Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and table
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Revolutions, paradigms, and incommensurability
- Part II Kuhn’s evolutionary epistemology
- Part III Kuhn’s social epistemology
- Chapter 9 Kuhn’s constructionism
- Chapter 10 What makes Kuhn’s epistemology a social epistemology?
- Chapter 11 How does a new theory come to be accepted?
- Chapter 12 Where the road has taken us
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 12 - Where the road has taken us
a synthesis
from Part III - Kuhn’s social epistemology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and table
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Revolutions, paradigms, and incommensurability
- Part II Kuhn’s evolutionary epistemology
- Part III Kuhn’s social epistemology
- Chapter 9 Kuhn’s constructionism
- Chapter 10 What makes Kuhn’s epistemology a social epistemology?
- Chapter 11 How does a new theory come to be accepted?
- Chapter 12 Where the road has taken us
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
So where has the road that Kuhn traveled since the publication of Structure taken us?
One of my principal aims in this book has been to encourage a re-examination of Kuhn’s work. I believe that there are still important insights to gain from his work as we develop an epistemology of science. More precisely, I have argued that: (1) we need to move past the popular negative reading of Kuhn, and (2) in our efforts to understand his constructive contributions to philosophy of science we will benefit from attending to his later work, in particular, Kuhn’s mature notion of scientific revolutions and his emphasis on scientific specialization. For the most part, philosophers have seen Kuhn’s account of science as a threat to the rationality of science. Consequently, in their discussion of Kuhn’s work many philosophers have sought to show either how Kuhn is mistaken in his descriptive account of scientific change, or how he is mistaken about the normative implications of theory change in science. They have seldom sought positive insights from his work.
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- Kuhn's Evolutionary Social Epistemology , pp. 201 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011