Kuhn, Thomas S.
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
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There's a "Frank & Ernest" comic strip showing a chick breaking out of its shell, looking around, and saying, "Oh, wow! Paradigm shift!" Blame the late Thomas Kuhn. Few indeed are the philosophers or historians influential enough to make it into the funny papers, but Kuhn is one.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is indeed a paradigmatic work in the history of science. Kuhn's use of terms such as "paradigm shift" and "normal science," his ideas of how scientists move from disdain through doubt to acceptance of a new theory, his stress on social and psychological factors in science--all have had profound effects on historians, scientists, philosophers, critics, writers, business gurus, and even the cartoonist in the street.
Some scientists (such as Steven Weinberg and Ernst Mayr) are profoundly irritated by Kuhn, especially by the doubts he casts--or the way his work has been used to cast doubt--on the idea of scientific progress. Yet it has been said that the acceptance of plate tectonics in the 1960s, for instance, was sped by geologists' reluctance to be on the downside of a paradigm shift. Even Weinberg has said that "Structure has had a wider influence than any other book on the history of science." As one of Kuhn's obituaries noted, "We all live in a post-Kuhnian age." --Mary Ellen Curtin
Book Description
Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.
"A landmark in intellectual history which has attracted attention far
beyond its own immediate field. . . . It is written with a combination
of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of
aphorisms. . . . Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of
scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be
true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior
paradigm, [this book] has been a resounding success." --Nicholas Wade,
Science
"Perhaps the best explanation of [the] process of discovery." --William
Erwin Thompson, New York Times Book Review
"Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence far beyond its
originally intended audience. . . . Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions . . . has clearly emerged as just such a
work." --Ron Johnston, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Among the most influential academic books in this century." --
Choice
--One of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World
War," Times Literary Supplement
Thomas S. Kuhn was the Laurence Rockefeller Professor Emeritus of
linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His books include The Essential Tension; Black-Body Theory and the
Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912; and The Copernican
Revolution.
Customer Reviews:
Is this book proof that the world has gone mad?.......2007-06-05
Iconic? Absolutely. Influential? Undoubtedly. The source of an incredible amount of philosophical error and mischief? Yes - perhaps more so than any other book of the 20th century. Was this despite its many errors? I doubt it. I think it was precisely BECAUSE of its many errors it became so popular. But to explain...
The primary implication of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is that science has no, and should be granted no, privileged standing amongst competing methods of ascertaining reality. It claims that knowledge is "created" merely by "assent" (not *discovered*), and likens the replacement of one theory with another - like Newtonian physics with Einsteinian - to "religious conversion" (an act regard by most critical thinkers as the example par excellence of irrationality).
That being the case, it is no wonder that the book should have become so popular amongst members of the softer sciences, like sociology, philosophy, political science, history, etc., as well as amongst the clearly insane, like astrologers, religious lunatics, and palm readers. To quote Kuhn himself, "as in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice - there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community". Well, of course not, once it has been adopted as a premise that nothing about the world-in-itself can ever be known. All "facts", in that case, only become a matter of *what "relevant" people decide are, or should be, the "facts" (it is no wonder that Steve Fuller has been able to make the case for Kuhn as a Platonic [in the worst way] elitist. See Fuller's "Kuhn vs. Popper" or his "Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History For Our Times").
Kuhn also argues that the idea that there has been an accumulation of objective knowledge about the world is a myth. I can only hope that those readers who may have noticed the existence of electricity, cell phones, air flight, radios, immunizations, and about three billion other discoveries and inventions over the past few hundred years, will regard Kuhn's claims as as ludicrous as they deserve to be regarded.
For an unsparing (and frequently hilarious) critique of Kuhn's philosophy (and that of Popper, Feyerabend, and Lakatos), I strongly recommend "Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Post-Modern Cult", by the late University of Sydney philosopher David Stove.
I hope this review has been of benefit to someone.
Good luck in your studies.
Brilliant - A Classic.......2006-12-23
Originally published in 1962 Thomas Kuhn's `The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' is widely recognized as the most influential work in the philosophy of science. It is one of those rare scientific works/commentaries that has had enduring significance outside of its specific field.
At the time of Kuhn's writing scientific progress was widely viewed an evolutionary process characterized by the gradual accumulation of knowledge and corresponding theoretical refinement. In opposition to this view, Kuhn proposed a more discontinuous or revolutionary view - one where scientific understanding undergoes periodic abrupt and radical change or paradigm shifts. In a simple Kuhnian view, paradigms can be understood as collections of shared assumptions and beliefs within scientific communities that serve to guide and interpret research. In this framework so-called `normal' science (refinement) occurs within given paradigms. Occasionally, normal science encounters sufficient anomalies or difficulties that the prevailing worldview is challenged. This challenge is often characterized, at first, by ad hoc theoretical adjustments to account for these difficulties and, in the certain circumstances eventually to the adoption of a new explanatory paradigm. A classic example of such transitions is the oft cited transitions in physics from Aristotelian to Newtonian to Relativity. Throughout the text Kuhn provides a vast number of well known as lesser known examples of paradigm shifts.
As with all meta-theories the applicability of Kuhn's model can be, and sometimes has been, overstated. That said, it is a wonderful explanatory tool in science as well as the broader socio-psychological context - we see what we believe. An interesting contemporary example of Kuhn's theory can be seen in Neo-Darwinian Theory (NDT). Although Darwinism still has outspoken supporters, from a Kuhnian perspective it could be viewed as bumping -up against the boundary of normal science. That is to say that it is encountering an increasing number of difficulties, which has triggered an accompanying growth in ad hoc adjustments. Despite its many shortcomings, however, NDT has not been replaced as a paradigm. This is not surprising in the Kuhnian view; theories in crisis tend to stick around until there is an alternative. In the case of NDT; though critics such as the Intelligent Design (ID) movement have highlighted Darwinism's deficiencies, they have not to date put forward a broadly appealing alternative.
Overall, one of those rare works that has developed an influence well beyond its' intended audience. I recommend it highly to all students of science and philosophy - it is a true classic. For an opposing view a look at some work by Popper may be instructive.
Small and perfectly formed: one of the greats of 20th Century Philosophy.......2006-12-16
A true classic of twentieth century literature, this wonderful little book, which argues for the contingency of scientific knowledge, deserves space on the bookshelf next to The Wealth of Nations (identifying the contingency of economic wellbeing and value), Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (causal scepticism), The Origin of Species (the contingency of biological development) and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (the contingency of language) - along with those perennially confusing continental stalwarts Freddie Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as representing the fundamental underpinnings of modern Relativist thought.
Thanks to the Chomskies, Dawkinses and Sokals of this world, who have cunningly bound perfectly sensible Cognitive and Ethical Relativism to silly Post-Structuralism, proper Relativism has become a dirty word these days.
It may be unfashionable but it's also powerful, and if you want to understand it, and its power, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - as short and beautifully written a classic of philosophy as you could possibly ask for - is as good a place as any to start.
Following publication of "Structure", Kuhn had a famous public debate with Karl Popper over what counts as science and the way in which science develops over time. Popper had, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, made the invaluable observation that "verification" as a standard for science is too high, since as a matter of logic an argument based on induction ("since the sun has risen on every day in recorded history, therefore it will rise tomorrow") can never be proven true. The sun rising is a very good example: for all our folksy expectations, current cosmology predicts that there will be a point at some time in the distant future when the sun will explode, and therefore will not rise tomorrow.
In lieu of verification as the scientific gold standard, Popper asserted (seemingly plausibly) that valid scientific theory could be assessed by the lack of any falsifying evidence among the data. The requirement for scientific statements to be "falsifiable" is a useful contribution to the debate: To be of any use, a scientific theory must narrow down from the list of all possible outcomes a set of predicted ones, and rule the rest out. Statements which cannot be falsified by any conceivable evidence don't do that, so fail at science's fundamental task.
Thomas Kuhn's insight was to offer a historian's perspective, and to note that, while that might be theory, that's simply not what science does in practice. Scientific theories are absolutely never thrown out the moment contradictory evidence is observed: the dial is tapped, the experiment re-run, and "numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory" are devised to eliminate any apparent conflict. Indeed, when the data won't do what it's meant to, sometimes it is the question which is rejected as being irrelevant, and not the answer predicted by the theory.
All this activity takes place inside what Kuhn describes (somewhat inconsistently) as a "paradigm" - a "particular coherent tradition of scientific research". The paradigm governs not only the theory but the education, instrumentation, rules and standards of scientific practice, and is the basis on which the scientific community decides which kinds of questions are and are not relevant to the development of scientific research. A paradigm claims exclusivity over the adjudication of its own subject matter, and one only has authority to pronounce on a scientific problem once one has been fully inducted: evolutionary biologists will not take seriously the biological assertions of fundamentalist Christians, for example. Fundamentalist Christians who take biology exams will fail, and thereby will never be able to authoritatively comment on biological matters.
Paradigms are generally a useful thing for the jobbing scientist, since to her they provide a pre-agreed framework - what Dan Dennett would describe as a "crane" - on which additional scientific research can be undertaken without having, literally, to re-invent the wheel. Kuhn characterises this sort of "normal scientist" as being involved in "puzzle solving" in exactly the sense that one solves a crossword puzzle. You have a framework of rules for how to solve the puzzle; you have problems (the blank spaces on the puzzle) and you empirically obtained evidence (clues) which you manipulate using the rules to produce predictions (or answers), and each newly discovered answer then acts as an additional clue to solve the remaining problems.
Superficially, this all sounds fine, but there are brutal, jagged corals just below the water's surface: Once inside a paradigm it informs your view of the world so thoroughly it is not possible to conduct research outside it. To solve a crossword puzzle, there must first be *some* pre-determined rules of engagement (the same puzzle can be solved, differently, with different sets of rules: a "cryptic" crossword yields different answers for the same boxes, and perhaps even the same clues, to a "quick" crossword. But to solve it one needs to use one or the other). Unlike a crossword, Mother Nature doesn't come with a label saying "cryptic" or "quick". So how do we know which paradigm to use? Can the truth or falsity of the paradigm to be judged, other than in terms of the paradigm itself?
Kuhn says no. This is an immensely powerful idea. Not only does it undermine the certitude many people have about their own ways of life, it seems to opens the door to all the whacky alternatives, with no objective means of choosing between them. So can we really not choose between Radiotherapy and Healing Crystals?
That this might be the case terrifies a lot of people, especially scientists, and Kuhn gets a lot of the blame for this state of unease. Post-Modernism: It's all Kuhn's fault.
But this is surely to shoot the messenger: Kuhn's great contribution is not to say that healing crystals are in (he says nothing of the sort) but to say that the sacred and immutable link between science and truth is out, and we owe it to ourselves to keep an open mind about whatever we believe. After all, the history of science (which is what Kuhn started out writing about) is a long history of frequent revolution. Either all the theories scientists have ever believed up to the current day are baloney, always were, never really counted as science and we're just lucky to be around when the human race has finally got it right - which, to put it mildly, is wishful thinking - or the revolutionary history of science, which no-one disputes, tends to back up what Kuhn is saying.
Science does evolve, through the great algorithm of human discourse, and the dominating theories through time will tend to be the ones which most of us are persuaded work the best for us (whether we're right or not is really beside the point). What persuades in Tehran may differ from what persuades in Texas. All Thomas Kuhn cautions against is either side taking its own position as a given.
His enterprise is therefore fundamentally democratic - placing epistemological legitimacy in the hands of the entire community, as contingent and random as it may be from time to time, and not a self-selecting, self perpetuating elite.
One thing economic theory tells us is that concentrating economic control in a small part of the population (as in a monopoly) generally works out worse for everyone except the monopolist. There's no reason to suppose that concentrating intellectual authority should be any different.
In the Western Hemisphere - outside the Grateful Dead tour circuit, at any rate - intellectual authority mostly resides with established science, but it has to work - literally - to earn our respect.
The anti-Kuhn brigade like Richard Dawkins may not like that sort of accountability but, not being a scientist, I do.
Olly Buxton
a historically dense version of Jacob Bronowski;.......2006-11-18
Thomas Kuhn points out a lot of the sociology of how new scientific theories are accepted, and along the way 'derives' much of the remarkableness of the scientific process; people are forever saying how dry and mechanical science is, but they are ignorant and scared little you know whats more than anything else; trully, anybody who doesn't know the adventure and beauties that science reveals is mentally and emotionally sick; things like how Newtonian Mechanics is both right and wrong and every scientific theory is right and wrong which indicates research directions; when General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics corrected the problems of Newtonian Mechanics, they didn't just throw away Newtonian Mechanics, they 'generalized' and/or ate it up in the way they consumed/derived newtonian mechanics from a new higher perspective; Thomas Kuhn argues that Newtonian Mechanics cannot be derived from General Relativity, but I found his arguement unconvincing and shortsided(I forgot how/why/what; it has been awhile since I read the book, but I just reread my notes on the book last night and decided to right a review!).
I'll save some of the other remarkable things Kuhn found along the way of his historical research of science and point out one major omission that limits his seeing science in the proper light - the relation of mathematics and science. This is the major reason the book falls short in understanding the fundamental nature of science; that science/mathematics is a constructive analogy as Jacob Bronowski puts it; that science/mathematics is a unification(the derivation of newtonican mechanics from General Relativity, and chemistry from quantum mechanics are the classic scientific proofs of this effect of science), and the understanding of how that creative 'unification' of concepts solves problems works in science/mathematics.
I of course recommend reading Jacob Bronowski - particularly his "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination" above most of his other stuff. His "Ascent of Man" is more to be read for fun after knowing what he says in 'Origins.' "Ascent of Man" is just so general that if you don't know about the nature of science he teaches in his other books, then you'd read right past so much in "Ascent of Man." And, his 'Origins' book is the culmination and greatest synthesis of his insights; it is the culmination of twentieth century thought that Godel's theorem and the revolutions of science put on mankind in the twentieth century. It is the best science book outside of a good historical perspective development of a scientific theory type book like "Project Physics Course", or David Hilbert's "Geometry and the Imagination", or Morris Kline's, "Calculus."
A Worthwhile Effort.......2006-11-14
*I am not Tom Kozikowski -- I am a student in his high school Physics II class, and I write this with his permission*
I'm recommending The Structure of Scientific Revolution not because its a light read, but because it presents ideas that the average person will not encounter during their educational experience. Kuhn provides a perspective on the scientific world that few people ever see.
It becomes obvious that he knows a great deal about science and the history of science, but he approaches it with an outsider's perspective. As he notes in the book, perspective is a major factor in how one understands a topic, and thus he is able to understand the progress of the scientific community differently than a member of the field would. He points out that science is unique from other fields in the way that it progresses. The depth at which he analyzes the progression of scientific revolutions is unmatched by other contemporary scientific texts.
I will make a few precautionary notes about reading the novel. Kuhn's ideas are complex, and despite his efforts to communicate them effectively, are often difficult to express. One has to devote time to understand his ideas, since they are usually entirely new to the reader. Also, keep in mind that Kuhn is not diluting his ideas at all, so some readers will quickly become lost in his vocabulary and structure.
Overall, though the book is a difficult read, it is still worth it to be exposed to the ideas and concepts that Kuhn presents. Nowhere else can one see such a unique perspective on the field of science.
Average customer rating:
- An extremely challenging book
- All you wanted to know about q.m. but were afraid to ask
- How the Quantum came to be
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Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912
Thomas S. Kuhn
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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ASIN: 0226458008 |
Book Description
"A masterly assessment of the way the idea of quanta of radiation became part of 20th-century physics. . . . The book not only deals with a topic of importance and interest to all scientists, but is also a polished literary work, described (accurately) by one of its original reviewers as a scientific detective story."--John Gribbin, New Scientist
"Every scientist should have this book."--Paul Davies, New Scientist
Customer Reviews:
An extremely challenging book.......2005-08-24
Anyone who has learned quantum mechanics has been told, in a general way, what Planck did and how it fits into the history of quantum physics. Kuhn shows that Planck thought about his goals and his results very differently than do textbook writers today.
Warning! This is a very tough read:
- You will not get much out of this book unless you are able and willing to follow detailed arguments in thermodynamics and statistical physics, in fairly gory mathematical detail. Quantum history-lite this isn't!
- You will also not get much out of this book unless you are willing to relax about the "right" way of thinking about thermodynamics and quantum theory. However YOU may think about it, Planck thought about it differently -- and Kuhn attempts to follow his thought, zigging & zagging as he did. If you're not willing to follow along closely and attentively for the ride, you will miss the story.
The payoff from reading this book is a more vivid understanding and appreciation for how very very differently we think about physics than the way it physicists saw it 100 years ago.
All you wanted to know about q.m. but were afraid to ask.......2001-10-01
The solution to the blackbody radiation problem is often quoted in Physics books as the formal bridge between the classic and quantum world viewpoints. However, as Kuhn points out, the full solution and not just the answer is nowhere else to be found.
Well beyond the satisfaction that reading this book should present to any serious Quantum Physics related student it is an absoulte requirement in the History of Physics.
Yes, the mathematical arguments get quite dense and most are not trivial. However, little is needed beyond basic calculus, statiscal mechanics and thermodynamics. View this as an excellent excuse to get going in those areas.
If every time you hear something about the beginnings of q.m. something stirs in your guts telling you that something is not quite right about the story you're being fed, that the full story isn't being told, then who could be better than Kuhn to show you that you were after right, after all?
How the Quantum came to be.......2000-06-29
Excellent book, as Kuhn's usually are, on the origin of quantum theory. "Everyone" knows Planck arrived at the quantum by studying black-body radiation, but what you are never told is *why* he was doing that! Kuhn reaches back as to why Planck was, and has an interesting story to tell for it (the question of thermodynamic irreversability vs reversability in classical mechanics). Another major part of Kuhn's tale is that even after he arrived at his quantum hypothesis, Planck still saw it as a direct extension of classical physics. It was others, mainly Einstein, who realized the revolutionary nature of the quantum (and who ran with the idea), and physicists like Planck had to conceptually play catch up in the quantum revolution in the first decade of the 20th century. One serious WARNING: while interesting and well written, the book has some very technical parts, requiring at least intermediate college physics. While not flooded with equations, Kuhn freely gets into thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (entropy, free energy, H-theorem,...) in explaining the core of Planck's early work. The reader should be prepared for some technical physics on the journey!
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World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science (Bradford Books)
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ASIN: 0262082160 |
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Thomas Kuhn is perhaps the most widely known and influential philosopher of science of our time. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions called into question such central notions of scientific method as the concept of absolute truth, the observation/theory distinction, the determinate rationality of theory choice, and the normative function of philosophy of science. It replaced these with a historically more accurate model of scientific change. Kuhn's critique turned several fields upside down and continues to be read and debated not only by philosophers and historians of science but also by many practicing scientists. Inspired by his contributions, these twelve original essays address central aspects of Kuhn's thought. Most of the essays are philosophical, four are primarily historical, and one, by Kuhn himself, responds to issues raised in the other essays.
Paul Horwich is Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Probability and Evidence, Asymmetries in Time, and Truth.
The essays: Introduction, Paul Horwich. Thomas Kuhn, Colleague and Friend, C.G. Hempel. Carnap, Kuhn, and the Philosophy of Scientific Methodology, John Earman. Remarks on the History of Science and the History of Philosophy, Michael Friedman. Rationality and Paradigm Change in Science, Ernan McMullin. A Mathematicians' Mutiny, with Morals, J. L. Heilbron. Science and Humanism in the Renaissance: Regiomontanus's Oration on the Dignity and Utility of the Mathematical Sciences, N. M. Swerdlow. Design for Experimenting, Jed Z. Buchwald. Mediations: Enlightenment Balancing Acts, or the Technologies of Rationalism, M. Norton Wise. How We Relate Theory to Observation, Nancy Cartwright. Working in a New World. The Taxonomic Solution, Ian Hacking. Afterwords, Thomas Kuhn.
<B>A Bradford Book</B>
Average customer rating:
- Case Study of a Scientific Revolution
- How a world-view changed
- Outstanding Elucidation
- Excellent discussion and detail
- A fascinating book
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The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought
Thomas S. Kuhn
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Book Description
For scientist and layman alike this book provides vivid evidence that the Copernican Revolution has by no means lost its significance today. Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this scientific age, from which to evaluate our own beliefs more intelligently. With a constant keen awareness of the inseparable mixture of its technical, philosophical, and humanistic elements, Mr. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man's concept of his relation to the universe and to God. </p>
The book begins with a description of the first scientific cosmology developed by the Greeks. Mr. Kuhn thus prepares the way for a continuing analysis of the relation between theory and observation and belief. He describes the many functions--astronomical, scientific, and nonscientific--of the Greek concept of the universe, concentrating especially on the religious implications. He then treats the intellectual, social, and economic developments which nurtured Copernicus' break with traditional astronomy. Although many of these developments, including scholastic criticism of Aristotle's theory of motion and the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, lie entirely outside of astronomy, they increased the flexibility of the astronomer's imagination. That new flexibility is apparent in the work of Copernicus, whose DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ORBIUM CAELESTIUM is discussed in detail both for its own significance and as a representative scientific innovation. </p>
With a final analysis of Copernicus' life work--its reception and its contribution to a new scientific concept of the universe--Mr. Kuhn illuminates both the researches that finally made the heliocentric arrangement work, and the achievements in physics and metaphysics that made the planetary earth an integral part of Newtonian science. These are the developments that once again provided man with a coherent and self-consistent conception of the universe and of his own place in it. </p>
This is a book for any reader interested in the evolution of ideas and, in particular, in the curious interplay of hypothesis and experiment which is the essence of modern science. Says James B. Conont in his Foreword: "Professor Kuhn's handling of the subject merits attention, for... he points the way to the road which must be followed if science is to be assimilated into the culture of our times." </p>
Customer Reviews:
Case Study of a Scientific Revolution.......2007-02-16
"The Copernican Revolution" tells the epochal story of how the earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy was replaced by the sun-centered cosmology of Copernicus and Kepler. The book is a classic. Kuhn understood how ideas influence each other and hang together in a system. He could write with equal erudition about observational astronomy, medieval theology, astrology, and Aristotelian physics.
"The Copernican Revolution" is a trove of historical and intellectual insights. Perhaps the main lesson is that scientific progress is not a simple matter of theory adapting to observation. Multiple theories can account for the same observations, theories have complex non-observational bases of support, and extra-theoretical assumptions provided by "common sense" (such as the immobility of the earth) can be highly contingent products of a culture. Scientific progress is never guaranteed. Erroneous theories -- such as the theory placing the earth at the center of the universe -- can hold sway for centuries and generate a vast body of supporting evidence, only to fall out of sync with new observations and a new climate of opinion -- at which point they can hang on tenaciously, or collapse "suddenly" over the course of a generation or two. It all comes down to history.
Kuhn's great contribution to thought was to situate the history of science within the history of ideas -- he treated scientific theories as the products of cultures, institutions, and sheer accidents, not as deliverances of pure logic. "The Copernican Revolution" is fantastic and should be ready by anyone who enjoyed and learned from "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It's become fashionable to bash Kuhn lately but his books have a secure place in the canon of history and philosophy of science. Six stars!
How a world-view changed.......2005-04-02
The Sun and the planets and all the stars revolve around the Earth, which is itself at the center of the universe. Beyond the sphere of the fixed stars is nothing; there is no void or matter or anything, as voids cannot exist in nature. All these celestial bodies that do exist revolve in nice perfect circles. All these statements were once common knowledge to anyone with a smattering of education, even though astronomers were known to make slight variations on the concepts of circular motion. But today every single one of these concepts is demolished, and only fools believe in the Earth centered universe. Why was there a change? It certainly wasn't because of a mass of new information. The old geocentric universe was rejected long before anyone put up satellites and space probes to go zipping around the solar system. Even the invention of the telescope only provided the final blow to the old system. It was a fundamental change in thinking that made up the subject of The Copernican Revolution, Thomas Kuhn's look at the break between ancient and modern thinking on the subject.
Copernicus himself made no observations. He worked only with acquired data and ancient texts. What system did he start out with? This is important, as we can't understand what changed without knowing what was. Kuhn traces the nature of the Ptolemaic system with diagrams but virtually no equations (until the technical appendix at the end) to give the reader an understanding of what sorts of phenomena caught the eyes of ancient astronomers. The Sun and Moon and stars move in their own peculiar manners, and the planets, the wandering stars, behaved in the most peculiar manner of all. The ancients developed rather sophisticated methods to track and predict these movements using their own location as a reasonable starting point. Yet Copernicus had the idea that this starting point was not properly speaking the actual center of the universe. He developed a Sun centered system that qualitatively explained many phenomena (such as retrograde motion of the planets, a notable improvement) without some of the mathematical oddities of the old system, but required so many of its own modifications for accuracy that the final system was no neater than the original.
Yet some astronomers preferred the new to the old. This was, all myth busting aside, still a dangerous idea to advocate in the midst of the Reformation. There was a subtle distinction between advocating a mathematical model and advocating a statement of physical reality. There were many reasons to reject Copernicus, and Kuhn covers them here. There are two main themes: the first is that ancient astronomy was bound up with ancient physics and with theology, and rejecting one introduced many awkward questions about the rest that intellectually honest scholars couldn't ignore. The second is political. Most people know something of the story of Galileo and his confrontations with the Inquisition. It didn't help him that he was arrogant, that he mocked powerful people he called friends, and that politically it was a bad time to make waves. This is also touched upon briefly in Kuhn, but the focus remains on the intellectual revolution, and there Galileo had much to contribute in his new observations. Ultimately, the revolution was as much about insight and vision as about calculations and observations.
Readers more familiar with Kuhn from his later The Structure of Scientific Revolutions will find some of his discussion taking a familiar tone. Indeed, the Copernican revolution fits well with that model; it was a revolutionary idea that marked a turning point in Western science, straddling both the ancient and modern viewpoints. For the reader who is willing to visualize the issues and absorb the history, Kuhn has provided the most succinct and clear explanation of Copernicus's contribution to the Western world likely to be found anywhere.
Outstanding Elucidation.......2003-09-30
This book, written before his Structures, is condensed, well written and, for me at any rate, highly entertaining. No one with a casual understanding of the history of astronomy can read this and not be surprised. Of special interest is the illumination of the fact that at the time Copernicus offered his Helio-centric cosmology there was no good, scientific reason for accepting it - it being a geometric inversion of the Ptolemaic system and thus inheriting exactly all of the Ptolemaic deficiencies. Kuhn explores the reason for the gradual shift to Copernicanism and the effects a moving earth had on other sciences.
Excellent discussion and detail.......2003-08-05
The author gives thorough discussion about what Copernican revolution really is, who were the key players and how each contributed to the overall progress. In addition, it provides many technical details about many systems that affect the revolution in one way or the other. However, I do not think that any necessary astronomical experience is necessary to read the book, but in order to understand the full picture it is necessary to understand the technical details. Overall, the book develops the idea very clearly and gives insights that give a good understanding of how scientific thought developed.
A fascinating book.......2001-01-04
This book is an excellent and entertaining book for a scientific reader and/or for a general reader who doesn't mind being challenged a bit by logical arguments. Don't let this discourage you, though, since the logical arguments are not too difficult and really need to be discussed for completeness sake. The historical background adds to the book in a way comparable to Carl Sagan's 'COSMOS' series or to 'The Mechanical Universe' series. This book should be required reading for all enlightened westerners. It's THAT good.
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- Kuhn's missing link
- Good Collection
- Did Kuhn ever recover from 'Structure'?
- An interesting look at a self-absorbed life
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The Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993, with an Autobiographical Interview
Thomas S. Kuhn
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It is possible that no book written in the last 50 years has had an influence as profound and far-reaching as Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's argument that scientific knowledge does not develop cumulatively, but rather proceeds by a series of "paradigm shifts," captivated not only philosophers of science, but scholars in a wide range of academic disciplines. The Road Since Structure is a follow-up to his landmark work and a look at Kuhn's theory since the book's original publication in 1962.
In keeping with Kuhn's wishes (he died in 1996), editors James Conant and John Haugeland organized The Road Since Structure to include 11 philosophical essays written since 1970. In the first part of the book, Kuhn spells out his theory as it developed in the 1980s and 1990s; in the second part, he replies to a number of criticisms and misreadings. The third section is a fascinating interview with Kuhn conducted less than a year before he died. For general interest readers, the lengthy interview--in which Kuhn candidly and engagingly discusses the trials and tribulations of his life and philosophical career--will probably be the most interesting part of the book. For those attuned to Kuhn's controversial work, The Road Since Structure is an indispensable aid for understanding his theory as it developed and for appreciating the full force of his replies to a host of critical objections. As always, Kuhn's clarity and fluid prose render accessible a field fraught with opaque writing. --Eric de Place
Book Description
Thomas Kuhn will undoubtedly be remembered primarily for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book that introduced one of the most influential conceptions of scientific progress to emerge during the twentieth century. The Road since Structure, assembled with Kuhn's input before his death in 1996, follows the development of his thought through the later years of his life. Collected here are several essays extending and rethinking the perspectives of Structure as well as an extensive and revealing autobiographical interview.
Customer Reviews:
Kuhn's missing link.......2006-01-12
This posthumously published book is a collection of papers published between 1970 and 1993 together with a transcript of an autobiographical interview given by Kuhn in 1995, a year before his death. The book also contains a complete bibliography of his works.
Most of the important contributing philosophers of science in the twentieth century formed their views by reflection on the great scientific revolutions in modern physics, notably relativity theory and quantum theory. But in the first paper in this book, "What are Scientific Revolutions?" (1987), Kuhn reports that his most formative intellectual experience was his attempt in 1947 to understand the physics of Aristotle - what in his autobiography he calls his "Aristotle experience."
What distinguishes the contrast between the physics of Aristotle and Newton is the vast gulf in time, which makes their contrast quite radical in comparison to the contrast between, say, Einstein's theory and Newton's immediately preceding theory. Also the ascendancy of Newton's theory was not due to a decisive empirical test, like the eclipse experiment that decided for Einstein's theory over Newton's. It is this radical contrast between Aristotle's and Newton's physics that occasioned Kuhn's comparably radical thesis of scientific revolutions, that they are nonempirical conversions from one "paradigm" to another incommensurably different one.
When Kuhn set forth his thesis of scientific revolutions in 1962 in his famous book titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the book was not welcomed by philosophers of science, who expected and demanded a coherent philosophy of language and a linguistic analysis for the Kuhnian thesis. The papers in Road Since Structure are in large part the fossil record of Kuhn's successive and unsuccessful attempts to evolve his missing link between history of science and philosophy of science. The papers show his groping, eclectic, and somewhat naive efforts at philosophy of language by a scholar who was firstly a historian of science.
Readers interested on my further comments on Kuhn are invited to read my book titled History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science or Google my web site philsci for free downloads of my book by chapter - and also to read my other book reviews in this Amazon web site.
Thomas J. Hickey
Good Collection.......2003-09-30
Unless you're a research scientist or have found yourself wrapped up in the miniscule debates over Kuhn's writings ( eg. "What exactly IS a paradigm, perfesser?"), this book is delightful! Of particular interest are the two essays "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" and "The Trouble With The Historical Philosophy of Science." Some of this can be found in "The Essential Tension" as he was always repeating himself to different audiences.
Did Kuhn ever recover from 'Structure'?.......2003-02-08
As with (to a lesser extent) Feyerabend, Kuhn wrote his contreversial opus in the mid 60's. I think it's safe to say that anything hinting at anti-authoritarianism, as it seemed to do on the surface, was begging to be misunderstood. Honestly, after 'paradigm shift' became a bastardized slogan for everything from class-struggle to new-age revelations through meditation, I'm not sure Thomas Kuhn ever recovered from this world-wide misunderstanding. What I read in "The Road Since Structure" corroborates that as we find an author that constantly needs to clarify, "This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm not saying. Now that we're clear, let me repeat myself!"
First, as anyone who's read "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" knows, Kuhn has no talent for clear writing. Nothing's changed since. These essays, although more concise and to the point (perhaps that's Kuhn having learned his lesson) are still difficult reads. The first section, I think, is the book's 'payoff'. It is here that he reiterates, clarifies and expands on what is and is not scientific revolution, incommensurability and paradigm. Two essays in particular, "What are Scientific Revolutions?" and "The Road Since Structure" are worth the price of the book alone.
The second section consists of replies to Kuhns many and in an ideological sense, far ranging critics. Most of these papers were written for symposia and are difficult in the sense of listening to only one end of a phone dialogue. As he is generally responding to papers of others, without access to those papers, it is akward reading to say the least. Still, for those of us scientific philosophy nuts, the essays "Reflections on My Critics" (part of a symposium featuring Lakatos, Popper and Feyerabend amongst others) and "The Natural and the Human Sciences" are excellent illucidations of Kuhns thought.
Honestly, the interview, I didn't like. Much of it is Thomas Kuhns history and as for the reviewer below that bemoans a self-absorbed Kuhn talking about himself and his "intellectual project", I'm not sure what else you should expect from an interview of a philosopher. Interviewers like to ask about the interviewee and philosopher's like to talk about what they work on. Honestly though, if you are at all familiar with Kuhns life, this interview offers little that you didn't already know.
An interesting look at a self-absorbed life.......2001-07-26
Having just finished Steve Fuller's decimation of Kuhn's significance, I come away much less impressed with this book. I immediately noticed that Fuller's claim that Kuhn was beholden to Harvard President James Bryant Conant seems to continue after the grave, since the editor of this set of papers and interviews is none other than Conant's grandson! But putting that aside (sheer coincidence perhaps?), the final interview shows just how self-absorbed Kuhn was. Considering what was going on in the larger world around him, he seemed forever preoccupied by a very private intellectual project that never attracted the attention that buzzwords like "paradigm" did. Fuller read this interview in the original obscure Greek philosophy journal where it appeared, and makes some sharp observations about Kuhn's tendency to deny all influences -- including highly publicized ones like Ludwik Fleck. This is not to say that Kuhn's intellectual project wasn't interesting, but it's amazing just how unwilling he remained to deal with the way his work was used. Lucky for him, he was professionally ensconced in the Ivy League and so never really had to bother much with what the sub-Ivy intellectuals thought.
What made Kuhn tick, and more.......2001-03-09
There are three parts to this book: essays Kuhn wrote to respond to the most substantial criticisms of THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, essays that extend and elaborate on his thinking since STRUCTURE, and, most remarkable, a very long and revealing interview or discussion with three Greek philosophers of science less than a year before his death.
To me, the interview is the most interesting part of the book, mainly because it's autobiographical. I am told by people who knew him that, after the hullabaloo over STRUCTURE, Kuhn became quite reticent, at least in public, and certainly about himself. Well, reticent is the last thing he is in this interview. He speaks quite openly about his parents, his early education, his attraction to physics, his time at Harvard, his decision to move from physics to philosophy and history of science, the issues in history and philosophy of science that moved him most deeply, his opinions of colleagues. In this interview, Thomas Kuhn becomes a person, not merely an icon. It's surprising, moving, and instructive, and anyone who's ever wondered about the man who wrote THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS will find the interview, as well as the essays in this book, well worth the read. Enjoy! And wonder!
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- Some comments on Kuhn's & also Polanyi's ideas
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Thomas Kuhn (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)
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Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is probably the best-known and most influential historian and philosopher of science of the last 25 years, and has become something of a cultural icon. His concepts of paradigm, paradigm change and incommensurability have changed our thinking about science. This volume offers an introduction to Kuhn's life and work and considers the implications of his work for philosophy, cognitive psychology, social studies of science and feminism. More than a retrospective on Kuhn, the book explores future developments of cognitive and information services along Kuhnian lines. Outside of philosophy the volume is of interest to professionals and students in cognitive science, history of science, science studies and cultural studies. Thomas Nickles is Professor of Philosophy and Chair at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is editor of Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality and Scientific Discovery: Case Studies (both Reidel, 1980). Nickles is co-editor of PSA 1982 (The Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings).
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Contemporary Philosophy in Focus offers a series of introductory volumes to many of the dominant philosophical thinkers of the current age. Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is probably the best-known and most influential historian and philosopher of science of the last 25 years, and has become something of a cultural icon. His concepts of paradigm, paradigm change and incommensurability have changed the way we think about science. This volume offers an introduction to Kuhn's life and work and then considers the implications of Kuhn's work for philosophy, cognitive psychology, social studies of science and feminism. The volume is more than a retrospective on Kuhn, exploring future developments of cognitive and information services along Kuhnian lines. Outside of philosophy the volume will be of particular interest to professionals and students in cognitive science, history of science, science studies and cultural studies.
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Some comments on Kuhn's & also Polanyi's ideas.......2005-12-04
Writers like Kuhn and Polanyi's subjectivistic approach to science are still popular in some circles, mostly because of the west's fascination with individual consciousness and the existential and phenomenological approaches to reality that grew out of that. While this is understandable historically I believe that this approach is still invalid, so I thought I'd say a little about that. But that will involve my discussing some basic philosophical history, so I hope you don't mind if I wax a little nerdy there.
Basically, the most important concept in epistemology is the split between the philosophies of idealism and empiricism. Idealists believe that ideas about the external world are innate. Kant was the last major philosopher to articulate the classical position on this, and his influence is still being felt by contemporary neo-Kantian theories and philosophers. For example, Kant mantained that the ideas of space and time were so fundamental that they had to be built-in, innate ideas. He argued that the test of this is that if one can't imagine a universe without a certain idea, then that idea couldn't have come from external reality. While this is an interesting contention, and there is some support for it (perceptual psychologist Eleanor Gibson showed that even at 1 year of age babies can perceive depth and space very well, in her famous "visual cliff" experiments), it is unlikely that there are truly innate ideas, although there are probably innate abilities like Kant suggested, since as he pointed out, in order for the mind to be actively involved in organizing and structuring the data of the senses, this could not occur unless there were corresponding mental capabilities and constucts to match.
But getting back to the philosophy definitions, as many people know, Locke, Hume, and most of the British philosophers were empiricists; they believed that ideas come from sense data and from external reality. This philosophical split between idealism and empiricism in thinking goes all the way back to Aristotle and Plato, so if you understand what it was about, you basically understand what most of western philosophy was about since then. The one exception here is the British philosopher Berkeley, who was an extreme subjectivist, and his philosophy is known as solipsism. He actually thought that the external world only existed because we perceived it, making it an extreme form of idealism. He did this by arguing that since we ultimately only know our own minds and its consciousness and internal perceptions, that there is no real way to prove that an objective, external reality even exists. While there is some truth to this, it's obviously an extreme position, and as result of recent research over the last 30 years in the neurophysiology and biophysics of sensation and perception, as in the case of David Marr's mathematical and theoretical work and his followers, we know now just how rigorous and analytical the process of perceiving external reality actually is.
Hence, there is very little reason anymore to insist on the fundamental subjectivity of perception in the Kantian sense. It is true that there are visual illusions at the higher levels of sensory perception, but those are now regarded as special cases, and they are being shown to be explainable in terms of mathematical visual field- distortion theories of these mechanisms that can be quantified just like the basic sensory processes.
But getting back to what I was saying before, Kant's view is still popular in some circles, and actually, he was right about certain things, such as the mind having certain built-in capabilities to understand reality, as I mentioned above in the case of idealism. The linguist, Noam Chomsky, and his ideas about an innate language capability are an example of this neo-Kantian approach, actually, which has been supported by developmental studies and by studies of feral children in regard to a critical period between 6 and 8 years of age, which is required for language developement.
However, most scientists and philosophers since the early 20th century are probably either Logical Positivists or Critical Naturalists rather than Idealists or neo-Kantians in the strict sense. The problem with neo-Kantianism is that a systematic ghost of an illusion pervades even the finest specimens of this theory, since there is no strong connection to external reality anymore. Both Critical Naturalism and Logical Positivism were strongly influenced by scientific theories about reality, and Logical Positivism is really just the philosophy and analysis of scientific method and of the logic of scientific hypothesis and theories rather than traditional philosophy in the usual sense. Some of the famous Logical Positivists were people like Rudolf Carnap, A.J. Ayer, and Reichenbach, whose names many people know. Critical Naturalism does get more into traditional philosophical topics like metaphysics and ontology but again, they tend to take their ideas about reality from what science has discovered in quantum theory and cosmology and what that implies as far as figuring out the metaphysics and ontology of the real world.
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell were two famous 20th century philosophers who were examples of the Critical Naturalism school, and both of them were mathematicians as well as philosophers. Whitehead was Russell's math professor, and in fact, they both wrote a famous work on mathematical logic, The Principia Mathematica, in which they show that the basic mathematical operations can be derived from logic.
Since we're on the subject, I thought I'd make several comments specifically on Kuhn's theory as set forth in his famous book, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's idea qualifies as a psychohistorical explanation of the nature of scientific progress, because scientists must have already made a cognitive shift to a new mindset before acceptance of the new theory can occur.
Other people have commented on similar ideas in the works of Feyerabend, Popper, and Polanyi, so I won't repeat any of that here. What I will say, however, is that this theory, while interesting, makes as little, or as much sense, itself, as the irrational science it purports to explain.
First, Kuhn's explanation of the process seems plausible psychologically but in fact is not supported by the psychological literature itself. People change deeply held convictions and ideas not because of an external paradigm shift, but because they become convinced internally that the new idea is superior to the old. Why? Because it explains the facts better, makes more powerful predictions, or is simpler. In other words, it is a fairly logical, reasonable process. This should surprise no-one but Kuhn.
Second, Kuhn's theory ignores the innumerable scientific hypotheses, theories, and advances that displaced earlier explanations with very little or no resistance.
Third, Kuhn misinterprets the initial resistance to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The real problem with the acceptance of this theory is that when it made its debut (especially in the case of Einstein's General Theory), few physicists themselves could even understand the mathematics and physics involved. Ignorance should not be confused with scientific irrationalism or just stubborn refusal to accept the truth.
Well, I hope you didn't mind my little philosophy digression, but I thought I'd make a few comments about the evolution of these ideas since Kuhn and Polanyi's ideas are best understood in the context of the development of philosophical ideas over the last several centuries.
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- A comment on Magellan's comments
- Another beautiful mind
- A few comments on the evolution of the philosophy
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The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change
Thomas S. Kuhn
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"Kuhn has the unmistakable address of a man, who, so far from wanting to score points, is anxious above all else to get at the truth of matters."--Sir Peter Medawar, Nature
Customer Reviews:
A comment on Magellan's comments.......2006-06-07
In the last few lines of Magellan's "A few comments on the evolution of the philosophy", Thomas Kuhn was strongly criticized. This criticism perhaps originates from the same misunderstanding of human nature that produced Confusianism and Maxism.
What is brave about Kuhn is that he dared to point out the weakness of mankind. Indeed scientists eventually accept new ideas and theories because they are closer to truth as revealed by the new experimental observations and findings. But this paradigm shift can indeed be painfully long as people first try to exhaust all the means to rescue the old paradigm. Scientists should be trained to have the ethnics of merely pursuing truth and only truth. However, as human beings (shame on them), some scientists care more about their reputation and survival than about what is true. When the majority of a community is like so, the paradigm shift indeed begins as an external process, i.e., the shift is forced upon and not voluntary.
Another beautiful mind.......2005-06-30
Kuhn's ideas are almost always insightful, sometimes brilliant, though he can be challenging and somewhat dense to read. The last point is an observation rather than a criticism. Unlike some academic writers who use a lot of jargon and unnecessarily big words to sound authoritative, Kuhn is "scholarly" in the best sense -- meticulous about detail and extremely thoughtful in his explanations. There's a lot of great stuff here, just not light reading.
A collection of essays like this is especially nice because Kuhn's writings on a variety of topics can be sampled in manageable chunks of about 10 to 30 pages each. His consistent theme is how communities of scientists come to understand, test, and advance the state of knowledge in their fields of study. What makes the essays so fascinating for me is Kuhn's deft exploration of the inherent social nature of how science is done and how it moves forward. And though Kuhn is writing specifically about SCIENCE as a social endeavor, a number of the insights can be readily applied to other areas.
Finally, Kuhn's analyses, insights, and critiques carry added weight because he's not writing about science as an outsider. He started out as a scientist/practitioner and it shows in the crisp way he explains and weaves scientific examples into his writing. Well worth the effort to read!
A few comments on the evolution of the philosophy.......2004-09-23
This is a nice collection of Kuhn's essays on various topics in the history and philosophy of science, which should be of value to anyone interested in Kuhn's thought and specifically in the important theory he put forth in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In some ways, his approach is similar to Michael Polanyi's, so I thought I'd discuss both of them a bit here.
Writers like Kuhn and Polanyi's subjectivistic approach to science are still popular in some circles, mostly because of the west's fascination with the individual consciousness and ego and with the existential and phenomenological approaches to reality that grew out of that. While this is understandable historically I believe that this approach is still invalid, so I thought I'd say a little more about that. But that will involve my discussing some basic philosophy, so I hope you don't mind if I wax a little nerdy here. I apologize in advance as this is a long review and perhaps a little technical philosophically, but perhaps you'll find my comments on the subject informative or at least useful.
Basically, the most important concept in epistemology is the split between the philosophies of idealism and empiricism. Idealists believe that ideas about the external world are innate. Kant was the last major philosopher to articulate the classical position on this, and his influence is still being felt by contemporary neo-Kantian theories and philosophers. For example, Kant mantained that the ideas of space and time were so fundamental that they had to be built-in, innate ideas. He argued that the test of this is that if one can't imagine a universe without a certain idea, then that idea couldn't have come from external reality. While this is an interesting contention, and there is some support for it (perceptual psychologist Eleanor Gibson showed that even at 1 year of age babies can perceive depth and space very well, in her famous "visual cliff" experiments), it is unlikely that there are truly innate ideas, although there are probably innate abilities like Kant suggested, since as he pointed out, in order for the mind to be actively involved in organizing and structuring the data of the senses, this could not occur unless there were corresponding mental capabilities and constucts to match.
But getting back to the philosophy definitions, as many people know, Locke, Hume, and most of the British philosophers were empiricists; they believed that ideas come from sense data and from external reality. This philosophical split between idealism and empiricism in thinking goes all the way back to Aristotle and Plato, so if you understand what it was about, you basically understand what most of western philosophy was about since then. The one exception here is the British philosopher Berkeley, who was an extreme subjectivist, and his philosophy is known as solipsism. He actually thought that the external world only existed because we perceived it, making it an extreme form of idealism. He did this by arguing that since we ultimately only know our own minds and its consciousness and internal perceptions, that there is no real way to prove that an objective, external reality even exists. While there is some truth to this, it's obviously an extreme position, and as result of recent research over the last 30 years in the neurophysiology and biophysics of sensation and perception, as in the case of David Marr's mathematical and theoretical work and his followers, we know now just how rigorous and analytical the process of perceiving external reality actually is.
Although his work was in the area of mathematical and theoretical neurobiology, it has important implications for the entire field of mind and brain, since Marr's computational and mathematical approach to vision revolutionized the entire area of vision research, after which it was never the same. There are strong hints of this approach in the earlier work of quantitatively oriented perceptual psychologists such as Julesz and Gibson, but Marr's work takes the whole field a quantum leap further, giving it a rigorousness and mathematical elegance never before seen.
For example, to mention just a few of his important ideas, and to give you some idea of how rigorous they were, Marr's demonstrations that retinal receptive field geometry could be derived by Fourier transformation of spatial frequency sensitivity data, that edges and contours could be detected by finding zero crossings in the light gradient by taking the Laplacian or second directional derivative, that excitatory and inhibitory receptive fields could be constructed from "DOG" functions (the difference of two Gaussians), and that the visual system used a two-dimensional convolution integral with a Gaussian prefilter as an operator for bandwidth optimation on the retinal light distribution, were more powerful than anything that had been seen up to that time.
Hence, there is very little reason anymore to insist on the fundamental subjectivity of perception in the Kantian sense. It is true that there are visual illusions at the higher levels of sensory perception, but those are now regarded as special cases, and they are being shown to be explainable in terms of mathematical visual field-distortion theories of these mechanisms that can be quantified just like the basic sensory processes.
But getting back to what I was saying before, Kant's view is still popular in some circles, and actually, he was right about certain things, such as the mind having certain built-in capabilities to understand reality, as I mentioned above in the case of idealism. The linguist, Noam Chomsky, and his ideas about an innate language capability are an example of this neo-Kantian approach, actually, which has been supported by developmental studies and by studies of feral children in regard to a critical period between 6 and 8 years of age, which is required for language developement.
However, most scientists and philosophers since the early 20th century are probably either Logical Positivists or Critical Naturalists rather than Idealists or neo-Kantians in the strict sense. The problem with neo-Kantianism is that a systematic ghost of an illusion pervades even the finest specimens of this theory, since there is no strong connection to external reality anymore. Both Critical Naturalism and Logical Positivism were strongly influenced by scientific theories about reality, and Logical Positivism is really just the philosophy and analysis of scientific method and of the logic of scientific hypothesis and theories rather than traditional philosophy in the usual sense. Some of the famous Logical Positivists were people like Rudolf Carnap, A.J. Ayer, and Reichenbach, whose names many people know. Critical Naturalism does get more into traditional philosophical topics like metaphysics and ontology but again, they tend to take their ideas about reality from what science has discovered in quantum theory and cosmology and what that implies as far as figuring out the metaphysics and ontology of the real world.
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell were two famous 20th century philosophers who were examples of the Critical Naturalism school, and both of them were mathematicians as well as philosophers. Whitehead was Russell's math professor, and in fact, they both wrote a famous work on mathematical logic, The Principia Mathematica, in which they show that the basic mathematical operations can be derived from logic.
Since we're on the subject, I thought I'd make several comments specifically on Kuhn's theory as set forth in his famous book, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's idea qualifies as a psychohistorical explanation of the nature of scientific progress, because scientists must have already made a cognitive shift to a new mindset before acceptance of the new theory can occur.
Other people have commented on similar ideas in the works of Feyerabend, Popper, and Polanyi, so I won't repeat any of that here. What I will say, however, is that this theory, while interesting, makes as little, or as much sense, itself, as the irrational science it purports to explain.
First, Kuhn's explanation of the process seems plausible psychologically but in fact is not supported by the psychological literature itself. People change deeply held convictions and ideas not because of an external paradigm shift, but because they become convinced internally that the new idea is superior to the old. Why? Because it explains the facts better, makes more powerful predictions, or is simpler. In other words, it is a fairly logical, reasonable process. This should surprise no-one but Kuhn.
Second, Kuhn's theory ignores the innumerable scientific hypotheses, theories, and advances that displaced earlier explanations with very little or no resistance.
Third, Kuhn misinterprets the initial resistance to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The real problem with the acceptance of this theory is that when it made its debut (especially in the case of Einstein's General Theory), few physicists themselves could even understand the mathematics and physics involved. Ignorance should not be confused with scientific irrationalism or just stubborn refusal to accept the truth.
Well, I hope you didn't mind my little philosophy digression, but I thought I'd make a few comments about the evolution of these ideas since Kuhn and Polanyi's theories are best understood in the context of the development of philosophical ideas over the last several centuries.
More puzzles, please..........2000-05-06
These collected essays provide a nice framework for further investigations into Kuhn's groundbreaking 'The Structures of Scientific Revolutions.' At the forefront are the issues of writing the history of scientific disciplines. This is to be contrasted with the philosophy of science, and, to be sure, Kuhn differentiates the writing of a history from the philosophy. What this book provides are more empirical and contextual essays that serve as details to the theoretical framework of "Structures." Kuhn is and will always be a frustrating but rewarding thinker. This book is no exception.
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Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolution (Key Contemporary Thinkers)
Wes Sharrock , and Rupert J. Read
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- Excellent analysis of the difficult details of Kuhn's work.
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Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science
Paul Hoyningen-Huene
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ASIN: 0226355519 |
Book Description
Few philosophers of science have influenced as many readers as Thomas S. Kuhn. Yet no comprehensive study of his ideas has existed--until now. In this volume, Paul Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's work over four decades, from the days before The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to the present, and puts Kuhn's philosophical development in a historical framework.
Scholars from disciplines as diverse as political science and art history have offered widely differing interpretations of Kuhn's ideas, appropriating his notions of paradigm shifts and revolutions to fit their own theories, however imperfectly. Hoyningen-Huene does not merely offer another interpretation--he brings Kuhn's work into focus with rigorous philosophical analysis. Through extended discussions with Kuhn and an encyclopedic reading of his work, Hoyningen-Huene looks at the problems and justifications of his claims and determines how his theories might be expanded. Most significantly, he discovers that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions can be understood only with reference to the historiographic foundation of Kuhn's philosophy.
Discussing the concepts of paradigms, paradigm shifts, normal science, and scientific revolutions, Hoyningen-Huene traces their evolution to Kuhn's experience as a historian of contemporary science. From here, Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's well-known thesis that scientists on opposite sides of a revolutionary divide "work in different worlds," explaining Kuhn's notion of a world-change during a scientific revolution. He even considers Kuhn's most controversial claims--his attack on the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification and his notion of incommensurability--addressing both criticisms and defenses of these ideas.
Destined to become the authoritative philosophical study of Kuhn's work, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions both enriches our understanding of Kuhn and provides powerful interpretive tools for bridging Continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions.
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Excellent analysis of the difficult details of Kuhn's work........1999-09-16
The author shows that he masters the subject with insight and is able to reconstruct either chronologically or by problems, thesis, objections and possible interpretations, the philosophical work of T.S.Kuhn. He choices to present the reconstruction from a caritative point of view, wich allows him to concentrate into the internal problems of Kuhn's theory of science. In Part I he locates Kuhn's work in the context of the Historiography of Science. Part II concentrates in the problem of scientific knowledge and Kuhn's hard and highly misunderstood thesis about "the construction of the world". Part III develops the subject of the dynamic of scientific knowledge and Kuhn's point of view about scientific progress. It is particulary helpfull to have at hand Kuhn's books while reading Hoyningen-Huene's book because he has a gift for suitable quotation.
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- why science isn't so scientific
- A Truly Original, Thought-Changing Work
- Scientific facts: constructed, not discovered?
- A truly original and groundbreaking work--mandatory reading.
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Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
Ludwik Fleck
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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ASIN: 0226253252 |
Book Description
Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory--including his own--is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his Foreword. Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource.
"To many scientists just as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a made thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."--Steven Shapin, Science
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why science isn't so scientific.......2007-01-10
A long-lost, terrific insight - from a respected scientist no less - of the ways in which so-called "objective" science really works. Which, I have to point out, doesn't make it any less effective. This is a great way to explore the inner workings of laboratories, science journals, and the worlds of research and academia. Warning: the language is a bit puffed up and can be hard to slog through at times. The guy WAS a scientist, after all, and it was translated from the German.
A Truly Original, Thought-Changing Work.......2006-04-13
I first read Genesis & Development of A Scientific Fact while I was a graduate student at New York University. While the work was admittedly a challenging one, it was, without doubt, one of the most truly original, thought-changing works I've ever read. Fleck was, in my opinion, a true visionary who forwarded an extremely provactive thesis about the origin of scientific "facts." Fleck's monograph is high on my short list of "must read" intellectual works. Other similar works worth reading include: Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and Giambattista Vico, The New Science.
Scientific facts: constructed, not discovered?.......1999-02-14
If you thought scientific knowledge was clear, objective, and unbiased, but fortunately became enlightened by your readings of Kuhn, think again!! Rediscovered by Kuhn himself, Fleck exposes in a brief, very-well illustrated monogrpah, how facts -such as the apparently objective Wassermann reaction for syphilis- are constructed, not passively discovered. From medieval magic to modern medicine, the concept of syphilis has been transformed. I urge you to read Fleck's work and evaluate for yourself why he anticipated his time. Enjoy!
A truly original and groundbreaking work--mandatory reading........1998-05-12
I first encountered Fleck's work while I was a doctoral student at NYU. The clarity and orginality of his thoughts completely captivated me. This work is truly one which has changed my life and my way of thinking. Fleck was indeed a pioneer and prophet--I continually re-read "Genesis & Development of A Scientific Fact," each time gaining greater insight and appreciation for its depth and scope. Fleck's monograph is truly an original and groundbreaking tour de force--mandatory reading from a true (but sadly overlooked) genious.
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