directed to novelties and tending at first to suppress
them, it is nonetheless very effective in causing them to arise. An initial paradigm accounts quite
successfully for most of the observations and experiments readily accessible to that science's
practitioners. Research results in the construction of elaborate equipment, development of an
esoteric and shared vocabulary, refinement of concepts that increasingly lessens their
resemblance to their usual common-sense prototypes. This professionalization leads to immense
restriction of the scientist's vision, rigid science, resistance to paradigm change, and a detail of
information and precision of the observation-theory match that can be achieved in no other way.
New and refined methods and instruments result in greater precision and understanding of the
paradigm. Only when researchers know with precision what to expect from an experiment can
they recognize that something has gone wrong.
Consequently, anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm. The
more precise and far-reaching the paradigm, the more sensitive it is to detecting an anomaly and
inducing change. By resisting change, a paradigm guarantees that anomalies that lead to
paradigm change will penetrate existing knowledge to the core.
2.7. CRISIS AND THE EMERGENCE OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES.
As is the case with discovery, a change in an existing theory that results in the invention of a new
theory is also brought about by the awareness of anomaly. The emergence of a new theory is
generated by the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to be solved as they should.
Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones. These failures can be brought
about by observed discrepancies between theory and fact or changes in social/cultural climates
Such failures are generally long recognized , which is why crises are seldom surprising. Neither
problems nor puzzles yield often to the first attack. Recall that paradigm and theory resist change
and are extremely resilient. Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than
one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. In early stages
of a paradigm, such theoretical alternatives are easily invented. Once a paradigm is entrenched,
theoretical alternatives are strongly resisted. As in manufacture so in science--retooling is an
extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. Crises provide the opportunity to
retool.
2.8. THE RESPONSE TO CRISIS
The awareness and acknowledgement that a crisis exists loosens theoretical stereotypes and
provides the incremental data necessary for a fundamental paradigm shift. Normal science does
and must continually strive to bring theory and fact into closer agreement. The recognition and
acknowledgement of anomalies result in crises that are a necessary precondition for the
emergence of novel theories and for paradigm change. Crisis is the essential tension implicit in
scientific research. There is no such thing as research without counter instances. These counter
instances create tension and crisis. Crisis is always implicit in research because every problem
that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint, as a counter instance
and thus as a source of crisis. In responding to these crises, scientists generally do not renounce
the paradigm that has led them into crisis. Rather, they usually devise numerous articulations and
ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict. Some, unable to
tolerate the crisis, leave the profession. As a rule, persistent and recognized anomaly does not
induce crisis. Failure to achieve the expected solution to a puzzle discredits only the scientist and
not the theory to evoke a crisis, an anomaly must usually be more than just an anomaly.
Scientists who paused and examined every anomaly would not get much accomplished. An
anomaly must come to be seen as more than just another puzzle of normal science.
All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for
normal research. As this process develops, the anomaly comes to be more generally recognized
as such, more attention is devoted to it by more of the field's eminent authorities. The field
begins to look quite different: scientists express explicit discontent, competing articulations of
the paradigm proliferate and scholars view a resolution as the subject matter of their discipline.
To this end, they first isolate the anomaly more precisely and give it structure. They push the
rules of normal science harder than ever to see, in the area of difficulty, just where and how far
they can be made to work.
All crises close in one of three ways. (i) Normal science proves able to handle the crisis-
provoking problem and all returns to "normal." (ii) The problem resists and is labeled, but it is
perceived as resulting from the field's failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve
it, and so scientists set it aside for a future generation with more developed tools. (iii) A new
candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues. Once it has achieved
the status of paradigm, a paradigm is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available
to take its place. Because there is no such thing as research in the absence of a paradigm, to
reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. To
declare a paradigm invalid will require more than the falsification of the paradigm by direct
comparison with nature. The judgment leading to this decision involves the comparison of the
existing paradigm with nature and with the alternate candidate. Transition from a paradigm in
crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is not a cumulative
process. It is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals. This reconstruction changes
some of the field's foundational theoretical generalizations. It changes methods and applications.
It alters the rules.
2.9. THE NATURE AND NECESSITY OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
In this chapter we found that Why should a paradigm change be called a revolution? What are
the functions of scientific revolutions in the development of science?
A scientific revolution is a non-cumulative developmental episode in which an older paradigm is
replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one. A scientific revolution that results in
paradigm change is analogous to a political revolution. Political revolutions begin with a
growing sense by members of the community that existing institutions have ceased adequately to
meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created. The dissatisfaction
with existing institutions is generally restricted to a segment of the political community. Political
revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves
prohibit. As crisis deepens, individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the
reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework. Competing camps and parties form.
One camp seeks to defend the old institutional constellation. One (or more) camps seek to
institute a new political order. As polarization occurs, political recourse fails. Parties to a
revolutionary conflict finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion.
Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms
proves to be a choice between fundamentally incompatible modes of community life.
Paradigmatic differences cannot be reconciled. When paradigms enter into a debate about
fundamental questions and paradigm choice, each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that
paradigm's defense The result is a circularity and inability to share a universe of discourse. A
successful new paradigm permits predictions that are different from those derived from its
predecessor. That difference could not occur if the two were logically compatible. In the process
of being assimilated, the second must displace the first.
2.10. REVOLUTIONS AS CHANGES OF WORLD VIEW
During scientific revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar
instruments in places they have looked before. Familiar objects are seen in a different light and
joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Scientists see new things when looking at old objects. In a
sense, after a revolution, scientists are responding to a different world.
Why does a shift in view occur? Genius? Flashes of intuition? Sure. Because different scientists
interpret their observations differently? No. Observations are themselves nearly always different.
Observations are conducted within a paradigmatic framework, so the interpretative enterprise can
only articulate a paradigm, not correct it. Because of factors embedded in the nature of human
perception and retinal impression.
2.11. THE INVISIBILITY OF REVOLUTIONS
Because paradigm shifts are generally viewed not as revolutions but as additions to scientific
knowledge, and because the history of the field is represented in the new textbooks that
accompany a new paradigm, a scientific revolution seems invisible.
The image of creative scientific activity is largely created by a field's textbooks. Textbooks are
the pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science. These texts become the
authoritative source of the history of science. Both the layman's and the practitioner's knowledge
of science is based on textbooks. A field's texts must be rewritten in the aftermath of a scientific
revolution. Once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the existence and
significance of the revolutions that produced them. The resulting textbooks truncate the
scientist's sense of his discipline's history and supply a substitute for what they eliminate.
The historical reconstruction of previous paradigms and theorists in scientific textbooks make the
history of science look linear or cumulative, a tendency that even affects scientists looking back
at their own research. These misconstructions render revolutions invisible. They also work to
deny revolutions as a function. Science textbooks present the inaccurate view that science has
reached its present state by a series of individual discoveries and inventions that, when gathered
together; constitute the modern body of technical knowledge-the addition of bricks to a building.
2.12. THE RESOLUTION OF REVOLUTIONS
In this, the proponents of a competing paradigm convert the entire profession or the relevant
subgroup to their way of seeing science and the world. Scientific revolutions come about when
one paradigm displaces another after a period of paradigm-testing that occurs only after
persistent failure to solve a noteworthy puzzle has given rise to crisis. This process is analogous
to natural selection: one theory becomes the most viable among the actual alternatives in a
particular historical situation.
At the start, a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters. If the supporters are
competent, they will improve the paradigm, explore its possibilities, and show what it would be
like to belong to the community guided by it. For the paradigm destined to win, the number and
strength of the persuasive arguments in its favour will increase. As more and more scientists are
converted, exploration increases.
2.13. PROGRESS THROUGH REVOLUTIONS
In the face of the arguments previously made, why does science progress, how does it progress,
and what is the nature of its progress? To a very great extent, the term science is reserved for
fields that do progress in obvious ways. But does a field make progress because it is a science, or
is it a science because it makes progress? Normal science progresses because the enterprise
shares certain salient characteristics, Members of a mature scientific community work from a
single paradigm or from a closely related set. Very rarely do different scientific communities
investigate the same problems. The result of successful creative work is progress.
Even if we argue that a field does not make progress that does not mean that an individual school
or discipline within that field does not. The man who argues that philosophy has made no
progress emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that Aristotelianism has failed to
progress. It is only during periods of normal science that progress seems both obvious and
assured. In part, this progress is in the eye of the beholder. The absence of competing paradigms
that question each other's aims and standards makes the progress of a normal-scientific
community far easier to see. The acceptance of a paradigm frees the community from the need to
constantly re-examine its first principles and foundational assumptions. Members of the
community can concentrate on the subtlest and most esoteric of the phenomena that concern it.
Because scientists work only for an audience of colleagues, an audience that shares values and
beliefs, a single set of standards can be taken for granted.
We may have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry
scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth. The developmental
process described by Kuhn is a process of evolution from primitive beginnings. It is a process
whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding
of nature.
2.0. CORE FACTS
Kuhn’s expresses about the role of history in science-which other research texts give scant
consideration,
It studies the route, nature and role of normal science, which we need to know as would be
investigators.
Enables the users of the essay to have a profound understanding about paradigm, which
implies the benefit behind framework, and paradigm shift and its causes, such as anomalies
and crisis.
It provides a unified view of scientific revolutions though the strengths over weigh its
weaknesses, the critic of this book identified the following limitations:
Problems and mistakes created due to the old diction usage of the essay.
Science as mere belief, subjective and non-rational creativity.
Using two meanings- example ‘paradigm’,
The statement that investigator can be done without referring a paradigm.
Equating paradigm shift to revolution. The assertion that science has a certain pick time
by which it becomes dormant to novelties,
4.0. INFLUENCE
Form the publication; over one million copies have been sold, including translations into sixteen
different languages. In 1987, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was reported to be the
twentieth-century book most frequently cited in the period 1976-83 in the Arts and the
Humanities. The changes that occur in politics, society and business are often expressed in
Kuhnian terms, however poor their parallel with the practice of science may seem to scientists
and historians of science. The terms "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" have become such
notorious clichés and buzzwords that they are viewed as effectively devoid of content.
4.1. PHILOSOPHY
The first extensive review of Structure of Scientific Revolutions was authored by Dudley
Shapere, a philosopher who interpreted Kuhn’s work as a continuation of the anti-positivist
sentiment of other philosophers of science, including Feyerabend and Hanson. Shapere notes the
book’s influence on the philosophical landscape of the time, calling it “a sustained attack on the
prevailing image of scientific change as a linear process of ever-increasing knowledge.”
Philosopher Michael Ruse writes that it discredited the ahistorical, prescriptive approach to the
philosophy of science of Ernest Nagel's The Structure of Science (1961). The book did indeed
spark a historicist “revolt against positivism,” although this may not have been Kuhn’s intention;
in fact, he had already approached the prominent positivist Rudolf Carnap about having Structure
published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.
4.2. SOCIOLOGY
Kuhn’s ideas were the sociology of scientific knowledge Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Sociologists working within this new field, including Harry Collins and Steven Shapin, used
Kuhn’s emphasis on the role of non-evidential community factors in scientific development to
argue against logical empiricism, which discouraged inquiry into the social aspects of scientific
communities. These sociologists expanded upon Kuhn’s ideas, arguing that scientific judgment
is determined by social factors, such as professional interests and political ideologies.
4.3. ECONOMICS
Developments in the field of economics are often expressed and legitimized in Kuhnian terms.
For instance, neoclassical economists have claimed “to be at the second stage and to have been
there for a very long time – since Adam Smith, according to some accounts (Hollander, 1987), or
Jevons according to others (Hutchison, 1978).” In the 1970s, Post Keynesian economists denied
the coherence of the neoclassical paradigm, claiming that their own paradigm would ultimately
become dominant.
After the explosion of macroeconomics in the 1970s, the field looked like a battlefield. Over
time however, largely because facts do not go away, a largely shared vision both of fluctuations
and of methodology has emerged.
4.4. POLITICAL SCIENCE
In 1974, Structure of Scientific Revolutions was ranked as the second most frequently used book
in political science courses focused on scope and methods. In particular, Kuhn’s theory has been
used by political scientists to critique behaviorism, which claims that accurate political
statements must be both testable and falsifiable. Structure of Scientific Revolutions also proved
popular with political scientists embroiled in debates about whether a set of formulations put
forth by political scientists constituted a theory, or something else.
4.5. IMPLICATIONS
Many believe Kuhn’s observations on the nature of scientific advance have sufficient validity to
apply them to other areas of human behavior, like strategy. One example is how crisis precedes
paradigmatic change.
The USAF tries to utilize the objectivity of science to make decisions. It must be careful because
science is not as objective as the Air Force may think .
If science is so influenced by underlying assumptions, then so much more is the rest of the
world. In order to overcome limitations of a paradigm it is wise to invite dissent and include a
wide variety of backgrounds (inter-disciplinary thinking) in your decision process. When facing
problems or conflicting information, assess your underlying assumptions which may be
preventing you from recognizing the best solution.
5.0. OBSERVATION
5.1. POSITIVE CRITICISMS
Kuhn showed that the theories of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein were all self-contained and
“incommensurable” with one another. There was no steady accumulation of truth in the form of
objective knowledge about the physical universe. Instead each theory was a revolutionary break
from the previous theory, resulting in the arbitrary replacement of one conceptual matrix, or
worldview, by another. Once the matrix changed, the way science was done and applied was
fundamentally different.
Kuhn used the word “paradigm” to describe this conceptual matrix. A paradigm, in his
formulation, is a constellation of facts, theories, methods, and assumptions about reality that
allows researchers to isolate data, elaborate theories, and solve problems. Aristotle’s “Physical,”
Ptolemy’s “Almagest,” Newton’s “Principia” and Lavoisier’s “Chemistry” are examples of
scientific classics that gave rise to new paradigms.
5.2. NEGATIVE-CRITICISMS
There are probably many criticisms about the “Structure of Scientific Revelation”. Kuhn’s
structure of Scientific Revelation was soon criticized by his colleagues in the history and
philosophy of science.
A number of the included essays question the existence of normal science. In his essay,
Feyerabend suggests that Kuhn’s conception of normal science fits organized crime as well as it
does science. Popper goes so far as to express distaste with the entire premise of Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, writing, “the idea of turning for enlightenment concerning the aims of
science, and its possible progress, to sociology or to psychology (or. to the history of science) is
surprising and disappointing.”
5.2.1 CONCEPT OF PARADIGM
In his 1972 work, Human Understanding, Stephen Toulmin argued that a more realistic picture
of science than that presented in Structure of Scientific Revolutions would admit the fact that
revisions in science take place much more frequently, and are much less dramatic than can be
explained by the model of revolution/normal science. In Toulmin's view, such revisions occur
quite often during periods of what Kuhn would call "normal science." For Kuhn to explain such
revisions in terms of the non-paradigmatic puzzle solutions of normal science, he would need to
delineate what is perhaps an implausibly sharp distinction between paradigmatic and non-
paradigmatic science.
5.2.2. INCOMMENSURABILITY OF PARADIGMS
In a series of texts published in the early 1970s, C.R. Kordig asserted a position somewhere
between that of Kuhn and the older philosophy of science. His criticism of the Kuhnian position
was that the incommensurability thesis was too radical, and that this made it impossible to
explain the confrontation of scientific theories that actually occurs. According to Kordig, it is in
fact possible to admit the existence of revolutions and paradigm shifts in science while still
recognizing that theories belonging to different paradigms can be compared and confronted on
the plane of observation.
Kordig maintains that there is a common observational plane. For example, when Kepler and
Tycho Brahe are trying to explain the relative variation of the distance of the sun from the
horizon at sunrise, both see the same thing (the same configuration is focused on the retina of
each individual). This is just one example of the fact that "rival scientific theories share some
observations, and therefore some meanings." Kordig suggests that with this approach, he is not
reintroducing the distinction between observations and theory in which the former is assigned a
privileged and neutral status, but that it is possible to affirm more simply the fact that, even if no
sharp distinction exists between theory and observations, this does not imply that there are no
comprehensible differences at the two extremes of this polarity.
At a secondary level, for Kordig there is a common plane of inter-paradigmatic standards or
shared norms that permit the effective confrontation of rival theories.
In 1973, Hartry Field published an article that also sharply criticized Kuhn's idea of
incommensurability. In particular, he took issue with this passage from Kuhn:
"Newtonian mass is immutably conserved; that of Einstein is convertible into energy.
Only at very low relative velocities can the two masses be measured in the same way, and
even then they must not be conceived as if they were the same thing." (Kuhn 1970).
Field takes this idea of incommensurability between the same terms in different theories one step
further. Instead of attempting to identify a persistence of the reference of terms in different
theories, Field's analysis emphasizes the indeterminacy of reference within individual theories.
Field takes the example of the term "mass", and asks what exactly "mass" means in modern post-
relativistic physics. He finds that there are at least two different definitions:
1. Relativistic mass: the mass of a particle is equal to the total energy of the particle divided
by the speed of light squared. Since the total energy of a particle in relation to one system
of reference differs from the total energy in relation to other systems of reference, while
the speed of light remains constant in all systems, it follows that the mass of a particle has
different values in different systems of reference.
2. "Real" mass: the mass of a particle is equal to the non-kinetic energy of a particle divided
by the speed of light squared. Since non-kinetic energy is the same in all systems of
reference, and the same is true of light, it follows that the mass of a particle has the same
value in all systems of reference.
5.2.3. INCOMMENSURABILITY AND PERCEPTION
The close connection between the interpretation list hypothesis and a holistic conception of
beliefs is at the root of the notion of the dependence of perception on theory, a central concept in
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn maintained that the perception of the world depends on
how the percipient conceives the world: two scientists who witness the same phenomenon and
are steeped in two radically different theories will see two different things. According to this
view, our interpretation of the world determines what we see.
Jerry Fodor attempts to establish that this theoretical paradigm is fallacious and misleading by
demonstrating the impenetrability of perception to the background knowledge of subjects. The
strongest case can be based on evidence from experimental cognitive psychology, namely the
persistence of perceptual illusions. Knowing that the lines in the Müller-Lyer illusion are equal
does not prevent one from continuing to see one line as being longer than the other. This
impenetrability of the information elaborated by the mental modules limits the scope of
interpretationalism.
In epistemology, for example, the criticism of what Fodor calls the interpretation list hypothesis
accounts for the common-sense intuition of the independence of reality from the conceptual
categories of the experimenter. If the processes of elaboration of the mental modules are in fact
independent of the background theories, then it is possible to maintain the realist view that two
scientists who embrace two radically diverse theories see the world exactly in the same manner
even if they interpret it differently. The point is that it is necessary to distinguish between
observations and the perceptual fixation of beliefs. While it is beyond doubt that the second
process involves the holistic relationship between beliefs, the first is largely independent of the
background beliefs of individuals.
Other critics, such as Israel Sheffler, Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke, have focused on the
Fregean distinction between sense and reference in order to defend scientific realism. Sheffler
contends that Kuhn confuses the meanings of terms such as "mass" with their references. While
their meanings may very well differ, their references remain fixed.
6.0. CONCLUSION
It’s been almost a half-century since the publication of Thomas S. Kuhn’s THE STRUCTURE OF
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, tried to see the involvement of history to the very existence of
science in the different eras. It also considered the route, nature, and puzzle solving role of
normal science. The reason why paradigms are well-thought-out as the prioritized models in
science is briefly treated. Anomalies as new problems that could not be solved with the known
algorithm and the attendant reactions to this situations-discovery are well taken-in. The possible
responses of scientists about crisis and the attendant outcomes of science- new scientific theories
which are realized through discovery are also part of the book. In the end, the book tried to
explicate points such as progress, resolution, invisibility, nature and necessity, and how world
view is changed by scientific revolution.
Usually, I found the book a high level literary work and basic scientific research concepts which
I did not come across through any other means so far in my professional as well as student hood
years. In my level of understanding of the basic idea of this book generated me to say that Kuhn
is an intellectual “angel” who tried to lift up science from an extreme positivist tradition to the
consideration of both- mainly the subjective world.