Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A THE DIALECTIC OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT
- B PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION
- C EPISTEMIC PROBABILITY
- D INDUCTIVE INFERENCE: THE DIALECTIC OF EXPERIENCE AND REASON
- 9 Scientific inference
- 10 Reconsiderations on inductive inference
- 11 Comments on two epistemological theses of Thomas Kuhn
- E FACT AND VALUE
- Index
11 - Comments on two epistemological theses of Thomas Kuhn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A THE DIALECTIC OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT
- B PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION
- C EPISTEMIC PROBABILITY
- D INDUCTIVE INFERENCE: THE DIALECTIC OF EXPERIENCE AND REASON
- 9 Scientific inference
- 10 Reconsiderations on inductive inference
- 11 Comments on two epistemological theses of Thomas Kuhn
- E FACT AND VALUE
- Index
Summary
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Kuhn's afterthoughts (1970a, 1974) have been subjected to so much penetrating criticism that any further examination might be supposed redundant. There are, however, two epistemological theses in his work which have not, in my opinion, received adequate analysis. They are not essentially dependent upon considerations of Gestalt switches, theory-ladenness of observation, incommensurability, or the ambiguity of the word ‘paradigm’, which have received much critical attention.
The first thesis is that the progress of science ought not be construed as the approach to a fixed goal which is the truth about nature.
But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science's existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community's state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal?
(1970, p. 171)Kuhn maintained this thesis in his replies to critics and even strengthened it somewhat: “If I am right, then ‘truth’ may, like ‘proof’, be a term with only intra-theoretic applications” (1970a, p. 266). The second thesis is that the procedures of scientific investigation can be shown to be rational, and the appropriate sense of “rationality” can be explicated, only by drawing upon the substantive achievements of science.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Search for a Naturalistic World View , pp. 301 - 318Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993